The older elf turned to the table and snarled something in the language of the Elflands, and the kids, looking frightened and resentful, filed out of view, past the speaker we couldn’t see. They must have left the room; a door slammed and the older elf winced. Then he snatched the box of candles off the table in a careless, haughty gesture, and carried them off what I thought of as the stage, toward the other person. A few more indecipherable sentences, and we heard the door slam again.

Sunny grabbed my arm and yanked me toward the back of the building. We were trying to be discreet and quiet, so we made it to the rear corner just in time to see the back door open. It and the steps down from it were lit by a torch in a bracket. Torchlight was enough to keep someone from falling down the stairs, and enough to make it easy to recognize the man on the steps. Toby Saquash, who’d had third shift desk duty at Chrystoble Street Station the morning I found Walt Felkin.

Sunny didn’t look surprised; she must have had all the reaction she was going to when she recognized his voice. Saquash put the box of candles in a hardshell case over the rear fender of a dark-colored Yamaha Virago and mounted up. When he started the engine, Sunny said next to my ear, “Would you be able to find him?”

I nodded. I’d liked Toby Saquash. How could somebody I liked have been responsible for the passport, for the virus, for bombs, and death by falling, and my partner weak and sick in the care hostel? “You’re not going to let him take that batch out of here, are you?”

“Calm down. He won’t distribute it in a hurry—he can’t. He knows as well as I do that when these things get rushed, people make mistakes, and that’s when they get caught. Besides, we spent the whole day playing jacks with his customer base.”

The Virago bounced away down the alley, taillight dark. “Now what?” I whispered.

“We find out how many people are in the building.”

As far as we could tell from looking in and listening at windows, we’d already seen all the occupants. Sunny tried the front door, and nodded when it wouldn’t budge.