“Perfectly. Oh, Mab! You were busy when I roped you in, weren’t you? I’m terribly sorry.”

“We’re looking for something,” Tick-Tick said. “Without much luck, so far.”

Camphire’s gaze moved from the Ticker to me, with a question in it. I realized that Camphire really did know who I was and what I did, and that the official town finder of things wandering around asking people if they knew where something was made as strange a picture as Camphire being rational. It would take too long to explain, so I told her about the drug instead.

Her frown made a neat pair of wrinkles over her nose. “Why does that sound familiar?” She interrupted her own thoughts with another glancing smile at us. “You see, when I’m in my usual state, people will be indiscreet, sometimes. And I can’t think why, since it’s not as if anyone believes I’m deaf. It had something to do with Bonnie Prince Charlie.”

“That would be about right. He was probably a courier for whoever’s responsible.”

“Good riddance to bad rubbish in that quarter, I’m afraid, though I know I shouldn’t be so quick to say it. Oh, I remember! It was that poor wretched girl who calls herself Tiamat. Do you know her?”

Tick-Tick and I shook our heads in unison.

“Maybe she swims well. If so, it’s more than one would expect. She’s a lumpish, angry, red-headed girl—lives above that store on Woodruff that sells art supplies, and works at the counter there sometimes. She and someone I don’t know were worrying over where to find a new source of something, because word had just gone round that Charlie was dead, and Tiamat said that she was, and I quote, ‘damned well going to get it, because I’m planning on the Elflands for Christmas this year.’ End of quote. I couldn’t think why anyone would refer to the Elflands as if they were on a par with Canc·n, but it makes sense now.”

“It does, doesn’t it?” said Tick-Tick. “Thank you very much. You’ve given us the first reasonable hint we’ve had.”

Camphire laughed. “I believe stranger things have happened, but not very many of them. Oh, you didn’t tell me what you think of the picture!”

What we thought of a piece of art that we’d had a hand in, and that had been indirectly responsible for a lead? We told her it was swell.

•

We found the art supply store on Woodruff. It was still open, and one of the people tending it was a red-haired human girl with a grim expression. She had been fat; her skin sagged, doughy and inelastic, on her upper arms and around her neck and chin, where the padding had disappeared too quickly beneath it. She walked uncertainly, as if her legs were new to her, and a little painful.