"Where are we?" he hissed at Rowan as soon as the door shut behind them. "Could you tell? Is this Bharaputra's headquarters?"

"No," said Rowan. "His main residence is still under renovation. Something about a commando raid blowing out several rooms," she added snappishly.

He walked slowly around their chamber, but he did not take up banging on the walls again, to Rowan's obvious relief. "It occurs to me . . . that there's another way to escape besides breaking from the inside out. That's to get someone else to break from the outside in. Tell me . . . would it be harder to break in and take someone held prisoner by House Bharaputra, House Fell, or House Ryoval?"

"Well . . . Fell would be the hardest, I suppose. He has more troops and heavy weapons. Ryoval would be the easiest. Ryoval's really a House Minor, except he's so old, he gets the honors of a House Major by habit."

"So . . . if one wanted someone bigger and badder than Bharaputra, one might go to Fell."

"One might."

"And . . . if one knew help were on the way . . . it might be tactically brighter to leave said prisoner at Ryoval's, rather than to have him shifted to some more formidible location."

"It might," she conceded.

"We have to get to Fell."

"How? We can't even get out of this room!"

"Out of the room, yes, we must get out of the room. But we might not have to get out of the house. If one of us could just get to a comconsole for a few uninterrupted minutes. Call Fell, call someone, let the world know Vasa Luigi has us. That would start things moving."

"Call Lilly," said Rowan sturdily. "Not Fell."

I need Fell. Lilly can't break into Ryoval's. He considered the uneasy possibility that he and the Durona Group might be starting to move at cross-purposes. He wanted a favor from Fell, whom Lilly wished to escape. Still—one would not have to offer very much to interest Fell in a raid on Ryoval. A break-even in materials, and the profit in old hatred. Yeah.

He wandered into the bathroom and stared at himself in the mirror. Who am I? A skinny, haggard, pale, odd-looking little man with desperate eyes and a tendency to convulsions. If he could even decide which one his clone-twin was, glimpsed so painfully yesterday, he could dub himself the other by process of elimination. The fellow had looked like Naismith to him. But Vasa Luigi was no fool, and Vasa Luigi was convinced of the reverse. He had to be one or the other. Why couldn't he decide? If I am Naismith, why did my brother claim my place?

At that moment, he discovered why it was called a cascade.