“We got your precious book,” said Brrr, trying not to sound panicky. “The girl is a bonus. What’re we waiting around for?”

“I don’t know. How the hel should I know?” Mr. Boss’s tone was darker than usual.

“Ask the Clock?” suggested Ilianora, as if that thought might not have occurred to him.

“I can’t.”

Brrr had only been with the company of the Clock for the past six months. Stil, he’d heard that the Clock decided for itself when it needed a rest. When this happened, the company would sometimes disband for a while. Maybe it was time. The Lion asked, “What, is the thing on strike again? Holding out on us?”

Mr. Boss shifted this way and that without answering. Off to one side, to the plinks from a silver guitar and a set of jingle-tongs, the bawd came through clearly. The seven lads were improvising more lewd verses to their nightly lay of the endless lay. Some evenings the boys sang of themselves taking their pleasures in a whorehouse, sometimes in a female seminary, sometimes in front of an audience of kings and bishops. The boys were equaly godlike in endurance and readiness, the girls indistinguishably gorgeous except for variations in hair color. Hardly lulabye material, but soon enough Rain slumped in the Lion’s forearms and noodled herself toward sleep.

“Now,” said the Lion, “I don’t mean to rush you, but assassins are no doubt starting out to find us, the Clock, and the book. They’l have put it al together, given we showed them an excerpt of what to expect. Do you want to tel us what’s going on?”

Mr. Boss sighed, and a single golden tear slid out of his eye and lost itself in his bottlebrush mustache. Brrr didn’t trust the tear of a dwarf any more than he trusted the Unnamed God to appear in the clearing and settle the universal contest of good versus evil. Or even good versus bad taste.

Ilianora extended their chieftain the benefit of the doubt. “What’s upset you? It surely can’t be the child?”

The dwarf sunk his chin farther into his chest, as if he’d rather speak to his lap. “I hoped getting the book back from Lady Glinda would refresh the Clock’s executive function, but I don’t believe it has done so.”

Ilianora and Brrr exchanged glances, and waited.

“You always see the entertainment message of the Clock,” explained Mr. Boss. “That’s al anyone ever sees. The audience side with the stages, the apertures and balconies and suchlike. But there’s a difference between public demonstration and private revelation. Around the corner? Not the side with the storage cabinets, but the back end of the cart? Where the placard says HE DREAMS YOU UP AND