I could not help liking him on some levels.

"You're not going to pursue the Krage thing, then?"

"Oh, yeah. Of course. The bodies are missing. But that's not unusual. Probably turn up across the river in a couple days, if they're dead. Or screaming for blood if they're not." He tapped a name on his list. "This guy hangs around the same place.

Maybe I'll talk to this guy

Raven while I'm there."

I felt the blood drain from my face. "Who?"

He looked at me strangely. I forced myself to relax, to look casual. His eyebrows dropped. "Guy named Raven.

The foreigner who was supposed to be feuding with Krage.

Hangs out the same place as this one guy on my wood-gatherer's list. Maybe I'll ask him a few questions." "Raven. Unusual name. What do you know about him?" "Just that he's a foreigner and supposed to be bad news.

Been around a couple years. Typical drifter. Hangs out with the Crater crowd."

The Crater crowd were the Rebel refugees who had established themselves in Juniper.

"Do me a favor? It's a long shot, but this guy could be the ghost I was talking about the other day. Stand off a ways. Pretend you never heard the name. But get me a physical description. And find out if he's got anybody with him."

Bullock frowned. He didn't like it. "Is it important?"

"I don't know. It could be."

"All right."

"Keep the whole thing under your hat if you can."

"This guy means something to you, eh?"

"If he's the guy I knew, that I thought was dead, yeah. Him and me got business."

He smiled. "Personal?"

I nodded. I was feeling my way now. This was touchy. If this was my Raven, I had to go careful. I didn't dare let him get caught in the coils of our operation. He knew too damned much. He could get half the Company officers and noncoms put to the question. And made dead.

I decided Bullock would respond best if I kept it mysterious, with Raven an old enemy by implication. Somebody I would do most anything to jump in the dark, but not somebody important in any other way.

"I got you," he said. He looked at me somewhat differently, as though glad to discover I wasn't different after all.

Hell, I'm not. But I like to pretend I am, most of the time. I told him, "I'm going back to Duretile. Got to talk to a couple buddies."

"Can you find your way?"

"I can. Let me know what you find out."

"Will do."

We separated. I went up the hill as fast as forty-year-old legs would carry me.

I got Elmo and Goblin off where nobody could overhear us. "We maybe got a problem, friends."

"Like what?" Goblin wanted to know. He had been aching for me to talk from the minute I rounded him up. I guess I looked a little ragged around the fringes.