She took up her instrument again and leaned the edge of the minor bridge right on the edge of his bed. Her fingers running into the treble range, they danced in contrapuntal jiggery at the top register, not six inches from his right ear.

Wherewas he?

LADYGLINDA SAID TOLIIR,“I can tell you have no intention of leaving that charred broomstick behind, but if you try to walk into a public space carrying it over your shoulder like a blunderbuss you’ll be taken for a fool, or at any rate noticed. I think what you are after is something a little more like camouflage.” She paused to regard herself in a convenient looking glass in the stairwell. Adjusting her everyday tiara, she conceded, “It must be said that camouflage is not an effect I have ever strived to master. Still, we’ll do what we can.”

Liir followed her down the marble steps of the central staircase. The place had gone quiet. “Goodness, everyone takes off for a smoke the minute my back is turned,” she said. “Where are the kitchens, anyway? Through here?”

She stumbled into a cloakroom, and then opened the door to a closet where two of the belowstairs staff were involved in recreational exercises. “I beg your pardon,” she said, and shut the door, and then locked it. “Eventually they’ll have to thump to be released, and one of them is bound to be cheating. Heaps of fun. But where’s the kitchen?”

“Have you just moved here?” asked Liir.

“Don’t be silly. Lord Chuffrey had this place long before we married. But I don’t cook for myself, if that’s what you mean. Nothing other than the toast that I mentioned earlier, and that’s done in the breakfast hall. Ah, here we are.”

A half-flight of stone steps descended into a cavernous whitewashed kitchen. A dozen members of the staff were sitting about the table so deep in conversation that they didn’t hear her coming. “Lady Glinda,” said a bootblack, and they all leaped up with guilty looks.

“Glad to be recognized in my own home,” said Glinda. “I hate to interrupt what are probably well-intentioned plans to kill us all in our beds, but if you don’t mind? A minor request for whichever of you has just a moment to spare?” They melted away, all but the housekeeper and the houseboy.

“He’s about the same size as the bootblack,” said Glinda, pointing to Liir. “Suit him up in House of Chuffrey colors and find some decent shoes, and get him a leather satchel on a sling. You know, that long cylindrical thingy that Lord Chuffrey’s guests use to carry their arrows when they go hunting in the country. That ought to accommodate the filthy old broom, I think.”

“Asking your pardon, Lady Glinda,” said the houseboy. “We’ve no such satchels on the town premises. They’re all down to Mockbeggar Hall.”

“Do I have to think of everything? Haven’t we friends? Haven’t we neighbors to borrow from? Aren’t there shops still serving the public? Need I go tramping to the marketplace myself with a sack of coins between my teeth?”