“I’ll be asking questions, as well,” Jonas said dreamily. “Drifting here and there... looking spruce, smelling of bay-berries... and asking my little questions. I’ve known folks in our line of trade who’ll go to a fat, jolly fellow to find out the gossip—a saloon-keeper or bartender, perhaps a livery stable owner or one of the chubby fellows who always hangs about the jail or the courthouse with his thumbs tucked into his vest pockets. As for myself, Clay, I find that a woman’s best, and the narrower the better—one with more nose than tits sticking off her. I look for one who don’t paint her lips and keeps her hair scrooped back against her head.”

“You have someone in mind?”

“Yar. Cordelia Delgado’s her name.”

“Delgado?”

“You know the name, it’s on the lips of everyone in this town, I reckon. Susan Delgado, our esteemed Mayor’s soon-to-be gilly. Cordelia’s her auntie. Now here’s a fact of human nature I’ve found: folk are more apt to talk to someone like her, who plays them close, than they are to the local jolly types who’ll buy you a drink. And that lady plays them close. I’m going to slip in next to her at that dinner, and I’m going to compliment her on the perfume I doubt like hell she’ll be wearing, and I’m going to keep her wineglass full. Now, how sounds that for a plan?”

“A plan for what? That’s what I want to know.”

“For the game of Castles we may have to play,” Jonas said, and all the lightness dropped out of his voice. “We’re to believe that these boys have been sent here more as punishment than to do any real job of work. It sounds plausible, too. I’ve known rakes in my time, and it sounds plausible, indeed. I believe it each day until about three in the morning, and then a little doubt sets in. And do you know what, Clay?”

Reynolds shook his head.

“I’m right to doubt. Just as I was right to go with Rimer to old man Thorin and convince him that Farson’s glass would be better with the witch-woman, for the nonce. She’ll keep it in a place where a gunslinger couldn’t find it, let alone a nosy lad who’s yet to have his first piece of arse. These are strange times. A storm’s coming. And when you know the wind is going to blow, it’s best to keep your gear battened down.”

He looked at the cigarette he had made. He had been dancing it along the backs of his knuckles, as Reynolds had done earlier. Jonas pushed back the fall of his hair and tucked the cigarette behind his ear.