“Yer office,” the old bastard cackled as Depape led him down the alley toward the board fence and the heaps of rubbish at the far end. The wind blew, stinging Depape’s nose with odors of sulfur and carbolic from the mines. From their right, the sounds of drunken revelry pounded through the side of Hattigan’s. “Your office, that’s good.”

“Aye, my office.”

The old man gazed at him in the light of the moon, which rode the slot of sky above the alley. “Are you from Mejis? Or Tepachi?”

“Maybe one, maybe t’other, maybe neither.”

“Do I know you?” The old bastard was looking at him even more closely, standing on tiptoe as if hoping for a kiss. Ugh.

Depape pushed him away. “Not so close, dad.” Yet he felt marginally encouraged. He and Jonas and Reynolds had been here before, and if the old man remembered his face, likely he wasn’t talking through his hat about fellows he’d seen much more recently.

“Tell me about the three young lords, old dad.” Depape rapped on the wall of Hattigan’s. “Them in there may not be interested, but I am.”

The old bastard looked at him with a bleary, calculating eye. “Might there be a bit o’ metal in it for me?”

“Yar,” Depape said. “If you tell me what I want to hear, I’ll give you metal.”

“Gold?”

“Tell me, and we’ll see.”

“No, sir. Dicker first, tell second.”

Depape seized him by the arm, whirled him around, and yanked a wrist which felt like a bundle of sticks up to the old bastard’s scrawny shoulderblades. “Fuck with me, dad, and we’ll start by breaking your arm.”

“Let go!” the old bastard screamed breathlessly. “Let go, I’ll trust to your generosity, young sir, for you have a generous face! Yes! Yes indeed!”

Depape let him go. The old bastard eyed him warily, rubbing his shoulder. In the moonlight the blood drying on his cheeks looked black.

“Three of them, there were,” he said. “Fine-born lads.”

“Lads or lords? Which is it, dad?”

The old bastard had taken the question thoughtfully. The whack on the head, the night air, and having his arm twisted seemed to have sobered him up, at least temporarily.

“Both, I do believe,” he said at last. “One was a lord for sure, whether them in there believe it or not. For I saw his father, and his father bore the guns. Not such poor things such as you wear—beggin your pardon, I know they’re the best to be had these days—but real guns, such as were seen when my own dad was a boy. The big ones with the sandalwood grips.”