Jonas, accompanied by a silent guest, sat playing Chancellors’ Patience at Coral’s table to the left of the batwing doors. Tonight he was wearing his duster, and his breath smoked faintly as he bent over his cards. It wasn’t cold enough to frost—not quite yet—but the frost would come soon. The chill in the air left no doubt of that.

The breath of his guest also smoked. Kimba Rimer’s skeletal frame was all but buried in a gray serape lit with faint bands of orange. The two of them had been on the edge of getting down to business when Roy and Clay (Pinch and Jilly, Rimer thought) showed up, their plowing and planting in the second-floor cribs also apparently over for another night.

“Eldred,” Reynolds said, and then: “Sai Rimer.”

Rimer nodded back, looking from Reynolds to Depape with thin distaste. “Long days and pleasant nights, gentlemen.” Of course the world had moved on, he thought. To find such low culls as these two in positions of importance proved it. Jonas himself was only a little better.

“Might we have a word with you, Eldred?” Clay Reynolds asked. “We’ve been talking, Roy and I—”

“Unwise,” Jonas remarked in his wavery voice. Rimer wouldn’t be surprised to find, at the end of his life, that the Death Angel had such a voice. “Talking can lead to thinking, and thinking’s dangerous for such as you boys. Like picking your nose with bullet-heads.”

Depape donkeyed his damned hee-haw laughter, as if he didn’t realize the joke was on him.

“Jonas, listen,” Reynolds began, and then looked uncertainly at Rimer.

“You can talk in front of sai Rimer,” Jonas said, laying out a fresh line of cards. “He is, after all, our chief employer. I play at Chancellors’ Patience in his honor, so I do.”

Reynolds looked surprised. “I thought... that is to say, I believed that Mayor Thorin was...”

“Hart Thorin wants to know none of the details of our arrangement with the Good Man,” Rimer said. “A share of the profits is all he requires in that line, Mr. Reynolds. The Mayor’s chief concern right now is that the Reaping Day Fair go smoothly, and that his arrangements with the young lady be... smoothly consummated.”

“Aye, that’s a diplomatic turn o’ speech for ye,” Jonas said in a broad Mejis accent. “But since Roy looks a little perplexed, I’ll translate. Mayor Thorin spends most of his time in the jakes these days, yanking his willy-pink and dreaming his fist is Susan Delgado’s box. I’m betting that when the shell’s finally opened and her pearl lies before him, he’ll never pluck it—his heart’ll explode from excitement, and he’ll drop dead atop her, so he will. Yar!”

More donkey laughter from Depape. He elbowed Reynolds. “He’s got it down, don’t he, Clay? Sounds just like em!”