“Susan,” Cordelia said in a small, hurt voice. “How can ye call me so? What’s so coarsened your tongue and your regard for me?”

Susan went out without replying. She crossed the yard and entered the barn. Here the smells she had known since childhood—horses, lumber, hay—filled her head and drove the awful clarity away. She was tumbled back into childhood, lost in the shadows of her confusion again. Pylon turned to look at her and whickered. Susan put her head against his neck and cried.

7

“There!” Sheriff Avery said when sais Dearborn and Heath were gone. “It’s as ye said—just slow is all they are; just creeping careful.” He held the meticulously printed list up, studied it a moment, then cackled happily. “And look at this! What a beauty! Har! We can move anything we don’t want em to see days in advance, so we can.”

“They’re fools,” Reynolds said... but he pined for another chance at them, just the same. If Dearborn really thought bygones were bygones over that little business in the Travellers’ Rest, he was way past foolishness and dwelling in the land of idiocy.

Deputy Dave said nothing. He was looking disconsolately through his monocle at the Castles board, where his white army had been laid waste in six quick moves. Jonas’s forces had poured around Red Hillock like water, and Dave’s hopes had been swept away in the flood.

“I’m tempted to wrap myself up dry and go over to Seafront with this,” Avery said. He was still gloating over the paper, with its neat list of farms and ranches and proposed dates of inspection. Up to Year’s End and beyond it ran. Gods!

“Why don’t ye do that?” Jonas said, and got to his feet. Pain ran up his leg like bitter lightning.

“Another game, sai Jonas?” Dave asked, beginning to reset the pieces.

“I’d rather play a weed-eating dog,” Jonas said, and took malicious pleasure at the flush that crept up Dave’s neck and stained his guileless fool’s face. He limped across to the door, opened it, and went out on the porch. The drizzle had become a soft, steady rain. Hill Street was deserted, the cobbles gleaming wetly.

Reynolds had followed him out. “Eldred—”

“Get away,” Jonas said without turning.

Clay hesitated a moment, then went back inside and closed the door.

What the hell’s wrong with you? Jonas asked himself.