One early morning, as the Huntress neared the half, Reynolds and Depape came downstairs together from the second floor of the Travellers' Rest. The main public room was silent except for various snores and phlegmy wheezings. In Hambry's busiest bar, the party was over for another night.
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!"
Reynolds grinned, but his eyes were still worried. Rimer managed a smile as thin as a scum of November ice, and pointed at the seven which had just popped out of the pack. "Red on black, my dear Jonas."
"I ain't your dear anything," Jonas said, putting the seven of diamonds on an eight of shadows, "and you'd do well to remember that." Then, to Reynolds and Depape: "Now what do you boys want? Rimer 'n me was just going to have us a little palaver."
"Perhaps we could all put our heads together," Reynolds said, putting a hand on the back of a chair. "Kind of see if our thinking matches up."
"I think not," Jonas said, sweeping his cards together. He looked irritated, and Clay Reynolds took his hand off the back of the chair in a hurry. "Say your say and be done with it. It's late."
"We was thinking it's time to go on out there to the Bar K," Depape said. "Have a look around. See if there's anything to back up what the old fella in Ritzy said."
"And see what else they've got out there," Reynolds put in. "It's getting close now, Eldred, and we can't afford to take chances. They might have - "
"Aye? Guns? Electric lights? Fairy-women in bottles? Who knows? I'll think about it. Clay."
"But - "
"I said I'll think about it. Now go on upstairs, the both of you, back to your own fairy-women."
Reynolds and Depape looked at him, looked at each other, then backed away from the table. Rimer watched them with his thin smile.
At the foot of the stairs, Reynolds turned back. Jonas paused in the act of shuffling his cards and looked at him, tufted eyebrows raised.
"We underestimated em once and they made us look like monkeys. I don't want it to happen again. That's all."
"Your ass is still sore over that, isn't it? Well, so is mine. And I tell you again, they'll pay for what they did. I have the bill ready, and when the time comes, I'll present it to them, with all interest duly noted. In the meantime, they aren't going to spook me into making the first move. Time is on our side, not theirs. Do you understand that?"
"Yes."
"Will you try to remember it?"
"Yes," Reynolds repeated. He seemed satisfied.
"Roy? Do you trust me?"