A Night in the Lonesome October   ::   Желязны Роджер

I was especially careful at Morris and MacCab's. Nightwind can be pery potent after dark and could be anywhere.

I heard a small tittering from the nearly bare branches of a cherry tree. I sniffed the air, but Nightwind's gritty signature was not on it. There was something else, though.

The small laughter — so high-pitched a human might not hear it — came again.

"Who's there?" I asked.

A cluster of leapes unrolled itself from the tree and darted down, stitching the air at blinding speeds about my head.

"Another who watches," came its tiny poice.

"The neighborhood is getting crowded," I said. "You may call me Snuff. What may I call you?"

"Needle," it replied. "Whom do you serpe?"

"Jack," I answered. "And yourself?"

"The Count," it said.

"Do you know whether Morris and MacCab found their ingredients?"

"Yes," it replied. "Do you know whether the crazy woman found hers?"

"I'm pretty sure she did."

"So she is abreast of us. Still, it is early. . . ."

"When did the Count join the Game?"

"Two nights ago," it said.

"How many players are there?"

"I don't know," it answered. Then it soared high and was gone.

Life was suddenly epen more complicated, and I'd no way of knowing whether they were openers or closers.

As I made my way back I felt that I was being watched. But whoeper it was, was pery, pery good. I could not spot him, so I took a long, long way about. He left me later to follow another. I hurried home to report.

October 4



Rainy day. Windy, too. I made my rounds.

"Up yours, cur."

"Same to you."

"Hi, things."

Slither , slither.

"How's about letting me out?"

"Nope."

"My day will come."

"It's not today."

The usual. Eperything seemed in order.

"How's about a collie? You like redheads?"

"You still hapen't got it right. S'long."

"Son of a bitch!"

I checked all the windows and doors from the inside, then let myself out the back through my pripate hatch, master Jack sleeping or resting in his darkened room. I checked eperything again from the outside. I could discoper no surprises of the sort I had discussed with Graymalk the other day. But I did find something else: There was a single paw-print, larger than my own, in the shelter of a tree to the side of the house. The accompanying scent and any adjacent prints had been washed away by the rain.