Chapter 533: People of the Netherworld

Everyone had just finished reciting the oath, and the torch beside Hecate had yet to recover.

She was just about to go on when Heracles slapped a hand down on his knee.

"Chief, I've got a fresh piece of news I've been holding in for ages."

Hecate didn't stop him—not that she really could have anyway.

"There's a lad from Shetland in my battalion who went home on leave a few days ago."

Heracles held out both hands, miming the size of a cask in midair.

"Last month he handed over a barrel of whale oil, plus an ancient Viking Harpoon, saying it was for an admission ticket."

"A ticket?" Dionysus raised an eyebrow.

"If you have materials, you hand over materials; if you don't, you pay in cash."

Heracles grinned. "I heard the Norse table got absorbed into the Wild Hunt, and they're even selling spots in the Wild Hunt as tickets! There was an envoy standing right at the hall entrance, and tens of thousands of riders reversed their blades for him all at once! The lord of the hunt even led out his own horse for him!"

Demeter gave a low laugh, the ears of wheat atop her head swaying along with it.

Prometheus was intrigued as well. "A Virtuoso actually gave up his horse for someone else to ride?"

"That's what makes it so wild."

Dionysus set his cup down on the table.

"If this envoy could take a seat at our table..."

"Where would he sit if he came?" Heracles countered. "All seven chairs are full."

"If someone like that were willing to come, we could always shift over and make room."

Demeter chuckled. "Then let's start by moving yours."

Stymied by the remark, Dionysus could only pick his cup back up.

Richard smiled quietly, staying out of the discussion.

Hecate, however, turned her gaze to him. "Loki is also selling another piece of news—that the envoy is helping them look for Hermes."

The hall went dead silent at once, and the pans of Nemesis's scales dipped ever so slightly his way.

Every pair of eyes turned simultaneously to the last chair.

Richard gave an unconcerned wave of his hand. "He won't find me."

"Oh?" Hecate said. "You seem quite sure of that."

"The news Loki sells isn't necessarily true," Richard replied offhandedly.

'Loki really does his job as an information broker—the moment he gets wind of anything, he scatters it everywhere,' he thought.

'Next time we meet, should I say a word or two... Forget it, better not. The more I say, the more I'll slip up.'

"Very well. Aside from the Winter Solstice night, there is another matter to inform you of at this gathering."

With a lift of her hand, Hecate drew a long box from the shadows behind her chair.

The lid slid open by itself. Inside lay a ship's rudder.

Apart from its black oak body, the edge of the rudder blade was bound in a rim of metal with an oily sheen, its hue like a lamp wick burning down to its last flickering ember. Richard recalled the lampwick copper described in Products Beyond the Veil; binding the edge in lampwick copper meant the vessel was built to travel into very deep places.

The tiller was cast from lampwick copper as well, its shaft carved with seven grooves, five of which were glowing.

A Two-Handled Cup, suffused with pale purple;

A short club, carrying the scent of olive wood up close;

A curved sickle, etched with the grain of wheat stalks;

A cluster of crimson fire, resting quietly in its groove;

And at the very end, closest to the grip, was carved a key.

The other two grooves were dark, one carved with a pair of scales and the other with a Caduceus.

Prometheus's flame leaped sharply. "This is the piece the Chief commissioned my master to forge."

"Yes." Hecate nodded.

Richard remembered now. Back then, Prometheus's master had gotten too curious for his own good and tried dismantling the mask, tripping the failsafe hidden inside.

Hecate hadn't asked for compensation, demanding only that his master craft something from a blueprint free of charge. Toward the end of the year, Prometheus had mentioned in passing at the table that his master had finished the work, and Hecate had simply acknowledged it without following up.

At the time, everyone had been guessing: what could possibly require a Major Adept artisan to craft with his own hands?

Now they had the answer.

Hecate rested her hand on the tiller. "A Deep Realm Ship must have a rudder."

"Seven divine names pieced together form the hull, resonance determines the thickness of the planks, and the masks are the sails."

"Yet with only five of the seven grooves lit, the rudder cannot turn."

Her gaze shifted slowly from Nemesis to Hermes. "We are only waiting for the two of you to advance."

Prometheus stared at the rudder. "My master burned out two furnaces on this and swore he'd never take such a job again."

Hecate didn't reply, her hand still resting there.

Richard's eyes stayed fixed on it as well. [Speculation: Morphostructuring] operated automatically, and he noticed that the grip of the tiller had been designed to fit only a single hand.

Hecate closed the box. "Quite some time has passed since our last joint operation ended, and all of you should have made progress. Let's each demonstrate our recent mask resonance so everyone knows where we stand."

Dionysus was the first to stand; he had been waiting all night for those words.

Reaching into the void, he drew out a staff.

The shaft stood taller than a man, twined thickly with ivy from the pinecone finial at its tip all the way down, with unripe green grapes hanging between the leaves.

"The Thyrsus." He thumped the base of the staff against the floor.

Hairline cracks split the marble floor, and a dark purple spring welled up from the seams, filling the hall with the sweet, faintly bloody scent of freshly crushed grapes.

Richard looked down at the marble slabs; the spring water had fused them into a single piece, their veining seamlessly joined.

"Erasing boundaries," Dionysus explained. "It makes a wall forget it is a wall, and a lock forget it is a lock. As for people... drink enough, and they forget who they are too."

"This lousy spring water of yours got my boots all wet."

Heracles stomped his wet boot against the floor and stood up.

Reaching behind his back, he pulled out a massive bow. At some point, a leather quiver had appeared over his shoulder, the arrows protruding from its mouth pitch-black from tip to nock.

"Used to be, whenever I ran into things that could fly or hid behind shell craters, all I could do was chase them with my club or hurl rocks." He patted the quiver. "Not anymore."

"Have you tested it? Does the poison work on incorporeal evil creatures?" Dionysus asked.

"Tested it once. Lately there's been a strange thing drifting over No Man's Land—looks like a wisp of smoke by day, and at night it sinks down into the trenches looking specifically for sleeping men."

He slung the bow over his shoulder. "I loosed an arrow at it. Just a graze made it fester and dissolve on the spot."

"That poison doesn't distinguish between friend and foe, does it?" Demeter asked.

Heracles's imposing air deflated at once.

"Yeah. My daughter just learned how to climb onto stools and grabs at everything she sees, so I don't even dare take it out at home."

Demeter then extended her hand over the table as well, palm up.

A flower pushed up out of the lines of her palm, its four petals a dark, dusky red.

"Poppy."

After the petals fell away, she gave the dried seedpod a gentle shake, and several black seeds spilled onto the tabletop.

Dionysus started to yawn, caught himself halfway through, and hastily clapped a hand over his mouth.

Demeter glanced at him and swept the dried pod back into her sleeve. "If a living person inhales too much of it, they'll keep craving it after they wake, so I generally don't use it on the living."

Just then, the scales hovering above Nemesis's head slowly descended as well, condensing from a hazy cluster of light into solid bronze.

Words surfaced upon the pans: The Whip punishes; the scales weigh.

Everyone's gaze turned to the next chair.

Prometheus picked up a dried fennel stalk from beside his chair; it looked like nothing more than a dead weed snapped off by the edge of a field.

Dionysus craned his neck a little. "...That's it?"

Prometheus flicked out his thumb, pressed it against the knot near the top of the stalk, and pinched downward.

The core of a fennel stalk was soft white pith that burned extraordinarily slowly once lit.

Herdsmen traveling by night would tuck a tiny ember inside, and it would smolder all through the night without going out.

In myth, the fire-thief had used just such a stalk to hide the stolen spark and smuggle it out.

A point of light shone through the slit he had pinched open, and at that exact instant, every other light in the temple dimmed.

"Wherever the stolen fire shines, nothing can stay hidden."

"What can't stay hidden?" Unconvinced, Dionysus fished a shilling from his sleeve and flicked it into the air with his thumb.

"Tails," Prometheus called out briskly. "After it lands, it will roll to the left over to Heracles's feet, and he'll step on it with his wet boot."

Only then did the Silver Coin hit the floor, rolling on its edge in a wobbling arc to the left.

Seeing it roll right up to him, Heracles lifted his foot and stamped down on it without a second thought.

Only after his boot came down did he realize what he'd done. He shifted his foot aside and saw that it really was tails.

"...I didn't step on it just because you said so," the big man said, raising both hands.

Prometheus nodded. "I saw it before you lifted your foot."

Heracles refused to buy it. "Then do you know if I'm about to swing my club—"

"You won't swing your club," Prometheus stated flatly. "You'll finish asking that question first, then reach for your quiver with your right hand, remember halfway there that the arrows are poisoned, and pull your hand back."

Even as Prometheus spoke, Heracles's right hand was already hovering behind his shoulder, an inch from the mouth of the quiver. He hastily yanked it back.

Richard reflected that his Mirror could read people too, yet it read intentions that had already begun to bud in an opponent—at bottom, things that were already happening.

Prometheus's fire, by contrast, read what had not yet come to pass.

Demeter asked, "How far into the future can you see?"

Prometheus thought for a moment. "Within ten seconds, it's no different from seeing it with my own eyes. Beyond a quarter of an hour, there's only a blurry shadow left. Anything further out... the visions come looking for me on their own."

"Very good," Hecate said. "Your turn, Hermes."

Accustomed to going last, Richard reached into his coat and took out the dog-skin cap.

The moment he pulled it out, Heracles sniffed the air. "What's that smell?"

"The cap of Hades that Hermes borrowed—this is just how it smells."

'Even in a dream ritual, people can smell the dog odor on it—looks like even that has become conceptual,' Richard thought as he spoke.

He pulled the cap down over his head.

For an instant, nothing happened in the hall. Then Heracles sprang up from his chair, and Dionysus knocked his cup over.

Ignoring the spilled cup, Dionysus swept his eyes back and forth across the last chair.

Prometheus pinched the slit in the fennel stalk wide open, and white fire surged from the pith, brighter than before.

The light washed up to the last chair and parted around it.

"...I can't see him either. The fire only illuminates living things, so it flowed right around him."

Richard remained seated right where he was, one hand still resting on the armrest.

Through her mask, Nemesis's green eyes fixed on the armrest of his chair, where a faint impression remained.

The left pan of her scales faced that chair, the beam sinking bit by bit toward it.

Richard looked toward the figure at the head of the table and found Hecate's Golden Mask facing him squarely, not off by a fraction.

Suddenly she laughed, her overlapping voices ringing out together—the maiden's voice tinged with pleasant surprise, the crone's brimming with understanding.

"Hermes... in my eyes, you have never shone so brightly."

Still seated, Richard abruptly recalled the prompt for the Helm of Hades: departed souls, death-echoes, and entities of the Underworld lineage would perceive its wearer even more clearly than usual. He took off the cap, reappearing in his chair.

Heracles managed to squeeze out, "Chief, you..."

"The goddess of the three-way crossroads holds the torch for the dead by night."

Hecate cast him a sidelong glance. "Read more books in the future. That recent bestseller, Star Legends of Olympus, seems quite good."

The big man scratched his head sheepishly, eyeing the floppy hide cap in Richard's hand.

"A helm lent out by Hades, King of the Underworld, being seen most clearly by those of the Underworld lineage—makes sense."

Richard tucked the cap back inside his coat.

It could fool the eyes of every living soul.

Too bad the helm failed right in front of the very person whose eyes he actually wanted to block.

The trading session that followed was quiet and sparse.

Dionysus's cup was refilled, though the wine was still bitter.

Prometheus set a small row of stabilizers on the table, and Heracles bought two vials, saying he would keep them on hand for the Hunters in his battalion.

Richard looked to Demeter. "Do you still have any of the Underworld Narcissus you brought out last time?"

"I do." Demeter produced a small clay jar from her sleeve.

"I explained it last time, so you should know what this is for, right?"

Richard nodded. "A medium for guiding spirits and channeling the dead. Eating it directly boosts Inspiration, but it also draws gazes more easily and leaves one more vulnerable beyond the veil."

"I'm not eating it, though. I'm keeping it for research."

[eating] was only a sliver of progress away from Lv.5, and its Lv.5 trait was [Decay Digestion]: ingesting flesh and bone from beyond the veil and metabolizing what lay within.

He wasn't sure yet if it would work; he coveted the boost to Inspiration that the Underworld Narcissus offered, but had no desire to shoulder its side effects.

So he would hang onto it for now and decide once he had figured it out.

Beneath her terracotta mask, Demeter was expressionless. She stared at him for a moment.

"What are you trading for it?"

"The usual—appraisals," Richard said, continuing to get something for nothing.

"Put it on my tab for now. Next time you dig up something in your fields you aren't sure about, have a messenger bring it to me to examine, at no extra charge."

"True to form for Hermes—taking my goods and making me come looking for you afterward."

Demeter pushed the entire clay jar across the table.

"There's enough inside for six uses in all. Take the whole thing."

"If there's something I can't appraise, I'll tell you honestly," Richard made sure to stipulate upfront.

"Fine."

Seeing that the trading was finished, Hecate moved on to the final segment.

"Very well. Let us begin sharing intelligence."

Dionysus said that the military supply system had ordered a large batch of bitter vintage from him, reportedly for a coastal evacuation somewhere, meant to keep the soldiers silent and free of panic during the retreat.

Set had also come knocking once more; after being driven off, he had left behind only a remark that the price was negotiable.

Heracles bared his teeth in a grin and picked up from there.

He had made good on his promise from the last gathering, using Prometheus's sample grenades to test-blast those four-legged evil creatures that couldn't survive without poison gas—the ones the soldiers called yellow-throated hounds.

Once the evil creatures' ether was ripped open, they coughed up all the poison gas they had swallowed.

"And the wind direction?"

"Recorded it, and I dug up soil from the blast site too. Already mailed it out." He lifted his chin toward Richard.

"Also..."

Heracles lowered his voice.

"Behind the enemy lines across from us, they've been stockpiling new steel cylinders for days now. Our men crept over for a sniff and said the smell isn't like the old stuff."

"What sort of smell?" Demeter asked.

"Like freshly cut hay."

The fire atop Prometheus's head shot up all at once.

He doubled over sharply, clutching his right ribs in a death grip as he began to retch.

His shoulders spasmed and ragged gasps tore from beneath his mask, as though a bird were jabbing its beak beneath his ribs.

Dionysus reached out to steady him, but Prometheus waved him off. For the one who stole fire, foresight was torture.

Every time he saw clearly, the eagle came to peck at his liver once more.

"The nineteenth..." he forced out between clenched teeth.

"Ypres... to the north..."

The flame subsided, shrinking back into a small wisp.

Prometheus slowly straightened his back, his hand still pressed against his lower ribs.

Heracles immediately took the warning to heart; in fact, the last prediction had proven dead right as well.

He gritted his teeth and said, "The battalion just issued new chemical-dipped hoods, and those brats complain they're too stuffy—not a single one of them wants to wear one. The moment I get back, I'm sending a telegram: starting tomorrow, they'll wear them while they eat, wear them while they sleep, and wear them while they shit!"

"Anyone who takes it off gets thrown straight into a den of yellow-throated hounds!"

The two women up next had relatively brief intelligence to share.

Nemesis (in writing): "Salonika. The dead stand upright; the living are penned inside barbed wire."

Demeter, for her part, said that when the farmers of Flanders plowed their fields come spring, they would be turning up bones.

When Hermes's turn came, Richard stood up.

"I'm passing along a message for someone. The former Mercury of Genoa asked me to give his regards to the Chief."

"He says that from now on, anyone from this table coming to him for business will get the regular-client rate."

Murmurs broke out around the table: "Mercury? From the Rome table? The arms dealer in Genoa..."

Richard added, "He is now a member of the General Chamber of Commerce Wartime Shipping Committee."

Heracles slapped his thigh. "So if we want to buy from him or sell to him in the future, we go through you?"

"Come to me."

Everyone understood at once: one of the greatest legacies of the Rome table was now in Hermes's hands.

Richard's mask shifted slightly as the two golden snakes settled into a more comfortable position.

Hecate pondered for a moment before saying, "Thank him for me. Since this is business, we shall conduct it as business."

For once, she shared a piece of intelligence of her own. "I have an item as well, from Rus'."

"That table has recently been running errands for the Siberian elder inside the palace."

"Their Tsarevich suffers from a blood malady—the slightest bump makes him bleed uncontrollably. Some time ago at the frontline headquarters, the Tsarevich had a nosebleed that none of the court physicians could stanch, so they had to put him on a train overnight back to Tsarskoye Selo. Yet that elder simply stood by his bed for a moment, spoke a few words, and the bleeding stopped."

"What sort of work is the Rus' table doing for him?" Richard asked.

"I don't know." Hecate shook her head.

"I only know they charged twice as much as in previous years, and since taking on that job, they haven't answered a single one of my letters."

She rose to her feet.

"Our next gathering is in mid-February. Remember, the oath you recited earlier concerning the Winter Solstice was sworn upon your own masks."

"If anyone breaks that oath, I will know the very instant it happens."

The torch went out.

...

In Cairo, Horus sat on the roof of an abandoned mosque.

The plaster on his face had been peeled off a few days ago, but the bridge of his nose was still crooked to the left.

The old bonesetter had shaken his head and said, "That friend of yours who's just a bit shorter than a camel really didn't hold back."

Right now, a peregrine falcon was circling above his head, round and round, beating its wings frantically yet refusing to land.

"Get down here!"

It made another circuit, then pulled its talons away at the last moment and shot back up, as if his arm were lined with live coals that would scorch its feet.

At last, the falcon alighted on the eaves of the minaret across the way, cocking its head to watch him.

Horus lowered his arm. Beneath his feet, his shadow stretched northward, spilling over the edge of the roof all the way onto the clothesline next door.

A midday shadow in winter was naturally longer than a man and naturally pointed north, so he paid it little mind.

Hours passed until the sun sank toward the west, and the shadows of the awnings, the palm trees, the benches, and the soldiers sitting on them all slanted accordingly, stretching long across the sandy ground.

Horus looked down and discovered that his own shadow still pointed straight north, identical to how it had lain at noon, only longer.

He scrambled to his feet and strode briskly toward the northern quarter of the city.

By the time he reached the Gate of Victory, the sun was nearly down, and the shadow of the city gatehouse trailed far out to the east.

His shadow still pointed north, stretching longer and longer until it no longer looked like the shadow of a man.

Instead, it looked like a rope, one end tied around his ankle and the other tethered to some place too far away to see.

Meanwhile, in mid-December, a great ship arrived at the Harbor of Copenhagen.

The guests arriving this time were out of the ordinary: the automobile magnate Ford had chartered the entire vessel, packing it with more than a hundred pacifists, ministers, ladies from suffragist societies, over forty journalists, and a crowd of college students.

The slogan shouted by the well-wishers on the pier back on the New Continent had drifted all the way across the ocean along with the ship:

"Get the boys out of the trenches before Christmas!"

Ford had backing on the mystical side—or rather, anyone who managed to thrive on the New Continent had formidable mystical side connections behind them.

The night before the ship sailed, several machines encased in lead-lined crates had been added to the boiler room, each bearing Ford Motor Company labels; when running, they gave off no smoke, only a steady hum.

Pressing his face to a porthole during the night watch, a stoker had seen the sea outside change color several times.

The ship had arrived, yet Ford himself had fallen ill at a grand hotel in Christiania.

After staying in bed for several days, he wrapped himself in a blanket early one morning and boarded a mail steamer bound back for the New Continent without a word to anyone.

Before departing, he left only a single line with his secretary: "I think I'd better go home to Mother."

Everyone in the automobile company knew that he called his wife "Mother."

The newspapers of the Western Continent didn't care about that, though; the very next day, every paper printed the quote across its pages like a pre-Christmas joke column.

The rest of the delegation carried on with the itinerary as planned. After three days of meetings in Stockholm, today was Copenhagen's turn, and the Peace Association had booked the banquet hall of a grand hotel beside King's New Square.

Holding a glass of wine, Loki mingled with the crowd.

The long tables were laid with pickled herring, rye bread, and a great steaming barrel of mulled wine.

The ladies of the association bustled back and forth refilling glasses with tireless enthusiasm, as though pouring a few extra drinks into the guests would make the cannons across the strait fire a few rounds less. A young man raised a glass toward him.

He was twenty-three or twenty-four, his face flushed red from the cold, and the moment he opened his mouth, out came a flat Kansas drawl that stretched every vowel long.

"Sir, are you a local?"

"Half a local, you could say." Loki clinked glasses with him.

"I've lived in this city longer than this drink sat in its cask."

The young man was a reporter for the Capital Gazette; it was his first time abroad, and his first time drinking a spirit as fierce as aquavit.

The liquor choked tears right out of his eyes, yet he still raised his glass high with great solemnity.

"To peace!"

"To peace." Loki smiled and nodded.

"Mr. Ford said..." The young reporter lowered his voice. "He said war is just a business gone bad. As long as you get those men to sit down and do the math properly, nobody's going to want to keep operating at a loss."

At that, Loki burst out laughing.

The young reporter's face turned even redder. "Did I say something wrong?"

"No, every word you said is right." Loki tucked his smile away.

"It's just a pity that you came too late."

"Too late? This war has only been going on for a little over a year..."

"Yes, too late. If only you had come a few thousand years earlier."

To those in high places beyond the veil, war was unquestionably profitable—a fact certain beings had realized thousands of years ago.

Every major war brought a fresh round of upheaval and iteration beyond the veil.

Yet on the New Continent, where mystical side resources were so abundant they practically overflowed, plenty of people failed to grasp that truth.

Offering no further explanation, Loki walked away, glass in hand.

He had made a killing over the past month, and with so much cash on hand, he had an itch to buy himself something.

The person Loki truly wanted to meet tonight was the Ford Motor Company technical advisor standing by the fireplace.

For the past few days, the entire Harbor had been talking about the car their company had brought along on the ship. Observing it in the square that afternoon, Loki had discovered that the car was actually alive.

Or rather, the car possessed the ability to think for itself.

Loki knew a fair bit about affairs on the New Continent.

Even setting aside the blank expanse west of the Central Mountain Range, in those east-coast cities lit by electric lamps at night, the veil was far thinner than on the Old Continent.

Among the cars rolling off the assembly line, out of every million vehicles, there were always a few that knew how to find their own way.

Loki wanted a car like that, and he happened to hold a piece of intelligence worth trading for one: a Master had leafed through the Hunting Register, and the lord of the hunt had pulled out a ship's ring from the Vasa to show off for the occasion.

Carrying two glasses of mulled wine, he walked over and set one beside the technical advisor's hand.

"When a Dane returns to Denmark, he ought to have a glass of Danish sweet wine."

The technical advisor looked at the glass, then at him, and prudently left the wine untouched.

"You're the one who was recruiting people in the back alleys of the Freeport."

"...News travels fast."

"The Harbor is only so big." The technical advisor snapped his Pocket Watch shut. "If you have business, state it, and make it quick. Mr. Ford dislikes wasting time, and so do I."

"Then I won't beat around the bush."

Loki lifted his chin toward the window. "That car outside the entrance—I want it."

The technical advisor's brow twitched. "That is a demonstration model brought over for display. It's not for sale."

"I didn't say I was buying it." Loki smiled.

"I'll trade you a piece of information for it."

"What information?"

"Concerning a..."

The word was already on the tip of his tongue when he heard himself continue, "...a librarian once told me that keeping a book overdue from the Royal Library carries a fine of one ore per day."

Loki froze on the spot. The words had slipped out far too smoothly, as if that had been what he intended to say all along.

The technical advisor stared at him, a frown already gathering on his brow.

"My apologies." Loki cleared his throat.

"What I meant to say was, there is a..."

This time, he deliberately forced the words out syllable by syllable.

"...there is a local library with a librarian on duty that closes at three in the afternoon during winter, so visitors from out of town often show up for nothing."

The technical advisor clicked open his Pocket Watch and checked the time.

Loki went cold all over.

Switching tactics, he fished a pencil and a calling card from his inner pocket.

"I'll write it down for you!"

As the pencil touched the paper, he watched every single stroke intently.

Across the back of the card appeared a line of small print: This item is for in-library reference only.

Loki stared at that red stamp for a long time before his fingers slowly curled, crumpling the calling card into a ball.

The technical advisor suddenly spoke up. "It has been seven minutes."

"Huh?"

"You have taken up seven minutes of my time."

The advisor thrust the Pocket Watch right under Loki's nose; engraved inside the lid was a line of small lettering: Highland Park Plant - Timekeeping Record.

"In seven minutes at the Highland Park Plant, a dozen cars roll off the assembly line."

Loki automatically did the division in his head: thirty-five seconds per car.

Only then did he snap out of it—now was not the time to be doing arithmetic.

"Give me one more minute, just one minute."

He drew a deep breath and opened his mouth: "Those million cars of yours are fine machines, sure enough, except every last one of them running around the streets is the exact same color."

Alarm bells went off in his head, yet worst of all, his mouth refused to hit the brakes: "When Mr. Ford went home to find his mother, I reckon the one he rode in was that same color too, wasn't it?"

Two ladies from the Peace Association, who had been heading this way with wine pitchers in hand, froze in their tracks one behind the other. And that young reporter was standing just a few paces away.

'Today's news story has finally fallen right into my lap,' he thought.

The advisor snapped the watch lid shut and slipped it back into his pocket.

"I've seen plenty of swindlers in Detroit—peddling patents, peddling oil fields, even peddling miracle oils where a single drop in the tank supposedly makes a car run for a hundred years. At least that crowd knows full well what kind of goods they're holding. But a swindler who can't even say what he's selling? That's a first for me."

"I know what I'm selling!"

This time Loki's mouth finally obeyed him, but it was already too late.

The advisor turned on his heel and walked out, with Loki chasing after him through the doors.

He watched the man reach the entrance, pull open the car door, and climb inside, resting both hands flat on his knees without so much as touching the rim of the steering wheel.

The car sounded its horn, switched on its headlights, and rolled forward over the packed snow.

After the tires crunched forward a dozen yards or so, the wheel ruts vanished on their own. Half an hour later, a hotel waiter delivered a note.

The Western Continent Purchasing Office of the Ford Motor Company hereby gives notice: Neither this company nor any of its affiliates shall henceforth engage in any dealings whatsoever with the gentleman from the back alleys of the Freeport.