"You know, this could be a golden opportunity for us," Will said. "Instead of frittering it away like this, we could be walking out of banks with sacks of gold—for charity if you wish, but at least some of it for ourselves."
Unexpectedly, Nat laughed. "That's not what a trickster does. It's not what he is" He lowered his voice in a caricature of confiding charm, and winked. "It's not what were for."
"Suddenly we have a purpose?"
"Absolutely. We keep things stirred up. Without us, the world would grow stale and stagnant. Every life we've touched today has been made richer and stranger."
"The poor bastard whose wallet you took isn't any richer."
"No! Infinitely richer! He was stuck in a rut and he didn't even know it. He had his head stuck so far up his wallet that he was blind to the wonders of the world. An hour from now, he'll be mourning the loss of his money. But later tonight, he'll reflect on what a fool he was. By morning, he'll be rethinking his life."
"And the young ladies?"
"When a lass finds a C-note in her knickers and no idea how it got there, that's a wake-up call. She has only one possible reaction: To resolve to mend her sluttish ways."
"And what if she's chaste? What if she has no sluttish ways?"
"Then she can take them up!" A police car grumbled by tracing a tortuous route through the frozen traffic. "It isn't for me to increase or decrease the total amount of virtue or vice in the world—just to keep things stirred up. To keep us all from dying of predictability."
The city, silent until now, began to murmur. Sirens wailed in the distance. A lancer in a biohazard suit galloped by them. But these were exceptions to an otherwise universal state of stasis. "Almost there," Nat said cheerfully.
They passed a line of scarecrows set up on wooden frames whose heads had been doused with gasoline and set afire. The amber flames engulfing them glowed but did not flicker. Nat lifted the yellow police tape that ran from scarecrow to scarecrow, and they both ducked under. They rounded a corner.
"This is our street," Will said. "That's our flat!"
"Look busy," Nat growled. "Act like you belong here."
There were hundreds of emergency workers, investigators, and political functionaries, all vying for preeminence in a situation that had useful work for no more than a tenth their number. Nat and Will wove their way between cars with the insignia of a dozen military and quasimilitary forces, all with their lights flashing. Fire hoses snaked across the pavement. Tylwyth Teg officers stood in amuleted trench coats overlooking the scene bleakly. Sorcerer elves so old that by rights they should have been declared legally dead centuries ago stood outside the brownstone, staves raised, maintaining the citywide stasis. Poulettes cycled in and out of the building lugging enough cardboard boxes to carry out everything Nat and Will and Esme owned and half the neighbors' possessions as well.
"It looks like they're winding up here," Nat said. He leaned forward so that their helmets almost touched and gestured with short, choppy mudras, as if he were giving instructions. "Now this is just reconnaissance, to see if they've taken the bait. So dummy up, okay? Speak only when spoken to."
"Nat, you madman! This is absolutely bugfuck. What have you gotten me involved in?"
"Everything's happening right on schedule. You should have been expecting this. The return of the king is a big deal. All this fuss was foreseeable.'' In his most reassuring manner, Nat said. "This is the great game, kid. It's like Aesop's nettle. Approach it timidly and seize it gently and it'll sting like fire. But grasp it boldly, like a man, and it will be painless and as soft as silk to your hand. Also, keep in mind that none of them knows what either of us looks like."
Will had his doubts about the nettle-seizing strategy, whether taken literally or figuratively, but he kept his silence. They were in this thing too deep for quibbles. So he followed Nat to a vantage point in a narrow alley across and down from their brownstone. "They're desecuring the area," Nat said. The emergency vehicles were starting to pull away and the scarecrows were one by one being doused and dismantled. Only the most important players remained to see the operation through to its conclusion. "I don't recognize anybody on the street," Nat said. "How about you?"
"Actually, yeah." Will pointed with his chin. "The one with scarlet lipstick and a warrior's posture. That's Zorya Vechernyaya. She's pretty highly placed in the political police, I think."
"Damn. I've got a rap sheet as long as the Fisher king's dick. She might recognize me." Nat scowled and muttered. "Hey, babe. I need you on deck. You're a better judge of character than I am. Take a look at this dame and tell me what you think."
"Huh?"
"Not you," Nat said peevishly. "Yeah, that's what I think, too. You want to take over here?"
"What on earth are you talking about?"
"I've got to step out briefly, kid. There's someone I want you to meet. Tell her everything. Trust her as you would me."
"But I don't trust you." Will followed in Nat's wake down the street to the storefront temple at the corner operated by the Cult of Profane Love.
"Smart-ass." They ducked within the temple. The interior might have been an educational tableau demonstrating the cult's varieties of worship: the flagellators with their whips curled in cryptic arabesques above their backs, the self-abusers in a circle about the altar, heads thrown back in ecstasy, and finally the virgin sacrifice strapped down upon the altar, about to receive the priests chastising instrument. "Watch closely. This is my best trick."
Nat slowly bent over double. For a long moment he writhed as if within the suit, his body were changing form. Then he straightened.
There was a stranger's face in the helmet.
"So you're the kid. I heard a lot about you." The stranger quirked a sardonic smile. She was one of those women who were beautiful at first glance, then showed their age, and then were beautiful again. Her hair was red and cropped. Her features were sharp and Asian. "I'm an old associate of Tomba's," she said. Then, when Will did not respond, "St. John Malice? Mullah Nasreddin? Tom Nobody? Liane the Wanderer? Nat Whilk? Let me know when I'm getting close."
"Who are you?" Will asked. "And what are you to Nat?"
"He didn't tell you about me? The rat. He'll pay for that." She stuck out a hand. "I'm Victoria il Volpone Sheherazade Jones. Don't call me Vickie. I'm Nat's partner."
"You're the vixen," Will said. "The one who rescued him in Whinny Moor Landfill."
"So he did tell you about me. The bastard. I told him not to."
"You, uh, share Nat's body with him?" Will flushed. "I mean—"
"Fast on the uptake, too." She tapped her chest. "I caught a shotgun blast right here—it pretty much pureed my heart—and had to go to earth for a few months to heal. Let's not get into the specifics about how it's done—they're a little intimate. Bring me up to speed here. What's Nat been up to in my absence?"
Will gave her the short version. How they had met in Camp Oberon and traveled to Babel together. How Nat had saved him from the political police but then, through his disdain of official documentation, made Will an illegal. Lastly, how they were working the Missing Prince scam together.
"Yeah, I know all about the scam." The vixen fleered. "This is another of Nat's overcomplicated schemes. The classics always work best when done simply. But he's an awrtist—he needs to rework em. Give him a pocket watch and he'll take it apart to see it he can add a few more cogs and maybe a stick of butter to it." Going up to the altar, she said, "Hey, let's give these guys a miracle!" She dipped a finger in a censor of scented charcoal that hadn't yet been set afire, and wrote the rune of celibacy on the sacrifice's stomach. Then she smartly slapped the celebrant's tool between her hands.