The first jet splots the rim, the underside of the upraised seat. The second’s less of a jet than an ooze that heavily falls to mar the water, a whitely oily bolus that unskeins itself apart, a creamy cloud thinning to watery milk, and Becker shivers. Sighs as he catches sight of his sticky fingers. Tears away a couple of squares of toilet paper to fold and wipe. Eyes the splotch left slickly glistening on the toilet rim as he drops the wadded paper in the bowl. Flushes. Lowers the seat, the lid, to hide it away.

Dressed now, grey trousers, blue-striped shirt, hastening down the stairs into the parlor, shoes in one hand, leatherette portfolio in the other. A messenger bag slumped on the floor there, and with a green-socked foot he toes open the flap of it to tuck the portfolio within. “Hail, the conquering hero!” calls someone from the dining room beyond, Jimmy, baggily soft pants in a zig-zagged profusion of bricky, earthen reds and oranges and yellows, his sideless T-shirt printed with a smiling cartoon, a monocled brown face under a limp-brimmed yellow hat, a signature that says Panama Jack.

“That’s what you’re wearing,” says Becker, slipping on his shoes, hoisting one onto the overwhelmed sofa to tie it.

“You know,” says Jimmy, “it’s a pleasure? To see your grasp of the obvious remains as firm as ever.”

He’s on a bus. Sat on a slatted wooden bench toward the front of it, passengers filing past and off, ducking their way out the front door, men and here and there an occasional woman in coveralls, lunch pails in hand, jackets slung from shoulders, hard hats still on a couple of heads, a man in a brown suit and a bow tie, shifting from one foot to another as he waits for the press to pass, a gaggle of kids in dungarees and sneakers, swaying poodle skirts, subdued perhaps the lot of them but clearly amused by some entirely private joke. Christian, smiling, frowning, shifts on the bench to look out the sunstruck window spotted with old rain. “Puertas a mi izquierda,” he mutters, watching them make their way along the sidewalk, waving, laughing, calling out, trudging stoop-shouldered away, tipping back a head to smile at the still-high sun so bright, and in her arms a broad round footed platter, a cakestand, all of milky green glass.

Christian leaps to his feet almost to collide with an older woman veiled in black and hatted, clutching the arm of an even older man, his loosely double-breasted suit and tie of black, “Sorry,” says Christian, hung back with a grimace, following after as they shuffle together to the front of the bus. Nodding to the driver as the couple works their way down the steps, the driver’s uniform and cap of navy stripes on periwinkle, and the badge at his breast says Portland Traction Co. His dark-jowled face unaccountably amused. “Interesting sweater you got there,” he says.

“What?” says Christian, and then, “It’s a hoodie.”

“Hoodie. Sounds like hoodlum, but I bet that’s why you kids like it.”

“Welcome to Portland,” says Gordon.

“They won’t fit,” she says.

“You’ll figure it out.” He sets the pump atop the mound of mismatched shoes on the worktable. The bell jingles as she leaves.

Through the pattering beaded curtain, into a cramped kitchen all scarred linoleum and darkly looming cabinets. Filling a kettle at the red tub of a sink, he sets it on a burner, cranks the knob to high, absently scratching the back of his head, where white curls ring his dark bald pate. “Too blasted many,” he mutters. Opening a cabinet, he rummages for a thick-walled mug, a red plastic jar that says Folgers ½ Caff. The bell jingles, out in the shop.

He shuts the drawer he’s opened, sets a spoon by the mug, “Better not,” he mutters, pushing out through the beaded curtain, “if that’s you, boy–”

It’s the Marquess of Northeast, the Helm Linesse, stood in the middle of the shop, gunmetal hair cropped close, her two arms pale and bare the length of them. “Porter,” she says.

“Is she within,” says Marfisa.

“The question you should be asking,” he says, “is whether she’s awake. As it turns out–”

“Eddie,” a sternly quaver somewhere behind him, and he sags against the door. “Well,” he says. “She wasn’t.”

The chain scrapes loose, the door swings wide, he steps back out of her way. A grandly overstuffed loveseat in the middle of the room, piled with pillows and a box or two and more of pads of yellow paper, leaves of them rumpled crimped and pressed by wavering wandering lines of ink that pinch and hump and curl to make the letters that make up words, words, words. Abby Tinker, bundled in a quilted housecoat, pulls herself to her feet at the one end of it, waving away whatever Marfisa isn’t saying, “Don’t mind me,” she rasps. Eddie hustles over to offer an arm she leans on to work her bare brown feet into terrycloth slippers. “I don’t sleep much, but it sure does take an awful long time to do it.” Lifting an admonishing finger. “I’ll be right back. No tomfoolery.” Teetering only a little, she makes her way from the loveseat to the doorway in the corner there, a plank laid above it from one bookshelf to another, bowed beneath the weight of yet more books. Eddie watchfully monitors her progress until she’s passed beneath, then turns balefully to Marfisa, “Why are you here.”

She turns away, wild hair whitely gold, rainshell light and grey. “It does concern you both,” she says, looking over the books close by, the names on the spines of them, Virginia Hamilton, Zenna Henderson, Basma Ghalayini, Eve L. Ewing, Kaiama L. Glover, Sonia Nimr, Grace Lavery, Katherine Kurtz.

“So tell me. I’ll tell her when she’s done. You wouldn’t have to wait.”

“Anvil?”

He straightens, shoulders shifting in a blue-sheened coat a trifle tight. “Mason,” he says. In one hand a worn brown leather satchel.

Back through an angled corridor more doorways than walls, out one of them into a courtyard crowded with birdbaths leaned companionably one against another, cold fire pits set before a line of chimineas, great earthen pots and planters and mirror-bright gazing globes, a clustered flock of spindly orreries and armillary spheres flanked by blocky concrete sundials poured from the same mold, and in the middle of it all a dry and empty fountain, the heavy-lipped basin surmounted by reticent angels. A low doorway opens on a steep flight of stairs to a cramped hall, lumpily carpeted and no angle entirely square. Luys knocks once sharply at a door, then opens it wide.

The office within surprisingly spacious, tall dimly shaded windows, spotless dark-stained floorboards, a brusquely modern desk in a corner, and behind it Bruno in a moleskin vest. “You weren’t kept long?” he says.

“I did pass the time,” says Pyrocles. “You’ve a great many distracting articles below.”

Past a couple-three mannequins draped and posed in polyester finery to a small high table clouded over with filmy scarves printed with maps, cartoons, faux-embroidery and trompe-l’œil batik, twisted in infinite loops. She selects one spangled with toy rockets and flying saucers, slips it over her head, lifting out of the way her wild hair the color of clotted cream. She winds it twice about her throat, smooths it over the nubbled collar of her sheepskin coat, issues another, louder cough. The clerk turns a page, shoulder shifting in his pinstripe vest. His beard thinly patched.

Back to the glass case filled with baubles. Cocking her head to one side, the other, shaking out her hands, she plants her feet. Holds her right arm out, fingers wiggling. Something slips from the sleeve of her coat, a length of wood, finely turned and polished, improbably lengthening until those fingers close about the tapered handle of it, a baseball bat she twirls once and lifts above her head. One last glance for the clerk, who turns another page.

Splash of glass she drives the bat through the case, shatter and crash she twists it about, knocking loose the jagged shards so she might reach in to pluck a pair of sunglasses, thin wire frames, aviator gold.

“Hey!” the clerk’s shouting, “Whoa! Hey!” Flinching as she rounds on him, sunglasses on her face, scarf about her throat, bat choked high. “The Shrieve,” she snarls.