he receptionist looked up in alarm as we barrelled through the lobby doors. Agrippina ran over to him and grabbed him by the lapels, half hauling him across the desk. "Stairs," she demanded. "Th-th-there," stammered the man, pointed round a corner by the lifts. Agrippina tossed him back across the desk again and hared off in the direction thus indicated. I kept pace with her as she bounded up the steps three at a time, trying to work out what the noises were that I could just about make out over Sebek's raucous rasping. A sucking sound, like someone stirring a vat of molasses, a door opening, sounds of movement, footsteps. Two people? No, three. We reached the first floor, and Agrippina stopped to peer up and down the corridor. "He went up three storeys," I reminded her, remembering the steady rhythm of Sebek vaulting from flight to flight. Through the ear-piece I could hear another door opening and closing. "Something's happening," I said, nudging her onwards, "Hurry."

The third floor landing was deserted, except for a tell-tale trolley with the remains of a chicken dinner scattered around it. Agrippina slid her gladius out from under her trenchcoat and headed for the door next to the desecrated wagon. I shook my head and pointed to the door opposite, Suite 12C. Ghastman's voice had come from behind Sebek. "Well bloody open it," Agrippina hissed at me. The door was locked, but unlatched itself easily enough with the judicious application of brute force. We tumbled through. The room inside was empty, save for a faint haze of cigar smoke.

Oh, and an insensible velociraptor curled up on the floor and drooling on the carpet.

Agrippina ran over to him immediately, and began to shake him. "Urp," dribbled Sebek, curling up tighter. Seeing that he was unharmed, I left him in her care and went to explore the obverse of each of the interior doors. No-one was lurking in either the two bedrooms or the bathroom. Ghastman and the gunsel had done a bunk. The lifts had been silent during our ascent, ergo... "Back stairs," I called to Agrippina as I ran out again. The rear stairwell was at the end of the corridor, and as I pushed the door open, another door clanged to at the bottom. I descended a flight at a time, and found myself in a small hallway, one doorway leading back towards the lobby, the other out into the street. A large saloon car was roaring off just as I re-emerged back into the rain. I recognised the driver by the size of his hat – like most of Weimar's accoutrements it was too big for him – and Kantar Ghastman by his size in general. There was a third person with them, a lightly built man, sitting with Ghastman in the back. It looked like Jule Kahira, the pop-eyed little dandy who had been nosing about in Amber with Brigita Asanci and Thursa Bey.

I reined in my initial impulse to do something melodramatic, like shooting out the tyres, and instead concentrated on the Pattern. It was extremely likely, I thought, that... Then I stopped. The car screeched away round the corner, dowsing a passerby with spray. No using the Pattern other than for transport or in life-threatening circumstances; that was one of the rules of the investigation. I retraced my steps back to the third floor. "They got away," I announced as I re-entered 12C. "How?" demanded Agrippina in disbelief. She was kneeling by Sebek with his head in her lap, velociraptor saliva slowly adding to the already sodden condition of her trenchcoat. "Because Sebek was asleep," I replied. I was half expecting an explosion of at least mild to moderate proportions in response to this, but instead she just looked worried. "Damien," she said, "I can't wake him up. I don't think he's just drunk. I think he's been drugged."

Drugged? I thought he'd keeled over a little more expeditiously than was usually the case, but I'd put that down to his metabolic inexperience with spirits. I picked up the tumbler that lay beside him, dipped my little finger in the dregs of the liquid it contained, and applied said digit to my tongue. Single malt, well aged. The faint sting of carbonated water. And the faintest trace of what could only be a mickey finn.

Well, now I was annoyed. I'd put up with Sebek being lied to and misdirected because I knew that the whole crooked crowd would get their comeuppance sooner or later, and Sebek, once reunited with his statue, would have the last laugh. This, however, constituted a serious case of ante-upping. It also made precious little sense. Why would Ghastman bother to tell him so much and then to offer him a deal, if he was planning all along to usher him onto the next available flight to the Land of Nod? An impromptu fabulation to pass the time until the drug took effect? Perhaps, but Ghastman had struck me as being a particularly assiduous devotee of the art of gamesmanship, and, inter alia, one who took the three-card-down rule very seriously. The tale of the Clavicle of Biahmu sounded highly dubious to me, but I suspected that as far as Ghastman himself was concerned, it fell into the category of half-truth rather than out-and-out porky. He'd wanted Sebek out of the way, but he hadn't been willing to pass up the opportunity to lay the foundations for future accommodation, should current endeavours come to naught. In other words, Ghastman had believed himself to be in possession of a lead on the statue, a lead that required him to move quickly, yet not one he was prepared wholly to rely on. Which meant that our Great Detective was – potentially – still in the game, assuming of course we could get him back on his feet.

I dug in my coat pocket for the Emergency Velociraptor Sobering-Up Kit, and passed to Agrippina the ammonium carbonate in tincture of lavender. "Gark!" spluttered Sebek as she waved the smelling salts under his snout. His eyes opened blearily. "How do you feel?" I asked him. "Wanna shleep," he slurred, "Go 'way." "How about a drink?" I suggested, selecting a phial of my own. This got his interest. "Want bubblesh in it," he peremptorised. I selected a clean tumbler, emptied the phial into it, and added a generous squirt from the soda siphon. I then emptied the mixture down Sebek's eager throat. "Eeeeeeee," he said, eyes bulging. Ten seconds later he was on his feet again, another satisfied customer of Childer's Elixir.

"Where's the Fat Man?" he demanded, zigzagging erratically around the room to peer behind chairs and under sofas. Things fell over and broke. "He left in a hurry," I told him, "and Kahira's with him. I think I sense a faction forming. So we need to find out where they've gone, and quickly. Are you ready for some serious detective work?" Sebek nodded, although to my eyes he still looked somewhat less than fully alert. "I'm good at that," he exclaimed, whilst simultaneously failing to detect one of the room's more prominent fixtures. "Oops. Stupid lamp." He bent down to retrieve it, his tail sweeping the coffee table free of glassware and ashtrays in the process. "Why don't you just tell us what you discovered today?" I sighed.

"Oh, I found out lots of things," Sebek informed us proudly, "The Fat Man said that my statue is the secret priest of a key!" He paused to think for a second. "No," he corrected himself, "he said that my priest is a secret statue. No, he said..." "He said that inside your statue there is a secret key, put there by your priests," I suggested. Sebek jumped up and down excitedly, a manoeuvre which in his current condition required Agrippina to hasten to his side to prop him up. "And if I let him look, I'll get more allowances," he crowed. "I wouldn't get too carried away, " I admonished, "I mean, did you also happen to notice that Ghastman put drugs in your drink so that he could sneak away?" Sebek looked blank. "Did he?" he said. "Yes," I said firmly. The Great Detective looked downcast. Finding himself outwitted was an unfamiliar experience, largely because most people were too soft-hearted to point it out when it happened. However, his undiminished capacity for rationalising away shame and embarrassment soon came to his rescue. "He must have done it while I was asleep," he reasoned, "or I'd have seen him and ripped him into little fat bits."

"All... right," I said slowly, deciding to postpone the parental lecture for later, "Now why do you suppose he drugged you?" Sebek nibbled a claw as he pondered this. "Because he didn't want me to know what he was doing?" he hazarded. "Well done," I encouraged him, "And why do you think he didn't want you to know?" "Because... he wanted it to be a surprise?" was the hopeful response. "A good surprise or a bad surprise?" I persisted. Sebek was going to make a deduction of his own even if it took all night. And most of tomorrow if necessary. "A... a bad surprise," ventured the velociraptor in the trenchcoat, "Because if it was a good surprise he'd have said 'You can't come because it's a surprise', and I'd have said 'What is it?' until he told me, only that doesn't always work. So he wanted to give me a surprise I wouldn't like." "Such as?" I prompted. I was prepared to be generous when it came to marking the "Show your reasoning" section of the paper just as long as his final answer bore some relation to the set texts. Fortunately a faint glimmer of understanding was beginning to dawn, sweeping over the peaks to banish the shadows from the cognitive valleys below.

"My statue!" squawked Sebek in realisation, "The Fat Man wants to steal my statue! He gave me drugs so he could have it all to himself and I wouldn't know. He said he'd give me money, but he was telling lies." He fished a clawful of bent cylindrical objects from the depths of his coat and regarded them mournfully. His stomach gurgled in a likewise disconsolate manner. "He gave me cigars," he said plaintively, "but he was a criminal. He didn't smell like a criminal. He smelt like oily snails and jellyfish gone runny in the sun. That's cheating. That's not what criminals smell like. Tristan made his criminals smell properly." "That's very good," I interrupted, not really wanting an olfactory field guide to the criminal underworld at that precise moment in time, "So what do you think we need to do so that we can find him and stop him?" Sebek's innards rumbled again, this time more forcefully. "Be sick now," he decided. Being all too aware of the peristaltic prowess of the Family Dromaeosauridae, Agrippina and I simultaneously look a step backwards. "Bathroom," we chorused.

"Do we really have time for this?" demanded Agrippina sotto voce as Sebek blundered into the designated chamber and stuck his head in the bath. There was a series of noises off – loud, abrupt and disagreeably wet. "Not really," I admitted, "Ghastman's pretty much stolen a march on us. But even if he manages to get hold of the statue before we do, tracking him down and reclaiming it shouldn't be too hard. Unless of course there really is such a thing as the Clavicle of Biahmu which unlocks the paths between worlds. That might prolong the pursuit a little. Still, I'm confident of Sebek's abilities." The bathroom fell silent as the aforementioned paused to inspect the results of his endeavours. "Look," said Agrippina, "Before we go any further, let's get one thing straight. You can't let Sebek go up against these people on his own like that again, even with us listening in. He could have been hurt. Or worse. Key or no key, they can't be ordinary criminals, not if they know about Nitocris and Nyarlathotep." A tap started running, followed by the sounds of a velociraptor slaking his thirst. "I couldn't agree more," I said, "While I doubt that Ghastman would have spoken quite so freely with either of us present, a more considered approach does seem called for now that Sebek's determined the calibre of the opposition." I was also desperately curious as to what Ghastman really thought he was up to, what his connection with Kahira and Asanci might be, and, most importantly, how he knew what he knew. Quite apart from the fact that our prime investigative agent was indeed a little out of his league, I suspected that few answers would be forthcoming if I insisted on remaining in the background.

Sebek reemerged from the bathroom, wiping strands of saliva and spew from his jaws with what looked suspiciously like Ghastman's dressing gown. He was also looking considerably better for the experience. "I'm hungry," he announced. "We have to find out where Ghastman's gone first," I reminded him, "Are you ready to look for clues?" "Look for clues!" exclaimed Sebek, "That's what detectives do!" He glanced down at the soiled garment in his claws and then held it out hopefully. "Is this a clue?" he inquired. "Probably not," I said, "Not unless there's anything in the pockets." There was a brief flurry of ripping and rending. "There's fluff," said Sebek. "Then why don't you go and search Ghastman's bedroom?" I suggested, "Look for places where he might have hidden things, look for anything written down, letters, or photographs, that sort of thing. If there's anything that might be important but you're not sure about, set it aside so we can look at it together. Okay?"

"Okay."

We set to turning over the suite. Sebek trotted off into the main bedroom, Agrippina took the living room, while I made a brief reconnaissance of the bathroom before checking Weimar's cubbyhole. In the wake of Sebek's purgings, the bathroom was a noisome place, but I gave it a once over anyway. There was a single set of rather cheap-looking personal toiletries in the cabinet over the washbasin. Since Weimar struck me as being the most likely of the two room-mates to squeeze the toothpaste tube in the middle, I deduced that they were his. The only other thing of note was the faint ring of something dark and gelatinous around the rim of the bath. If anything, it looked even less salubrious than the half-digested chicken splattered above it, below it and pretty much everywhere else, so I declined to take a sample. I was pretty sure I'd recognise it again if I had to. Weimar's room was a little more nasally commodious, greeting me with a lingering odour of chypre, which at least informed me where Kahira had been lurking during Sebek's interview. Further investigation turned up a change of clothing that might have been Ghastman's hand-me-downs, if the latter's taste and discrimination had stopped short of the sartorial sciences. There was a small pile of cheaply printed books and magazines, with titles like Shooters & Sawn-Offs and Amazing Gangster Stories Monthly. I quickly checked to see if any of them had been carelessly bookmarked with incriminating documents, but all I managed to shake out was an insert advertising acne cream. I kept looking.

I'd just managed to satisfy myself that there was nothing of immediate relevance to be found amidst the gunsel's accoutrements, when I heard Sebek's voice drifting in from next door. "Hello? Hello? Hello. This is Sebek. Yes, send more chicken to the Fat Man's room. Send two chickens. And ice cream. With marshmallows." "Sebek, what are you doing?" called Agrippina. "I've found the Room Service talking-handle," came the cheerful reply, "Do you want chicken? Send a chicken for Agrippina too." "Sebek, I don't want... Just put the telephone down." "Agrippina doesn't want a chicken. She'll just have ice cream. Do you have dormice?" "Sebek, put it down now." There was a faint click. "I hadn't asked for sausages yet," complained Sebek. "You're supposed to be looking for clues," Agrippina reminded him, "Have you found any yet?" "No. Shall I ask the Room Service woman?" "No!"

Agrippina gave me a 'You talk to him' look as I emerged from Weimar's forensically unrewarding quarters. "And before you ask," she added, "There's nothing out here. I even looked down the back of the couch. The writing desk's been used, but I'll be surprised if even you can decypher what's left on the blotting paper." "Voorish Sign," I said, glancing at it briefly. Agrippina's predicted surprise looked uncannily like stony Roman stoicism. "So Ghastman's a sorcerer," she said flatly. "Probably," I allowed, "Or it could just be... blots on blotting paper. Funny, from this angle it looks like a crab wearing a top hat..." I was interrupted by a series of tearing sounds from the master bedroom. "What's he doing now?" asked Agrippina in exasperation. She made no move to investigate. She'd defend Sebek to the death if she had to, but she wasn't going to fall on her sword in disgrace when I was the one who'd let him loose to make trouble. Something small and white drifted out into the living room, followed by a swirl of several more. I poked my head round the door. Sebek was standing on the bed, disemboweling the pillows and gleefully throwing clawfuls of goose-feathers about. "Do you have anything to show us?" I asked him, with just a hint of warning. "No," said Sebek from within the blizzard, "The Fat Man's stupid. He doesn't know how to leave clues. Is my chicken and ice cream here yet? This bed's bouncy." "Shall I help you?" I suggested with rather less hint and rather more warning. "There's only room for me on here," said Sebek blithely, trenchcoat flapping like an epileptic pterodactyl as the bed creaked beneath him. "Sebek," I snapped, in my best behave-or-be-grounded voice, "If you really want your statue back, then you're going to have to look for clues, and look for them properly. That's what detectives do, remember? It's like looking for trails. So get off the bed and look."

Sebek quickly hopped off onto the floor. "Where shall I look then?" he demanded, not quite at a total loss but obviously approaching it at some speed, "I looked under the bed, and in the big cupboard, and... and in the pillows. You saw me look in the pillows." A feather wafted down to settle on his snout. "Why don't you look in the wastepaper basket?" I sighed, "That's always a good place to look. Sometimes people throw things away which turn out to be important." "Oh." Sebek wandered over to the bin, upended it on the floor and began to poke about amidst the contents. Once I'd satisfied myself that he was pulling his analytical weight again, I started concentrating on the local aether. If Ghastman was indeed a sorcerer, I wanted some idea of what species of sorcery he practiced. Suite 12C contained nothing magickal as far as I could tell, although the low-grade discharge from the lights, the wall-plugs and the heating system made it difficult to say...

"Is this a clue?" Sebek had found some exciting rubbish to show me. "No," I said, "That's a cellophane wrapper. Yes, it's very crinkly, but it won't tell us where Ghastman's gone. Keep looking." I concentrated again, harder this time, as Sebek returned to his little pile of flotsam and jetsam. Aha. There was indeed something else, the merest whiff of some ill-defined magickal residue that didn't quite match the normal ambiance. A ritual, perhaps, although not a recent one, or maybe the aura of some enchantment that had been here long enough to add its own faint imprint to the background radiation. Sebek was back again. "Is this a clue?" "Sebek, it's an after-dinner mint – what do you think? No, take the wrapper off before you... never mind."

I gave up on the inchoate aetherical remnants, and turned my attention to manifestations more physical. Several cavernous suits were hung up in the wardrobe, pockets empty apart from a ticket stub for the same opera that Kahira had attended a couple of nights previously. There was some change on the dresser, including a couple of Diegan pesos. A steamer trunk in one corner was locked, and then it wasn't. It contained more clothes, some scented handkerchiefs – a relatively restrained cologne, rather than Kahira's pungent sandalwood concoction – and a couple of books, including an out-of-print and rather rare edition of the Catalogue of the Amber Museum of Arts and Antiquities. "Is this a clue?" "No, Sebek, that's an empty matchbox." I flicked through the catalogue and found it annotated in a fluid and generous hand, by someone with no small acquaintance with confluence of the occult and antiquarian sciences. I made a mental note to increase security at the museum. I didn't want the author of this all too knowledgeable marginalia sneaking back for a go at the Tablets of Y'qaa, or the Mezzamalech Cabochon, or any of the other artifacts – each and every of them, incidentally, far more potent and valuable than Sebek's inoffensive little statue – that seemed to excite his interest. "Is this a clue?" "No, that's a broken shoelace." I set aside the book to rummage in the chest of drawers. A few more personal effects, expensive but oddly anonymous, most of them bought locally. "Is this a clue?" "No, that's... wait, let me look at it." It was a small, crumpled square of paper, torn from a newspaper, and now further lacerated by Sebek's claws. I could see, however, that it had originated from the shipping columns, from a list of expected arrivals.

Sil Virago from Shadow Aksim
Lapal Urma from Shadow Diega
Damask Ray from Amber

"Yes," I said, "this is a clue. Well done. I think you've cracked it." Sebek jumped onto the bed and began bouncing again, heedlessly shredding the bedclothes with his sickle claws. "I found a clue!" he exulted, "Agrippina! Come and see my clue!" He stopped as something belatedly occurred to him. "What's it a clue of?" he asked, clambering back down beside me. I pointed out the second entry on the list. Agrippina's eyes lit up as she joined us. "That's the ship Asanci was asking after," she said. "And look where it's been," I added in satisfaction. Sebek looked uncertainly from me to Agrippina and back again, the connection still eluding him. "All right," I said, "Ghastman must be interested in one of these three ships, otherwise he wouldn't have torn out this piece of paper. Now we also know that Miss Asanci is interested in this particular ship, the one from Shadow Diega, which is where she and Kahira and Thursa Bey were before they came here. Add to that the fact that Ghastman wanted to go somewhere rather urgently this evening, just when the Lapal Urma is due to arrive here. What does that suggest to you?" Scratch, scratch. "One of them must have hidden your statue on the ship when they were in Shadow Diega," broke in Agrippina impatiently, "and now they're all rushing down to the harbour to try and get their hands on it before any of the others. Which is exactly what we ought to be doing." "Yes!" said Sebek, gladly relinquishing the thinking cap, "I want my statue now. Then I want to go to the opera because we missed it last time."

"Very well," I said, abandoning my attempted lesson in ratiocination, "Let's go. Do you have everything?" "Yes," said Sebek. We then had to wait for him to collect his umbrella, count his Trumps, sniff out his hidden transmitter which he'd shaken loose whilst jumping on the bed, loot another box of cigars and steal the soda siphon. He also insisted on bringing his clue, a little ragged testament to his deductive genius. Agrippina paced restlessly, chivying him along. I wasn't entirely averse to Sebek learning the hard way that effective time management was one of the secrets of successful crime-fighting, so I kept quiet. Finally we departed the ruins of Suite 12C, and stepped out into the corridor, where we were greeted by two waiters bearing chicken, ice cream and marshmallows. Behind them stood a burly, middle-aged man who could only be the hotel detective.

Sebek fell on the food, while Agrippina tried to lean inconspicuously in the doorway to conceal the shattered lock, and I improvised a cover story. "Mr Ghastman gave us the key," I informed the detective, "He forgot a couple of things, and asked us to pick them up for him." "Oh yeah?" said the detective, "Well, you can tell Mr Ghastman that that soda siphon is hotel property." Sebek had left me holding the loot. Something told me I was onto a loser here. "Bloody hell," I said, "Look, here's my card. Send the bill to the Amber Consulate. Sebek, we're going." "I haven't had any ice cream yet." "Bring the ice cream."

We made our way downstairs to the lobby, accompanied by sounds of slurping and threats of legal action. "You think you can just walk into my hotel and bust the place up?" fumed the detective, "We've got laws here, mac." He'd decided that he wasn't quite up to tackling an Amberite, a scowling woman carrying the most efficient short-sword ever invented, or a velociraptor with ice cream down his front. Professional pride, however, required him to talk tough. "I'm thirsty now," said Sebek as we reached the marble floors and potted palms of the lobby. I handed him back his plunder. "I tell you, I don't give a damn who you guys say you are," grumped the detective while Sebek gargled in the background, "I'm calling the cops. Are you listening to me?" Over his shoulder I could see Sebek look at him, and then at the soda siphon clutched in his claws. For some reason, I felt no particular urge to remark on this.

"He he," said Sebek as we departed the hotel and stepped out onto the rain-swept street, "That was funny. Can I have a new bubble-water gun? This one's empty now. I'm going to squirt Weimar the Cheap Hood when I see him. That'll be funny too. I'm getting wet. Help me with my umbrella." Needless to say, once the item in question was unfurled, he still wasn't prepared to let anyone else beneath its sheltering canopy. He trotted off ahead of us, while we jogged after him through the puddles. "Hurry up," he called back over his shoulder, as if nary a one of our recent delays could be deposited at his particular portal, "I want my statue before the opera starts." "We'd better not be getting his hopes up over nothing," muttered Agrippina, ever the protective, ever the pessimist. "It's a bit late for that now," I replied, "I think this evening's performance began nearly an hour ago." She glared at me. "He'll get his statue back," I said mollifyingly, "And even if he doesn't... Well, he'll get it back. Trust me."

It took us the better part of twenty minutes to get to the harbour. It might have taken us fifteen, except Sebek got distracted by the neon-frenzied frontage of a picture theatre halfway down Market Street. This had triggered a brief bout of reminiscence concerning his favourite musicals, leading in turn to an impromptu re-enactment involving his umbrella, a lamppost, and a lot of jumping about in the gutter. "I don't think the film showing here has any songs in it," I told him in an effort to get him back on track. It was, if I recall correctly, some kind of a political conspiracy thriller called CFK. Agrippina, who apart from a tendency to nit-pick sword-and-sandal epics had little time for cinematic criticism, just fumed damply. As it was, the delay in reaching the wharves and piers did us little harm. We'd have been too late anyway.

"Look!" said Sebek, "That boat's on fire!" He ran off to get a closer look. "You don't think..." began Agrippina. "Five hundred crowns at three to one on," I offered. We pushed our way through the crowd of onlookers, a task made easier by the fact of Sebek's previous passage – a rolled umbrella can be a fearsome weapon, especially in the hands of the feral elderly, but what Sebek could do with an open brolly was much, much worse. We dodged the cursing casualties and caught up with him at the edge of the dockside, where he was staring in fascination at a three-masted freighter which was blazing merrily some two hundred yards offshore. Sebek knew that on pain of the severest punishment he wasn't allowed to set fire to things, no matter how excitingly the flames billowed and swirled. I had been unable, however, to come up with an enforceable way of forbidding him from living vicariously.

From our front-row seats the stricken vessel seemed awash with fire, concentrated mainly to the aft, tongues of flame slurping with velociraptor-like relish from the rearmost cargo hold. However, the conflagration had spread to the rigging, falling portions of which were currently seeking out flammables further afield. Even as we watched, the windows of the superstructure shattered and more flames issued forth, waving animatedly to their fellows as if to proclaim that the Bastille had fallen. "Heee!" said Sebek, all agog as he hopped up and down. "Aargh!" said the man standing beside him, as he got an umbrella spoke in the ear. A few figures could still be seen on the distant deck, dodging the rain of glowing debris that spiralled down from above. They seemed to be performing some last minute salvage, but the fire was forcing them back to the tugboats that were gingerly nudging the burning freighter out into the harbour, away from the other ships in their berths. A couple of fireboats, trailing alongside, were trying to douse the fiercest of the flames with only partial success.

Despite the smoke and the curtains of water arcing from the fire-hoses, I could just about discern the name of the vessel painted on its rounded stern – two short words of roughly equal length, the first one beginning with "L". In order to avail myself of confirmation, I scanned the immediate crowd for someone of knowledgeable demeanour. "That's the Lapal Urma all right," said a bewhiskered longshoreman, "Ain't been docked here more than two, three hours mebbe, no time to unload her or nothing." "Any idea what caused it?" I inquired. My informant shrugged. "Couldn't say, rightly," he mused, "Heard some tale of shooting, mind, and the Cap'n being missing. Foreman reckons it's an insurance scam got botched. That happens, 'times. Sure as hell's one less job we're getting paid for." I thanked the venerable wharf-rat for his time and turned back to the others. "We need to have a word with the harbour police," I told them. "I want my statue first," said Sebek, "He he, that mast's fallen down." "Sebek," said Agrippina, "That's the ship your statue was on."

The long and flexible neck of the velociraptor fulfils numerous adaptive functions. In this case, it justified the millions of years of natural selection by enabling a particularly expressive double-take.

"My statue's on fire?" squawked Sebek in sudden agitation, "My statue's on fire! Make it stop!" He cast aside his treasured umbrella and with an optimism born of desperation, directed the nozzle of the empty soda siphon at the doomed freighter, now some three hundred yards offshore. "Sebek..." began Agrippina. Sebek, lost in a fog of panic, ignored her. The improvised fire extinguisher spat and dribbled, falling short of its intended target by some two hundred and ninety-nine yards, two feet and six inches. Pitching the recalcitrant device into the dark and rain-flecked harbour waters, he whirled round to face me, his tail sending two innocent bystanders head-over-heels after the discarded siphon. "Make it stop," he whined, "Do a spell. I don't want my statue to be burnt." "It's all right," I insisted, trying to forestall the imminent tantrum, "It's not on the ship any more, so it hasn't been burnt." Agrippina was looking at me warningly, so I favoured her with one of those minimalist Gallic shrugs. Yes, I hadn't forgotten: never lie to children, and never, ever lie to velociraptors. I had a suspicion, and that was all. For all I knew, flames could be licking at the eidolon of the Crocodile God even as we spoke.

"One of the others must have taken it and then set fire to the ship to try and cover their tracks," I explained reassuringly. Sebek took a moment to digest this. "Are you sure?" he said suspiciously. "Come on," said Agrippina, handing him his umbrella back, "They can't have been gone long. Let's see if you can find a trail here on the docks before the rain washes everything away." Sebek perked up at the prospect of Being A Detective again. "Good idea," I said, deciding that it would be churlish and unhelpful at this point to remind them that Oscuro City had to date proved a singularly barren showcase for Sebek's normally adroit urban tracking skills, "I'll catch up with you once I've made a couple more enquiries here." They headed off, the assembled rubberneckers practically falling over themselves to grant egress. Once the two of them were out of sight, I turned back to the Lapal Urma, sighed, and cast a spell.

I'd hung a scrying ritual attuned to Sebek's statue the better part of ten days ago, and hadn't done much with it since. When confronted with Oscuro City and its magickal smog, I had left it uncast, and attempted instead to scry the figurine from scratch, the better to compensate for the local murk. However, said murk had the consequence of rendering ranged magick all but useless, unless one had a clear line of sight to one's target. Standing on top of it helped too. This was the main reason why, when you hired someone to find something in this Shadow, you were more likely to receive an expenses bill for shoe leather than wear and tear on a spell rack. Nevertheless, I still had the ritual prepared, albeit slightly frayed from lack of regular maintenance; I had a good enough view of the burning ship, even if it had now receded to a less than promising distance; and the pollution wasn't quite so bad here at the edge of the city, which is to say that maybe one mage in ten could have devised a better thaumaturgical smoke screen. I dusted down the spell, and gave it a whirl.

The pull-back-and-zoom-in effect was less marked than usual, and the cameraman seemed to be drunk. Still, I could see the ship clearly enough with my preternatural perception, even if much of the view was masked by static from the engines of the lesser vessels clustered around it. There was no immediate sign of the target of the scrying, but vision was only part of the panoply of sensation that the spell engendered. I made myself relax and waited for the mental tug that would tell me in which direction the statue lay. If it was on the ship then I should at least be able to feel it, even if I couldn't see it. But I didn't. What I did feel was a fleeting impression, too diffident to be called a tugging, that I was looking in the wrong direction. I turned round and the sensation was gone, but it was enough. The black raptor had escaped the flames and was now somewhere back in the city. I could rejoin the search with a clear conscience.

Sebek was nibbling one his purloined cigars with the air of someone with something to celebrate. "I found a trail," he announced, "only it stopped. But Agrippina said I was very clever to find it, because of the rain, and that I should have more bubble-whisky." "All of that is true except for the last part," confirmed Agrippina. "Tell me what you found," I said. Sebek scampered off a bit and pointed at the ground. "I found a perfume and fish smell here," he said proudly, "which was the little buggy-eyed man, and there's Fat Man smell here, and Weimar the Cheap Hood smell here, and over here there's a Scanty Lady smell..." "Asanci," I corrected automatically. "… and they all come along here with a salty tobacco man smell, and then they stop and there's only car smell," concluded our bloodhound. He picked some shreds of tobacco from between his teeth and regarded me hopefully. Praise, followed by an explanation of what it all meant, was obviously in order. "That's very good," I said, "They must have left together with the ship's captain and taken the statue with them, back into the city somewhere. Let's try and find out where they've gone."

We split up again, Agrippina heading for the telephones to make enquiries of the hotels in which our assorted quarries were known to be lodged. Sebek, to whom a public telephone box was primarily a tinkling treasure-trove of shiny new coins handily conjoined with a means of making new friends at random, I took with me. The harbour police were still taking witness statements from the Lapal Urma's crew, which was useful, in that it allowed us to siphon off a few of the latter for an interview or two of our own. We quickly established that Miss Asanci had boarded the vessel almost as soon as it had docked, and had closetted herself with the captain, a fellow called Iacobus. Ghastman, Weimar and Kahira had turned up not long afterwards, whereupon the captain's cabin had apparently become crowded and tempers a little frayed. A shot had been fired – Weimar getting over-excited again, I assumed – but no-one had been hurt, and it seemed that Iacobus had played down the incident to his crew. Their interest thus piqued by these eccentric goings-on, they had been hard pressed not to notice their captain depart the ship in the company of his guests, not to be seen since. The fire had been discovered not long after.

No-one had apparently noticed any of the disembarkees carrying a suspiciously velociraptor-shaped parcel, but it had been dark and the statue would have been reasonably easy to hide under a coat. But at least we got a description of Iacobus, who at seven-foot tall was unlikely to be easy to miss. "They're all a big gang," opined Sebek as we hurried to rendezvous with Agrippina, "They're like bootlickers and rocketeers. We could have a raid. I could jump in and say 'Hands up your bust!' and we could have a big shoot-out. Can I have a tummy gun?" "No," I said. I was all in favour of Sebek learning to plan ahead, just as long as it wasn't on the basis of the gangster films that he loved almost as much as musicals.

"They're not at Kahira's hotel or at Ghastman's," said Agrippina when we caught up with her, "I asked reception to check. They've probably gone to Asanci's apartment, or possibly the detective's place, although I don't see why they should. Or they may be somewhere else entirely." Sebek suddenly looked thoughtful. "I bet the detective has a tummy gun," he mused. "All right," I said, ignoring the warning signs, "you and Sebek check Espatha's offices, see if they're there, see if he knows anything, and I'll tackle Asanci's place." "Yes!" said Sebek, "He's not a real detective, so he should let me have it. Come on Agrippina. We're going to have a big raid for my statue." "Hang on," said Agrippina, looking at me suspiciously, "What sort of tackling did you have in mind, precisely?" "I don't know where you get these ideas, " I said huffily, "Sebek was the one literally eating out of her hand. Look, they've almost certainly got the statue now, so time's short. I’ve got Sebek's Trump and he has mine if we need to get together in a hurry. In any case," I added, "you did say that she was the most dangerous." Agrippina snorted, still unconvinced, but nevertheless turned to follow Sebek, who was already bounding off down the street. "Oh, Juno," she groaned, starting to run after him, "Sebek! Wait! Shit. Taxi! Yes, you. Follow that velociraptor." The rain's veil swallowed them both.

Brigita Asanci's rented apartment on Sutter Street was in darkness when I reached it, so I went round the back to take the easier and less obvious way in. There was a faint aroma of cordite in the alleyway, and above me the back window was open, suggesting that it had already been put to good use. Whether for egress or exit I couldn't tell immediately, so I shinned up the fire-escape and peered inside. It looked untidy. Once I had established myself within, a quick visual interrogation of the interior determined that someone had been in a hurry to leave, but had probably been interrupted, since most of the inhabitant's belongings were still half-in, half-out of her valise. The window, then, had been an escape route, but the escapee's recourse to it had been insufficiently timely to avoid an encounter in the alley below. I took myself back down the fire-escape again, thinking. The thieves, perhaps unsurprisingly, had fallen out, which was rather inconsiderate of them. Their brief and passing display of unity had simplified matters somewhat, but now we were back in our previous position as the solitary guest at the party wanting to play Blind Man's Buff, while everyone else was engrossed in Pass The Parcel. I hunted around in the alleyway for a moment, and was rewarded with a faint bloodstain and a couple of scuffmarks were someone had stumbled, maybe fallen. I was watching in frustration as the rain erased these last tantalising traces of whatever had transpired here, when my pocket started talking to me. It was my earpiece.

"... at once!" I made out as I fished the device forth, "The detective's office... Sebek, no! Damien!" There were thumps, snarls and yells in the background. "Get here now!" screamed Agrippina. I started running, shifting Shadow, which had the disadvantage of cutting me off from what happened next, but over this distance it wasn't going to be appreciably slower than Trumping them, nor would it risk the potentially dangerous distraction of an ill-timed Trump call. I ran inside a building a couple of Shadow veils away, and then started shifting back as I ran upstairs. "Espatha & Arcarius – Private Investigators" read the sign on the door. There was no sign of the secretary. I burst through the outer office and...

The sight that greeted me in the inner office consisted of Agrippina, Sebek, Sebek's statue, two corpses, and a lot of blood. Sebek was looking unspeakably pleased with himself. "This is a raid," he said.