the magician said finally, as the coach lurched around some last corner and quivered to a halt before a sullen-fronted tavern, its windows painted black to fend off curious eyes. “The good old Death and Dollop!”Linny was already reaching in some desperation for the door of the coach, but the magician’s enormous hand got to the latch first. He wasn’t going to let her out until he had had his say.“Listen up a minute, girl,” he said. “It’s not complicated, the task you have here. You tell these people they need to arm themselves with the tools I have conveniently brought along. As far as they are concerned, you are the Girl with the Lourka, and you want the Surveyors brought down. That’s simple enough, I guess. Otherwise, stay mum. Behave yourself, and nothing bad will happen, to you or your dear brother. Am I clear?”He hopped out first and had a conversation with the man in front who drove the coach. Only then did he help Linny out of the conveyance, which apparently was going to wait in place for a while, with the magician’s boxes tucked away in it.Inside the tavern, Linny had a sense of tables and stools and smoke and shadows, and perhaps of curious pairs of eyes staring her way, but the magician hurried through the dim space to another room in the back, where four men and a woman around a table all looked up at once when the magician guided himself and Linny through the door.Linny took a breath to steady herself.
