'It's not my fault,' said Silverdun. 'I had a girl, but she resigned in a dispute over wages.'
'Really?' asked Paet. 'Olou gave me the distinct impression that you'd bedded her and that her husband found out about it.'
'That is true,' said Silverdun wistfully. 'But that's not why she quit.'
'I don't really need a valet,' said Ironfoot. 'I've been a bachelor for many years now.'
'I didn't ask if you needed one,' said Paet. 'But if you insist on dressing yourself, that's your business.'
Paet pulled another sheet from the sheaf in Silverdun's hand. There was an address written on it: Blackstone House. One Several Lane.
'Be at that address tomorrow at sundown,' he said. 'That's where you'll be working. Don't be late.'
With that, Paet turned and walked off up the dock, leaving Silverdun and Ironfoot to find their own ways home.
Blackstone House rose out of a walled garden overgrown with nettles, wild roses, and moss-covered willow trees. Several Lane was just inside the north wall of the city, in a neighborhood peopled mostly by those who valued their privacy and could afford to maintain it. Thus its secretive appearance was less out of place than it might have been elsewhere. A bronze gate was set in the wall just to the right of the house, its bars offering a view only of a chaotic line of shrubbery that might once have been an orderly hedgerow.
The second story jutted out above the garden, a bleak promontory, its dark bricks worn and vine-covered, its windows shuttered.
When Silverdun's hired cab dropped him off, just before sunset, he was certain there was some kind of mistake. He double-checked the address with the driver, who shrugged and whipped his horses on without a word.
This couldn't possibly be right. The headquarters of the all-powerful Shadows was in an abandoned ghasthouse? Surely Paet was having a joke at his expense.
It was chilly out, but Silverdun's new cloak, provided by his equally new valet Olou, was just the thing to keep out the cold. Olou had turned out to be a young man, probably fresh out of the army, who'd drawn a short lot somewhere along the way. Regardless of how he'd ended up there, he tended to his duties with panache. And Silverdun had never looked better.
Silverdun approached the gate, but before he could peer in, another carriage turned onto the road. It too stopped in front of Blackstone House, and Ironfoot emerged from it. He examined the house with the same reservation that Silverdun felt.
'Strange place for a government office,' he said.
'Ministry of Ghosts, perhaps?' offered Silverdun.
Ironfoot smiled. 'So what happens? We go in, get accosted by a few vengeful spirits, and then Paet shows up and laughs at us while we're wetting our breeches?'
'I was thinking roughly the same thing.'
'When I was in the army, they tied new recruits in burlap sacks and rolled them down the hills in the Gnomics,' said Ironfoot. 'Big, tall things, these hills. They'd have races with them.'
'And how did you fare?' asked Silverdun.
'I won four out of five,' said Ironfoot. 'It's all in how you arch your back.'
'Universal, I suppose. In my first session of Corpus, the senior hall minister handed me a four-hundred-page stack of bills and told me I'd be voting on them the next day, so I'd better read them all.'
'How far did you get?'
'I never even glanced at them,' said Silverdun. Seeing the look on Ironfoot's face, he added, 'I wasn't much of a legislator.'
'Do you find yourself wondering if we've made a terrible mistake?' asked Ironfoot.
'Every day. But then, I've made a career of joining the wrong team,' said Silverdun. 'One gets used to it after a while.'
'That's encouraging,' said Ironfoot glumly.
'Right on time, I see,' came Paet's voice behind them.
Silverdun turned. Paet was standing in the street, leaning on his cane. There was no carriage anywhere nearby.
'Where did you come from?' said Silverdun.
'I'm a Shadow, Silverdun,' said Paet. 'It's part of the job. Shall we go in?'
