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She squinted her remaining eye at us. “Who?”

That seemed like a bad thing for a spy to reveal, even to someone who could probably crack my head open like an egg with a single good punch. “Is that any of your business?”

“You Jules?” she asked. “One of you?”

“Uh…he’s Jules, yes,” Yudit said as I stood there dumbfounded. “And I’m his brother. How did you…?”

“You look like your sisters.” She hiked a thumb toward the door. “In there.”

My sisters? What?

The door slammed open, spilling light into the lane.

“There you are!” Winifred said. “I thought I heard your voice.”

Well, that accounted for the picture windows. “Hi, sis.”

“Where have you two been? We’ve been waiting ages.”

“There are three of us, not two,” Sunbeam grunted with his teeth clenched shut. I think he was attempting ventriloquism. “Four with Stinky.”

“Right, four. Sorry, Sunbeam. Hello, Sunbeam, we’ve missed you. What happened? We were worried you were all dead!”

My other sisters crowded into the doorway behind her. Drusilla, Alexandra, and Nicki, waiting expectantly for an explanation. Behind them, Lulach—the only one who was actually supposed to be there—peeped over their heads.

“There was a late winter storm—” I began.

“I knew it!” Drusilla interrupted. “ ’Twas completely doolally tae trust the wind! Why did ye nae ask Lulach tae tow ye?”

“How long have you been on the road?” Alexandra asked. “You look half-starved. We should get you fed.”

Winifred was staring at my shirt. “Is that crocodaemon blood? Ugh, it’s even pucer than I remember.”

“Maybe we should discuss that somewhere that isn’t the middle of the street?” I suggested. Nicki sneezed in agreement.

We started to go inside, but the huge doorwoman stepped in front of the horses. “No animals. They wee on the floor.” When my sisters protested, she shook her head. “Rules.”

“All right, Jinjur,” Winifred said to her, smiling winsomely. “We can catch up with Sunbeam later. Rules are rules.”

Jinjur shuffled her boots and said something incomprehensible. Sunbeam muttered under his breath about humans being the filthy ones who don’t even lick each other’s faces clean.

There was a pause while my sisters hugged Sunbeam, which did a great deal to improve his mood. When he’d had his fill of being cooed over, Jinjur led the horses to the inn’s small stable while the rest of us went inside.

The interior of the Frolicsome Mallard was, to be blunt, disgusting. I found myself agreeing with Sunbeam’s assessment, except maybe for the face-licking part. The floor was invisible beneath a thick layer of sticky ooze. If the horses used it as a bathroom, it wouldn’t make much of a difference. The tables and walls were covered with stains in colors that were impossible to explain solely by food and drink. As for the clientele, there wasn’t a single one I’d have cared to meet in a dark alley. And also not a single one that had a full set of body parts—I’d never seen so many peg legs, eyepatches, and hooks. Faces turned as we entered, wary eyes tracking our movements.

“We found them, everybody!” Alexandra announced as we entered. The crowd burst into cheers and applause, those without enough hands for it stomping on the floor, which splashed spatters of ooze every which way.

“I knew your brothers couldn’t be dead, lass,” a grizzled, one-eared dwarf sobbed, tears of joy streaming down his cheeks. “I just knew it!”

My shoulders, as well as Yudit’s, were thumped by a dozen friendly arms as we made our way through. And the occasional well-meaning but painful hook. My sisters received congratulatory hugs, and a woman with a missing nose and a murderer’s cold eyes ruffled Lulach’s hair.

Soon my family was seated around a corner table, choking down bowls of something that had charitably been called stew. If any of the mysterious lumps were vegetables, Yudit’s presence didn’t appear to affect them, even though I’d lagged so far behind her in the crowd that a lotus flower sprang out of the muck on the floor before I reached my chair. It was possible that everything in the stew had arrived pre-withered.

Not long after we sat down, the bar regulars started singing a rousing song about their merry old land of lifeless stony desert. Since none of them were paying us any mind, Yudit and I launched into an explanation of what had happened.

Most of an explanation. I left out the time I’d spent with Ilyana. It wasn’t relevant to our mission in the Crimson City, and…well, I just left it out.

“So we made our way here,” Yudit was finishing up, “in the hopes that Lulach might still be around, and found all of you.”