"I'd like to know how he was killed without my knowing it," he said.
"Somebody probably slipped that dirk into him when you weren't looking. You know, like this...." She fell against him suddenly and pinched his ribs. Then she recovered, laughing. Condemeign shuddered. In the thin, sharp shock of her fingers he felt the planners sculpturing death out of dreams into quiet, almost joyous forms. Suddenly he seized her hands and examined the fingers while she smiled up into his face. Then he sighed with relief. There was no poison ring, no barbed, dripping hypodermic crawling its point with icy death. Her nails were clean, unpainted. He tore at her wrists and she giggled, writhing in his grasp, and there was nothing there, up to the elbow, but smooth, pink skin.
Firelie Gluck fell against him suddenly and pinched him. Condemeign shuddered, for he felt the planners sculpturing death out of dreams into quiet, almost joyous forms.
"Firelie Gluck," he whispered, and laughed. "I heard a name once before like that, at a circus."
"Was she pretty?"
Condemeign stared at the hands of an old grandfather's clock across the great room.
"She was the bearded lady," he said. He walked away from her, thumbing his guide to Nepenthe. He hoped the drink she'd given him wasn't a watery passport to hell, for a while at least.