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"What're you gonna do?" the boy asked defensively.

"My job," I responded. One more shove did the trick, and the kid was off into the whirling cloud of mink and satin and hoity-toity laughter.

My job, in this case, involved grilling the servants. You listen to kids and old fools and servants. They've been in every crack and cranny, seen everything doing and everybody being done, and because of their station, had been ignored all the while. While Filson was giving diners the eye, I'd be giving cooks the ear.

I watched the double doors to see which swung which way, then made my entry. The kitchen-a long, low-ceilinged gallery-was as decked as any other room. Tables and butcher's blocks lined the marble floor, shiny-scrubbed pots and pans hung from the plaster-bossed ceiling, rolling steam stood above bubbling kettles, and chefs bustled about it all, their white smocks and mushroom hats flitting like scrap paper in wind.

I walked up to one of the chefs, who worked a bloody set of knives on five long tenderloins. "Excuse me," said I.

The man didn't look up. His hands moved expertly on meat and knife. "You're excused."

By his faint Sembian accent, I knew this was a connoisseur snob. Well, to me, a cook's a cook. "I was wondering if you've noticed any… magical lapses."

Again, no attention was spared me. He was busy sliding the steaks he'd cut from a tenderloin onto a platter, which was immediately whisked away by another cook. He reached for the second hunk of meat as he spoke. "I haven't time to notice-"

The words stopped dead. He must have seen it. I certainly couldn't have missed it. The long red wet slab of meat had turned to a great greasy cow pie, and the scoriated butcher's block into an uneven boulder. Worse still, though, the keen-edged knife had disappeared, an ass's jawbone in its place, and the cook's supple, well-trained hand had become a warty, clawed, three-fingered talon. Gone was the white smock and mushroom hat, replaced by a pessimistic clump of matted chest-hair on a bare, greenish, scaly chest… and an oily spit curl above a goblin pate.

Goblin pate!

Those dark, squalid goblin eyes lifted and met mine in that stunned moment, and two protruding lower fangs rose up and out to threaten those gray-green nostrils. But the next moment it was all gone, and the Sembian chef was staring impatiently, baldly, at me.

"Did you see that?" I asked, aghast.

"See what?"

Before our bland talk could go further, we were interrupted by a shout of outrage. I looked toward the doors in time to see a server in the last foot of his fall to the polished marble floor. A platter of steaming turkey and trimmings preceded him. It and he hit ground, and the turkey's featherless wings flapped stupidly as it arced upward, vomited its stuffing onto the server, and flopped onto the marble floor.

The cause of this small catastrophe followed hard on the fall-my doubtable assistant, Filson. He leapt past the open-out door and vaulted the server to run in gleeful pride toward me.

"Look, Quaid! Look what I found in Mr. Stavel's pockets!"

Too stunned to do anything else, I did look at the rich golden treasures spread out on the waifs grubby hands-a clockwork timepiece in gold, a money clip fat with Cormyr-ian notes, a pair of rings with rubies the size of cat's-eyes, and a strand of enormous pearls, any one of which would have equalled my typical take in a given year.

"You… you…" The bald bullocks of this "assistant"- not only to knock over a server and ruin a turkey after picking pockets in my name, but also to come brag to me and the kitchen staff about it-beggared me. "You stole from the guests!"

"But look! It's-" Now it was his turn to look flabber-gasted as he gazed at the trove in his hands. Unlike me, however, he found too many words to express his consternation. "But wait. I was going to return them after I checked for any clues or any evidence that might link them to attempts to shut down the lady's magic, only when I'd gotten the take they weren't in my hands more than a second or two before they turned into-"

He didn't