“You had this young man with you for... what, six years?"Halt shrugged. "Near enough," he replied."And did you ever understand a word he was saying?""Not a lot of the time, no," Halt said.Crowley shook his head in wonder. "It's just as well he didn't go into the Diplomatic Service. We'd be at war with half a dozen countries by now if he was on the loose."Will drew a deep breath to begin talking. He noticed that both men took an involuntary half step backward and he decided he'd better try to keep it as simple as possible.”

“Halt," said the elegant diplomat, "when you asked me to marry you, did you think we could just sneak off to a glade in the woods with a few close friends and get it done?"Halt hesitated. "Well, no...of course not."As a matter of fact, that was exactly what he had thought. A simple ceremony, a few friends, some food and drink and then he and Pauline would be a couple. But he felt that it might not be wise to admit that right now.”

“I'll be getting you for this,' Halt had told him as he dabbed the diguisting mixture on the worst of the cuts. 'That soot is filthy. I'll probably come down with half a dozen infections.'Probably,' Horace had replied, distracted by his task. 'But we'll only need you for today.'Which was not a very comforting thought for Halt.”

“Halt waited a minute or two but there was no sound except for the jingling of harness and the creaking of leather from their saddles. Finally, the former Ranger could bear it no longer.What?”The question seemed to explode out of him, with a greater degree of violence than he had intended. Taken by surprise, Horace’s bay shied in fright and danced several paces away.Horace turned an aggrieved look on his mentor as he calmed the horse and brought it back under control.What?” he asked Halt, and the smaller man made a gesture of exasperation.That’s what I want to know,” he said irritably. “What?”Horace peered at him. The look was too obviously the sort of look that you give someone who seems to have taken leave of his senses. It did little to improve Halt’s rapidly growing temper.What?” said Horace, now totally puzzled.Don’t keep parroting at me!” Halt fumed. “Stop repeating what I say! I asked you ‘what,’ so don’t ask me ‘what’ back, understand?”Horace considered the question for a second or two, then, in his deliberate way, he replied: “No.”Halt took a deep breath, his eyebrows contracted into a deep V, and beneath them his eyes with anger but before he could speak, Horace forestalled him.What ‘what’ are you asking me?” he said. Then, thinking how to make the question clearer, he added, “Or to put it another way, why are you asking ‘what’?”Controlling himself with enormous restraint, and making no secret of the fact, Halt said, very precisely: “You were about to ask me a question.”Horace frowned. “I was?”Halt nodded. “You were. I saw you take a breath to ask it.”I see,” Horace said. “And what was it about?”For just a second or two, Halt was speechless. He opened his mouth, closed it again, then finally found the strength to speak.That is what I was asking you,” he said. “When I said ‘what,’ I was asking you what you were about to ask me.”I wasn’t about to ask you ‘what,’” Horace replied, and Halt glared at him suspiciously. It occurred to him that Horace could be indulging himself in a gigantic leg pull, that he was secretly laughing at Halt. This, Halt could have told him, was not a good career move. Rangers were not people who took kindly to being laughed at. He studied the boy’s open face and guileless blue eyes and decided that his suspicion was ill-founded.Then what, if I may use that word once more, were you about to ask me?”Horace drew a breath once more, then hesitated. “I forget,” he said. “What were we talking about?”

“By the time Seth had finished the phone call he was on when he was notified of Grace's arrival, shrugged back into the jacket he'd removed as a concession to the heat and made his way into the bull pen, Carter's desk was completely surrounded. He heard a low,throaty female laugh rise out of the center of the crowd.And saw a half dozen of his best men panting like puppies over a meaty bone.The woman, he decided, was going to be an enormous headache."I see all cases have been closed this morning, and miraculously crime has come to a halt.”

“In a month, the passes into Teutlandt and Skanida will be open and my companion and I will be on our way."He paused and Philemon frowned, trying to understand what he was being told.You want us to come with you?" he asked, at last. "You expect us to follow you?"Halt shook his head. "I have no wish to ever see any of you again," he said flatly.”