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won an argument with
Marla.
    He thought about trying to gather Warren's
things as well, but ghouls had a rather transitory concept of
personal property, and, at the moment, Warren's estate consisted of
one broken algae lamp and two loaves of moldy sausage bread. He
decided to leave the tent in place and set off in search of the
early-rising ghoul.
    He found Warren at the bottom of the narrow
gulley where the other ghouls made their camp. Actually, it was
more like a nest.
    Garrett's nose wrinkled at the stench of
death and baking pies. He wasn't sure why they bothered hiding in a
ravine when all that the enemy would have to do to find the place
was to stand anywhere downwind of it.
    "Hi, Warren. Hi, Mr. Bargas!" Garrett called
out.
    Warren and his father looked up at Garrett's
approach. Warren had a slightly pained expression.
    "Mornin', boy!" Bargas said. The huge,
patchy-haired ghoul greeted him with a grin like a row of steak
knives, old, chipped steak knives that had never been cleaned.
    "Good morning, everyone," Garrett added for
the benefit of the forty or so other ghouls who sat, gnawing meat
and cracking bones.
    "Hi, Garrett!" Diggs and Scupp said together
as the brother and sister ghouls looked up from some sort of dice
game that involved a bewildering assortment of knucklebones. Diggs
sported a nasty bruise across his face, and his left eye was
swollen almost completely shut.
    "Are you all right?" Garrett asked.
    "Yeah, fine. Why'd ya ask?" Diggs replied,
cheerfully.
    Garrett half lifted his hand to his own face.
"Ah... your eye."
    "Oh! That's nothin'." Diggs shrugged his
furry shoulders and turned his good eye back to the dice game.
    "War hammer to the face is all," his sister
said with a vicious grin, "He got brave and tried to run one of 'em
down. If Ma had seen him act such a fool, she'd a dipped his tail
in sealing wax."
    "Well it's a good thing Ma's not here, ain't
it?" Diggs growled.
    "No problem," Scupp said, "She told me to
make a list o' your wrongdoin's for when you get home."
    "A list?" Diggs scoffed, "I'll give ya a few
entries for yer list right now!"
    "No you don't!" Scupp howled as her brother
sprang at her, sending a board full of dice flying through the
air.
    Diggs and Scupp scratched and yelped and
rolled in the mud, neither one gaining the upper hand. Garrett gave
the pair a wide berth as he made his way over to where Warren and
his father stood.
    "Hi, Garrett," Warren said. He was having
trouble looking Garrett directly in the eye.
    "What's going on?" Garrett asked.
    "Eh, you remember Miss Ymowyn, don'tcha?"
Bargas asked.
    "Yeah," Garrett said, "she's not in trouble
is she?"
    "No... not yet," Bargas said, "and we're
gonna see to it that she won't be. We all stand together on things
like this."
    "Because she's a ghoul too?" Garrett
asked.
    "'Cause she's a friend," Bargas answered,
"but that too, yeah."
    "Can I help?" Garrett asked.
    Warren looked down at his feet, and Bargas's
black lips pulled tight over his teeth.
    "I'm afraid you can't be in this, boy,"
Bargas sighed.
    "Because I'm not a ghoul?" Garrett asked,
"She helped me too. Without her help..." He didn't like to think
about that possibility.
    "No, boy!" Bargas said, "You know you're one
of us now." He leaned over to grasp the back of Garrett's neck with
one massive paw. He meant the gesture to seem fatherly, but Garrett
half feared that the ghoul might snap his neck by accident.
    "You can't go, because we're going back to
Braedshal," Warren said, his voice hard.
    A cold realization spread through Garrett's
body, making his chest ache. The people of Braedshal thought that
Garrett had murdered their king. He remembered them trying to fight
their way to him, to tear him apart. He could never go back there
again. "You're going without me?" he asked.
    Warren sighed. "We won't be gone long,
Garrett. We've just gotta go get her out of there before something
happens to her."
    "But, what if that Prex guy is there,"
Garrett asked, "What if he can