“Ron! Where are you going?” Flora asked.
“Away!” he answered, and he opened the door and passed through it.
“Hey! Wait!”
“No way!” came the reply from the next room.
“Damn!” she said, glaring at me. “You have a way of messing up a person’s life.” Then, “Ron! What about dinner?” she called.
“I have to see my analyst,” came his voice, followed shortly by the slamming of another door.
“I hope you realize what a beautiful thing you just destroyed,” Flora told me.
I sighed. “When did you meet him?” I asked.
She frowned. “Well, yesterday,” she replied. “Go ahead and smirk. These things are not always a mere function of time. I could tell right away that it was going to be something special. Trust someone crass like you or your father to cheapen a beautiful-“
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Thanks for pulling me through. Of course he’ll be back. We just scared the hell out of him. But how could he fail to return once he’s known you?”
She smiled. “Yes, you are like Corwin,” she said. “Crass, but perceptive.”
She rose and crossed to the closet, took out a lavender robe and donned it.
“What,” she said, belting it about her, “was that all about?”
“It’s a long story-“
“Then I’d better hear it over lunch. Are you hungry?” she asked.
I grinned.
“It figures. Come on.”
She led me out through a French Provincial living room and into a large country kitchen full of tiles and copper. I offered to help her, but she pointed at a chair beside the table and told me to sit.
As she was removing numerous goodies from the refrigerator, I said, “First “
“Yes?”
“Where are we?”
“San Francisco,” she replied.
“Why have you set up housekeeping here?”
“After I finished that business of Random’s I decided to stay on. The town looked good to me again.”
I snapped my fingers. I’d forgotten she’d been sent to determine the ownership of the warehouse where Victor Melman had had his apartment and studio, and where Brutus Storage had a supply of ammo that would Ere in Amber.
“So who owned the warehouse?” I asked.
“Brutus Storage,” she replied. “Melman rented from them.”
“And who owns Brutes Storage?”
“J. B. Rand, Inc.”
“Address?”
“An office in Sausalito. It was vacated a couple of months ago.”
“Did the people who owned the place have a home address for the renter?”
“Just a post office box. It’s been abandoned too.”
I nodded. “I’d a feeling it would be something like that,” I said. “Now tell me about Jasra. Obviously you know the lady.”
She sniffed. “No lady,” she said. “A royal whore is what she was when I knew her.”
“Where?”
“In Kashfa.”
“Where’s that?”
“An interesting little shadow kingdom, a bit over the edge of the Golden Circle of those with which Amber has commerce. Shabby barbaric splendor and all that. It’s kind of a cultural backwater.”
“How is it you know it at all, then?”
She paused a moment in stirring something in a bowl.
“Oh, I used to keep company with a Kashfan nobleman I’d met in a wood one day. He was out hawking and I happened to have twisted my ankle-“
“Uh,” I interjected, lest we be diverted by details. “And Jasra?”
“She was consort to the old king Menillan. Had him wrapped around her finger.”
“What have you got against her?”
“She stole Jasrick while I was out of town.”
“Jasrick?”
“My nobleman. Earl of Kronklef.”
“What did His Highness Menillan think of these goings-on?”
“He never knew. He was on his deathbed at the time. Succumbed shortly thereafter. In fact, that’s why she really wanted Jasrick. He was chief of the palace guard and his brother was a general. She used them to pull off a coup when Menillan expired. Last I heard, she was queen in Kashfa and she’d ditched Jasrick. Served him proper, I’d say. I think he had his eye on the throne, but she didn’t care to share it. She had him and his brother executed for treason of one sort or another. He was really a handsome fellow. . . . Not too bright, though.”