As they talk, the horse wanders back towards Holden; and he finds his abandoned brush, goes back to the matter of Dulcinea's coat. It's something to do with his hands, a place to focus part of his attention, all welcome with this topic of conversation.

Warden business. There's so little he knew of where Ellis was in the dreams, mostly taken for granted in the logic of dreams — that Ellis was gone somewhere, that Ellis was dead, and then, miraculously, that he wasn't. He considers the phrasing, sets it on the stock of things he knows about Wardens, and about Ellis, to be given thought.

"No," he says. The Venatori weren't kind; neither was the resistance; there's no point to pressing them now. "The best thing we can do now is take the information we got and figure out how to move forward with it."