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It was the woman he'd heard before, and she did have a damp and writhing child straddling her hip. She wasn't a slave—Pavek didn't keep slaves—and she wasn't one of the servants Hamanu had hired to open the house before Pavek returned to Urik from Quraite. She wasn't a Quraite druid, either; druidry left its mark on those who practiced it, as did any magical or Unseen art, and she didn't bear it. Stirring her thoughts gently, Hamanu was surprised to discover she was simply a woman who'd lost her man to the second levy and, reduced to scrounging for herself and her child, had made the fateful mistake of offering herself to a certain scar-faced man.
By the look and sound of the dwelling, she was far from the only stray Pavek had brought home.
"I wish to speak to the high templar, Pavek," Hamanu said.
He was prepared to stir her thoughts to obedience, but that was u
"The lord-templar's in the atrium. I'll take you to him—"
Hamanu raised his hand to stop her. There was more life in this place than he wished to have around him tonight. "I have something for him. If you'll fetch him for me, I'll give it to him and be gone."
She shrugged and hitched the toddler higher on her hip. "What's your name?"
He hesitated, then said, "Manu. Tell Lord Pavek that Manu is here to see him."
The name was common enough in this, Hamanu's city. She repeated it once and disappeared up the steps into the living quarters. Hamanu shut the door—a slave's job, but there were no slaves here—and settled down to wait on a tradesman's bench.
In a few moments Pavek appeared at the top of the stairs. He was alone. His right hand was tucked under his shirt hem and resting lightly on the hilt of a steel-bladed knife.
"It's a little late for caution, Pavek," Hamanu observed without raising his head. "Half the city could walk through your unguarded door. Half the city already has."
"Manu?" Pavek descended a few steps. "Manu? Do I know you? Step into the light a moment."
Hamanu obeyed. His illusion was, as always, perfect, and though Pavek could not hide his novice druidry from one of Rajaat's champions, there was nothing at all magical about the aura the illusory Manu projected. Indeed, there was nothing about Manu that Pavek should have recognized, including the scroll case, which was plain leather, sturdy, but scuffed. A child's spindle top shot out of the doorway behind Pavek, followed immediately by the child who'd lost it. The top bounced down the stairs, coming to rest at Hamanu's feet. Pavek put a hand out to stop the child, a scruffy little creature of indeterminate race and gender. He bent down and whispered something in the child's ear. There was a hug and a high-pitched giggle, then the child was gone, and Pavek was coming slowly down the stairs.
Hamanu picked up the toy and handed it to Pavek as he reached the last step. Their eyes met in the lantern light. Manu's eyes were brown, plain brown—even Dorean, who'd loved every part of Manu, said his eyes were ordinary, unremarkable. Hamanu's eyes, the eyes Rajaat had given him, were obsidian pupils swimming in molten sulphur. When Hamanu crafted his illusions, he always got the eyes correct, yet Pavek stared at his eyes and would not look away.
"Great One," he said at last, trying—and failing—to kneel on the entrance steps of his own home. "Great One."
Pavek lost his balance. Hamanu caught him as he fell forward, and held him until he was steady on his feet again.
Somewhere a child screamed, as children would, and incited a commiserating chorus.
Hamanu plucked the top out of the air where it had hovered while the Lion-King assisted his templar. He'd changed his mind about staying here. "Is there room in this house for one more?" he asked, dropping the toy in Pavek's nerveless hands.
"It is yours, Great One. Everything I have—"
"Manu," he said, grabbing Pavek's arm to keep him from kneeling.
Pavek nodded. "Your will, Great One—Manu."
They went up the stairs together. The child who'd lost the toy was waiting inside the hall along with two others, one definitely a dwarf, the other definitely a girl. They were soft-voiced and polite until Pavek relinquished the top. Then they were off, shrieking like harpies.
"Are you collecting every castoff and stray in Urik?"
"They have nowhere else to go, Gr—" Pavek caught himself. "I find one... but there's never just one. There's a sister, or a friend, or someone." He gestured at the ceiling. "This place, it's so big. How can I say no?"
"I can't have this, Pavek. You're giving the bureaus a bad name."
Pavek gave Hamanu the same worried look Enver had given him at least once a day. But Pavek—Whim of the Lion—knew when his humor was being tested.
"Not to worry, Manu. My neighbors think I'm fattening them up for market."
They laughed. It was invigorating to laugh in the face of doom. Manu, head-and-shoulders shorter than Pavek, reached out and gave the bigger-seeming man a hearty, laughing thump between the shoulder blades, which rocked him forward onto his toes. For a heartbeat, there was silence, and a world of doubt in Pavek's thoughts. Then Pavek dropped an arm on Manu's shoulder and laughed— tentatively—again.
A cold supper had been laid out in the moonlit atrium and a score of men and women gathered together to enjoy it. Hamanu was mildly surprised to see Javed sitting beside his chalk-ski
For that matter, Hamanu had visited House Escrissar many times and in many guises, but never as himself, certainly never as Manu.
There was a glimmer of inquiry from Javed's mind when Pavek introduced Manu, a Gold Street scribe left behind when his employer pulled up stakes and ran for a noble estate outside the walls. Hamanu had no difficulty raising a mind-bender's facade to defeat the commandant's curiosity. He had to scramble a bit, though, to keep up with the story that Pavek was cutting quickly out of whole cloth.
As for the other guests, beside Javed and Mahtra, there were the Quraite druids, all eight of them, including the young half-elf Hamanu had met before. Beyond-the-walls druids weren't the only guests in Pavek's house; there were Urikites, too, eating at his table, and not merely the strays he'd swept off the streets: A cheery earth-cleric helped himself to a handful of dried berries while a smattering of merchants and artisans—most of whom would not have nodded to each other on a sunlit street—talked softly among themselves. That they spoke naively of an unattainable future didn't diminish the remarkable nature of the gathering, especially in the red-striped home of a high bureau templar.
Pavek was a remarkable man, sitting at the foot of his own table—when he sat. Somewhere in the house there had to be servants, but Pavek was the one who poured wine for Manu and anyone else who needed it. He was the one who brought fresh food from the sideboard and carried away the empty bowls. A truly remarkable man, Hamanu decided as he sipped his wine and settled among the cushions. Quite possibly remarkable enough to evoke a miracle.
Hamanu's spirit was as calm and optimistic as it had been since he'd left Tyr, which, perversely, left him thinking not about where he was or with whom he was, but about Windreaver. Having put himself in the midst of friends, the immortal champion found himself with nothing to say, except to an ancient troll he'd never speak to again, no matter what happened tomorrow. He hadn't helped himself, either, with his choice of illusion.