The Brazen Gambit

He muttered apologies and kept going.

Midway through the third tier, he found what he was looking for: a warding that shed more light than his torch, and a glimpse of lacquered amphorae through the door grate. With his fingers folded thoughtfully over his mouth, Pavek studied the warding from a safe distance. Rokka had sufficient rank to ask for such potent spellcraft, but unless the dwarf had been spending all his spare hours in the archive, like Pavek, he shouldn't have known how to cast it. Even templars' borrowed spells were more than invocations. Complex spells, such as warding, were as individual as signatures or fingerprints. The warding on the amphorae storeroom was subtle and, therefore, not Rokka's style.

A High Templar would have both the rank and requirement to protect his private chambers with such an intricate warding. Here in the customhouse catacombs, it was going to raise a lot of eyebrows come daylight.

If it hadn't been dispelled before then.

Pavek spotted a likely hiding place amid a cluster of empty barrels. He extinguished his torch in a sand-bucket, but kept it with him as a weapon. Too bad there was no meat left on the bone. Excluding the zarneeka, he hadn't eaten anything since breakfast, and his churning stomach was noisier than the catacombs vermin. Digging into the belt-pouch beneath his robe, he found several sticks of stale chord sausage. The spicy, salted meat quieted his gut, and left him half-mad with thirst.

Cursing himself, Rokka, the sorcerer-king, and everything else in Urik, Pavek hunkered down. A length of coarse-woven canvas spilled out of one barrel. He draped the musty cloth over his bright robe and settled in for an uncomfortable night's spying.

His mind went as blank as any overworked slave's, and stayed that way until footsteps and torchlight roused him. At least four individuals were trooping down the stairs. They weren't talking, but from the sounds, two of them were leather-shod and another was heavy enough to be a half-giant. Pavek had figured the worst would be a face-to-face encounter with Rokka, or Rokka's contact; he hadn't figured on a quartet, especially a quartet with a half-giant. He wished he were anywhere else.

Wishing didn't help. After confirming that he was still covered by the canvas, thereby obscuring his visual shape and his heat signature from the dwarf's inhuman vision, Pavek eased forward for a better look. Rokka led with the torch. Behind him was a tall figure whose identity was concealed by a grotesque mask.

His heart skipped a beat when he saw the mask.

Questioners sometimes hid behind masks; necromancers always did. Pavek told himself the mask might be a low-ranked templar's clever disguise. He didn't convince himself.

Between flickering torchlight and the billowing robes, Pavek couldn't get a clear glimpse of the third member of the quartet, but the fourth was, unmistakably, a half-giant, bent and cramped within the ten-foot corridors and lugging two barrels virtually identical to the one behind which Pavek was hiding. He crouched lower, hoping against hope that the quartet was headed somewhere else, but they stopped between his hiding place and the storeroom. He smelled the bitter essence of arnica as someone, most likely the masked templar, dispelled the lock.

"Hit me again with that damned barrel and you'll finish your life in the mines!"

Pavek gasped. Hamanu's infinitesimal mercy-he'd hoped never to hear Dova

He'd sworn the disaster hadn't been his fault: they'd both been set up. Following her instructions, sent in a signed message, he'd waited alone for hours on a dark, deserted rooftop. But Dova

He'd tracked down the ringleader: the one and only time he'd had killed with his bare hands. He'd brought proof to Dova

So they learned to steer around each other. Pavek had heard she'd found a patron and hauled herself up a few ranks. Now, he didn't know which was worse: the thought of her hooked up with Rokka or with a dead-heart. Dire curiosity lured his eyes above the barrel rim a second time.

Lord yes, it was Dova

Tattooed and coiled serpents spiraled up her exposed arm. Pavek recalled Dova

It had taken every coin they both possessed to buy a single, slender, monochrome, serpent to circle her right wrist.

"We are not alone." A surprisingly commonplace voice came from the mask that spoke to Dova

She shrugged. The serpents writhed. "Nothing worth holding, great one."

"Then it was a thought-"

Pavek trembled. Necromancers dealt with all ma

Who was beneath the mask? A necromancer or a mind-bender? Or a master of both arts? An interrogator.

Basic mind-bending defense was instinctive in humans, like closing one's eyes when an object came too close. Pavek thought himself small while he considered the stranger. Measured against Dova

"Is there a spy, Lord Elabon?"

Lord was a courtesy title. There were no nobles in Urik's templarate, but Elabon Escrissar was an aristocrat in every other sense. The child, grandchild and great-grandchild of High Templars, for all that he was of a mixed and outcast breed, he had a flair for cruelty that, according to rumor, entertained Urik's ancient, jaded king. Metica wasn't going to be happy when she heard her regulator say that not only was Escrissar involved in the zarneeka trade, he was a mind-bender as well.

"Take a look around," the mask said. "See that we're alone."

Unless Metica already knew. She'd said High Bureau dead-hearts had performed the interrogation. She and I Elabon were both half-elves. Half-elves weren't as cla

Rokka searched the corridor where nothing could be hiding; Dova