The Brazen Gambit

"I didn't mean anything, Pavek. I know you got your reasons for what you do. You don't have to go. I don't want you to go."

There was a long, hot day between now and nightfall. Maybe he'd feel differently when his back ached and the weak left arm throbbed with every heartbeat. Maybe. If the druid and her zarneeka didn't show up.

He grunted, neither yea nor nay. "Then act like it. Stay out of trouble. Stay out of my way. Do that for a day-" His voice faded. Templars learned to tell easy lies, but lies came harder now, without that yellow robe for armor. "You ready?"

Zvain sniffed loudly and wiped a last trickle of blood onto his forearm. "I'm ready."

The boy was quiet as they passed through the awakening city. He stuck close, never wandering off, begging, or whining-all of which had become part of their morning ritual. Bothered by an emotion he couldn't name, Pavek stopped at a fruit-seller's stall where he exchanged a ceramic bit for a breakfast of cabra melons. A small cadre of citizen-vendors made a good living buying fruits, vegetables, and other perishables cheaply at the end of one market day for sale the next morning at considerably higher prices to people like him who needed to eat before me gates opened.

Zvain tore the rind with feral delight but winced when bright red juice stung his busted lip. He handed the melon back, and Pavek found his nameless ache had grown worse rather than better.

"Don't wander off," he whispered when the gate loomed before them. "Stay where I can see you."

The boy nodded solemnly. Pavek dug into his belt pouch again, drawing out the last two ceramic bits and dribbling them into the boy's hand.

"You believe in anything, Zvain?"

Immortal King Hamanu was Urik's tutelary deity. His titles and powers were part of the daily harangue; his name was an integral part of countless blessings... and curses. But belief was another matter entirely. To ask the question was an invasion of privacy; to answer it honestly, a declaration of trust.

"Sometimes. You?"

"The round wheel of fate-after a good day, not before. We need a good day, Zvain."

"I'll pray for you, Pavek." Zvain folded his fingers around the sharp-edged, irregularly shaped coins. "I know a place." "Better you stay here. Remember what I said: no wandering off."

A shout went up from the line of merchants and fa

Modekan sent artisans as well as fa

"You know your way through the templar quarter, rabble?"

"Not well, great one," Pavek lied. So much for prayer or the round wheels of fate.

The inspector offered an uncut ceramic coin if Pavek would haul the pirated bricks to a High Templar's residence. "She's building a fountain," he confided u

"I'm a poor man, great one, ill-clothed and dirty-not fit to cross such a threshold."

The inspector doubled his offer and Pavek, knowing that no man in his right mind would refuse the opportunity, conceded defeat gracefully by falling to his knees. He listened attentively as the inspector described a precise path through the deliberately mazelike quarter.

It could have been worse: at least he wasn't headed for House Escrissar. With the promise of two coins awaiting on his return, no one was surprised that he loaded the handcart quickly and set off at a trot. He tried to catch Zvain's eye, but the boy was napping.

And gone altogether when he returned. He asked as many questions as he dared among his fellow laborers, but no one had seen a slight, dark-haired boy leave his patch of shade, even when Pavek offered three bits of his new-found wealth for the information. The bribe drew unwanted attention from laborers and templars alike.

Mindful that everyone was already whispering about him and that his true name with its associated 40-gold-piece reward had not yet faded from the gatehouse walls, he was reluctant to ask anyone if an old dwarf, a testy half-elf, and an uncommonly beautiful human woman had dragged a cart of amphorae past the templars' greedy eyes.

Not long after he returned to the gate, the ground shuddered and, moments later, a plume of ash-colored cloud began to rise far to the north of the city: Smoking Crown was living up to its name. Those folk near the gate who venerated the elements of air or fire made the appropriate obeisance. Everyone else asked luck or fortune to keep the wind blowing from the south-to no avail. The southern wind faded almost at once and the cloud tower curled toward Urik long before it peaked. By noon the air was foul with sulphur and Pavek's jaw was aching the way it did whenever the wind came across the Crown.

There'd been no sign of Zvain or the druid. He told himself there was nothing to worry about. It had been midafternoon when the zarneeka arrived last time. Zvain had" wandered off yesterday and the day before; he'd been

"Nothing to worry about."

"What's that?" another laborer asked. He was a lanky veteran with a stubbly gray beard and a close-fitting leather cap to protect his bald scalp. His lips curled over toothless gums and though he kept pace with the younger men, Pavek swiftly judged him the least dangerous of this day's companions.

"Looking for someone," he admitted.

"Woman?"

Pavek nodded. A man could always blame a woman for his edginess. He offered an honest description of the druid, omitting her two companions.

"Not inspected, that's for sure. Not passed along, either, I think. I'd've remembered her. Traveling by herself or with a group?" When Pavek hesitated, the veteran drew his own conclusions. "Found someone better, eh? and left you with that boy on the hill?"

"Close enough." It was the simplest explanation and far more believable than the truth.

"I'll keep my eyes open." The veteran gave Pavek a good-natured clap on the shoulder. "You're young yet, and that boy's near full-grown. There's plenty of time left. No need to be worrying 'bout a woman who won't come home, son.",

Pavek muttered vague appreciation while trying to remember if anyone had ever called him 'son' before and -whether he liked the sound, considering its source.

Then Bukke shouted "Oelus-get your butt over here," and the conversation was over.

The acrid breeze that made Pavek's jaw ache soured everyone's disposition. As soon as he was in range, Bukke chastised him for dawdling and struck him across the shoulder with a leather-wrapped prod. A prod with expensive iron beneath its leather, judging by the bruising weight and sting, suitable for the slave-pits but illegal here at the gate where free men worked for pittance wages.

With a painful gulp, regulator Pavek resisted giving inspector Bukke a taste of his own weapon.

"Unload it, now, scum," Bukke snarled, striking Pavek a second time before pointing the prod at a hitherto unsuspecting farmer dragging a cart loaded with firewood.

"As you will, great one," Pavek replied and with will alone he wrestled the entire cartload onto the sand.

A smart, sane man would have groveled loudly. When he'd been a templar, he'd been smart enough, sane enough to grovel; now that he was an outcast wage-laborer he spread the kindling in silence. His arm was numb, the rest of him throbbed with pain and rage, but he wouldn't give a yellow-scum templar like Bukke the satisfaction of seeing any emotion on his face.