The Brazen Gambit

Lightning lit the heavens with cool brilliance. Pavek braced for the gut-punch crack of thunder, which did not arrive for several moments and was distant-sounding when it did. The Tyr-storm would be violent when it arrived, but he, his trio of captors, and the other scurrying denizens of Modekan-he assumed they'd come to that village-still had ample time to prepare and dread.

"Can we trust him? Do we dare take him into the i

Thrusting out his lower lip, Yohan blinked and shook his head. Pavek started to protest this judgment against his character, but the dwarf silenced him with a scowl.

"It's not a question of trust; it's those hands and feet. It'll be midnight before he can use his hands, longer before he can walk. Anybody who sees him will think a question or two and somebody may guess the answer. Forty pieces is a lot of gold, Kashi. It's not my decision, but if it were, I'd keep moving and go to ground when we reach the barrens." Another flash of lightning-the same color as the druid's eyes, or perhaps that was merely an illusion. Either way, her nose wrinkled as she looked from him to the storm and back again. Without offering a word, much less the decision they were all waiting for, she reversed the knife and aimed it for its sheath.

Pavek murmured, "Wipe it first-" Akashia glowered as thunder rumbled and Yohan made a fist.

He had no idea who'd forged his knife, but any steel was worthy of respect, and mention of the last dwarven stronghold got Yohan's attention, as he'd hoped it would. Akashia, seeing something like awe on the veteran's face, swirled the blade carefully across the whetstone attached to the sheath.

Only Ruari missed the moment completely. "You aren't going to let a mud-scum templar talk to you like that, are you? His kind never learns. He still thinks he can give orders and we'll all grovel at his filthy, stinking feet. He'll sing a different song once Telhami's through with him-"

"Ruari!" Akashia snarled.

And Pavek looked immediately at Yohan, whose face reflected unspeakable weariness in the faint light. The dwarf had the requisite experience and wisdom, but he wasn't the druids' leader, and neither was Akashia. That honor belonged to someone named Telhami-a woman, by the name's cadence, and undoubtedly a force to be reckoned with.

"Well," Pavek demanded when no one else seemed inclined to say anything, "what are you going to do with me? Hit me over the head again and dump my body where the storm will finish your dirty-work?"

Akashia finished stropping the blade but before she returned it to the sheath she took a moment-or so it seemed-to examine the elaborate knotwork along the hilt, the knotwork that concealed his mother's hair.

He wanted the knife back because the worth of its metal was measured in gold; he wanted Sian's midnight hair back because its worth was beyond all measure.

"You value this?" she asked.

Her expression went beyond calculation or suspicion. Remembering the white fire she'd seared through his mind at the gate, he feared for his life, though common-lore said any mind with enough thoughts for stealing could defend itself against a mind-bender's invasion. But he felt nothing explicitly threatening, only the elusive sense that he was still being measured and judged.

"I value it, yes."

"How much?"

"To you, or to Telhami?" he countered, letting them know he'd heard Ruari blurt out that name. "Nevermind."

She secured the valued knife in its sheath and the sheath in a fringed bag suspended from her waist.

Lightning flashed and the thunder came quicker, louder. A merchant wearing silken robes scurried toward them. He spotted the four of them and stopped suddenly, causing his tail of servants, carters, and apprentices to stumble against one another. One cart overturned completely with the sound of shattering glass.

"We're doomed!" the frantic merchant wailed. "Doomed! The i

They looked at one another and at the wedge of ground where they stood. The place Yohan had selected for an urgent discussion lay between two tall, windowless walls and was as readily defensible as it was discreet. Another weight went on the balance pan in Pavek's mind with the scales tipping toward a conclusion that Yohan had seen service with one or another of the sorcerer-longs.

He knew what he'd do in similar circumstances: accept manifest good fortune, ten gold pieces, and make his stand against the storm from somewhere else. But he wasn't Yohan, and Yohan wasn't in charge.

Akashia held out her hand, palm-up. "You have so many with you, and so much more to protect. To deny your request would be to deny the principles of life itself."

The merchant extended his own, empty, hand toward her. He would have sworn he could hear both Yohan and the half-elf muttering. But at the last moment before an agreement would have been reached without any exchange of gold, silver or ceramic bits, Akashia made a fist.

"Was that eleven gold pieces you offered, good merchant, or twelve?"

"Good for her," Yohan whispered clearly enough for Pavek to overhear despite another clash of thunder.

Pavek let his swollen hands hang loosely in his lap, hoping not to draw attention to them. His fingers twitched uncontrollably as blood slowly, painfully, restored feeling to lifeless nerves. Yohan's concerns about his conspicuousness were valid: people would notice and people tended to remember what they noticed when gold was involved, whether it was a forty-piece bounty or the eleven pieces the merchant was dribbling slowly into Akashia's hand.

He lowered his head, avoiding eye-contact with anything but his feet, until the cart was well-away from the merchant and his company.

"Good work, Kashi!" Ruari cried. "Now we can buy a room at the i

"Don't be a fool," Akashia retorted as she and Yohan turned toward the open, unguarded village gate. "If eleven pieces of gold could buy a place at an i

The wind had picked up. It blew with enough force to set the heavy gate banging on its hinges. Yohan turned the cart toward the public kank-pen, just inside the gate. A gust caught the disc-shaped wheels and threatened to dump them all on the cobblestones.

"We're not going outside?" Ruari argued. "You've lost your wits. The storm! The kanks will go mad."

"No madder than what's left loose in this village." Yohan stopped the cart and offered his brawny arm to Pavek.

Privately, Pavek sympathized with the half-elf. The kanks' high-pitched droning raised the short hairs at the base of bis neck. He'd never been so close to the big, black bugs before; kanks were ba

The thought of riding a crazed kank into the teeth of a Tyr-storm scared him to the marrow, but he'd do it, if the druids gave him the opportunity, because Yohan was more right than Ruari. The cerulean storms went beyond natural elements. The wind and the icy hail-which had just begun to pelt the ground with nut-sized chunks-were only the harbingers. When the storm's full fury was above them, it would drive some unfortunate men and women into madness.

Pavek recalled only too well the mobs outside the templar barracks during his two previous storms. Their screams were louder than the howling winds and their fists left bloody streaks on the plaster-covered stone walls. He doubted there was a wall or door in Modekan that could withstand such punishment.