The Brazen Gambit

"Leave her alone!" the boy sobbed, pummelling Pavek ineffectively with bis fists.

"I can't. She's been murdered. Questions have to be asked, answered. The man who did it can't help. His mind was gone before he died."

The boy went limp in the templar's arms as all his strength flowed into wails of anguish. Pavek thought he understood. He'd never known his father. His mother had done the best she could, buying him a bed in the templarate orphanage when he was about five years old. He'd hardly seen her after that, but he'd cried when they told him her crumpled body had been found at the base of the highest wall. There was a lock of her black hair beneath the leather-wrapped hilt of his metal knife.

But Pavek had forgotten the words for compassion, if he'd ever known them. Ten years in the orphanage, another ten in the barracks had erased such simple things from his mind. He squeezed the boy against his chest and thumped him on the head. He thought that was what his mother had done, once or twice, and the boy did grow quiet

"Give me a hand. We'll take her to the civil bureau, then I'll find you a place-"

"The bureau!" Shocked out of his tears, the boy wriggled free. "Who are you?"

"Pavek. Just plain Pavek. Regulator-"

"A templar!"

The boy's fist shot forward, a small hard object striking just below Pavek's groin. He folded inward, barely staying on his feet as the boy scampered into the shadow. Not far. The footsteps didn't fade; they stopped. Pavek cursed beneath his breath as he slowly straightened his back and his legs.

"Boy-come back here. Urik's no place for a boy alone."

Pavek knew he was right, but words gasped through clenched teeth lost something of their effectiveness, and the orphan stayed where he was. When he was confident of his balance, Pavek removed a few ceramic coins from his belt purse, displaying them in the starlight.

"Look-you'll need these."

The boy didn't take the bait. Well, Pavek reckoned he wouldn't have taken it either, under similar circumstances. He dribbled the coins into the dirt for the boy to retrieve later, then, with a stab of pain through his midsection and a loud groan, he hoisted the corpse across his shoulders and headed back the way he'd come.

Chapter Two

Hot, sun-filled days came and went. The fist-sized bruise in Pavek's groin faded; so did the memory of who'd given it to him and why. He filled his memory with scribbling from the archive, not the dreary details of his own life.

Pavek was on morning duty in the vast customhouse, transferring hock-sized sacks of salt from one barrel to another, ticking off groups of five on a wax tablet as he went. His gut reaction was anger when the adolescent messenger interrupted him. The girl dropped to her knees. Slender, trembling arms thrust through the plain yellow sleeves of her robe and stretched across the floor to touch his feet.

"Forgive me, great one." Pavek was a big man with limbs as thick-muscled as any gladiator's, but not a great one.

Who knew what Sian would say if she could see her only child now? His cronies joked that the only promotion waiting for him was the one to intimidator, for which he was so, obviously well suited.

Intimidator. Templar of the eighth rank. Not if he lived a thousand years like King Hamanu. He was just plain Pavek, a third-rank, flash-tempered fool, and he'd never be anything more.

"Get up, girl."

He tried to help her, but she scrabbled away.

"Medea wants you." The messenger hid her arms beneath the long panel at the front of her robe and regarded Pavek with a stare that was both defiant and defeated.

Pavek threw the three sacks dangling from his left hand into the barrel he was filling. He made a mark in the wax with his thumbnail and peeked into the barrel he was emptying. Ignoring the girl, he scooped up another handful of sacks.

"One... Two... Three..." He tossed them as he counted.

"She said 'now'."

"Four. Five. I'm counting, girl. 'Now' happens when I'm done." Another fingernail impression in the wax, another scoop of salt-sacks.

"I can count for you."

"Yeah-for me and who else? Rokka? Dova

"Metica said 'now,' great one, and I'll catch it if you're late. I'll just count, I swear it. I'll swear whatever you want. Put in a good word for me, great one?"

"Five. Pavek. Just plain Pavek, or Right-Hand Pavek- and if you think my good word will help you with Medea, you're an even greater fool than me." He clapped the salt dust from his hands and handed her the wax tablet. "If there's less than two hundred when I get back, I'll come looking for you, girl, and you'll wish you were never born."

She pushed back stringy locks of dull, brown hair, revealing a blood-crusted gouge along her hairline. "Gotta do better than that, Pavek, if you want to intimidate me."

The salt-room had only a grease-lamp for light. It was hard to tell whether she was full-human or half-elf. Pavek guessed half-elf. Whatever attraction drew elves and humans together, it didn't usually extend to their children. He'd never met a half-elf who wasn't outcast by its mother and father's kin alike. They were all orphans, and they scrambled for whatever crumbs of patronage they could get, just like him.

"Right," he said, rolling down his yellow sleeves, uncovering a slim collection of crimson and orange threads. "Two hundred, and seal the barrel when you're done."

"I could wait for you...."

"Don't bother."

Pavek left with the sound of laughter ringing in his ears. Maybe she would wait. Tomorrow was Todek's Day, so named for the largest of the outlying villages, which, according to the ten-day rotation that was as old as Urik itself, was scheduled to bring its produce into the city market.

More importantly, tomorrow was the one day in ten that he could claim for himself. He usually spent his free time in the archives, copying and memorizing spellcraft, but there were other ways to pass the time. She was only a messenger; he was a regulator. He couldn't put in a useful good word for her with Metica, but he could buy her a free day. A day with him.

Striding along the crowded streets between the custom-house and the stone-fronted civil bureau where Metica had her office, Pavek weighed the possibilities several times. Any-thing to distract him from thinking about the reasons his taskmaster want to see him.

If she did want to see him. The old adage about not trusting strangers held true in the bureaus. He didn't know the messenger.

Pavek paused at the bottom of the broad stairway leading to the administrators' chambers, mopping the sweat from his brow and shaking the dust from his robe, then started climbing.

A man got tired in the templarate. Pavek guessed he was about twenty-five years old, but he'd already accumulated a lifetime of tired. For once he thought of Metica not as a familiar adversary, but as a gray-haired half-elf, and wondered how she had survived-how anyone survived long enough to grow old. His life wasn't a choice between the half-elf girl and a day in the archives, it was a choice between any tomorrow and no tomorrow at all. Sometimes he wondered why he hadn't Mowed his mother's example, except that when templars cracked-and one did from time to time-they didn't do it quietly or alone.

All at once and without warning, his thoughts were back in Joat's Place, watching the raver suffocate, and in the squatters' quarter, looking down at a woman with a broken neck. He swallowed the thoughts and kept climbing.