Dagger

He thought he recognized the man who was fingering his staff now that his cape was rearranged.

"Who would you be, my friend?" Samlor asked without hostility or any other motion.

"My name is Khamwas," the fellow said in a cultured voice that tried to be calm. The peak of his hood must have added several inches to his height, because he was clearly shorter than the caravan master as well as being much more slightly built. "I'm a stranger here in your city."

The manikin silently reappeared on Khamwas' shoulder. The tiny features were unreadable in the dim light, but the figure's pose was apprehensive.

"Did you have a friend in that tavern?" asked the caravan master softly. When his right thumb turned to indicate the wall of the Vulgar Unicorn, the point of the push dagger winked knowingly toward Khamwas' eyes. "A brother, maybe?"

Reaching out on a sudden whim, Samlor jerked open the other man's cape. He knew the body he'd thrown ahead of him through the tavern window was dead, but the faces were so much alike. .

There were no bloodstains on this man's clothes and the garments themselves were different-though of a not dissimilar fashion. A linen tunic bared Khamwas' right shoulder but covered most of his chest, and the belt that cinched it at the waist was of dark brocade, red or blue- certainly not gold.

"I beg your pardon," Khamwas said, touching his cape closed again with cautious dignity. "I have no brothers, and I don't know anyone in this city. I'm a scholar from a far country, and I've come to ask a favor here from a man named Setios."

"Uncle, that-" blurted Star, catching herself before Samlor's free hand could waggle a warning.

"A bird who flies to the nest of another," chirped the manikin sententiously, "will lose a feather."

"What in hell is that?" asked the caravan master deliberately, pointing at the manikin with his right index finger. The bodkin-bladed push dagger parallelled the gesturing finger as if by chance.

The manikin eeped and cowered. Khamwas reached across to his right shoulder with his cupped hand, as if to shield and stroke the little creature simultaneously.

"He does no harm, sir," the self-styled scholar replied calmly. "I-when I was younger, you understand-prayed to certain powers for wisdom. They sent me this little fellow instead. His name is Tjainufi."

The manikin stared balefully at Khamwas, but his tiny arm reached out to pat the hand protecting him. "A fool who wants to go with a wise man," he said, "is a gooSe who wants to go with the slaughter knife."

Samlor blinked. He was confused, but that probably didn't matter, not compared to a dozen other things. "You know my name, then?" he said, harshly again, sure that Khamwas had to have some co

"Sir, I know no one in your city," Khamwas repeated, drawing himself up and planting the staff firmly before him with his hands linked on it. "I have a daughter the age of your niece, so I-tried, I should say, to intervene when she seemed to be in difficulties."

He paused. For an instant his staff glowed again. The grain of the wood made ripples in the phosphorescence, and a haze of light wrapped Khamwas' hands like a real fog.

Star reached past her uncle and touched the staff.

The glow flickered out as Khamwas started, but a tinge of blue clung to the child's fingers as she withdrew them. Samlor did not swear, because words had power-especially at times like these. His left hand caressed his niece's hair, offering human contact when he could not be sure what help, if any, the child required.

If Khamwas' toying had done any harm, he would be fed his liver on the point of a knife.

Star giggled while both men watched her with fear born of uncertainty. She opened her fingers slowly and the glow between their tips grew and paled like the sheen of an expanding soap bubble. Then it popped as if it had never been.

Khamwas let out his breath abruptly. "Sir," he said to the caravan master, "I didn't realize. Forgive me for intruding in your affairs."

Tjainufi, who had disappeared when Star lifted light from the staff, now waggled an arm at Khamwas and said, "Do not say, 'I am learned. Set yourself to become wise."

Khamwas would have stepped by and continued up the alley, but Samlor restrained him with a gesture that would have become contact if the scholar had not halted. "You saved Star from a bad time before I got here," he said. "And likely you saved me, besides distracting the little bastards. My name's Samlor nil Samt." He sheathed the little dagger behind his collar. "You and I need to talk."

"All right, Master Samlor," agreed the other man, though the way his lips pursed showed that the suggestion was not one he would have made himself. He gestured up the passageway, the direction from which the Cirdonian had come, and added, "There are more suitable places to discuss matters than here, I'm certain."

"No," said Samlor flatly, "there's not."

It wasn't worth his time to explain that the direction in which Khamwas was headed would be a no-go area for at least the next hour. The passageway was narrow enough to be defended by one man, and both flanks were protected by masonry that would require siege equipment to breach. If their luck were really out, they could be attacked from both directions simultaneously, but that risk was better than being trapped in a cul-de-sac with no bolthole.

Given the nature of Sanctuary, this was probably the safest place within a league in any direction.

"What do you know about Setios?" the caravan master demanded, no more threatening than was implicit in the fact that he had already demonstrated his willingness and ability to kill.

Star was squatting, her skirts lifted and wrapped around her thighs to keep the hem from lying in the muck. A tiny glow spun within the globe of her hands as she cooed. Its color was more nearly yellow than the blue which had washed Khamwas' staff.

The glow was reflected faintly by the eyes of the dead youth.

Khamwas' face worked in something between a grimace and a moue of embarrassment as he watched the child. "Ah," he said to Samlor. "That is, ah-are you. .?"

The caravan master shook his head, glad to find that the question amused him rather than arousing any of the other possible emotions. "On a good day," he said, "I might be able to recite a spell without stumbling over the syllables- if somebody wrote 'em out for me really careful." That was an exaggeration, though not a great one,

"My sister, though," he added, embarrassed himself for reasons the other man should not be able to fathom, "that was more her line."

To the extent that anything besides sex was Samlane's line.

"I see," said Khamwas, and he continued to glance down at the child even as he returned to the earlier question. "I don't know Setios at all," he explained, "but I know- I've been told by, well-"

He shrugged. Samlor nodded grimly; but if this fellow called himself scholar rather than wizard, he at least recognized that the latter was a term of reproach to decent men.

"Serve your god, that he may guard you," said Tjainufi, stroking his master's-could Khamwas be called that? – right ear.

"He has," Khamwas went on after the awkward pause, "a stele from my own land, from Napata-"

"Of course," Samlor interrupted, placing the stranger at least. "The Land of the River."

"The river," Khamwas agreed with a nod of approval, "and of the desert. And in the desert, many monuments of former times-" he paused again, gave a gentle smile " – greater times for my people, some would say, though I myself am content."

"You want to-retrieve," said Samlor, avoiding the question of means, "a monument that this Setios has. Is he a magician?"