us have to stay alive, and while we live, we do what we have to do to keep on living.”
Ruari spat out a word that belonged in the rankest gutters of the city and implied that the New Race woman belonged there as well. Without a sound or changing his expression, Pavek spun on his heels. Before he left the city, there were those in the bureaus who said Pavek had a future as an eighth-rank intimidator, if he’d ingratiate himself sufficiently with a willing patron. He was a head shorter than the half-elf, and there was a clear path to the open door, but Ruari stayed right where he was. Once learned, the nasty tricks of the templar trade couldn’t be forgotten. Pavek subjected his friend to withering scrutiny before saying:
“You’re too pretty. You’d last a morning on the streets, maybe less. You wouldn’t even make it as far as the slave market. No one would want to carve up your pretty face.” Although that face wasn’t very pretty just then, with ashen cheeks and a cold sweat blooming on his forehead, as if the half-elf were about to get violently ill. Pavek repeated the malediction Ruari himself had used.
Akashia placed her hands on his arm and tried, futilely, to turn him around. “Stop, please! You’ve made your point: we don’t understand the city the way you do… she does. Stop. Please?”
He let himself be persuaded. The scar throbbed the way it did when he let his expression pull on it, but pain wasn’t the reason he’d never have made intimidator—and not because he couldn’t have found a patron, precisely as the New Race woman had found one in Escrissar… Pavek was the one—the only one in the hut—who truly felt ill. He wanted to leave at a dead run, but couldn’t because the woman had awaked.
She sat up with slow, studied and graceful movements, like those of a feral cat. After examining herself, she looked up. Her open eyes were as astonishing as the rest of her: palest blue-green, like gemstones, they showed none of the differentiation between outer white and inner color of the established races. There were only shiny black pupils that swelled dramatically as her vision adjusted to the light of a single, tiny lamp.
“Who are you? What do you want from us?” Akashia spoke first.
“I am Mahtra.” Her voice was strange, too, with little expression and a deep pitch. It seemed to come from somewhere other than behind her mask. “I have a message for the high templar called Pavek.”
Pavek stepped away from the others and drew her attention. “I am Pavek.”
Bald brows arched beneath flesh of living gold. Her pupils grew inhumanly large, inhumanly bright, as she stared him up and down, but mostly at his scarred face. “My lord said I would find an ugly, ugly man.”
He almost laughed aloud, but swallowed the sound when he saw Akashia’s face darkening. “Your lord?” he asked instead. “King Hamanu? The lord of Urik is your lord?”
“Yes, he is my lord. He is lord of everything.” Mahtra rose confidently to her feet, displaying no sign that she’d been unconscious rather than asleep. Extending a wickedly pointed red fingernail, she reached for Pavek’s face. He flinched and dodged. “Will it always look like that? Is it painful?”
New Race, he reminded himself: not a mark on her scaly skin other than those metallic patches. Not a scratch or a scar, nor a sun blister. He recalled Zvain’s warnings about the mask and didn’t want to imagine what scars it might conceal. She was as tall as Ruari; her slight, strong body was almost certainly full-grown, but what of her mind?
“It aches sometimes. I would rather you didn’t touch it. You can understand that, can’t you?” He met the pale blue stare and held it until she blinked. He hoped that was understanding. “You have a message for me?”
“My lord says he’s given you more time than a mortal man deserves. He says you’ve dawdled in your garden long enough. He says it’s time for you to return and finish what you started.”
Aware that everyone—Mahtra, Akashia, Ruari, and Zvain—was staring at him intently, Pavek asked, “Did the Lion tell you what that might be?” in an almost-normal voice.
“He said you and I would hunt the halfling called Kakzim, and I would have vengeance for the deaths of Father and Mika.”
“Kakzim!” Zvain exclaimed. “Kakzim! Do you hear that, Pavek? We’ve got to go back now.”
“Father! What Father? You said