demanded with his arms bided over his chest. No one answered. Mahtra looked like someone important; he looked like a farmer. Pavek hooked the leather thong around his neck and brought the gouged medallion into the light. “Who is in charge?” he repeated.
Audacity often succeeded in the Tablelands because the price of failure was so high that few would dare it. Templar and villager alike knew the punishment for impersonating a high templar. They stared at Pavek brandishing his ceramic medallion as if it were made of gold. After a long moment during which his heart did not beat at all, the crouching woman got to her feet. There was a smile on her face as she came toward him. The earlier insult was forgotten; now she expected to have the honor of turning an imposter over to higher authorities.
Then she saw the gouge in the medallion he held out to her, and her smile wavered. Pavek didn’t need magic or mind-bending to hear the doubts contending in her mind as she extended her arm. They were, however, equally shocked when crimson sparks leapt from the gouge to her fingertips, sparks bright enough to make them both blink.
“Great One!” she cried, nursing burnt fingers as she dropped to her knees. “Great One, Lord, forgive me. I meant no disrespect.”
All the others followed her example, parents grabbing their children as they knelt and holding them close. The children cried protest at the rough handling, but there were adult sobs, also. Pavek could slay them all with his own hands, no questions asked nor quarter given. He could enslave them on the spot, selling them or keeping them without regard for kinship. Such were the ingrained powers of the Lion-King’s high templars.
Pavek chewed his lower lip, sickened by what he’d done, uncertain how to rectify it. The only high templar he’d met in the flesh was Elabon Escrissar, whose example he’d sooner die than follow.
“Mistakes happen,” he muttered. Mistakes did, of course, and people died for them. “You weren’t expecting us.” They should have gone to Khelo. “There’s been no harm done, to us or you. No reason to sweat blood.”
Slipshod and undisciplined as the registrators were, they were templars, and they knew about sweating blood. Here and there, a head came up to stare at him. If mekillots would fly before a high templar showed mercy to fools, then Pavek had just sprouted wings.
“We’d like water to drink and to wash off the dust, and a hand-cart for our baggage. Then we’ll be on our way. We have business in Urik.”
More heads had come up, more folk questioning fortune. The burly registrator got to her feet, still cradling her hand against her breast. She looked at the medallion, then at Pavek’s face.
“Whatever you wish, Great One, Lord. Whatever your dreams desire. Please, Great One, Lord, tell us who are you or—?”
“Pavek,” he replied, almost as uncomfortable as she was.
Judging by the lack of reaction, his name, which had been associated with a forty-gold-piece reward less than a year ago, had been forgotten. The registrator’s lips worked, summoning up the fortitude for another question:
“Forgive me, Great One, Lord Pavek, we are so isolated here. We know only peasants, slaves, and farmers, but what is your house-name, so we may honor you, Great One, Lord Pavek, with the proper respect.”
Of course. Like the nobility living on their estates, high templars had a second name engraved on their medallions. Pavek could have made one up out of whole cloth to satisfy these nervous registrators, and he would have, for their sakes and his, but his mind had gone completely blank.
“By decree of Hamanu, Lord of the Mountains and the Plains, King of the World—”
They’d all forgotten Mahtra, still sitting cross-legged atop her kank. Lord Hamanu must have prepared her for this moment, at least Pavek hoped the sorcerer-king had taught her the words when he gave her the message she brought to Quraite. The alternative was that Lord Hamanu was bending Mahtra’s thoughts at this very moment. Pavek noticed he wasn’t the only one looking for sulphur eyes in the skies over her head. He didn’t find any.
“—Lord Pavek is sole inheritor of House Escrissar. You may call him Lord Escrissar.”
There was a name everyone recognized, feared and rightly despised, Pavek included. The Modekaners looked at him, more uncertain than before, and even Ruari and Zvain seemed taken aback. It shouldn’t have been such a gut-numbing surprise—the Lion-King had all but told him he