The Rise and Fall of a Dragonking - By Lynn Abbey Page 0,115

toddler higher on her hip. “What’s your name?”

He hesitated, then said, “Manu. Tell Lord Pavek that Manu is here to see him.”

The name was common enough in this, Hamanu’s city. She repeated it once and disappeared up the steps into the living quarters. Hamanu shut the door—a slave’s job, but there were no slaves here—and settled down to wait on a tradesman’s bench.

In a few moments Pavek appeared at the top of the stairs. He was alone. His right hand was tucked under his shirt hem and resting lightly on the hilt of a steel-bladed knife.

“It’s a little late for caution, Pavek,” Hamanu observed without raising his head. “Half the city could walk through your unguarded door. Half the city already has.”

“Manu?” Pavek descended a few steps. “Manu? Do I know you? Step into the light a moment.”

Hamanu obeyed. His illusion was, as always, perfect, and though Pavek could not hide his novice druidry from one of Rajaat’s champions, there was nothing at all magical about the aura the illusory Manu projected. Indeed, there was nothing about Manu that Pavek should have recognized, including the scroll case, which was plain leather, sturdy, but scuffed.

A child’s spindle top shot out of the doorway behind Pavek, followed immediately by the child who’d lost it. The top bounced down the stairs, coming to rest at Hamanu’s feet. Pavek put a hand out to stop the child, a scruffy little creature of indeterminate race and gender. He bent down and whispered something in the child’s ear. There was a hug and a high-pitched giggle, then the child was gone, and Pavek was coming slowly down the stairs.

Some men were born to be fathers, and Pavek was one of them. It was a pity he’d sired no children. A pity, that is, until Hamanu thought about tomorrow and the great number of fathers who would be unable to protect their children.

Hamanu picked up the toy and handed it to Pavek as he reached the last step. Their eyes met in the lantern light. Manu’s eyes were brown, plain brown—even Dorean, who’d loved every part of Manu, said his eyes were ordinary, unremarkable. Hamanu’s eyes, the eyes Rajaat had given him, were obsidian pupils swimming in molten sulphur. When Hamanu crafted his illusions, he always got the eyes correct, yet Pavek stared at his eyes and would not look away.

“Great One,” he said at last, trying—and failing—to kneel on the entrance steps of his own home. “Great One.”

Pavek lost his balance. Hamanu caught him as he fell forward, and held him until he was steady on his feet again.

Somewhere a child screamed, as children would, and incited a commiserating chorus.

Hamanu plucked the top out of the air where it had hovered while the Lion-King assisted his templar. He’d changed his mind about staying here. “Is there room in this house for one more?” he asked, dropping the toy in Pavek’s nerveless hands.

“It is yours, Great One. Everything I have—”

“Manu,” he said, grabbing Pavek’s arm to keep him from kneeling.

Pavek nodded. “Your will, Great One—Manu.”

They went up the stairs together. The child who’d lost the toy was waiting inside the hall along with two others, one definitely a dwarf, the other definitely a girl. They were soft-voiced and polite until Pavek relinquished the top. Then they were off, shrieking like harpies.

“Are you collecting every castoff and stray in Urik?”

“They have nowhere else to go, Gr—” Pavek caught himself. “I find one… but there’s never just one. There’s a sister, or a friend, or someone.” He gestured at the ceiling. “This place, it’s so big. How can I say no?”

“I can’t have this, Pavek. You’re giving the bureaus a bad name.”

Pavek gave Hamanu the same worried look Enver had given him at least once a day. But Pavek—Whim of the Lion—knew when his humor was being tested.

“Not to worry, Manu. My neighbors think I’m fattening them up for market.”

They laughed. It was invigorating to laugh in the face of doom. Manu, head-and-shoulders shorter than Pavek, reached out and gave the bigger-seeming man a hearty, laughing thump between the shoulder blades, which rocked him forward onto his toes. For a heartbeat, there was silence, and a world of doubt in Pavek’s thoughts. Then Pavek dropped an arm on Manu’s shoulder and laughed—tentatively—again.

A cold supper had been laid out in the moonlit atrium and a score of men and women gathered together to enjoy it. Hamanu was mildly surprised to see Javed sitting beside his chalk-skinned bride. The king of