and made polite noises, but the greater part of her thoughts were on her own problems. Her ship departed in two days. The matter couldn't wait until she devised an airtight argument. She had to speak with Father tonight.
Ral watched them from the shadow of the Emperor Tronieger monument in the center of Torvelli Square, the strapping officer of the Guard and the young daughter of a respected statesman, as they shared a deep kiss on the front steps of the manse. The prefect's hands slid down to clutch his lady's slender bottom in broad daylight. Ral smiled to himself. The wagging tongues of High Town would wear themselves ragged.
Ral didn't understand the fascination with romance. Oh, he enjoyed the company of women aplenty, the sorts who were attracted to a man of means, and the girl was a pretty slip of a thing, but he didn't have time for anything that outlasted the night. Perhaps after his work was done he would take the time to find a companion, someone suitable for an upcoming man with a bright future.
Finally, Markus bid the girl farewell. Ral followed him, keeping his distance. The prefect, in his scarlet coat, was simplicity itself to shadow through the broad streets of Opuline Hill.
The sights and sounds of High Town did not distract Ral. Growing up, he had sampled every type of excess that wealth could buy. His life might have turned out differently if his father had lived to a ripe old age, but fate had intervened in the form of news off an Arnossi trader bound for Illmyn. Both of his father's ships had disappeared in a storm off the Hvekish coast, lost with all hands. In an instant, he went from a boy to a man of means. He sold his interest in the shipping company and bought a big house. He found new friends in the sons and daughters of the city's finest families, hosted lavish parties that went on for days, and lived the life he'd always wanted. Until the money ran out. Then the loan sharks started circling. He borrowed to keep up his sumptuous lifestyle, and then again when that ran out. By the time he realized the depths to which he had sunk, it was too late.
They found him dead drunk in the back room of a Low Town dive. Five big men with cold eyes propped him on a rickety chair and lashed his hands behind his back.
"Mr. Ayes isn't happy with you," the biggest of them rumbled. "You been spending his money like it's piss, and he ain't seen nothing back in more than a fortnight."
Another thug flashed a long-bladed dirk, so big it was almost a sword. "Not a smart thing to do, making Mr. Ayes angry. Now we come to collect."
They cut off his clothes and shook them out, but Ral laughed at them, too drunk to care whether or not they killed him.
The man with the big knife rested the point between Ral's legs and whispered in his ear. "If you can't pay, friend, then you have to make good some other way."
They gave him a simple choice: lose his skin or do one small favor for his debtor in exchange for wiping the books clean.
All he had to do was kill a man.
That job changed him forever-the apprehension as he stole into another man's home in the dead of night; the tingling of his skin as he found his quarry abed, oblivious to the doom looming over him; the euphoria that surged through his veins when he drove the knife into that soft belly. His victim's death moan had been a paean of rebirth, setting him free from all the constraints that had been ingrained into him by a society blind to his needs, apathetic to his desires. That night he had stepped into a world where the power over life and death rested in his hands. He had never looked back.
Ral followed Markus through the old Forum with its afternoon strollers out for their constitutional amid the rows of vendor stalls. The shouts of hawkers punctuated the susurrus of the crowd. Markus strode straight ahead like a charging bull, never glancing to his left or right. Complete obliviousness to the city's dangers, great or small-that was the prerogative of being an officer in the Sacred Brotherhood. Markus's stride didn't even slow to the sound of cracking whips.
Ral slipped behind a stack of cloth bundles as a band of men in