brazen gambit, The - Lynn Abbey Page 0,15
direction of the open gate before he staggered to the cistern and thrust his whole head into the stagnant water.
Chapter Three
The tongue-thickening numbness in Pavek’s mouth was gone long before the bitter taste of zarneeka faded into memory, along with the jeers of Bukke and the others at the gate.
He was accustomed to such outbursts. His pursuit of spell-craft—which he could not hope to invoke—invited ridicule. The archive scholars laughed when he mispronounced the names of the scrolls he wanted to study. His comrades in the low ranks of the civil bureau laughed because he was that most ludicrous of supposedly sentient creatures: a big, ugly, and dirt-poor templar with a romantic curiosity.
And compassion—at least more compassion than was considered useful or wise in the templarate.
Pavek cared about the widow and her children, now headed for the obsidian pits. He was ashamed that his scheme to catch the zarneeka itinerants had netted a clutch of hard-scrabble farmers instead. There was no reason, Pavek told himself, for the dull ache in his heart: the family was smuggling for the Veil. Nothing worse than the usual templar harassment would have befallen them if they had not been breaking one of Urik’s cardinal laws.
Their fate was their own damned fault, not his.
But Pavek cared; he ached, and the family’s faces joined countless others in the tiers of his conscience. The female druid, with her smoldering eyes and torn dress was headed there, too. The orphan boy who’d gut-punched him a few nights back had already claimed his place.
Wincing under his private burden, Pavek pounded the streets between the gate and the customhouse. His size and expression cleared a path, while a small voice inside his skull warned with every stride: Forget them all. Take care of yourself. Forget them all.
He slipped through an inconspicuous door at the rear of the customhouse and wove his way past stockpiles of those commodities King Hamanu judged both essential to his city’s residents and eminently taxable. The customhouse was larger than the palace, though few guessed its true dimensions because it had been carved into the limestone beneath the streets rather than rising above them. It swallowed the lives of poor, patronless templars, and Pavek, already a ten-year veteran of the templarate’s bottom ranks, knew every dim and twisted corridor, every rat-hole shortcut. No one could have reached the imposing procurate tables in the entry hall faster than he did, but it was Rokka’s predictability rather than Pavek’s luck or skill that got him where he wanted to be before it was too late.
Rokka made everyone wait. The smarmy dwarf would make King Hamanu wait in line, even if it got him killed. Today he was making everyone wait even longer: two empty tables flanked the one where the miser had enthroned himself. A line of citizens and merchants stretched onto the sunbaked street.
Pavek glanced at the array of trade goods heaped behind Rokka’s chair. There were no amphorae, neither lacquered nor resealed with loose wax plugs. None of the hot, weary faces matched the itinerants from the gate.
Pavek sighed with satisfaction and relief, then joined a pair of fellow regulators marking time in the coolest corner, near a row of massive chests. Taking orders from Rokka was a regulator’s nightmare; the two were willing to let him stand duty in their places, no questions asked. They left the customhouse on a wave of his hand.
The lone procurer was a crude man. Curling bristles sprouted from his brow. Tufts of matted hair protruded from his ears and nose. Any other self-respecting dwarf would have plucked each offensive hair out by its root, but Rokka wore his hideous hair like armor. It fueled the contempt mat oozed with every word, every gesture.
Even the proud merchant standing in front of the table when Pavek entered the hall had been reduced to a nervous pallor by the time the assessment was concluded. Rokka made a scratched entry on the tax scroll for the merchant to witness before he waved a two-fingers-extended fist in the air above his shoulder. Taking an empty pouch from a pile beside the chest, Pavek filled the pouch with two nearly level measures of salt, then—because it was Rokka sitting at the procurer’s table—he let some trickle back into the chest.
The dwarf scowled when Pavek appeared at his side to put the pouch in one pan of a balance scale and two ceramic lions in the other. All eyes were on the balance beam, which swung