Rokka still hadn’t returned when the night guards assumed their posts. They shot a few sidelong glances his way, and he returned the favor. Templars were suspicious of each other and any deviation from routine.
They were also inclined to let those suspicions fester. Casual questions were unthinkable.
Pavek considered reporting directly to Metica. He knew her billet in the templar, quarter and he thought he knew enough about the zarneeka trade. If he got lucky, he’d discharge his debt, catch a midnight meal at Joat’s, and spend his Todek’s Day off in the archives as he’d planned.
And if he wasn’t lucky? If he hadn’t learned enough? He could see the administrator’s arched eyebrows pull together like a kank’s mandibles when he mentioned those gold coins—if he mentioned those gold coins.
And if he didn’t…?
And if she found out he hadn’t…?
Ignoring the elven guards who were ignoring him, Pavek opened a minor door and descended into the catacombs. The only lighted lamps hung in the stairways, those in the corridors had been extinguished to save precious oil. Bone torches were stacked at every landing. He selected one that was sturdy enough to double as a club, then lit the pitched straw wrapping, acutely aware that a torch was a better target than light source.
Humans were at a distinct disadvantage in the dark. The other Athasian races saw heat as well as light and had far keener night vision. If it had been simply a matter of getting to a specific location within the catacombs, he would have foregone the torch. Magic locks sealing the more valuable commodities in their storerooms shed enough eerie light for a cautious man. But Pavek didn’t know where Rokka or the zarneeka had gone; he needed light to find them.
Light, that simplest of all spells, was still a gift from the sorcerer-king and not worth requesting.
He started down the long corridor, stabbing his torch into every shadow. He rehearsed his excuses: Rokka had seemed unwell. Rokka had left him, a mere regulator, in charge of the procurer’s table. Rokka had not returned from the storerooms, and he, a dutiful regulator, had not dared leave the customhouse until he’d gotten the procurer’s countersignature on the tax scroll.
Only a complete fool would believe he was actually looking for the dwarf, but in the strained society where templars dwelt, plausibility was more important than either belief or truth.
Pavek saw things he would be careful not to remember. He interrupted a small number of storeroom trysts. High-rank templars married and raised families, but low-rank templars, living their lives in barracks and competing ruthlessly for such crumbs of patronage as slipped through the cracks, made do with empty storerooms and empty affairs. He’d never know the number or names of his children, if he had any. A woman of similar rank could not raise an infant. Her children wound up in the templarate orphanage or on the streets.
He muttered apologies and kept going.
Midway through the third tier, he found what he was looking for: a warding that shed more light than his torch, and a glimpse of lacquered amphorae through the door grate. With his fingers folded thoughtfully over his mouth, Pavek studied the warding from a safe distance. Rokka had sufficient rank to ask for such potent spellcraft, but unless the dwarf had been spending all his spare hours in the archive, like Pavek, he shouldn’t have known how to cast it. Even templars’ borrowed spells were more than invocations. Complex spells, such as warding, were as individual as signatures or fingerprints. The warding on the amphorae storeroom was subtle and, therefore, not Rokka’s style.
A High Templar would have both the rank and requirement to protect his private chambers with such an intricate warding. Here in the customhouse catacombs, it was going to raise a lot of eyebrows come daylight.
If it hadn’t been dispelled before then.
Pavek spotted a likely hiding place amid a cluster of empty barrels. He extinguished his torch in a sand-bucket, but kept it with him as a weapon. Too bad there was no meat left on the bone. Excluding the zarneeka, he hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast, and his churning stomach was noisier than the catacombs vermin. Digging into the belt-pouch beneath his robe, he found several sticks of stale chord sausage. The spicy, salted meat quieted his gut, and left him half-mad with thirst.
Cursing himself, Rokka, the sorcerer-king, and everything else in Urik, Pavek hunkered down. A length of coarse-woven canvas spilled out of one barrel. He