The young templar’s fingers arched delicately over his instrument. His eyes were closed and his body swayed gently in rhythm with the music that was as beautiful as it was unexpected.
Strange, Joat mused silently in a lull between refills, listening to the pipes. Where had he learned to play like that? And why?
Joat knew the templars as well as anyone who did not wear a yellow robe knew them. More specifically, he knew the under-rank templars from the civil bureau, who had only a few threads of orange or crimson, never gold, woven into the hems of their sleeves. Such folk came to his place to celebrate their infrequent promotions, gripe about their varied failures in the ruthless bureaucracy, and to eulogize their dead. There were, of course, other kinds of templars: aristocratic High Templars who inherited their positions and seldom ventured outside their private, guarded quarter, ambitious templars who’d betray, sell, or murder not just ordinary citizens like him, but other templars, too…
And then there were Hamanu’s pets: men and women to whom the ancient, jaded king gave free rein. Those pet names were whispered here, in Joat’s Den, and feared above all others, even the king’s.
The dwarf didn’t particularly like his customers, but he knew them well enough to know that beneath the robes they were very much the same as other people. They made the compromises everyone made to survive in a world indifferent to life. He certainly didn’t envy them. In his eyes their privileges couldn’t outweigh the risks they took every day, clinging tightly to their little niche in Urik’s grand bureaucracy.
King Hamanu decreed that nothing changed. In the larger sense, the king spoke the truth. But change was a constant in Joat’s small world. He’d raised his family here, behind the customhouse. His wife still cooked all the food. His children helped in more ways than he could count. Five grandchildren slept in cozy beds beneath the pantry.
It hadn’t been easy; he’d endured more hard years than he cared to recall. The templars were reliable customers, except when crop failures tightened supplies or one of Hamanu’s chronic military campaigns put the whole city on war rations. Joat’s Den had been burnt out twice, most recently when Tyrian hooligans had sacked the city, trying, without success, to free the slaves.
King Hamanu always got Urik set to rights, easing off on fines and taxes until trade was back on its feet again. The sorcerer-king didn’t claim to have founded Urik, but he, and the templarate he had founded, nurtured the city with ferocious care. Urik survived; Urik’s citizens survived. In the end, survival mattered more than the king’s notorious cruelty or any individual templar’s brutality.
Standing in the twilight of his life—his eyes a bit dimmer than they’d been in his youth, his hand a shade less steady when he poured from a full jug—Joat was proud of himself, of his Den, of their survival.
Or maybe it wasn’t pride, just that forsaken, melancholy music.
The youth had entranced himself and everyone with his playing. He showed no sign of fatigue. Like as not, he’d pipe away until sunrise, unless someone stopped him. Melancholy music that produced melancholy customers who, in turn, produced no sales. Joat wiped his hands on the leather apron that covered him from neck to knees—and covered a variety of weapons as well. He selected a supple sand-filled sap from the apron’s armory. The small weapon disappeared in a thick-fingered dwarven fist.
He was easing around the end of the mekillot rib bar, determined to solve the night’s problem, when a woman’s terrified shriek split the night. Every head came up—except for the musician’s. The scream hung in the air a moment, then ended the way it had begun: abruptly.
A quick exchange of glances around the Den said it all: Murder. No spoken words were needed, nor anything else. Even if a templar had been interested in rescuing the woman, the odds against finding her were as long as the odds against saving her were short.
Templars were cautious gamblers, especially when their own skins might be on the line.
A blond templar—handsome except for his broken teeth—hoisted his tankard upside-down. A war-hardened elf (on the other side of the room, naturally) made the same gesture; and a third templar pitched a ceramic coin into the musician’s half-filled cup. She called for a happier song.
An unanticipated chorus of slurred dissent erupted. To Joat’s astonishment, a fair number of his rock-headed half-drunk customers were enjoying the unpaid performance. Who