brazen gambit, The - Lynn Abbey Page 0,23

never learns the truth. Sassel gets reward tonight anyway.”

Pavek conceded defeat. He’d never expected deceit worthy of any templar from the mouth of a half-giant. Athas truly was changing. “But you can’t carry me to the boneyard. I can’t ‘talk nice’ to the knacker if I’m tucked under your arm. He won’t listen to me.”

The half-giant changed his grip, setting Pavek gently on his feet. “Sassel didn’t think of that. Pavek walk now.”

Pavek didn’t walk; he ran for the shelter of the nearest dark street. He had a twenty-step lead before Sassel collected his wits.

It wasn’t enough time to hide: Sassel had the same low-light advantage over him that Rokka had, but there was enough time to look for a weapon. The little metal knife wouldn’t damage a half-giant. He hoped for something he could use as a spear or a club, but Urik’s scavengers were thorough. The best he saw was a chunk of glazed masonry large and heavy enough to crack a half-giant’s skull if—a big if—he could get close enough to use it effectively. Pavek hid the masonry behind his back.

Half-giants were too big for Urik’s intersections. Sassel had to stop completely before he could enter Pavek’s street.

“What’s Elabon Escrissar going to say when he finds out that you’ve lost me, Sassel?” Pavek retreated while he taunted the half-giant. The street was wide enough that he should be able to side-step and get clean shot at the back of Sassel’s head, when the half-giant lost his temper and charged. “What kind of reward will Escrissar have for a clumsy oaf? Maybe he’ll take Sassel to the boneyard himself. Maybe he’ll find something worse. Poor, stupid Sassel.”

Sassel bellowed and charged. Pavek held his ground until there was no way the half-giant could stop or turn, then he launched himself to one side. Sassel had the templar’s arm for a scant moment. Pavek made a spinning escape, but he lost his balance for a heartbeat. His elbow led the rest of his body into a collision with coarse stucco wall. White agony exploded behind his eyes, but fortunately for him, he’d only wrecked his left arm; and, conquering the pain, he managed to hurl the masonry with his right hand at the base of Sassel’s skull with sufficient force and accuracy to drop the half-giant to his knees, then to his face on the cobblestones.

Pavek let his head hang a moment, until his heart beat less furiously. He couldn’t move his left arm from the shoulder down. Something was crushed, and he’d need a healer, but other things came first. Wobbling on jelly-filled legs, he staggered to Sassel’s side.

Blood flowed through the half-giant’s matted hair. He was still alive, but unconscious and wheezing. There’d be more mercy in running his metal-blade knife across Sassel’s throat than leaving him to die like an animal, but Pavek couldn’t afford mercy. While Sassel lived, he would lie to stay alive. Let the dead-heart slay his servant, if he wanted to read the truth from the last images in his memory.

Grunting with pain and effort, he rolled Sassel onto his back, exposing the leather belt-pouch. Half-giants didn’t usually lie; the pouch was hefty and a quick probe with the fingers of his right hand found the reassuring coolness of metal as well as the more neutral texture of ceramic bits. Pavek was looping the pouch thongs around his own belt when he heard the first alarm.

“A templar and a half-giant. Down here! Down Customs Row!”

Half-giants were unmistakable, but so was a templar in his sulphur-yellow robe; and, given the templars’ reputation, anyone answering that alarm would take Sassel’s side. Pavek tore off his robe. He mopped Sassel’s wounds with the cloth, adding the half-giant’s blood to his own. Then he looped it over Sassel’s fingers.

Eventually, whether Sassel lived or died, the robe would wind up in Escrissar’s hands. Maybe it would be enough to convince the interrogator that an inconvenient regulator had bled to lonely, unobserved death.

Footsteps echoed near the customhouse. Cradling his left arm with his right, Pavek escaped into the night.

Chapter Four

Pavek’s first hours of fugitive exile within Urik were the hardest. Panic clung to his shoulder, whispering dire warnings after every sound, glimpsing the sulphurous yellow of the robe he no longer wore in every half-seen movement, His entire body protested the beating it had taken; his elbow protested loudest. Escrissar’s cuts on his cheek seeped fresh blood each time he swallowed the panic; they burned as sweat, hot and