brazen gambit, The - Lynn Abbey Page 0,25

medallion, which he shoved into Sassel’s pouch as quickly as he could loop it over his head, there was nothing to identify him as a templar. The orator had given his name and his rank, without mentioning his distinctive appearance or the equally distinctive slashes Escrissar had left on his face. So, it was safe to assume that some version of the previous night’s events had percolated through the templarate, but he judged that it was also safe to assume that it was not the true one.

For the first time, Pavek allowed himself to believe that his ruse had worked, that his blood-soaked robe combined with testimony, delivered alive or through necromancy, had convinced Elabon Escrissar of his death. His body was still young and resilient; his injuries, except for his elbow, were already healing, and the elbow, though painful, wasn’t as badly damaged as he’d feared. His fingers worked, and he could flex the joint, if he didn’t mind wincing through the pain.

He’d have new scars on his face, but he’d never been handsome, and scars were nothing to be ashamed of. A man’s life was written in his scars. Last night, his life had changed forever; it was fitting that he’d acquired a new set of scars. He left the courtyard filled with a dead man’s confidence.

* * *

It was Todek’s Day, his day off—the first of many. He wandered to the open-air market where the most enterprising farmers and day-traders were already setting up their stalls. Todek was justly praised for its vegetables and a particular type of spicy, sun-dried sausage. Pavek boldly squandered two of Sassel’s ceramic bits on a steaming breakfast. He gave another four bits to the first man he saw whose clothes looked big enough for him to wear and whose luck looked worse than his own.

The dun-colored garments were stiff with dirt and stank of stale wine. Folk kept their distance, as if he were still a yellow-robed templar.

He found a corner of the market where grandparents watched their youngest grandchildren while able-bodied parents and older grandchildren labored for their daily wage. The codgers eyed him warily; he looked disreputable enough to be a slave-merchant’s scrounger. Slavers could sell their merchandise in the squalid plaza assigned to their use, but they and their minions were excluded by law from other parts of the city.

But, like most of King Hamanu’s laws, the law against child-snatching could be disregarded for a price, and a mother’s warning about the fate of careless children was no idle threat. Pavek ignored the old and young alike—after he used their fears to clear the sturdiest public bench for himself alone.

An idea had come to him while he ate breakfast. As the sun climbed toward sweltering noon, he built that idea into a plan.

Zarneeka had been his downfall; it would be his deliverance as well. Or, rather, the druids would become his deliverance. Druids weren’t subversives or revolutionaries like the Veiled Alliance fanatics, but by everything Pavek knew, they wouldn’t approve of Laq. That proud young woman with the smoldering eyes could not be a willing partner with the hate-filled halfling or dead-heart Escrissar. She would listen to the start of his tale and pay willingly to hear the end.

Briefly Pavek entertained an intricate vengeance underwritten with druid gold and culminating with Escrissar’s literal unmasking, but the small stubborn voice of his deepest self asked a single question: Then what? and the whole idea unraveled. No amount of vengeance or gold could buy his way back into his lowly but familiar regulator’s life, and he was fit for no other trade. The orphanage had prepared him well for the templarate, but everything he’d ever learned there was useless now that he was cut off from the sorcerer-king.

He could imagine the reaction of any clerical order if he showed up at their altar-school saying that he only needed to be taught how to pray because he already knew the spell-craft. They’d laugh him clear around the city walls, if they didn’t pound him to holy mush for insolence first. Yet his days in the archive were his only other asset. Through patient, methodical curiosity, he’d managed to read and memorize several dozen lengthy arcane scrolls. The archive scholars tried to avoid him and cowered like rabble when he cornered them with his questions, but eventually they had conceded that he understood the theories of elemental providence and the complex geometry of the celestial spheres of influence.

Pavek knew better than most