the day I was born and just as poor. Spare me, priest. I grew up in a templar orphanage; I’ve heard it all before. Bring me your potions in a plain cup—”
“All that you came with will be returned,” Oelus insisted, his smile undimmed. “Saving the shirt, which was not fit for rags. We’ll give you another—and a few bits for your purse, enough to see you and the boy started.”
“I had a knife, a gray steel knife—”
“With human hair wound beneath the hilt leather? Yes, it’s kept and safe.”
A fist Pavek did not remember making relaxed. Air filled his lungs in a sigh. The hair was Sian’s, cut from her corpse in the boneyard, more cherished than any single memory of their few years together, before the orphanage. He held a hand against his naked neck.
“My medallion?” like her hair, it belonged to a lost time. Twenty years of time now lost as completely as Sian.
Oelus frowned. “You have no need of it—”
“Nor have you,” he interjected sharply and saw deceit on the cleric’s face. “Was that the Veil’s price? Will they use my medallion to attack the king?” Strangely, the notion offended him. Mages who left children to fend for themselves on the streets of Urik were, to borrow Oelus’s expression, cut from the same cloth as King Hamanu, but without the king’s experience and, yes, wisdom in ruling the city.
“No, it is with your other possessions. But, surely, you do not wish to be tempted to wield its power in your new life?”
“You know Hamanu’s magic corrupts, but you don’t know how it works, do you? Believe me, priest, there’s less temptation to me than there is to you.”
“But if you’re discovered with it—?”
“Then my ‘new life’ is over. It’s mine, cleric, will you return it to me?”
“That medallion will bring you grief, Pavek.”
“Do you read the stars or scry the future? Don’t harry me with vague threats, priest. Tell me what you know, or tell me that you’ll return my possessions, as you promised.”
The cleric exhibited a moment of doubt, then, visibly reluctant, nodded. “I would have you remember me as a man of my word, whatever the danger that medallion brings you.”
Light appeared in the passageway beyond the chamber and, moments later, a shadow and a woman bearing a steaming loaf of bread on a tray.
“Your supper,” Oelus explained. “May the earth lie gentle beneath your feet all the days of your life, Pavek, and give you rest at the end of it.” He touched Pavek’s forehead with the fingers of his right hand. “It is not every man who gets to start over. Take care of yourself and that boy.”
Despite his protests that he wanted his draught in a plain, bitter cup, the aromas seeping through the bread set his mouth watering and blunted his appreciation of the cleric’s blessing. Matching Oelus’s bow with a curt nod of his head, he’d retrieved the tray before the sounds of Oelus’s sandals faded.
The door remained open—a challenge he ignored.
Securing the linen at his waist, he lifted the upper portion of the crusted bread from the hollowed loaf beneath it. The stew was thick with roots and tubers and other things that grew in the earth, but tasty nonetheless. He consumed it, the upper crust, and was tearing the bowl itself into bite-sized pieces when lassitude struck, and he fell asleep where he sat.
Pavek awoke with the warmth of sunlight on his face and the inimitable sounds of the Urik streets in his ears. He remembered Oelus, the stew, and the moment when his eyelids became too heavy to hold open. Before he opened his eyes, his hand moved to his neck. The inix leather thong was in its familiar place.
“A man of his word,” he whispered.
“Are you awake, Pavek? They said you’d wake up when the sun came ’round.”
He recognized the young, reedy voice. Oelus was definitely a man of his word—not the first Pavek had met, but with the others, the epithet was not entirely a compliment. He stretched himself upright, knocking his bands against a low ceiling in the process. Zvain’s bolt-hole was another underground chamber. Sunlight filtered in through a yellowed slab of isinglass set between the lashed-together bones shoring up the roof and walls. Pavek blinked as oblong darkness landed in the center of the isinglass, and felt foolish as his hearing made sense of the background noises: The translucent isinglass replaced one of Urik’s countless paving stones. Zvain’s chamber had been