He grunted, neither yea nor nay. “Then act like it. Stay out of trouble. Stay out of my way. Do that for a day—” His voice faded. Templars learned to tell easy lies, but lies came harder now, without that yellow robe for armor. “You ready?”
Zvain sniffed loudly and wiped a last trickle of blood onto his forearm. “I’m ready.”
* * *
The boy was quiet as they passed through the awakening city. He stuck close, never wandering off, begging, or whining—all of which had become part of their morning ritual. Bothered by an emotion he couldn’t name, Pavek stopped at a fruit-seller’s stall where he exchanged a ceramic bit for a breakfast of cabra melons. A small cadre of citizen-vendors made a good living buying fruits, vegetables, and other perishables cheaply at the end of one market day for sale the next morning at considerably higher prices to people like him who needed to eat before me gates opened.
Zvain tore the rind with feral delight but winced when bright red juice stung his busted lip. He handed the melon back, and Pavek found his nameless ache had grown worse rather than better.
“Don’t wander off,” he whispered when the gate loomed before them. “Stay where I can see you.”
The boy nodded solemnly. Pavek dug into his belt pouch again, drawing out the last two ceramic bits and dribbling them into the boy’s hand.
“You believe in anything, Zvain?”
Immortal King Hamanu was Urik’s tutelary deity. His titles and powers were part of the daily harangue; his name was an integral part of countless blessings… and curses. But belief was another matter entirely. To ask the question was an invasion of privacy; to answer it honestly, a declaration of trust.
“Sometimes. You?”
“The round wheel of fate—after a good day, not before. We need a good day, Zvain.”
“I’ll pray for you, Pavek.” Zvain folded his fingers around the sharp-edged, irregularly shaped coins. “I know a place.”
“Better you stay here. Remember what I said: no wandering off.”
A shout went up from the line of merchants and farmers already waiting at the gatehouse: the templars—due at sunrise but always at least an hour late—could be seen approaching. Pavek hurried toward the inspection stand—pausing once to see if Zvain had settled in. The boy had found a patch of shade behind a heap of rock and bone left behind after the most recent refurbishing and repainting of King Hamanu’s portraits on the walls. They exchanged a fleeting wave.
Modekan sent artisans as well as farmers to the weekly market. Pavek worked up a rapid sweat emptying four cart-loads of red-glazed bricks destined for some noble’s town-house. An inspector—not Bukke—judged several dozen: defective, levied a substantial fine, then called Pavek aside once the carts had been reloaded and the unhappy artisan sent along his way.
“You know your way through the templar quarter, rabble?”
“Not well, great one,” Pavek lied. So much for prayer or the round wheels of fate.
The inspector offered an uncut ceramic coin if Pavek would haul the pirated bricks to a High Templar’s residence. “She’s building a fountain,” he confided unnecessarily. “With day labor.”
“I’m a poor man, great one, ill-clothed and dirty—not fit to cross such a threshold.”
The inspector doubled his offer and Pavek, knowing that no man in his right mind would refuse the opportunity, conceded defeat gracefully by falling to his knees. He listened attentively as the inspector described a precise path through the deliberately mazelike quarter.
It could have been worse: at least he wasn’t headed for House Escrissar. With the promise of two coins awaiting on his return, no one was surprised that he loaded the handcart quickly and set off at a trot. He tried to catch Zvain’s eye, but the boy was napping.
And gone altogether when he returned. He asked as many questions as he dared among his fellow laborers, but no one had seen a slight, dark-haired boy leave his patch of shade, even when Pavek offered three bits of his new-found wealth for the information. The bribe drew unwanted attention from laborers and templars alike.
Mindful that everyone was already whispering about him and that his true name with its associated 40-gold-piece reward had not yet faded from the gatehouse walls, he was reluctant to ask anyone if an old dwarf, a testy half-elf, and an uncommonly beautiful human woman had dragged a cart of amphorae past the templars’ greedy eyes.
Not long after he returned to the gate, the ground shuddered and, moments later, a plume of ash-colored cloud began to rise far