to another, ticking off groups of five on a wax tablet as he went. His gut reaction was anger when the adolescent messenger interrupted him. The girl dropped to her knees. Slender, trembling arms thrust through the plain yellow sleeves of her robe and stretched across the floor to touch his feet.
“Forgive me, great one.”
Pavek was a big man with limbs as thick-muscled as any gladiator’s, but not a great one.
Sian, his mother, once said he’d inherited his father’s looks, from which Pavek concluded that his otherwise unknown father was one ugly human. He couldn’t blame his nose on his sire; his own stubbornness had gotten that part of him mashed more times than he bothered to remember. The scar that pulled his upper lip into a permanent sneer was an orphanage souvenir: a midnight brawl turned vicious. He’d given as good as he got. Both he and the other boy pretended they’d fallen out of bed.
Who knew what Sian would say if she could see her only child now? His cronies joked that the only promotion waiting for him was the one to intimidator, for which he was so, obviously well suited.
Intimidator. Templar of the eighth rank. Not if he lived a thousand years like King Hamanu. He was just plain Pavek, a third-rank, flash-tempered fool, and he’d never be anything more.
“Get up, girl.”
He tried to help her, but she scrabbled away.
“Medea wants you.” The messenger hid her arms beneath the long panel at the front of her robe and regarded Pavek with a stare that was both defiant and defeated.
Pavek threw the three sacks dangling from his left hand into the barrel he was filling. He made a mark in the wax with his thumbnail and peeked into the barrel he was emptying. Ignoring the girl, he scooped up another handful of sacks.
“One… Two… Three…” He tossed them as he counted.
“She said ’now’.”
“Four. Five. I’m counting, girl. ’Now’ happens when I’m done.” Another fingernail impression in the wax, another scoop of salt-sacks.
“I can count for you.”
“Yeah—for me and who else? Rokka? Dovanne? Metica herself? I go up there and find she doesn’t want to see my ugly face at all, then I come back here and find there’s half a barrel missing—with my mark on the roster. No thanks, girl.” Pavek tossed sacks as he spoke. “I’ve been down that road before.”
“Metica said ‘now,’ great one, and I’ll catch it if you’re late. I’ll just count, I swear it. I’ll swear whatever you want. Put in a good word for me, great one?”
“Five. Pavek. Just plain Pavek, or Right-Hand Pavek—and if you think my good word will help you with Medea, you’re an even greater fool than me.” He clapped the salt dust from his hands and handed her the wax tablet. “If there’s less than two hundred when I get back, I’ll come looking for you, girl, and you’ll wish you were never born.”
She pushed back stringy locks of dull, brown hair, revealing a blood-crusted gouge along her hairline. “Gotta do better than that, Pavek, if you want to intimidate me.”
The salt-room had only a grease-lamp for light. It was hard to tell whether she was full-human or half-elf. Pavek guessed half-elf. Whatever attraction drew elves and humans together, it didn’t usually extend to their children. He’d never met a half-elf who wasn’t outcast by its mother and father’s kin alike. They were all orphans, and they scrambled for whatever crumbs of patronage they could get, just like him.
“Right,” he said, rolling down his yellow sleeves, uncovering a slim collection of crimson and orange threads. “Two hundred, and seal the barrel when you’re done.”
“I could wait for you…”
“Don’t bother.”
Pavek left with the sound of laughter ringing in his ears. Maybe she would wait. Tomorrow was Todek’s Day, so named for the largest of the outlying villages, which, according to the ten-day rotation that was as old as Urik itself, was scheduled to bring its produce into the city market.
More importantly, tomorrow was the one day in ten that he could claim for himself. He usually spent his free time in the archives, copying and memorizing spellcraft, but there were other ways to pass the time. She was only a messenger; he was a regulator. He couldn’t put in a useful good word for her with Metica, but he could buy her a free day. A day with him.
Striding along the crowded streets between the custom-house and the stone-fronted civil bureau where Metica had her office, Pavek weighed