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come through the gates for Modekan's market, he wasn't coming back to
this bolt-hole tonight.
Damn Oelus! Let the Veil reel their orphan in if they wanted to. He'd had done
enough.
With deliberate casualness, he approached the high shelf where he'd stowed the
boy's stolen weapon and his templar medallion. His hand closed around the
medallion. The weapon was missing.
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"Why're you taking that?" Zvain asked, his voice gone charming
again, and full of childish curiosity-as if nothing had happened. He
came close and wove his fingers through the inix thong while it hung
from Pavek's fist.
"You said it was too risky to take it to the gate."
An older man couldn't change his mood so quickly. He shed the boy
and stepped around him, shoving the medallion to the bottom of his pouch
before securing it to his belt
"Why, Pavek, why?"
"Same reason you moved that arena stick: not sure I trust the people I'm
living with."
"I didn't mean anything, Pavek. I know you got your reasons for what you do.
You don't have to go. I don't want you to go."
There was a long, hot day between now and nightfall. Maybe he'd feel
differently when his back ached and the weak left arm throbbed with every
heartbeat. Maybe. If the druid and her zarneeka didn't show up.
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 fanners 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
sand-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.
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Modekan sent artisans as well as fanners 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
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