The Dark Queen (16 page)

Shinare's festival was doomed from the outset. From the abandoned Tower of High Sorcery,
its gates draped in drooping golden ribbons in honor of the goddess, all the way across
the central city to the School of the Games, where tarnished bronze griffin wings hung as
a reminder of earlier, more vibrant festivals, the city stiffened under a turgid pall. The
few paltry booths, decked with the ribbons of the goddess, looked muddy and stained in the
hot, windless afternoons. The goods sold in the Marketplace seemed tawdry and cheap:
shoddy earthenware statuary from Thoradin replaced the customary carved stone, the
scrimshaw from Balifor seemed abstract and rushed, and the scaleless fish from northern
Karthay was the worst of all failures. This fish, brought to the markets in thousands of
pounds and kept on ice from the Karthayan moun- ^ tains, was intended as the principal
delicacy of this" year's Shinarion. But the heat of the city grew suddenly unbearable, and
the catch had spoiled by the second day, leaving the air of the city tainted, almost
unbreatheable. The visitors could not help but notice. Despite the fuming incense on the
windowsills of houses, despite the cloves hung by the thresholds and the attars of roses
and violets let run in rivulets through the gutters of the streets, the city stank. By the
second evening of the Shinarion, those who were leaving the festival outnumbered the
arrivals. Into the adjoining towns about the bay they retreated, past the monastery or
through the Karthayan forest, rushing on horseback, in carts, on foot toward the fresh,
cool air, shaking the odors of incense and dead fish from their clothing. The few among
them who looked back, nostalgic, no doubt, for the merriment of earlier festivals, saw the
lights of Istar flickering and dim across the dark water. The Shinarion candles, once used
to mark the festival time in such profusion that the light was visible ten miles away, had
dwindled to a few sad thousand, barely producing light to steer by. It was not long before
the travelers lost the city behind them in the rising dusk. Alone on the Temple
battlements, gazing out over the putrid city, Vaananen marveled at the quiet and darkness
of this most unusual festival time. The city looked besieged. Of course, the rumors had
spread through Istar more quickly than the smell of the rotten fish. A rebel force had
come out of the desert again, headed toward the city, its numbers unknown. At its

helm was the same manthe Water Prophetwho had burst into the grasslands less than a month
before, inflicted great casualties on the Twelfth and Seventh Istarian legions, then
hastened back into that godless country of rock and sand, where he had vanished like a
dying wind. Vaananen shook his head. It was too soon.

No matter the powers of this Fordus Firesoul, he and his rebels were not ready. The forces
arrayed against them were more than formidable, the road ahead of them perilous and long.
With Fordus away from the kanaji, there was no chance to warn him. Vaananen leaned against
the cooling stone wall and stared out over the city. In the distance, the School of the
Games blazed with gaudy purple light, and a roar erupted from a crowd accustomed to
gladiatorial slaughter and reckless horse races.

Now was the most dangerous timefor his own mission in the city, and for Fordus's rebellion
in the outlands. For the Sixth Legion had indeed arrived in Istar. Of that much Vaananen
was certain. After his trip to the stables and the other discoveries, Vincus had rushed
back to the druid's quarters, scrambled through the window in a net of torn vines and
brambles, and gesticulated so wildly that it took Vaananen the goodly part of an hour to
calm the young man down.

By now, the druid believed the servant's story, but he accompanied him back to the stables
anyway, and the horse's tattooed lip had confirmed the unpleasant truth. Not even three
legions of Solamnic Knights could hope for victory against Istar's garrison of over five
thousand veteran soldiers.

He had warned the Prophet accordingly, drawn the glyphs in the rena garden, four symbols
bold in the dark sand. But who would be there to read it? Vaananen pulled his cloak
tightly about his shoulders. It always seemed to happen during the Shinarion: the last
days of summer blended unaccountably into the first of autumn, and sometime, usually in
midfestival, one cool, unforeseen night would signal a change in the season.

Vaananen descended the battlements. The sun had drifted behind the delicate white spires
and domes of the western city, staining the luminous buildings with an ominous red. He had
one desperate hope. The Kingpriest, for all his skill in ritual and politics, was not
known for his perfect choice of generals. Each successive commander had been worse than
the last, culminating in the abysmal Josef Monoculus. To find a good leader had become
next to impossible when the Solamnic Order, disgusted with Istar's.policy of oppression,
had ceased to support the Kingpriesf s sterner measures. And a good thing that was,
Vaananen concluded, because the Istarian army with a real general at its head would be
matchless. Shivering at the thought, the druid pulled up his hood and entered the great
Council Hall of the Temple, where, in his guise as a loyal follower of the Kingpriest, he
would join a handful of other chosen clerics in receiving the next, no doubt, in a sorry
line of military leaders. “The fool of the season” Brother Alban had called the new
commander. None of the priests had met the new man. Always an occasion for curiosity, the
moVnent arrived, and Vaananen was somewhat shocked when, entering the torchlit hall, he
saw the clergy crowded around the impressive figure of a black- robed man. The man stood
next to the Kingpriest himself. For the first time in years, perhaps the Kingpriest had
chosen wisely. Vaananen could tell by the cut of the man: sturdy and strong, his pale body
chiseled, almost translucent, as though an able sculptor had carved him of marble. The
black silk tunic he wore was simple and elegant, a striking contrast to the billowing,
ornate robes of his clerical hosts, and he wore a battered sword at his sidea weapon that
had seen years of action, the druid guessed, unlike the ornamental baubles banging around
on the belts of the last three generals. This man was dark-haired, handsome in a feminine,
almost reptilian fashion, and he held the gaze of the Istarian priests impassively, with
neither respect nor condescension. He refused the wine

offered him by Brother Burgon and remained standing when most of the clergy chose to sit,
his pale arms crossed over his broad chest. Beside him, the Kingpriest displayed his
gentlest features. He was a lean, balding scholar with bright sky-blueno, sea-blueeyes. If
the power of Istar had not resided in the little man, he might have been mistaken for the
new general's obsessively proper secretary.

The two dignitaries spoke quietly to one another, as the priests and monks leaned into the
conversation. The Kingpriest looked tired, harried; what remained of his auburn hair had
thinned even more since Vaananen had seen him last, and for a moment the druid wondered if
the monarch was ill. But when the blue eyes turned toward him, they were bright and
hectic. And afraid. How odd. Vaananen edged closer through the crowd, hearing the
stranger's name bandied excitedly by the murmuring clerics. Tadec? Tanik? The whispering
was insistent, distracting, the words blending together so that the druid could not make
out the name in question. But whoever the man was, Tadec or Tanik, he continued to charm
his hosts: a low, melodious comment from the man drew animated laughter and, with an icy
smile, he scanned the room, his eyes locking at once with Vaananen's. The eyes of the new
general were amber, depth-less, and slitted. He stared at the druid, and the black core of
his gaze opened malignly. Looking into the heart of those eyes, Vaananen saw an image of a
dark void, a huge winged shape spiraling in the windless nothingness, its webbed, extended
wings flexing and shimmering. / know you, a dark voice seemed to say, rising from nowhere
but registering inside the shaking druid's head. Then, as suddenly as it struck, the
feeling subsided. Vaananen blinked, the general turned away, and the image vanished. But
in that moment's communion Vaananen knew both what the man called himself, and who he
really was. “Takhisis,” Vaananen whispered to himself, as the clergy around him slipped
past on their way to meet and admire and adore this new, mysterious leader. “Takhisis
commands the armies of Istar. Now I know. ”And now she knows, too."

*****

The corridors of the tower were drafty and dank as the druid made his way back to his
quarters. The hour was still early, his priestly brothers either at prayers or the
festival ... or adoring the general, breathless and rapt like vermin mesmerized before a
sewer snake. There was still time to warn the rebels, if Fordus returned to the kanaji.

Vaananen knew that the days to come would be dangerous for all of them. Now he would have
to lock his doors, board his windows against the suddenly hostile night. The goddess had
recognized himhe was almost sure of it. And since that was true, his life was forfeit. A
faint light wavered and approached from a side corridor. Not even an hour, and. it has
already begun, Vaananen thought, wrestling down a rising fear. He stepped into a dark
threshold, pressed himself against the polished wood of the door . . . and watched as a
sleepy acolyte passed, bearing a torch to the last prayers of the night.

Vaananen moved out from the darkness, laughed softly and sadly. It would not do. He would
not hide and hole away in the temple, waiting for Takhisis to strike. He would not lie
trembling in bed, awaiting a footfall outside his locked doors. And yet, despite his brave
thoughts, Vaananen sighed in relief when his own door was behind him, when it was locked
and double-locked against the night and his own fearful imaginings. At once the druid
moved to the rena garden, to see if the four glyphs he had drawn that morning lay
untouched in the shadowy sand.

Yes, they were still there. Fordus had not received them. Vaananen sat on the black stone.
It was time for a fifth symbol. The druids had taught him that a powerful magic lay in the
crafting of this extraordinary glypha magic to be used only when circumstances were dire.
The message of the fifth symbol was always loud: sometimes a warning of famine or sudden
flood, often, during the Age of Dreams, a token that a dragon approached. It was distinct
from the other glyphs, for it beckoned with an impulse as strong as hunger or weariness.
Now the message would call out to Fordus from the landscape itselffrom the rocks in the
foothills to the mud along Lake Istar, wherever his army marched. The fifth rune would
summon him back to the desert, to the kanaji. Carefully, shaking ever so slightly,
Vaananen drew the glyph beneath the other four. It was an ancient symbol, used last, the
druid believed, in the time of Humain the Third Dragon War that had driven the goddess
from the face of Krynn. The markings were twofold, overlapping. The image of a woman upon
that of a man. Beware Takhisis! the glyph read. Beware the dark man! Tamex greeted the
last of the clergy, two balding old men who bowed and scraped before him as though he were
the Kingpriest himself. They babbled their amenities, their little phrases of flattery and
adoration, never noticing that the new commander's amber eyes had strayed from them.
Quick, ruthless, and efficient, she had come to Istar for business. Crawling through the
city as a snake had been a pleasing reconnaissance. No one noticed another serpent in
Istar, anyway. And there had been no one to bar entry to the arena, no one to disturb her
next transformation. Out of the sands she had assembled Tamex, and it had been easy for
this embodiment, this creature of crystal and lies, to win over the Kingpriest and his
companyindeed, to win over all of them. All of them, that is, except that druid. Oh, yes.
She had seen the druid for the first time in a vision, exultant at Fordus's victory,
raising his bared arms. It had to be him. She had seen the red oak leaf tattooed on the
inside of his left arm. That information alone, in the proper hands, would be enough to
silence him. Yet, at times the court of Istar moved with exasperating slowness.
Misdemeanors could take years to try and judge, and a capital crime such as thishigh
treason against the empirecould take so long the druid might die of old age before he was
sentenced. No, his silencing would come by older, more traditional means. Tamex moved
through the dispersing crowd, taking care not to brush against priest or acolyte. The
cold, stony feel of the adopted body would surely arouse suspicion. Moving the heavy limbs
without overmuch noise or breakage was difficult enough. Watch your windows, druid, the
crystals in Tamex's blood whined and whispered. Watch your doors, and watch your back in
the corridors. And, oh, yes, count the sunrises and the sunsets, and bless each one of
them. For you, there are few remaining.

A third day had passed, and a fourth, while the glyphs lay unchanged in the rena garden.
Always before, they had vanished on their own, a sign that their message had been received
by the rebels. But now Fordus was far afield, and Vaananen's concern deepened with the
passing hours. Had the fifth sign not called him back? Perhaps the Prophet refused to
return to the kanaji, to the intelligence that might save him and his small army.

Vaananen's own time had run out. He knew Takhi-sis was coming for him. It was only a
matter of when and how. As he sat on the red stone in the rena garden, Vaananen composed
his last message. He picked

gingerly at a black silken hair caught on the.inch-long needles of the large barrel cactus
near his foot. The strand caught on a ripple of his breath and settled back upon the
spines, this time well entangled. Vaananen stared abstractedly at it for a moment, and
then caught a tiny, odd vibration from the life-current in the plant. He noticed the
cactus had also swelled somewhat over the last few hours, as if there had been a sudden
rain the afternoon before.

“Just like the new commander's power,” he muttered. “Swelled full-blown overnight.” The
priests of Istar had reveled as the new commander assumed the reins of the army. The
scattered Twelfth and Ninth Legions recombined within a day and were renamed the
Fifteenth, joining the First, Second, Fourth and Eighth in the defense of the city. With
the current size of the city's garrison, three legions could at any time march out the
gates and still leave a sizeable guard at home. The town now knew that the fabled Sixth
had arrivedthe hexagons drawn in charcoal on the stone walls of alleys, scratched on doors
and hung on tattered banners from the windows of abandoned houses, bore ominous witness
that at last the legion was showing itself. Soon they would all join together. Tamex would
have his army, and the goddess within him would have her foothold in the world. Vaananen
shifted on the red stone. “But it isn't over yet,” he said firmly, quietly. Outside the
window, almost in mockery, the distant sounds of the shabby festival reached him from the
Marketplace, and the druid stood, stepped away from the garden, and walked to the lectern,
where he scrawled a hasty note on a scrap of parchment. He stepped into the corridor,
handed the note to a passing linkboy, and ordered the child to the library. “I want this
book from the dark young man, the silent one,” he whispered, and the linkboy hurried off.
Of course, it was no book Vaananen awaited. Vincus arrived minutes later, his hands ink
stained and sandy from Balandar's copying tasks. He found Vaananen somber and crouched
above the rena garden as usual, but this time circled by lanterns as though he awaited a
deeper darkness, as though all of that light was meant to ward him from something deadly
and close. Instantly, Vincus knew that this time was different. This time was special.
Vaananen beckoned him, and cautiously Vincus approached. He knew there was a magic in this
gar- den, but it was quiet and meditative magicfar from the fire and thunder of the
festival illusionists. And yet, best be alert. Solemnly, the druid showed him four symbols
drawn in the sand. “You're a copyist, Vincus,” he whispered, “and a good one, I hear. How
is your memory?” Vincus stared at the symbols in puzzlement. His memory was sharp and
searching. Though he had seen them just once, he could have told of each booth in the
Marketplace, the merchant's name and his wares, his home country and the color of the
pennants on his tents. No, there were no clouds in Vincus's recollection. But the druid
was asking for more than memory. And what he was asking for ... Well, Vincus was not sure.
So he shrugged, his right hand flickering with three tentative signs. I remember as well
as some, he told the druid. Vaananen raised an eyebrow and smiled grimly. “You'll have to
do better than that,” he whispered. “You're the only one I can trust.” Vincus averted his
eyes. “No, look!” Vaananen urged, clutching the young servant's arm, pointing at the row
of glyphs. “Could you remember these?” Vincus looked. The lines were simple, bold. He
already knew them. And yet.. . Slowly, reluctantly, Vincus nodded. Vaananen erased the
glyphs. “Show me,” he said. Vincus drew again the four simple signs: Desert's Edge, Sixth
Day of Lunitari, No Wind, the Leopard. And then the fifth symbolthe elaborate interlacing
of two ancient letters.

“The last is the most important one,” Vaananen said quietly. “The one that must reach
Fordus Fire- souland he is far away, beyond the city walls, in the desert. Go.” Vincus
looked up sharply in disbelief. The mythical rebel commander! “Yes, you must go to him,”
Vaananen said, smiling, trying to ease the young man's mind.

I will, Vincus signed. His gestures were confident, perhaps a little too bold. He would
go. But he would never come back. Vincus did not believe in Fordus, nor in the world
outside the city, for that matter. Vincus stepped to the windowsill, searching the dark
expanses of vallenwood below, the walls and the city beyond. Vaananen moved to him and
touched his silver collar. A sharp blaze of blue crackled in the air at Vincus's ear, and
he jerked away, dazed.

Vaananen looked him in the eye and said, “For years I have been striving to pay your
debtyour father's debtlegitimately and legally. I have wrestled the Kingpriest, losing
under his self-serving rules. But all the rules are broken now. Go in peace. Your collar
will tell Fordus who you are.” The druid produced two books from beneath his cot. He
handed them to Vincus, who turned the volumes over in his hands, then opened one.

On the frail, brittle pages was a story in the elusive Lucanesti script, of gods and
goddesses, of Istar and inheritances and the rightful ruler. Vincus could read little of
it. The other was a copy, but still written in Lucanesti. “The one is too fragile to
travel,” the druid observed. “Here is a copy. Old words upon new parchment, as much as is
legible. Take it with you. One will ask for it soon, and you will know it is right to give
the book to that person.”

Vaananen placed the book and some food, along with a dagger and some odd seeds, in a small
hide bag, and pressed it into Vincus's hand. “You have served well, Vincus,” the druid
concluded, as Vincus moved away, still puzzled. An odd note of finality crept into
Vaananen's voice. “Well done.”

Vincus descended through the spreading branches, climbing away from the words. He stood at
the edge of the Marketplace as the festival closed for the night. One of the merchants an
enormous wine seller from Baliforwalked wearily from lantern to lantern, slowly darkening
his brightly lit booth. Vincus stepped into the shadows as the merchant passed. Uneasily,
he fingered his silver collar. The druid's magic still stung. It was too much, this task
Vaananen had set before him. Until now, his work for the druid had been easy and
intriguingfind this, listen to that, carry rumor and gossip and the whispers of officers
back to Vaananen's quarters. And in return, Vaananen made sure Vincus received the best
food and lightest duties. What the druid did with the information could be anything, and
it could be nothing. Whatever hap- pened had been none of Vincus's business or care, until
now. This thing fretted at him. He leaned against a marble wall that formed the
southernmost edge of the Slave Market. On the day the Temple had bought hima lone boy of
eleven, he had stood in the square between two auctioned Que-Kiri warriors and been sold
for the debts of a larcenous fathernobody had supposed him a spy in the making. If they
had only known! The strange, bright-eyed boy in their midst, inexplicably mute, had come
to be trusted with the keys to a dozen chambers, to the library and the upper room of the
Tower, where the Kingpriest spoke to his counsel. They had given him books and scrolls to
carry and sort and store. They never knew when he had learned to read. Vincus's smile was
veiled by the dark of the alley. They had always underestimated himall except Vaananen,
that is, whose bidding he had followed over the last year. He scooped up a fistful of sand
from the base of the wall, scattered it into the shadows, covering his tracks. Out in the
lamplit square, the vintner stored the last of the wine barrels in his rickety oxcart and,
with a soft, guttural command to the huge animal, steered the vehicle into the dark.
Vincus rose slowly. The square was empty now. But tomorrow the vendors would return, and
the

day after, and for five days after that, unless the impossible actually happened. Unless
the mythical rebels, who were scarcely more than a fleeting, unpleasant dream amid the
chanting and ritual of the Tower nights, stepped into the waking world, closed down the
festival, captured the Tower, and liberated Istar.

Liberate. It made Vincus smile againthat confident, foolish word. Oh, he had heard talk
from the other servants that, if Fordus seized the city, there would be freedom for many
who now were enslaved. Each would receive a handful of silver, a cart, or a tun of
aledepending on the version of the rumor.

But the elder slaves, the ones who remembered the old Kingpriest and the times before the
Siege on Sorcery, said that freedom talk always arose, drifting like smoke into the
corners of the city, when a new leader threatened old power. The grayheads did not believe
in Fordus, did not believe in a coming freedom.

After all, they had seen the years, seen Kingpriest and liberator come and go. And they
still wore the collarsbrass, copper, or silverand the slave trade continued to boom in
Istar. Now the square was empty, the lanterns shut and darkened. With a cautious glance
toward the torchlit Tower, the young man crossed the open Marketplace, headed toward the
School of the Games and the ramshackle houses that lay in the western slums of the city.

There he had grown up, his friends and companions the child thieves and pickpockets of
Istar. They would receive him back, and he could lose himself in the narrow streets and
alleys, where neither Istar-ian Guard nor clergy nor the Kingpriest himself would bother
to look. It would be like it was before.

Vincus slipped past the Welcoming Tower, past the great Banquet Hall to where the streets
nar- rowed and darkened, the older wooden buildings leaning in on each other like
wind-felled trees, the faint scent of the harbor lost in the sharp stink of tannery and
midden. Pale faces peered out of the darkened windows. An old woman in an upper story
lifted her hand in a warding sign. Someone in the mouth of an alley, cloaked and bent,
hissed at him as he passed. He knew better than to stop or even look back. This was a part
of the city untouched by the festival, by the priests or the merchants or the guards.
These were the ones whom Fordus would liberate. Vincus quickened his steps. He was south
of the arena now, somewhere south of the School of the Games. At a decent hour, he could
have located hinv self by the sound of the crowd at the gladiatorial combats, could have
told the street name and the nearest alley by the echoing roar. But it was far past a
decent hour now, and dark. He was not exactly sure where he was. It had been longer than
he remembered. Things had changed. He found himself on a commercial streeta shabby line of
storefronts on the slum's edge. A dozen or so darkened buildings, boarded and barred,
lined a road that led to a small, circular court, in the center of which stood a broken
fountain, littered with ashes and refuse and crawling with rats. No doubt the night had
turned toward morning, for every shop hung in uneasy quiet except a small pub, the Sign of
the Basilisk, outside of which three torches sputtered and popped, casting a blood-red
light on the fountain square and streaking the storefronts with long shadows. A solitary
watchman, lantern in hand, passed from storefront to storefront. Vincus slipped back into
the shadows until the lantern weaved into the darkness and vanished. Laughter from the
Basilisk broke uneasily in the close, humid air, and from somewhere in the vaulted shadows
of the buildings there came the unmistakable sound of wingbeat, the harsh cry of a bird.
Cautiously, Vincus stepped into the torchlight. The Basilisk was as good a place as any to
starta run-down pub, not far from his childhood haunts. There might be someone here who
would remember himcertainly someone would remember his father. And once he had made the
connection, had touched on old friendships and older memories ... There would be a safe
place for him somewhere in the city's intricate, anonymous alleys. This was his big
chance. As he watched the door of the pub, it swung open. Four young men walked out of the
smoky light

and into the square. One of them, a lean, wiry type dressed in a tattered gray tunic,
shielded his eyes against the torchlight and returned Vincus's stare. “Y'got an eyeful,
pup?” he shouted. He was well into his cups, and the wine blurred his thick street accent.

Vincus was not sure what the man said next. Something about “feast” and “come on over,”
but his gestures were large and violentwaving his arms and beckoning dramaticallyand it
could have been greeting or challenge. The other three brushed by the drunkard, headed up
the street between the storefronts, and when Vincus stepped uncertainly toward the
gesturing man, one of them turned and regarded him.

“Vincus?” the man asked, his tight face breaking into a grin. “ ”Us you, old post? Old
cat-tongued barnacle?" He recognized the taunts, the pet names. Pugio, who used to tease
him when the gang of boys stole loaves from the bakery by the Welcoming Tower. Vincus
walked toward the young man, smiling sheepishly.

Sure enough, it was Pugio. Vincus gestured. It has been a long time, his hands said. Pugio
laughed and shrugged. “I don't remember none of that hand-jabber. No use for it in
Bywall.” Bywall. Vincus had forgotten the name. The worn, crowded settlement pitched in
the shadow of Istar's original fortifications was known as Bywall. When the city had
expanded beyond its original boundaries, wealthy Istarians had moved north of the Tower,
or south into outlying country villas, leaving the older buildings to the itinerant, the
unhoused, the poor. The buildings had collapsed and burned in a fire two years before
Vincus was born. In the midst of the rubble and ashes, the destitute survivors had built a
city of tents and lean-tos, of capsized wagons and abandoned vendors' booths, carried from
the festival grounds and the Marketplace to the filthy, shadowy strip at the foot of the
ancient walls. While Vincus was growing up, he and his friends had avoided that part of
the city where the plentiful and average dangers turned large and unmanageable. Vincus
approached reluctantly, already misgiving his hopes of renewing old friendships. Pugio was
hard, almost stringy, and there was an ashy sallowness about his skin. He was scarcely a
year older than Vincus, yet his hair was wispy and matted, and a long purple scar laced
jaggedly across his right forearm. No more than twenty, Pugio looked three times his age,
and the men with him were even worse for weartoothless and scarred, but not past menace
and danger. Vincus watched warily as the three men spread out, walking slowly toward him
across the torch-haunted square. “Y'member Anguis,” Pugio said, nodding at the man to his
left. “And Ultion. Ultion done the games at the School under Angard.” Vincus nodded and
lifted his hand to both men. He remembered neither of them, though Anguis looked faintly
familiara face recalled in the red light of Lunitari... something about knives. “Y'member
us all, don'ya, Vincus?” Pugio asked, his street talk thickening the nearer he drew to
Vincus. “Y'member us well enough for the handlin'?” The- handling. Vincus raced through
his memory for the word. He remembered, shook his head. “Livin' high put you out o'
thievin', Vincus?” Ultion drew back mockingly and asked with a faint, pleasant smile. “I
hear of it happenin' when you got three square an' all. Nice clothes they give ya.” Pugio
and Anguis murmured in assent. “A one-timer?” Pugio asked. “Just an old-times handle on
the rug merchant over to the Marketplace?” Vincus shook his head. The three drew nearer.
“No?” Pugio asked, his voice filling with a steely coldness. “Then you'll be givin' us
your food, I'm certain. You don't starve an old friend, Vincus.” Suddenly chilled, Vincus
looked into their eyes. They returned his gaze steadily, calmly, almost innocently, and
then, when his guard descended slowly, when he thought that perhaps his suspicions