The Brazen Gambit

Chapter Seven

Pavek awoke empty-headed and floating in air. An instant later he landed hard on splintery wood. His mind crystalized: the last thing he'd remembered was being hit over the head in the dyers' plaza. Now he was knotted up inside the handcart as it rolled over rough pavement.

Whoever had spit-tied him was a master of the craft. His wrists and ankles were bound tightly together some immeasurable distance behind his back and anchored from there to the cart itself. His limbs were stretched, strained, and throbbing. His hands and feet were numb. In the midst of his discomfort, he spared a moment to wonder who, besides another templar, would bind a man tight enough to cripple him.

Another jolt brought him back to immediate concerns. He couldn't stifle a moan, but no one noticed. There were other voices, near and far. The words were lost in the wheels' clattering. He couldn't see anything, either. A piece of coarse cloth had been bound over his eyes. Straw had been thrown over him as well; the sharp stalks pricked through his clothes to his skin, which, he realized, was chilled.

The sun had set. The gates of Urik were closed. The druids must have consigned their zarneeka to the city-the cart wasn't large enough for both him and the amphorae- after which they'd hauled him, bound and unconscious, out; of the only home he'd ever known.

Pain-fogged as he was, Pavek didn't know whether to be relieved or terrified: he was out of the city where his life was worth forty gold pieces and into the care of druids who didn't care if they crippled him. At least they'd protected his eyes; a man could go blind through his eyelids if he lay faceup in the sun all afternoon. Then his nose reminded him that the sun hadn't been visible this past afternoon. The air he breathed through a layer of straw was gritty with smoke and sulphur.

So, the druids had tied him cruelly, and then they'd covered him with straw to conceal him while they smuggled him out of the city. They wanted him, or more of his story, but they didn't trust him.

Pavek sighed. He could understand that: no templar took trust for granted.

He considered announcing that he was conscious, but thought better of that impulse. Better to wait while his senses sharpened and his mind snared snatches of conversation from the world beyond his ears.

"What now?" An adolescent whine.

His mind struggled to find a name and threw up two: Zvain and Ruari. Ruari was correct; Zvain brought a different ache. He could tell himself everything had gone for the best, that an orphan's chances on the streets of Urik were better than a bound templar's in a handcart. Probably it wasn't a lie. The boy and he had squared whatever debts had stood between them. But there was an ache, distinct from the myriad body aches, and the half-elf's grousing only made it worse.

"I've never seen this place so crowded," Ruari continued when no one answered his question. "There's hardly a corner that doesn't have someone camped in it."

"No one wants to go farther, not tonight," a woman's voice-Akashia, the druid, the leader of his captors. "Not with that cloud lighting up the sky. There's a Tyr-storm brewing, Ru." Brown-haired Akashia was beautiful in a way no hardened templar woman could ever be, but just as tough. The half-elf was smart enough to keep his mouth shut, and the cart jolted forward again.

A Tyr-storm. He hadn't heard that phrase before, but guessed its meaning. Tyr was the city that sent heroes, or fools-the barroom ballads he knew equated the two-out to challenge the Dragon. And, against all odds, the hero-fools had succeeded. Now the storms came, about as frequently as the Dragon had come for bis toll of mortal life.

The Dragon's toll had been paid in slaves; anyone with a bit of luck or coin had nothing to fear. But the storms ravaged everything equally with wind, hail, and rain. No one could buy luck when blue-green lightning filled the sky.

So why not name the storms after Tyr? Someone had to take the blame. Smoking Crown had been belching as long as anyone could remember, but the smoke hadn't bred storms until the fools of Tyr had slain the Dragon.

Between the blindfold-bandage and the straw, he couldn't see the blue-green lightning, but, straining his ears, he heard the now-and-again rumble of thunder. Dread greater than any pain filled his heart: he'd sooner be dead than confront a Tyr-storm trussed-up as he was.

"This is as far as we can go without a decision," Yohan, the third member of the trio said with a sigh.

The cart tipped as the old dwarf lowered the traces. Pavek slid forward, helplessly, toward the dwarf and the ground. Bolts of agony, sharper and brighter than the unseen lightning, racked his joints as the rope between his bound limbs and cart snapped taut. His ribs contracted and, with his not-inconsiderable weight suspended halfway in, halfway out of the cart, he tried to howl, but the sound strangled in his throat.

"Earth, wind, rain, and fire!" Akashia swore.

Yohan put a hob-nailed sole against his chest, shoving him backward as the cart leveled. Pavek could breathe again, and scream as the wheels swiveled, bounced, and rolled rapidly through the darkness.

"Hold these!" the dwarf barked, and the two-wheeled cart tottered as one of the others took his place between the trace-poles.

Straw was swept aside, and a massive, strong hand clamped over his forearm to haul him out of agony with the rude courtesy one veteran expected of another, even when they were on opposite sides.

"Look at his hands," Akashia whispered from somewhere near his head.

Her tone, midway between horror and disgust, was enough set him struggling, but Yohan's grip was firm.

"You've come close to crippling him," Yohan snarled, not toward the woman, so it was the half-elf, the whiner, who'd spit-tied him. "Give me that knife of his, Kashi-"

A moment later, he felt cold steel against his right arm. He heard the unmistakable snap of stretched leather as steel sliced through his bonds and guessed that Ruari had tied him up with wet thongs. It was a templar tactic: leather shrank as it dried. He couldn't control his arms or legs as, one after another, they went from freedom to spasms. He ground his teeth together in a vain attempt to remain quiet, and when he could not, he swore vengeance against the half-elf scum.

"Easy," Yohan counseled, shoving and pulling until he was sitting erect. "Water?"

Another pair of hands, Akashia's, unwound the cloth from his eyes. He blinked a moment, adjusting to the twilight, and gasped when he saw his swollen, discolored hands. Growling like a maddened beast, he lurched toward the lean silhouette at the corner of his vision. Yohan stopped him with one hand.

"Don't be a fool," the dwarf hissed.

He let the fight go out of him. With no control over his fists, no strength in his legs, he was a fool. He slumped against the side planks of the cart.

"It's going to tip!" Ruari shouted, grappling with the traces-though whether to help or hinder was beyond Pavek's guessing.

Yohan planted his foot against the opposite side. The danger passed. "Water?" he repeated.

Of his three captors, the dwarf was clearly the most dangerous, but the two of them were playing by the same rules, by templar rules: victor and vanquished, power and prisoner. Right now water was more precious than life itself, but accepting it would establish the hierarchy between them, with him inescapably on the bottom. Pavek hesitated. The dwarf uncorked a jug and, tilting it recklessly, allowed water to trickle along his chin as he drank deep and loud.

"Yes-water." Pavek surrendered. With effort and concentration, he got his jelly-boned arms to move, but Yohan had to steady the jug as he drank. The liquid restored his will and cleared his thoughts.

Lightning lit the heavens with cool brilliance. Pavek braced for the gut-punch crack of thunder, which did not arrive for several moments and was distant-sounding when it did. The Tyr-storm would be violent when it arrived, but he, his trio of captors, and the other scurrying denizens of Modekan-he assumed they'd come to that village-still had ample time to prepare and dread.

"Can we trust him? Do we dare take him into the inn?" Akashia asked when the thunder had rumbled past.

Thrusting out his lower lip, Yohan blinked and shook his head. Pavek started to protest this judgment against his character, but the dwarf silenced him with a scowl.

"It's not a question of trust; it's those hands and feet. It'll be midnight before he can use his hands, longer before he can walk. Anybody who sees him will think a question or two and somebody may guess the answer. Forty pieces is a lot of gold, Kashi. It's not my decision, but if it were, I'd keep moving and go to ground when we reach the barrens." Another flash of lightning-the same color as the druid's eyes, or perhaps that was merely an illusion. Either way, her nose wrinkled as she looked from him to the storm and back again. Without offering a word, much less the decision they were all waiting for, she reversed the knife and aimed it for its sheath.

Pavek murmured, "Wipe it first-" Akashia glowered as thunder rumbled and Yohan made a fist.

He had no idea who'd forged his knife, but any steel was worthy of respect, and mention of the last dwarven stronghold got Yohan's attention, as he'd hoped it would. Akashia, seeing something like awe on the veteran's face, swirled the blade carefully across the whetstone attached to the sheath.

Only Ruari missed the moment completely. "You aren't going to let a mud-scum templar talk to you like that, are you? His kind never learns. He still thinks he can give orders and we'll all grovel at his filthy, stinking feet. He'll sing a different song once Telhami's through with him-"

"Ruari!" Akashia snarled.

And Pavek looked immediately at Yohan, whose face reflected unspeakable weariness in the faint light. The dwarf had the requisite experience and wisdom, but he wasn't the druids' leader, and neither was Akashia. That honor belonged to someone named Telhami-a woman, by the name's cadence, and undoubtedly a force to be reckoned with.

"Well," Pavek demanded when no one else seemed inclined to say anything, "what are you going to do with me? Hit me over the head again and dump my body where the storm will finish your dirty-work?"

Akashia finished stropping the blade but before she returned it to the sheath she took a moment-or so it seemed-to examine the elaborate knotwork along the hilt, the knotwork that concealed his mother's hair.

He wanted the knife back because the worth of its metal was measured in gold; he wanted Sian's midnight hair back because its worth was beyond all measure.

"You value this?" she asked.

Her expression went beyond calculation or suspicion. Remembering the white fire she'd seared through his mind at the gate, he feared for his life, though common-lore said any mind with enough thoughts for stealing could defend itself against a mind-bender's invasion. But he felt nothing explicitly threatening, only the elusive sense that he was still being measured and judged.

"I value it, yes."

"How much?"

"To you, or to Telhami?" he countered, letting them know he'd heard Ruari blurt out that name. "Nevermind."

She secured the valued knife in its sheath and the sheath in a fringed bag suspended from her waist.

Lightning flashed and the thunder came quicker, louder. A merchant wearing silken robes scurried toward them. He spotted the four of them and stopped suddenly, causing his tail of servants, carters, and apprentices to stumble against one another. One cart overturned completely with the sound of shattering glass.

"We're doomed!" the frantic merchant wailed. "Doomed! The inns are full. The stables. There's no place for an honest man to hide. Will you give me your place for ten pieces of gold?"

They looked at one another and at the wedge of ground where they stood. The place Yohan had selected for an urgent discussion lay between two tall, windowless walls and was as readily defensible as it was discreet. Another weight went on the balance pan in Pavek's mind with the scales tipping toward a conclusion that Yohan had seen service with one or another of the sorcerer-longs.

He knew what he'd do in similar circumstances: accept manifest good fortune, ten gold pieces, and make his stand against the storm from somewhere else. But he wasn't Yohan, and Yohan wasn't in charge.

Akashia held out her hand, palm-up. "You have so many with you, and so much more to protect. To deny your request would be to deny the principles of life itself."

The merchant extended his own, empty, hand toward her. He would have sworn he could hear both Yohan and the half-elf muttering. But at the last moment before an agreement would have been reached without any exchange of gold, silver or ceramic bits, Akashia made a fist.

"Was that eleven gold pieces you offered, good merchant, or twelve?"

"Good for her," Yohan whispered clearly enough for Pavek to overhear despite another clash of thunder.

Pavek let his swollen hands hang loosely in his lap, hoping not to draw attention to them. His fingers twitched uncontrollably as blood slowly, painfully, restored feeling to lifeless nerves. Yohan's concerns about his conspicuousness were valid: people would notice and people tended to remember what they noticed when gold was involved, whether it was a forty-piece bounty or the eleven pieces the merchant was dribbling slowly into Akashia's hand.

He lowered his head, avoiding eye-contact with anything but his feet, until the cart was well-away from the merchant and his company.

"Good work, Kashi!" Ruari cried. "Now we can buy a room at the inn-"

"Don't be a fool," Akashia retorted as she and Yohan turned toward the open, unguarded village gate. "If eleven pieces of gold could buy a place at an inn, that merchant wouldn't have given them to us."

The wind had picked up. It blew with enough force to set the heavy gate banging on its hinges. Yohan turned the cart toward the public kank-pen, just inside the gate. A gust caught the disc-shaped wheels and threatened to dump them all on the cobblestones.

"We're not going outside?" Ruari argued. "You've lost your wits. The storm! The kanks will go mad."

"No madder than what's left loose in this village." Yohan stopped the cart and offered his brawny arm to Pavek.

Privately, Pavek sympathized with the half-elf. The kanks' high-pitched droning raised the short hairs at the base of bis neck. He'd never been so close to the big, black bugs before; kanks were banned within Urik's walls and restricted to high-ranked templars at other times. Though they were considered docile creatures under ordinary circumstances, the storm bearing down on them was far from ordinary. Already the kanks inside the pen were milling in frantic circles. Every lightning flash illuminated their gnashing pincers, and in the darkness that followed, their mandibles shimmered with a faintly yellowish, liquid light.

The thought of riding a crazed kank into the teeth of a Tyr-storm scared him to the marrow, but he'd do it, if the druids gave him the opportunity, because Yohan was more right than Ruari. The cerulean storms went beyond natural elements. The wind and the icy hail-which had just begun to pelt the ground with nut-sized chunks-were only the harbingers. When the storm's full fury was above them, it would drive some unfortunate men and women into madness.

Pavek recalled only too well the mobs outside the templar barracks during his two previous storms. Their screams were louder than the howling winds and their fists left bloody streaks on the plaster-covered stone walls. He doubted there was a wall or door in Modekan that could withstand such punishment.

He reached for Yohan's arm, but though he could feel the leathery texture of the dwarf's skin beneath his palm-a sure sign that he'd suffered no permanent damage while his limbs were bound together-his grip had no strength. Muttering words that were lost in the storm, Yohan hauled him out of the cart. Through great effort and an equal amount of luck, he managed to land on his nearly useless feet with his back braced against a fence post.

Before he could congratulate himself, the kanks crowded around him, palpitating his face with their flexible, sticky antennae.

"They like you, templar," Akashia chuckled.

He cursed and batted at the hovering antennae. The bugs retaliated by spraying him with their foul, poisonous drool. Fighting nausea, he shuddered uncontrollably, and chitinous pincers probed the backs of his knees. In a mindless panic, he tried to run, but his feet didn't cooperate, and he fell to his knees. He dragged himself beyond the kanks' reach, then, after assuring himself that they hadn't broken his skin, he uprooted a handful of scraggly grass and, with no regard for what was left of his dignity, swiped the radiant slime from his legs.

Several pulse-pounding moments passed before he heard Ruari laughing. It was one insult too many. He hurled the soggy grass in the half-elf's direction. His aim was off: the faintly glowing wad missed that wide-open mouth and splattered against bis chest instead.

Ruari's laughter died in his throat. "You're dead, templar!" His teeth were visible in the lightning as he cleaned the mess from his shirt. When he was done, his fingers were curled into claws. "Because I'm going to kill you-"

But Akashia thrust her open hand between them. Her wrist waggled slightly. First, Ruari staggered backward, then a gust of wind punched Favek's chest, knocking the fight out of him, too. Magic or mind-bending had somehow redirected the storm's gusty winds. The display was all the more impressive in its subtlety and casualness.

Pavek let go of his injured dignity. A templar knew when to lay low. A half-elf, apparently, did not.

"You saw what he did-"

Akashia's hand flicked again. Ruari sat down hard, wide-eyed with astonishment.

"Enough! Both of you. Behave yourselves or we'll leave you both behind... together."

"Kashi-"

"Don't 'Kashi' me," she warned. "Just stay here and stay out of trouble. Can you manage that?"

Ruari scrambled to his feet. "He's a templar, Ah-ka-she-a," he snarled each syllable of her name. "He's no good, and you know it. He's lying and deceit disguised as a human man. Look what he's done to us already. I say we leave him right here. Let the storm take care of him."

Through the tail of his eye, Pavek watched Akashia's hand fall slowly to her side and a variety of soft emotions parade across her face. She might be a druid and a mind-bender, but she wouldn't survive a single day or night in the templarate. Ruari, with his back to the storm and everything else, wouldn't last an hour. That left only the dwarf, at whom he dared a glance.

Yohan stood between the traces of the cart. His expression was properly opaque. If the dwarf had not been a templar, he'd spent enough time around them to learn their ways. Still, Yohan was waiting, not doing. He might be the shrewdest and wisest of his new companions, but he was the third of three in rank.

"What about you, templar?" Akashia asked. "Is Ruari right, are you lying and deceit disguised as a man, or can we trust you?"

He shook his head and chuckled. "That's a foolish question. Why would I say no? Why would you believe me if I said yes? You've got to decide for yourself."

"He's right," Yohan added, to Pavek's surprise. "And we don't have much time, if we're going to get ourselves out of this place before the storm's on top of us."

Akashia flattened her wind-swept hair against her skull and closed her eyes. Pavek braced himself for another mind-bending onslaught, but none came-at least not into his mind. When the druid reopened her eyes her calm and confidence had been restored.

"You're coming with us," she said. "If you even think of lying or deceit, you'll wish you'd never been born. You'll do what you're told to do, when you're told to do it. And you'll leave Ruari alone, no matter what he does or what he says. Understand?"

He nodded. "In my dreams, great one. In my dreams." Akashia cocked her head. She seemed about to ask a question when Yohan called from the doorway of the kank-keeper's shed, and she joined him there without saying anything more. *****

At least he didn't have to worry about controlling the creature. There was no way he could reach the bug's antennae once he'd gotten himself wedged beneath the rack.

"We're not going any farther than we have to," Yohan assured him as he threaded a supple leather rope through man-made holes in several of the soldier-kank's spikes." "We'll dig in as soon as we find shelter."

Pavek nodded with more confidence than he truly felt. The dwarf tied the rope to the back of his saddle. Akashia led the way through the unguarded gate; Yohan followed, Ruari brought up the rear.

They weren't the only travelers who'd decided that safety lay in small, familiar groups beyond the village walls. Pavek lost track of the number of likely places they approached only to be warned away by well-armed men and women.

The Tyr-storm was almost above them. Lightning ringed the horizons and the thunder never ceased. Winds gusted from every quarter, sometimes bearing sulphurous grit from the Smoking Crown or sharp-edged pellets of ice. His companions huddled beneath thick, wool cloaks; Pavek had the shirt Oelus had given him. Cold, wet, and miserable, he curled up like an animal, eyes closed, enduring what he could neither control nor change. The kank's six-legged gait had no rhythm his body could decipher. He slipped into a thoughtless state midway between sleep and despair and did not notice when the insect finally came to a halt.

"Move your bones, templar."

Ruari's snarl penetrated Pavek's stupor. The rude jolt of a staff against his ribs roused him to action. He grabbed the smooth wood, noting with satisfaction that he'd recovered his strength. The half-elf twisted and tugged, but he couldn't free his weapon. The Tyr-storm winds swallowed Ruari's oaths as fast as he uttered them.

Pavek didn't need to hear, he could read the words by lightning-light. Never mind that his former peers had put a price on his head, to Ruari he was templar, and personally answerable for all the many, many crimes his kind had committed. He straightened his arm, ramming the opposite end of the staff into Ruari's gut. The youth staggered backward. His hands slipped from the wood and, in the flashing blue-green light, his expression changed from insolence to fear.

"Do that again, half-wit, and you'll need a crutch, not a staff," Pavek shouted and hurled the stick away.

He eased down to the ground. His muscles were cold-cramped, but nothing like before. He glowered at Ruari, confident that he could deliver his threat if the youth was foolish enough to make a move toward the staff.

A bolt of lightning slammed the ground a few hundred paces away. It stunned them both and left them standing like angry statues until Yohan strode between them. One lightning-lit scowl from the veteran dwarf brought them to their senses. Ruari ran away, leaving the staff behind. Pavek took his first conscious look at what his companions called shelter: the roofless remnant of a peasant's mud-walled hovel, abandoned, no doubt, after an earlier Tyr-storm and melting as he watched.

He grimaced, Yohan scowled. Then they hobbled the kanks together, frontmost legs of one to the hindmost of another, and unlashed the harness from the soldier-kank's back. Cursing and slipping, they wrestled the bone rack through the mud, into the remains of the hovel where Akashia and Ruari were already huddled in a leeward corner. Pavek thought there was room there for two more, but, before he could join them, Yohan struck his arm, pointing outside, where they'd left the kanks.

Size and strength conferred their own, sometimes futile, responsibilities. Following the dwarf, he returned to the storm. The bugs, which had circled so frantically in their Modekan pen, obeyed different instincts now that the storm was directly above them, crowding close together to make their own shelter from the pelting hail. He overcame his distrust and, with the lead ropes from two of the smaller kanks wound around his waist and wrist, clung to their clawed legs when the wind struck like a giant's fist and thunder thumped; his gut.

His eyes adjusted to blue-green brillianccj leaving him blind in those rare moments when lightning was not flashing. His ears grew deaf to the ceaseless thunder clash. Time and place lost meaning, yet, somehow, he was aware of a woman's scream and cast aside the ropes. He strained his battered senses, but the only additional screaming came from the Tyr-storm itself.

He found himself ten long paces from the kanks, but couldn't remember moving his feet. His heart shivered; he hugged himself for warmth, reassurance.

This is how madness starts.

The thought, not quite his own, floated through his mind as he returned to the hobbled kanks and Yohan.

He was halfway there when the first erdlu ran by, so close that its scaly wings brushed against his arm. Then another flightless bird raced between him and the hovel, its movements frozen in series of lightning flashes. There were other shapes in the flickering light. Dozens of them, and dozens more. Familiar creatures: erdlus, kanks, giant spiders, and unfamiliar escapees from a madman's nightmare. They were all panicked, stampeding beneath the Tyr-storm, trampling everything in their path.

Including the hovel.

Pavek skidded into Yohan just as Akashia and Ruari emerged, as terrified as the stampeding creatures around them. They both ran toward him, Yohan, and the hobbled kanks, which together were large enough and solid enough to deflect the stampede to either side.

Nearby, tightly confined by Yohan's arms, Akashia was screaming: the same sound Pavek had heard before. The veteran wound his hands into her hair, forcing her face against his shoulder. There was nothing she or her druid spellcraft could against the panic of a Tyr-storm. ' There was nothing any of them could do, except watch in horror. Pavek forgot to breathe. It wasn't compassion that filled his lungs with fire. If there was a word for what he felt as the Tyr-storm roared, that word was outrage. Outrage because water, the most precious substance in all the world, had become deadly and life could be extinguished for no more meaningful reason than a slip in the mud.

Then he saw Ruari's staff, unbroken, almost within reach and, without an intervening thought, outrage became action.

Every would-be templar had to master five weapons before he wove his first messenger's thread through the hem of his sleeve: the sword, the spear, the sickles, the mace, and a man-high staff. The smooth hardwood was familiar in Pavek's hands. He cleared a path to the injured half-elf, planted his feet deep in the mud and, with a fierce bellow, defied the minions of the storm.

None of the panicked creatures, including the nightmare predators swept up in the stampede, was interested in a challenge, nor were they running so thick that they could not avoid a noisy, moving obstacle in their path. Pavek bashed at anything that came too close or seemed to hesitate, but the greatest danger came from Ruari, still clutching a knee and thrashing into his legs at unpredictable moments.

But he kept his knees flexed and retained his balance until the last immature erdlu had raced by. The Tyr-storm itself still raged. He feinted at the wind until Yohan appeared in front of him, shouting his name.

"Pavek! Back off, Pavek. Danger's passed."

Suddenly his arms were lead and the staff was the only thing keeping him upright. He stood calmly while Yohan, scooped the moaning youth and carried him to safety.

Then the shaking started.

He couldn't accept what he'd done. He had nothing but contempt for the fools of Tyr who'd challenged a dragon, yet he'd done something just as reckless and for less reason: for Ruari, who was a callow mongrel with a streak of cruelty cut through his half-wit's heart, not worth a moment's mourning.

Yohan came back: one comradely hand between his heaving shoulders, steering him out of the fading but still-potent storm, offering a small-mouthed flask. He took a swig with-: out thinking, just as he'd picked up the staff. A camphor-laced liquid made his eyes water. When his vision cleared, so had his mind. He sat on the ground, with Ruari's staff resting across his thighs.

There were fresh gouges all along the wood and a fractured chunk of chitin as long as his forearm wedged near one end. He traced the jagged edge with a trembling finger.

"You saved his life, templar-Pavek."

Akashia, beside him, didn't have to shout in order to be heard. The thunder was receding, and compared to what they'd been, the wind and rain were insignificant.

Pavek grunted, but kept his attention focused on the chitin chunk. His mind held no recollection of striking the creature who had lost it. Its dull yellow color was wrong for a kank. The inner edge was razor-sharp. He could have lost an arm, a leg, or his head.

"Your shoulder's bleeding, Pavek. May I tend it for you?"

Akashia knelt beside him, and noticing the gash for the first time, he began to shiver. She placed her hand on his brow. The shivering ceased. He didn't flinch when she peeled his shirt away from the wound, though he'd been to the infirmary often enough to know he was going to hurt worse before he felt better.

But the druid's touch was pleasantly warm. It soothed his nerves before numbing them. Maybe Oelus was right. Maybe there was something in the nature of the power King Hamanu granted his templars that caused pain. Or, just as likely, the infirmary butchers simply didn't care.

Curiosity got the better of him, as it often did. He observed Akashia's every move until the gash was a tidy scab some two handspans in length. Words for thanks were hard to find in his mind, awkward on his tongue; he grunted a few about appreciation and respect.

"I owe you that and more," Akashia assured him as she got to her feet. "I think I have misjudged you, Just-Plain Pavek. Without hesitation or thought of reward, you risked your life to save Ruari's, after you twice swore to kill him. There is more to you than a yellow robe. You might be a man, after all."

A hand came between them, long-fingered and lithe. It grabbed the staff and retreated.

"He's a templar, Kashi. The worst kind of templar. He pretends to be what he's not. Wash your hands after you touch him."