Khamwas caught his lower lip between his front teeth. He was wearing his cape again, but the caravan master remembered how frail the Napatan had looked without it.
“The man who looks in front of him does not stumble and fall,” said the manikin with his usual preternatural clarity of voice.
“Samlor,” said the Napatan, “I appreciate what you say … but what I seek is here, and I’ve made a very long-“
“Sure,” the caravan master interrupted. “I just mean we be careful, all right?
“And you, child,” Samlor added in a voice as soft as a cat’s claws extending. He knelt so that Star could meet his eyes without looking up. “You don’t touch anything, do anything. Do you understand? Because if the only way to keep you safe is to tie you up and carry you like a sack of flour-that’s what I’ll do.”
Star nodded, her face scrunched up on the verge of tears. The drifting glows dwindled noticeably.
“Everything’s going to be fine, dearest,” the caravan master said, giv- ing the child an affectionate pat as he rose.
It bothered him to have to scare his niece in order to get her to obey- while she remembered-but she scared him every time she did something innocently dangerous, like opening the ivory box. Better she be fright- ened than that she swing from his arm, trussed like a hog.
Because Samlor didn’t threaten in bluff.
Khamwas said something under his breath. His staff clothed itself in the bluish phosphorescence it held when the caravan master first met him in an alley. With the staff’s unshod ferule, the Napatan prodded the study door, lifting the bronze latch. When nothing further happened, he pulled the door open with his free hand and preceded Samlor and Star into the hall beyond.