best suited to resolving love triangles among house-servants.
‘We have need of this one.’
Thrusher nodded and oozed back into the shadows as deftly as he had emerged.
Walegrin waited until he was alone on the filthy streets before changing
direction and striding, shoulders set and fists balled, into the tangled streets
of the Maze.
The whores of the Maze were a special breed unwelcomed in the great pleasure
houses beyond the city walls. Their embrace included a poison dagger and their
nightly fee was all the wealth that could be removed from a man’s person. A knot
of these women clung to the doorway of the Vulgar Unicorn, the Maze’s
approximation to Town Hall, but they stepped aside meekly when Walegrin
approached. Survival in the Maze depended upon careful selection of the target.
An aura of dark foul air enveloped Walegrin as he stepped down into the sunken
room. A moment’s quiet passed over the other guests, as it always did when
someone entered. A Hell Hound, personal puritan of the prince, could shut down
conversation for the duration of his visit, but a garrison officer, even
Walegrin, was assumed to have legitimate business and was ignored with the same
slit-eyed wariness the regulars accorded each other.
The itinerant storyteller, Hakiem, occupied the bench Walegrin preferred. The
heavy-lidded little man was wilier than most suspected. Clutching his leather
mug of small ale tenderly, he had selected one of the few locations in the room
that provided a good view of all the exits, public and private. Walegrin stepped