combination: pushed and genuine.
The lean youth called Shadowspawn moved nothing but his head. ‘How’d you like a
hole in your middle to let out all that hot air, Abohorr?’
‘How’d you like a third eye, Abohorr?’ Hanse’s tablemate said.
Abohorr betook himself elsewhere, muttering – and hurrying. Both Hanse’s lean
swift hands remained on the tabletop. ‘You know him, Thales?’
‘No.’
‘You heard me say his name and so you said it right after me.’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re sharp, Thales. Too … smart.’ Hanse slapped the table’s surface. ‘I’ve
been meeting too many sharp people lately. Sharp as…’ .
‘Knives,’ Tempus said, finishing the complaint of a very very sharp young man.
‘You were mentioning that you were waiting for me to come out of that house-not
home, Hanse, because you knew I was carrying. And then Jubal’s bravoes attacked
– me -and you took down two.’
‘I was mentioning that, yes.’ Hanse developed a seemingly genuine interest in
his brown-and-orange Saraprins mug. ‘How many men have you killed, Thales?’
‘Oh gods. Do not ask.’
‘Many.’
‘Many, yes.’
‘And no scars on you.’
Tempus looked pained. ‘No scars on me,’ he said, to his own big hands on the
table. Bronzed, they were still more fair than Shadowspawn’s. On a sudden
thought, he looked up and his expression was of dawning revelation and
disbelief. ‘Hanse? You saved my life that night. I saved yours – but they were
after me to begin with. Hanse? How many men have you killed?’
Hanse looked away. Hair like a raven, nose of a young falcon. Profile carved out
by a hand-axe sharper than a barber’s razor, all planes and angles. A pair of