onyxes for eyes, and just that hard. His look away was uncharacteristic and
Tempus knew it. Tempus worked out of the palace and had access to confidential
reports, one of which not even the prince-governor had seen. He wouldn’t,
either, because it no longer existed. Too, Tempus had dealt with this spawn of
Downwind and the shadows. He was here in this murkily-lit tavern of humanity’s
dregs to deal with him again.
Hanse, looking away, said, ‘You are not to tell anyone.’
Tempus knew just what to say. ‘Do not insult me again.’
Hanse’s nod was not as long as the thickness of one of his knives. (Were there
five, or did he really wear a sixth on one of his thighs? Tempus doubted that;
the strap wouldn’t stay up.)
At last Hanse answered the question. ‘Two.’
Two men. Tempus nodded, sighing, pushing back to come as close to slumping on
his bench as his kind of soldier could. Damp. Who would have thought it? The
reputation he had, this dark surly scary (to others, not the man currently
calling himself Tempus) youth from the gutters he doubtless thought he had risen
so far above. Tempus knew he had wounded a man or two, and he had assumed. Now
Shadowspawn said he had never slain! That, from such a one, was an admission.
Because of me he has been blooded, Tempus mused, and the weary thought followed:
Well, he’s not the first. I had my first two, once. I wonder who they were, and
where? (But he knew, he knew. A man did not forget such.
Tempus was older than anyone thought; he was not as world-weary old as he
thought, or thought he thought.) Just now he wanted to put forth a hand and