butter. I am as silent as a shadow, but what good is that talent when anyone can
smell me a block away?’
Keeping her eyes on him, she stopped and cleaned her dagger on the dead man’s
robe.
‘Are you the one who’s been following me?’ she said. She straightened up.
He hissed with surprise, then said, ‘You saw me?’
‘No. But I knew someone was dogging me.’
‘Ah! You have a sixth sense. Or a guilty conscience. Come! Let’s get away before
someone comes along.’
‘I’d like to know who these men are … were.’
‘They’re Raggah,’ Smhee said. ‘There are two others fifty yards from here,
lookouts, I suppose. They’ll be coming soon to find out why these two haven’t
shown up with you.’
That shocked her even more than the attack.
‘You mean the purple mage wants we? Why?’
‘I do not know. Perhaps he thinks as so many others do. That is, that Benna told
you more than you have said he did. But come! Quickly!’
‘Where?’
‘To your place. We can talk there, can’t we?’
They walked swiftly towards her building. Smhee kept looking back, but the place
where they had killed the two men was no longer visible. When they got to the
door, however, she stopped.
‘If I knock on the door for the keeper, the Raggah might hear it,’ she
whispered. ‘But I have to get in. My daughter is very sick. She needs the
medicine I got from Dr Nadeesh.’
‘So that’s why you were at his home,’ Smhee said. ‘Very well. You bang on the
door. I’ll be the rearguard.’
He was suddenly gone, moving astonishingly swift and silently for such a fat
man. But his aroma lingered.