his possession, a flood of gold. His gallantry had come from his own poverty,
from one look at the woman’s fine clothing and a sure knowledge that Sjekso
Kinzan was all hollow when pushed. And for that gold in his hand he would have
waited in the alley all night, or beaten Sjekso to fine rags, no questions
asked.
It occurred to him while he went that it might involve more than that, but he
went, all the same.
The woman looked back at Sjekso and smiled, a fervid smile which made wider and
wider chaos of Sjekso’s grasp of the situation. He stood away from his wall and
– sobered as he had been in the encounter, deprived of the vaporous warmth of
the wine in his blood – still he recovered something of anticipation, re
estimated his own considerable animal charm in the light of the lady’s sultry
dark eyes, in the moonlike gleam of the gold coin she held up before him. He
grinned, his confidence restored, stood. easier still as she came to him – it
might have been the wine after all, this new blush of heat; it might have been
her slim fingers which touched at his collar and drew a line with the edge of
the coin down among the fine hairs of his chest, disturbing there the chain of
the luckpiece he wore.
His luck had improved, he reckoned, laying it all to his way with women. She had
liked it after all… they all did; and she might be parted from more than a
golden coin, and if she thought of using him and that bastard northerner one
against the other, good: there was a chance of paying off Mradhon Vis. He had