and persuade him he had some credit here. ‘Let’s have a drink,’ Varra said. ‘The
corpse-takers will get the rumour – do you want to be standing here conspicuous?
Come on inside.’
He went as far as the door of the Unicorn, looked back, and there was Minsy
standing over Sjekso, sniffling; and Sjekso lying there a great deal sadder,
open-eyed, while the crowd started away under the same logic.
Hanse wanted the drink.
*
Mradhon Vis turned the comer, none following, stopped against an alley wall and
let the tremors pass from his limbs. Ugly, that back there. Corpses, he had seen
– had created his share, in and out of mercenary service. He had no wish to take
on useless trouble … not now, not with gold in his boot and a real prospect of
more. A bodyguard sometimes, but he was not big enough for hired muscle; and
with a surly and foreign look – even guard jobs were hard come by. He meant to
be on time for this one. A patron who could come up with a fistful of gold on a
whim was one to cultivate – if only her throat was still uncut. And that thought
worried him: that was what had drawn him, against his natural and wary
instincts, to that noisy scene outside the Vulgar Unicorn – a body he had last
seen alive and escorting the patron who was his latest and most fervent hope.
He was more than concerned.
Other alarums sounded in his mind, warnings of greater complexity, but he
refused them, because they led to suspicions of traps, and connivances; he had a
knife in his belt, his wits about him, and no little experience of employers of