“Worthy of what?” Thrusher replied, not following Walegrin’s thoughts at all.
3
Dawn’s first light pierced the shadows and sent the denizens of the night
scurrying. The streets of Sanctuary were almost quiet. Flocks of seabirds
wheeled silently over the town, swooping suddenly as, one after another, the
houses opened their doors to jettison nightslops into the street. A cowled,
burdened monk slipped out the upper window of a tavern and disappeared down a
still-dark alley. The brief moment of calm magic faded; the day had begun.
The establishment ofBalustrus, metal-master, was among the first in the
armorer’s quarter to come to life. A young woman opened the upper half of the
front door and struggled to raise the huge, dingy slops-ewer to her shoulder.
She froze, nearly dropping the noisome thing, when a man stepped out of the
shadows. He wore a monk’s garb, but the cowl had fallen back to his shoulders. A
warrior’s tore held his straw-blond hair over his brow.
Walegrin had had three days’ rest and washed the desert from his face, but he
was still an ominous figure. The woman gave a small yelp when he took the ewer
from her and carried it some distance before upending it. When he returned to
the doorway, the metal-master himself stood there.
“Walegrin, isn’t it?”
If the young soldier was ominous, then Balus-trus was positively demonic. His
skin was the color of mottled bronze-not brown, nor gold, nor green-nor human at
all. It was wrinkled like dried fruit, but shone like metal itself. He was
hairless, with features that blended into the convolutions of his skin. When he