scant ceremony. Both of them were masked, as was the third man in the room. The
third was the obvious leader, seated behind the oil lamp and the account books
on a desk. The men who held Samlor were bravos; more perhaps than their muscles
alone, but certainly there for their muscles in part. The leader was a black.
The mask obscuring his face was battered from age and neglect, but the eyes that
glittered behind it were as bright as those of the hawk it counterfeited.
The black watched during the silent, expert search. Samlor held himself relaxed
in the double grip as the guards’ free hands twitched away his knife, his purse,
his scrip; snatched off his boots, the sheath in the left one empty already but
noted; ran along his arms. his torso, his groin. The only weapon Samlor carried
this night was the openly sheathed dagger. To leave it behind as well would in
this city have been more suspicious than the weapon.
When the guards were finished, they stepped back a pace to either side. Samlor’s
gear lay in a pile at his feet, save for the dagger, slipped now through the
belt of one of the burly men who watched him.
Unconcerned, the Cirdonian knelt and pulled on his left boot. The man behind the
desk waited for the stranger to speak. Then. as Samlor reached for his other
boot, the masked leader snarled, ‘Well? You’re from Balustrus, aren’t you?
What’s his answer?’
‘No, I’m not from Balustrus,’ Samlor said. He straightened up. holding the wine
bottle. He pulled the cork with his teeth and spat it on to the floor before he