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light glinted on the bare blade of Samlor's new dagger, harder in reflection than the source hanging in the air seemed.
    The caravan master blinked, touched his tunic over the silver medallion of the goddess Heqt on his breast, and only then slid the weapon back from its temporary resting place beneath his belt. The twisting phosphorescence gave the markings a false hint of motion; but they were only swirls of metal, not the script he thought he had again seen.
    Khamwas watched with controlled apprehension. Deciding that it was better to go on with his proposal than to wonder why Samlor was staring at the knife whose guard still bore dark stains, the Napatan said, "Master Samlor, you understand this city as I do not. And you're clearly able to deal with, ah, with violence, should any be offered. Could I prevail on you to accompany me to the house of Setios? I'll pay you well."
    "Do not walk the road without a stick in your hand," Tjainufi said approvingly.
    "We need to find Setios, Uncle Samlor," said the child in a voice rising toward shrill. She released Khamwas and instead tugged insistently on the elbow of her uncle's right sleeve. "Please can we? He's nice." 28
    David Drake
    Cold steel cannot flow, twist, parse out words, thought the caravan master. The nick in the edge was bright and real: this was no thing of enchantment, only a dagger with an awkward hilt and a very good blade.
    Star pulled at Samlor's arm with most of her weight. He did not look down at her, nor did his hand drop. That arm had dragged a donkey back up to the trail from which it had stumbled into a gulley a hundred feet deep.
    "Please," said the child.
    "Friend Samlor?" said the Napatan doubtfully. The knife was only that, a knife, so far as he could see.
    Go with him, spelled the rippling steel at which Samlor stared. The words faded as the glow in Star's hand shrank to a point and disappeared.
    "I was ready," said the caravan master slowly, "to find a guide in there." He did not gesture toward the tavern. He was speaking to himself, not to the pair of living humans with him in the alleyway. They stared at Samlor, his niece and the stranger, as they would have stared at a pet lion who suddenly began to act oddly.
    "So I guess," Samlor continued, "we'll find Setios together. After all—
    " he
    tapped the blade of the coffin-hiked dagger with a fingernail; the metal gave a musical ping.
    "—
    we're all four agreed, aren't we?"
    Star leaned toward her uncle and hugged his powerful thigh, but she would not meet his eyes again or look at the knife in his hand. Khamwas nodded cautiously.
    "We'll circle out of the Maze, then," said Samlor matter-of-factly. "Come on." The way down the alley meant stepping over the body of the youth he had just killed.
    This was Sanctuary. It wouldn't be the last corpse they saw.

CHAPTER 3
    THE BODY SPRAWLED just inside the alley would have passed for a corpse if you didn't listen carefully—
    or didn't recognize the ragged susurrus of a man
    breathing while his face lay against slimy cobblestones.
    "Mind this," said Samlor, touching first Star, then Khamwas so that they would notice his gesture toward the obstacle. Human eyes could adapt to scant illumination, but at this end of the alley the dying man's breath was all that made it possible to locate him.
    The manikin on Khamwas' shoulder must have been able to sense the situation, because he said, "There is no one who does not die." His voice was as high as a bird's; but, also like a bird's, it had considerable volume behind it. The Napatan "scholar" reached toward his shoulder with his free hand, a gesture mingled of affection and warning. "Tjainufi," he muttered, "Not now. . . ." Samlor doubted that Khamwas had any more control over the manikin than a camel driver did over a pet mouse which lived in a fold of his cloak. Or, for that matter, than Samlor himself had over his niece, who was bright enough to understand any instructions he gave her—
    but whose response was as