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under a shiny bald pate, although every other part of him sprouted dense black hair. He had a mellifluous, orator’s voice, a raging ambition, and sadistic tastes in recreation. He was wearing a loose silk tunic of sky blue and leaning his fists on his ornate desk.
    He greeted his coachman with a disagreeable scowl. “I am sorry to drag you from your work.”
    “I am entirely at your command, sir, of course,” Dosh remarked airily as he crossed the sumptuously colored Narshian rug. He was much more interested in the other man standing near the window.
    The other man was younger, leaner, even harder, with a cold intensity in his face to warn the discerning observer of potential trouble. He, too, wore the standard Joalian tunic and breeches. In contrast to Bandrops’s, his forearms were almost hairless, well muscled, and also much paler than his hands. As were his shins. His cheeks above his close-trimmed beard were darker than his ears and forehead.
    “This is the boy, Kraanard,” Bandrops declaimed. “Dosh, this is Kraanard Jurist. He has need of your services.”
    “As my master bids me, sir.” Dosh bowed to the stranger, wondering what sort of services were implied. He wondered, too, why an obvious soldier, a man who normally wore greaves, vambraces, and helmet, would be masquerading as a jurist.
    Kraanard regarded him with unconcealed contempt. “Have you a moa, boy?”
    If Dosh wished to be impertinent, he could now ask where a lackey like him could ever acquire the wealth to own a moa, but that was not what was meant. Moas resisted new riders with murderous zeal; it took months to attune a moa to a man. Dosh was skilled at many things other than seduction. He could harness the household stock to the master’s coach and drive it. Officially, that was all that was expected of him.
    When Bandrops had hired him, though, he had set out to imprint one of the household moas—mostly because he thought the brute would make suitable severance pay if he had to leave without notice. Bandrops knew he had been trying, because he had commented on the numerous bruises and tooth marks poor Dosh had acquired in the process. What he did not know, apparently, was that Dosh had persevered. There seemed no reason not to tell the truth in this instance, for the other servants knew.
    “There is one I can usually manage, sir.”
    The other men exchanged pleased glances.
    “You will come with me,” Kraanard announced. “We shall be gone only a few days.”
    Dosh had survived so long in his perilous career only because he possessed an acute sense of danger. Now tocsins clamored in his mind. There was something extremely fishy here. He contrived an expression of youthful anxiety, which had always been one of his most effective.
    “I doubt I can handle Swift for that long, sir. I am only an amateur on a moa.”
    Bandrops reddened, but it was the soldier who answered.
    “The matter is extremely important. Even if you suffer some scrapes, you will be well rewarded.”
    “I am sure to be thrown a few times, sir. Then Swift will escape.”
    Kraanard’s eyes narrowed. “We shall have others with us. We shall round it up for you. They never go far.”
    Now the details were starting to take shape—a troop of lancers!
    “If you need a moa rider, sir, surely there must be hundreds of native-born young Joalians far more expert than I am.”
    Again the two men exchanged glances. Then Kraanard strode across until he was right in front of Dosh and could stare down at him with cold gray eyes and unmistakable menace. He was considerably taller.
    “But I understand that you are familiar with a man named D’ward.”
    If he wanted to shock, he succeeded. Dosh felt as if he had been dropped into ice water and for once his self-control failed him. “The Liberator?”
    Kraanard was pleased by the reaction. “Some call him that. He is here in Joalvale, somewhere over by Jilvenby.”
    D’ward! It had been more than three years. They had been