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night, then add the sausage, cheese, and tomato paste the next night, melting them quickly on the stove. This would fit their usual pattern of baking bread over the coals of the fire they’d used to make dinner.
     
    Tarc wasn’t all that interested in just how the pizza had been made, but he did love the way it tasted. Sitting next to Lizeth was a decided bonus, though she and Sam had their heads together talking about something most of the time.
    Tarc and Daum discussed the beer the tavern sold. They thought it had been watered and that the brewers had substituted some other starch, perhaps potato, for much of the barley.
    Tarc got up and made his way to the back door of the tavern, following a sign indicating the location of the outhouse. Stepping out into the courtyard behind the tavern he looked around, then seeing the outhouses, started that way. After he’d done his business, he stepped back into the courtyard, but had only taken one step back toward the tavern when a large hand clamped over his face and jerked him backwards.
    The thief from the ferry! flashed through Tarc’s mind. Sure enough, when he sent his ghost out it confirmed the man behind him was much the same size and shape as the man from the ferry. He couldn’t be sure it was the same man like he would have been with his eyes, but the man’s words confirmed it. He growled in Tarc’s ear, “Thought you got away with something this afternoon, didn’t you, you little shit?”
    Tarc’s heart pounded in his chest. His first thought was to slow the flow in the man’s carotid again. But, if as he’d promised himself, he didn’t kill the man, the man would become highly suspicious over having gotten dizzy twice around the same victim. The next time the man might knife Tarc and rob him after.
    While Tarc dithered, the man pulled Tarc’s work knife out of his thigh holster. “You stole my knife from me when I got dizzy this afternoon,” the man grated. “Now I’m taking your knife away from you in return.”
    He put the point of Tarc’s knife against Tarc’s chest. Tarc realized he should have clamped the man’s carotid and to hell with the future!
    Tarc’s thoughts were confirmed when the man snarled, “And, in case that was your doing this afternoon, first thing I’ll do if I start to feel a dizzy is sink this knife into your chest. Got that?”
    Tarc nodded his head minutely under the pressure of the man’s hand while his mind desperately tried to think of something instantaneous to stop the man.
    The man said, “Now I need a little bit more than your knife to make up for all the trouble you caused me. So I’m gonna take my hand off your mouth and look through your pockets for any other valuables you might have.” The man’s hand started to lift away, then pressed back over Tarc’s mouth, “You holler, you die .”
    Tarc’s ghost reached out to the man’s upper spinal cord. With Tarc’s head so close to the man’s neck it was easy to stop the blood flow in the capillaries to the part of the spinal cord where the fifth nerve root came off. Since there aren’t any sensory nerves in the cord, the man didn’t feel anything happening.
    Bork’s limbs turned to flaccid jelly and he began collapsing to the ground behind Tarc. Eyes wide and mind screaming, he wondered what was happening to him.
    As Bork’s grip softened, the boy grabbed the wrist of Bork’s knife hand and pushed it away from his chest. Despite the numbness, Bork faintly felt the kid pulling up on his wrist and slowing Bork’s fall to the ground. Bork didn’t understand—he’d threatened the kid’s life, yet it seemed like the boy was trying to keep Bork from banging his head on the ground?!
    Bork couldn’t know Tarc had promised he wouldn’t kill.
    He wouldn’t have believed it if he had.
    The kid knelt over Bork and put his knife away. He said, “Yeah, I made you dizzy today. And now you know I can do even worse things.”
     
    The man’s panicked eyes