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backs. It felt
like a good time to vary the pattern. Pavek stuck two fingers in his mouth and whistled for Bukke's attention. The
inspector dismissed the carters he'd been harassing.
    Pavek turned away, remembering Metica's sharp smile; he had a life, too.
    A scuffle erupted in the clearing where Bukke was making his inspection. Pavek was slow to turn^slow to grasp
what had happened. One of the bundles was stuffed with chameleon skins, changeable bits of leather worth their
weight in gold to any sorcerer-and absolutely proscribed in Urik.
    Bukke's father pronounced sentence: the man was executed on the spot-with that arm he'd be no good in the
obsidian pits. The woman and walking children were condemned to sale in the slave market. Bukke seized the squalling
infant by its leg.
    The mother wailed loud enough to wake the dead. She offered her life for the life of her child. A poor bargain that
no one would take: a slave that couldn't walk or feed itself had even less value than a man with only one good arm,
while she was still strong and healthy. Bukke pressed the black edge of his blade against the infant's throat. The
screams subsided into anguished moans. Then another woman broke from the line. She was a dwarf; the infant was
human. She had a single silver coin.
    "Please let it be enough?"
    Bukke hesitated. A templar had the right to kill, but not the right to sell and, anyway, both his hands were fall.
    "Take it, damn you," Pavek shouted. He surged out of the gatehouse, but stopped short of physically
intervening. "We're not butchers."
    That raised a few heads down the line. Some because templars didn't usually quarrel in public; but most because
most nontemplars were convinced that templars had a long way to climb before they could be lumped in with
honorable butchers.
    Bukke released the infant's leg. He had the silver coin, and the dwarven woman had the infant in an eye-blink.
The infant's mother crawled across the sand; she wrapped her arms around Pavek's ankles and called upon the
immortal sorcerer-king to bless him.
    Bukke tightened his grip on the gore-clotted machete. The air in the clearing was too thick to breathe and hot
enough to burn of its own. Pavek gauged Bukke as an opponent, and wondered if he were good enough to take out
the young inspector and his father with a small, metal knife.
    He surely couldn't do anything with a hysterical woman clinging to his feet. He kicked free and went for his knife
beneath the front panel of his robe.
    Then Pavek saw them-it was like a gong striking behind his eyes-beyond Bukke's shoulder. Two men: a dwarf as
old as Joat holding the traces of the cart and an adolescent half-elf, a scowl full of bile and vinegar, typical of his kind.
And a woman...
    A certain man could forget that his life was in danger looking at that woman. A certain man nearly did, but Pavek
caught himself when Bukke's arm moved. The metal-blade knife had found its way into Pavek's hand without his
conscious effort and, thanks-be to his nameless father, he looked like he meant to use it. Bukke lowered his machete.
    "Them," Pavek said, pointing to the threesome. "Inspect them."
    The half-elf, an exotic specimen with coppery hair a few shades darker than his skin, fairly glowed with rage. He
had his walking staff raised for an attack-a coherent well-directed attack, Pavek noted in the back of his mind: someone
had taught this boy stick-work. Still, he would have been cut in two if the woman hadn't gotten her arms around him in
a hurry. She wasn't old enough to be his mother and didn't look to be his sister-though kinship between humans and
half-elves was sometimes hard to catch in a single glance, and that was all Pavek got as the dwarf dragged the cart into
the clearing. Pavek caught the dwarfs eye for less than a heartbeat-long enough to see a wariness that had nothing to
do with surprise or fear.
    He knew who had taught the kid, and he knew he had the right threesome even though