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boast, of those found in the Temple of Exorietta. The place was invariably crowded, filled with shadowy, sometimes dangerous men, but the wine and hashish were just expensive enough to prevent those who could not afford to bathe from rubbing shoulders with those who could.
    Until coming to the Holy Leper, Achamian had never liked the Ainoni—especially those from Carythusal. Like most in the Three Seas, he thought them vain and effeminate: too much oil in their beards, too fond of irony and cosmetics, too reckless in their sexual habits. But this estimation had changed after the endless hours he’d spent waiting for Geshrunni to arrive. The subtlety of character and taste that afflicted only the highest castes of other nations, he realized, was a rampant fever among these people, infecting even low-caste freemen and slaves. He had always thought High Ainon a nation of libertines and petty conspirators; that this made them a nation of kindred spirits was something he never had imagined.
    Perhaps this was why he failed to immediately recognize his peril when Geshrunni said, “I know you.”
    Dark even in the lamplight, Geshrunni lowered his arms, which had been folded across his white silk vest, and leaned forward in his seat. He was an imposing figure, possessing a hawkish soldier’s face, a beard pleated into what looked like black leather straps, and thick arms so deeply tanned that one could see, but never quite decipher, the line of Ainoni pictograms tattooed from shoulder to wrist.
    Achamian tried to grin affably. “You and my wives,” he said, tossing back yet another bowl of wine. He gasped and smacked his lips. Geshrunni had always been, or so Achamian had assumed, a narrow man, one for whom the grooves of thought and word were few and deep. Most warriors were such, particularly when they were slaves.
    But there had been nothing narrow about his claim.
    Geshrunni watched him carefully, the suspicion in his eyes rounded by a faint wonder. He shook his head in disgust. “I should’ve said, ‘I know who you are.’”
    The man leaned back in a contemplative way so foreign to a soldier’s manner that Achamian’s skin pimpled with dread. The rumbling tavern receded, became a frame of shadowy figures and points of golden lantern-light.
    “Then write it down,” Achamian replied, as though growing bored, “and give it to me when I’m sober.” He looked away, as bored men often do, and noted that the entrance to the tavern was empty.
    “I know you have no wives.”
    “You don’t say. And how’s that?” Achamian glanced quickly behind him, glimpsed a whore laughing as she pressed a shiny silver ensolarii onto her sweaty breasts. The vulgar crowd about her roared, “One!”
    “She’s quite good at that, you know. She uses honey.”
    Geshrunni was not distracted. “Your kind aren’t allowed to have wives.”
    “My kind, eh? And just what is my kind?” Another glance at the entrance.
    “You’re a sorcerer. A Schoolman.”
    Achamian laughed, knowing his momentary hesitation had betrayed him. But there was motive enough to continue this pantomime. At the very least, it might buy him several more moments. Time to stay alive.
    “By the Latter-fucking-Prophet, my friend,” Achamian cried, glancing once again at the entrance, “I swear I could measure your accusations by the bowl. What was it you accused me of being last night? A whoreson?”
    Amid chortling voices, a thunderous shout: “Two!”
    The fact that Geshrunni grimaced told Achamian little—the man’s every expression seemed some version of a grimace, particularly his smile. The hand that flashed out and clamped his wrist, however, told Achamian all he needed to know.
    I’m doomed. They know.
    Few things were more terrifying than “they,” especially in Carythusal. “They” were the Scarlet Spires, the most powerful School in the Three Seas, and the hidden masters of High Ainon. Geshrunni was a Captain of the Javreh, the warrior-slaves of