gentlemen and well-bred, high-minded Merrickartian ladies. Please allow me to show you that I have learned my lesson and that there are no hard feelings.’”
“You didn’t,” Pryce said.
“I did,” Gamor replied. “I marched right up to the bar and said, ‘A round for my friends and a round for the house. The apprentices of the great magician Petarius want to show the realm what a fine, talented, altruistic, charitable man their master is!’”
Pryce started to laugh. “Why didn’t you just tell the bartender they would pay and then wave to them so they’d wave back?”
“They might have known about that trick!” Gamor exclaimed. ‘Think about it. What could they do? Cry out ‘Oh, no’ so that every laggard in town would hear them insult their own master? Besides, this way they won’t have time to dally with the treacherous, teasing twins… not with the lowest life this side of the Nath pounding them on the back every other moment. Now let’s get out of here before they’re able to make their way through all those drunken thank-yous and restraining hands!”
Then off the two ran… into the mists of Pryce’s memory. Covington allowed them to disappear into the distance of his mind’s eye, then reluctantly permitted his concentration to return to the unfortunate matter at hand. He slowed, then stopped on the thick green, grassy incline outside the city wall.
Pryce turned as the first rumble of thunder rolled across the sky. In a crack of lightning, he saw his associate, Gamor Turkal, swinging from the end of a long, wet, tightly knotted rope, his boots six feet off the ground.
Curse this rain, Pryce thought. It made vision very difficult. For the second time that afternoon, he wiped beads of water from around his eyes. Some cunning thief he was! He couldn’t get twenty paces without letting his emotions get the better of him. Gamor may have been a womanizing, self-important rascal, but he had also been a predictable business associate and sometimes even a friend.
Turkal’s present position, however, had become too much for Pryce to bear. So Covington undertook an even worse transgression than stealing a cloak and leaving an apparent crime scene. He set about altering that crime scene.
Pryce couldn’t just leave his ex-partner swinging at the end of a knotted rope. Ignoring the storm, Covington shimmied up the tree to lay his old pal, Gamor Turkal, to rest.
CHAPTER TWO
The sudden, violent storm had ended by the time Pryce Covington reached the end of the long line of people waiting outside the Lallor Gate. He stood on the opposite side of the road, surveying the setup.
The line outside the gate was actually two lines: one very short, along a beautifully paved rock roadway; and one very long, in a muddy pathway that looked more like a narrow ditch, created by decades of hopeful immigrants desperate for an opportunity to prove their worth to the founding fathers of this bay-side retreat.
The two roads ran parallel, nestled between a cunningly constructed landscape, obviously designed for both beauty and security. Although greenery and foliage were much in evidence, the plants were trimmed low, so no lines of sight were obscured. Only narrow blooms and shrubbery were planted, so there were no real hiding places for any thief or attacker to use as cover.
Standing amid the carefully tended plants and flowers, Pryce considered the two roads that led to the Lallor Gate. He saw that the paved road was similar to the wall that surrounded the city, in that it seemed to be constructed of interlocking stones, only these were a good deal smaller and more jewel-like than those used in the wall. Perhaps Gamor hadn’t been exaggerating when he called Lallor the jewel of Halruaa!
No, Pryce thought, it couldn’t be. These couldn’t be dull, uncut gemstones! If they were, the magic protecting them must have been prodigious. Besides, why tempt every thief from the seaport of Githim in the south to the Bandit Wastes hundreds of miles to the north? Even if they weren’t actual jewels, it was an impressive entry path for those wealthy or powerful enough to use it.
Pryce’s eyes narrowed as he looked up at the wall, then down the divided road to the Lallor Gate. Even from this distance, the gate was obviously a magnificent construction. The woodworking was exquisite and seemed to shine in places, as if the logs were mortared with silver and gold. Pryce’s eyes narrowed even more as he tried to make out a subtle design amongst the interweaving vines and bark.
Suddenly, incredibly, a large eye opened at the very top of the gate. It had to be twenty feet across, stretching from one side of the gate opening to the other. The pupil was as black as darkest night, the white as milky as the stars in the sky. But between the two was an oval that changed color from brown to blue to green in rapid succession.
At first Pryce Covington thought the giant eye was looking straight through him, but soon he realized that it was following the progress of a newcomer who had been granted entry to the city. It watched carefully as the man slowly hurried… that is, the man was clearly in a hurry to make his way inside Lallor, but careful not to show the witnessing eye any disrespect. He was actually hurrying slowly.
Pryce made a face like a frog, his lips stretching as far down as they could go on either side. Then his mouth bounced back to its natural mildly pleasant expression, and he made his way nonchalantly across the gemstone road to the line of refugees. He trudged to take up his position behind the last person in line, careful not to jostle or disturb him.
After all, suspicion of outsiders was commonplace in Halruaa. It was a rich nation and quite exclusive. Having faced invasions on a regular basis from jealous outsiders, Halruans had become cautious by nature. Pryce appreciated this and tried to be as considerate as his ego would let him. Cautiously avoiding puddles, he waited at the very end of the long line, deciding that the wait was probably a good thing. It would give him time to figure out what he was going to do.
More of his father’s words reached him through the murk of his memory. “Every day is another play,” he recalled with remarkable clarity. “Think of your life as a comedy-drama with you as the hero. Prepare yourself for every eventuality as if your god were a master playwright. Then comport yourself as you would want your hero to behave. Be the star of your own life!” For an abandoning scoundrel who had left him next to nothing, Pryce’s father had managed to tell his only son a lot of useful things.
Pryce shrugged off the memory. He had two dead bodies to worry about, which had complicated his life more than anything he had previously experienced. Even so, he decided that he had come too far to stop now. After all, he had already torn up his Merrickartian roots to travel hundreds of miles down the Nath, past Lake Maeru, over the River Maeru, to the dangerous Lallor Pass. It was a tiny strip of serviceable land wedged between the undead- riddled ruins of the Zalasuu-Assundath Swamp, the monster-infested mountains of the Zhal Strip, and the bandit- filled desert of the Lower Swagdar outlaw wastes.
Even if he had wanted to return after experiencing the rendezvous-gone-wrong, he wasn’t going to tempt fate twice by trying his luck in the pass again. No, better to wait and take his chances in Lallor. The question now was to tell or not to tell? The odds favored the fact that Gamor was already well established within these walls. How else could he have acquired the magic necessary to contact Pryce with a talking face of dust? Why else would he have promised Pryce a cushy job for life? Besides, the owner of the cloak Pryce now wore was probably a quite successful individual, if his subtle yet impressive garments were any evidence.
Maybe Pryce wouldn’t have to risk revealing the fates of his former partner and his unknown companion. Maybe someone inside the city would report them missing. That made good sense, given what he knew about Lallor. The Lallor inquisitrixes prided themselves on their security. Only the finest law-enforcing inquisitrixes could work in Lallor, and that was only after many years of service and extensive biyearly tests. Naturally they would want to secure their jobs by being as efficient as humanly possible. That meant letting no missing person remain missing for long.
A search would eventually have to turn up the bodies, and then Covington could take his chances with any clues he might have left at the Mark of the Question. He would have hidden the cloak long before then… or at least have changed the impressive clasp!
Pryce noticed that the man waiting in line in front of him had turned in Covington’s direction. Pryce suddenly
