used as weapons in his desperate quest for freedom. In the tale, the slave Bashan became a desert raider with thirty wives to do his bidding, and a thousand camels.
Then Azad brought out a double-headed flail-
Everyone in the stands, even Cephas, awkwardly crouched on his high-soled clogs, had cheered. Cephas, though, had been cheering for Bashan Reaver, not for Azad.
Now the master of games lifted his hand from the weapon and walked over to another wooden stand. This one swiveled so that the object it held was concealed from view until Azad slowly rotated it toward Cephas. It held the
“Yes, I thought I would read you a story,” said Azad, opening the book. “But which one? Which one could teach the lesson that I mean to impart?” Azad was among the oldest of the Calishites, perhaps even as old as Grinta the Pike, but he was heavily muscled, with the build of a brawler. Still, his thick fingers managed the delicate act of turning pages nimbly.
“And then I realized the time for lessons is past. You have ignored so many, after all. No, now is the time for punishment.”
Cephas tensed, but Shaneerah had not moved from her relaxed stance. In fact, there was a glint of amusement in her eye.
“So now is when I tell you, Cephas,” finished Azad, “that you will never see this book, or hear any of its stories, again.”
Chapter Three
The claims of the elf sages may be disregarded,
as they are born of vanity and fancy.
The dwarves depend on legends, not scholarship.
History is clear. The djinn invented war.
For all his faults, and he was more than willing to admit they were many, the freedman Talid was no fool. He knew what his fellow former slaves thought of him. He knew, too, that the only time he was ever assigned guard duty on the downland bridge was when Azad and Shaneerah judged that there was no threat from that direction. Other than a few hapless wildcat miners scratching in unpromising places, the western mountains were empty.
That suited Talid just fine. He regretted he wouldn’t be able to liberate any whiskey from the kitchens during the night’s matches, but he knew he wouldn’t have to go to the trouble of actually watching the downslope trail, either. Talid usually managed to get a great deal of rest on guard duty.
He was not yet fully asleep when the rumbling sound came from behind him, and a wave of cool, moisture- laden air flowed over the canyon rim. Talid turned just in time to see a boulder that had sat immobile by the trail since the Calishites had arrived, a boulder under which he had been shaded on more than one occasion, fall back to the ground with a heavy thud, as if it had hovered in the air before he turned around.
The bandit quickly forgot any questions about levitating boulders when he spotted the three figures standing before him. Talid had seen dwarves many times, of course. The savage clans on the jungle islands south of Calimport were a favorite source of new talent for the genasi who had owned him. And these mountains were home to their own variety of the squat, muscle-bound little men. Once or twice a year one would show up on the canvas, usually lasting longer than most humans.
But neither the wild-eyed jungle dwarves he’d known in the South nor the quieter ones he’d encountered since Azad had led them north prepared him for the pair that confronted him on the trail. Talid was an expert on arms and armor, so he knew a good word to describe the baroque angles and intricate details, infinitely impractical, of the bejeweled suits of armor these two white-beards wore. That word was “archaic.”
As for the goliath fighter who loomed behind them, his mail shirt and enormous mattock struck Talid as infinitely practical.
The dwarves were a little shorter than Talid, who was not a tall man, but their shoulders were twice the breadth of his. They wore full suits of plate, ridiculous off a military battlefield; certainly no soldier had designed them. The ores that went into their making-unrecognizable to Talid-bore a sheen so high that at first the Calishite thought their golden color reflected the late-afternoon sun. And the jewels!
Cuirass and vambrace, hipguard and gauntlet, every surface that did not bear a spike or serration; all were fitted with a multifaceted ruby, sapphire, or emerald, and with other precious stones Talid didn’t know. They were clear in color, flaming orange, or royal purple, and none of them, no matter their hue, was smaller than the size of Talid’s eyes just then.
But the demeanor the dwarves projected was not martial. Rather, it was haughty, confident, to be sure, and troubled at finding Talid standing there, not because he represented a threat but because he was a bothersome inconvenience. The attitude they wordlessly expressed reminded Talid of nothing so much as the windsouled genasi back in Calimport; he had seen them almost every day of the first five decades of his life, but they almost never saw him at all. Only the memory of that inhuman haughtiness kept him from shaking in fear as the huge warrior reached down and between the dwarves and relieved Talid of his spear.
The dwarf who was not bearing a sword began to speak, but not to Talid, and not in any tongue he was familiar with. This ancient being bent almost double under the weight of the king’s ransom of precious stones woven into his enormous mustache. He leaned on a pair of canes that must have had wood or bone somewhere in their construction, but for all that Talid could tell, were cut straight from a vein of silver.
The armed dwarf, whom Talid judged the younger one, startled the Calishite by speaking in perfectly accented Low Alzhedo, the language the slave classes in the Emirates used among themselves.
“Legate Arnskull offers you a gift, though he must recognize that it is of little value. He offers you your life.”
Talid was a liar and a thief. He was lazy, dishonorable, and, worst of all-in the eyes of the other women and men who’d followed Azad’s promises across a waterless hell-he was weak. But he was not a fool.
“Please convey my thanks to the legate,” he said. “And please tell me what services I may rush to provide.”
The next time Cephas woke in his cell, the woman leaning over him was not Grinta. He fought the urge to scramble back, to hold his arms in front of his face in a defensive position.
The first time he’d ever seen one of the little people the other slaves called halflings, he’d mistaken the man for a human child and paid for the mistake when the man efficiently hamstrung him. Without a word, the man had then disappeared over the edge of the mote, the only slave to ever successfully escape Azad’s clutches.
This woman-the lines beneath her eyes and the scars on her hands would never let anyone mistake her for a child-held a short sword beneath his chin. She gazed down at him with impenetrable brown eyes. He shifted his gaze left and saw that the woman was also standing beside his cell’s grillwork door.
Before Cephas could decide whether he was dreaming or still seeing double from the blow to the head he’d taken on the cliff, the woman by the door flicked her right ring finger in a clear signal. The one standing above him leaned in, putting enough weight into the blade at his throat that Cephas felt his own blood flowing over his skin for the twentieth time in less than a day.
