made her uncomfortable.
'What do you think?' Markus asked. 'Does it make me look dashing?'
Josey dropped her gaze to the floor. 'Yes, quite dashing.'
Anastasia patted Josey's knee. 'Poor darling. Her father's sending her away, and we've been trying to concoct a scheme to keep her here.'
'Sending you away?' The note of real concern in his voice touched Josey. Perhaps he was as genteel as a knight after all. 'Whatever for?'
Josey folded the loaned handkerchief into a square on her lap. 'He says it isn't safe here in the city anymore. He says people have been assaulted, even killed.'
'How horrible!' Anastasia said. 'Is it true, Markus?'
'Oh, it's not for you to worry about. The Low Towners are forever at each other's throats, like a pack of curs fighting over a bone. That's where most of the attacks have taken place.'
'Most?' Josey asked. 'But not all?'
He brushed at the breast of his uniform, dismissing the idea. 'Some times a matter spills over across the Processional, but it's nothing to trouble you ladies. You're as safe as lambs in their pens.'
Josey wasn't sure she liked his description, but she put on a smile for her friend. 'I hope I can convince Father of that.'
'I have a wonderful idea,' Anastasia said. 'Markus could escort you home and tell your father just what he said to us. I'm sure it will comfort him, coming from an officer of the Sacred Brotherhood.'
'Would you?' Josey asked. She didn't like the idea of riding home with him, but she was willing to make sacrifices if it meant being allowed to stay in Othir.
Markus stood with a shake of his head. 'I'm sorry, but I cannot. I have business to attend this afternoon. I just stopped by to remind Ana of our date for a late supper this evening.'
Anastasia rose to embrace her betrothed. 'I didn't forget. I'm having Maya make something special for us.'
'Excellent.' He bowed to Josey and gave Anastasia a peck on the cheek. 'I shall see you later.'
Josey remained behind as Anastasia walked Markus out. They whispered their good-byes out of eyesight. Several minutes passed before Anastasia returned to the sitting room. Her eyes danced with joy as she plopped down beside Josey.
'Isn't he magnificent? I'm so happy, Josey. I feel like a cloud floating high above the world.'
Josey hugged her friend and murmured the words Anastasia wanted to hear, but she couldn't shake the suspicion that things might not remain so congenial between husband and wife after the wedding day. Markus was polite enough in mixed company, but his cavalier manner didn't suit her friend, who was the picture of a perfect lady, refined and unassuming. Yet Josey kept those fears to herself. Anastasia was clearly smitten, and there was no use spoiling her good feelings. And some part of Josey wondered if she wasn't just the tiniest bit jealous that her friend had found such love while she was still alone, chaste and waiting for the man of her dreams.
Josey listened with half an ear while Anastasia chattered about visits to the seamstress, finding the right orchestra, and all the other minutiae required to plan a wedding. She nodded at the appropriate places and made polite noises, but the greater part of her thoughts were on her own problems. Her ship departed in two days. The matter couldn't wait until she devised an airtight argument. She had to speak with Father tonight.
Ral watched them from the shadow of the Emperor Tronieger monument in the center of Torvelli Square, the strapping officer of the Guard and the young daughter of a respected statesman, as they shared a deep kiss on the front steps of the manse. The prefect's hands slid down to clutch his lady's slender bottom in broad daylight. Ral smiled to himself. The wagging tongues of High Town would wear themselves ragged.
Ral didn't understand the fascination with romance. Oh, he enjoyed the company of women aplenty, the sorts who were attracted to a man of means, and the girl was a pretty slip of a thing, but he didn't have time for anything that outlasted the night. Perhaps after his work was done he would take the time to find a companion, someone suitable for an upcoming man with a bright future.
Finally, Markus bid the girl farewell. Ral followed him, keeping his distance. The prefect, in his scarlet coat, was simplicity itself to shadow through the broad streets of Opuline Hill.
The sights and sounds of High Town did not distract Ral. Growing up, he had sampled every type of excess that wealth could buy. His life might have turned out differently if his father had lived to a ripe old age, but fate had intervened in the form of news off an Arnossi trader bound for Illmyn. Both of his father's ships had disappeared in a storm off the Hvekish coast, lost with all hands. In an instant, he went from a boy to a man of means. He sold his interest in the shipping company and bought a big house. He found new friends in the sons and daughters of the city's finest families, hosted lavish parties that went on for days, and lived the life he'd always wanted. Until the money ran out. Then the loan sharks started circling. He borrowed to keep up his sumptuous lifestyle, and then again when that ran out. By the time he realized the depths to which he had sunk, it was too late.
They found him dead drunk in the back room of a Low Town dive. Five big men with cold eyes propped him on a rickety chair and lashed his hands behind his back.
'Mr. Ayes isn't happy with you,' the biggest of them rumbled. 'You been spending his money like it's piss, and he ain't seen nothing back in more than a fortnight.'
Another thug flashed a long-bladed dirk, so big it was almost a sword. 'Not a smart thing to do, making Mr. Ayes angry. Now we come to collect.'
They cut off his clothes and shook them out, but Ral laughed at them, too drunk to care whether or not they killed him.
The man with the big knife rested the point between Ral's legs and whispered in his ear. 'If you can't pay, friend, then you have to make good some other way.'
They gave him a simple choice: lose his skin or do one small favor for his debtor in exchange for wiping the books clean.
All he had to do was kill a man.
That job changed him forever-the apprehension as he stole into another man's home in the dead of night; the tingling of his skin as he found his quarry abed, oblivious to the doom looming over him; the euphoria that surged through his veins when he drove the knife into that soft belly. His victim's death moan had been a paean of rebirth, setting him free from all the constraints that had been ingrained into him by a society blind to his needs, apathetic to his desires. That night he had stepped into a world where the power over life and death rested in his hands. He had never looked back.
Ral followed Markus through the old Forum with its afternoon strollers out for their constitutional amid the rows of vendor stalls. The shouts of hawkers punctuated the susurrus of the crowd. Markus strode straight ahead like a charging bull, never glancing to his left or right. Complete obliviousness to the city's dangers, great or small- that was the prerogative of being an officer in the Sacred Brotherhood. Markus's stride didn't even slow to the sound of cracking whips.
Ral slipped behind a stack of cloth bundles as a band of men in bloodred robes burst from a merchant's tent. Their scourges split the air as they flung the object of their ire onto the dirty pavestones. The man was dressed in the tattered remains of a fine suit. His round cap rolled in the dust. The Flagellants surrounded him-Ral could now see he was the owner of the stall-and proceeded to beat him without mercy while a scrawny woman, possibly his wife, wrung her hands and sobbed in the tent's doorway. What had been the man's crime? Ral couldn't guess. It could be almost anything, from cheating his customers to failing to display a proper image of the prelate within his establishment. Like the Brotherhood, the Flagellants were a law unto themselves, answerable only to the Church.
Ral skirted the scene. He found his quarry on the other side of the forum and followed him into the Temple District. A few streets farther, Markus entered the Pantheon, a converted pagan temple. While the prefect entered the stolid building through the front via a set of immense bronze doors, Ral went around to a side entrance located in a constricted alley. Avoiding piles of garbage, he wedged the tip of a dagger into the keyhole and snapped the simple lock. The door accessed a crowded storage room. The deep tones of choral singing filtered through another door on the other side of the room. Ral took a moment to rummage through a varnished wardrobe, selected a white cassock, and pulled the garment over his head. A red stole stitched with circles in gold thread went around his shoulders. Smiling, he slipped through another door.
