The Hidden City

again, you know. Even if you did persuade her to marry you, she’d never be faithful.’ He laid an insincere hand on his arm. ‘Kill her, Father,’ he advised. ‘At least your memory of her will be pure, she never will be.’
    Zalasta howled again and clawed at his beard with his long nails. Then he turned quickly and ran off down the street.
    Krager straightened, and his seeming drunkenness slid away. ‘You took an awful chance there, you know,’ he said in a cautious tone.
    Scarpa looked sharply at him. ‘Very good, Krager,’ he murmmured. ‘You played the part of a drunkard almost to perfection.’
    ‘I’ve had lots of practice,’ Krager shrugged. ‘You’re lucky he didn’t obliterate you, Scarpa—or tie your guts in knots.”
    ‘He couldn’t,’ Scarpa smirked. ‘I’m a fair magician myself, you know, and I’m skilled enough to know that you have to have a clear head to work the spells. I kept him in a state of rage. He couldn’t have worked up enough magic to break a spider-web. Lets hope that he does kill Sephrenia. That should really scatter Sparhawk’s wits, not to mention the fact that as soon as the desire of his life is no more than a pile of dead meat, Zalasta’s very likely to conveniently cut his own throat.’
    ‘You really hate him, don’t you?’
    ‘Wouldn’t you, Krager? He could have taken me with him when I was a child, but he’d come to visit for a while, and he’d show me what it meant to be a Styric, and then he’d go off alone, leaving me behind to be tormented by whores. If he doesn’t have the stomach to cut his own throat, I’d be more than happy to lend him a hand.’ Scarpa’s eyes were very bright, and he was smiling broadly. ‘Where’s your wine barrel, Krager?’ he asked. ‘Right now I feel like getting drunk.’ And he began to laugh, a long insane laugh empty of any mirth or humanity.
    ‘It’s no use!’ Ehlana said, flinging the comb across the room. ‘Look at what they’ve done to my hair!’ She buried her face in her hands and wept.
    ‘It’s not hopeless, my Lady,’ Alcan said in her soft voice. ‘There’s a style they wear in Cammoria.’ She lifted the mass of blonde hair on the right side of Ehlana’s head and brought it over across the top. ‘You see,’ she said. ‘It covers all the bare parts, and it really looks quite chic.’
    Ehlana looked hopefully into her mirror. ‘It doesn’t look too bad, does it?’ she conceded.
    ‘And if we set a flower just behind your right ear, it would really look very stunning.’
    ‘Alcan, you’re wonderful!’ the Queen exclaimed happily. ‘What would I ever do without you?’
    It took them the better part of an hour, but at last the unsightly bare places were covered, and Ehlana felt that some measure of her dignity had been restored.
    That evening, however, Krager came to call. He stood swaying in the doorway, his eyes bleary and a drunken smirk on his face. ‘Harvest-time again, Ehlana,’ he announced, drawing his dagger. ‘It seems that I’ll need just a bit more of your hair.’

Chapter 6
    The sky remained overcast, but as luck had it, it had not yet rained. The stiff wind coming in off the Gulf of Micae was raw, however, and they rode with their cloaks wrapped tightly about them. Despite Khalad’s belief that it was to their advantage to move slowly, Berit was consumed with impatience. He knew that what they were doing was only a small part of the overall strategy, but the confrontation they all knew was coming loomed ahead, and he desperately wanted to get on with it.
    ‘How can you be so patient?’ he asked Khalad about midafternoon one day when the onshore wind was particularly chill and damp.
    ‘I’m a farmer, Sparhawk,’ Khalad replied, scratching at his short black beard. ‘Waiting for things to grow teaches you not to expect changes overnight.’
    ‘I suppose I’ve never really thought about what it must be like just sitting still waiting for things to sprout.’
    ‘There’s not much sitting still when you’re a farmer,’ Khalad told him. ‘There are always more things to do than there are hours in the day, and if you get bored, you can always keep a close watch on the sky. A whole year’s work can be lost in a dry-spell or a sudden hailstorm.’
    ‘I hadn’t thought about that either.’ Berit mulled it over. That’s what makes you so good at predicting the weather, isn’t it? ’
    ‘It helps.’
    ‘There’s more to it than that, though. You