The Hidden City

few fitful spatters stuttering on the hatch-cover roof. They had more of the ham and beans for breakfast and began to get things ready to pack.
    ‘What do you think?’ Berit asked.
    ‘Let’s make him come to us. Sitting tight until the last of the rain passes wouldn’t be all that unusual.’ Khalad looked speculatively at his friend.
    ‘Would you be offended by a bit of advice, my Lord?’ he asked.
    ‘Of course not.’
    ‘You look like Sparhawk, but you don’t sound very much like him, and your mannerisms aren’t quite right. When the Styric comes, make your face colder and harder. Keep your eyes narrow. Sparhawk squints. You’ll also want to keep your voice low and level. Sparhawk’s voice gets very quiet when he’s angry and he calls people “neighbor” a lot. He can put all sorts of meaning into that one word.’
    ‘That’s right, he does call just about everybody “neighbor”, doesn’t he? I’d almost forgotten that. You’ve got my permission to correct me any time I start to lose my grip on the real Sparhawk, Khalad.’
    ‘Permission?’
    ‘Poor choice of words there, I suppose.’
    ‘You might say that, yes.’
    ‘The climate got a little too warm for us back in Matherion,’ Caalador said, leaning back in his chair. He looked directly at the hard-faced man seated across from him. ‘I’m sure you take my meaning, Order.’
    The hard-faced man laughed. ‘Oh, yes,’ he replied. ‘I’ve left a few places about one jump ahead of the law a time or two myself.’ Order was an Elene from Vardenaise who ran a seedy tavern on the waterfront in Delo. He was a burly ruffian who prospered here because Elene criminals felt comfortable in the familiar surroundings of an Elene tavern and because Order was willing to buy things from them—at about a tenth of their real value—without asking questions.
    ‘What we really need is a new line of work.’ Caalador gestured at Kalten and Bevier, disguised with new faces and rough, mismatched clothing. ‘A fairly high personage in the Ministry of the Interior was in charge of the group of policemen who stopped by to ask us some embarrassing questions.’ He grinned at Bevier, who wore the face of one of his brother Cyrinics, an evil-looking knight who had lost an eye in a skirmish in Render and covered the empty socket with a black patch. ‘My one-eyed friend there didn’t care for the fellow’s attitude, so he lopped his head off with that funny-looking hatchet of his.’
    Order looked at the weapon Bevier had laid on the table beside his ale-tankard. ‘That’s a lochaber axe, isn’t it?’ he asked.
    Bevier grunted. Kalten felt that Bevier’s flair for dramatics was pushing him a little far. The black eye-patch was probably enough, but Bevier’s participation in amateur theatricals as a student made him seem to want to go to extremes. His intent was obviously to appear dangerously competent. What he was achieving, however, was the appearance of a homicidal maniac.
    ‘Doesn’t a lochaber usually have a longer handle?’ Order asked.
    ‘It wouldn’t fit under my tunic,’ Bevier growled, ‘so I sawed a couple of feet off the handle. It works well enough—if you keep chopping with it. The screaming and the blood don’t bother me all that much, so it suits me just fine.’
    Order shuddered and looked slightly sick. ‘That’s the meanest-looking weapon I’ve ever seen,’ he confessed.
    ‘Maybe that’s why I like it so much,’ Bevier told him.
    Order looked at Caalador. ‘What line were you and your friends thinking of taking up, Ezek?’ he asked.
    ‘We thought we might try our hand at highway robbery or something along those lines,’ Caalador said. ‘You know, fresh air, exercise, wholesome food, no policemen in the neighborhood, that sort of thing. We’ve got some fairly substantial prices on our heads, and now that the Emperor’s disbanded Interior, all the policing is being done by the Atans. Did you know that you can’t bribe an Atan?’
    Order nodded glumly. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘It’s shocking.’ He squinted speculatively at ‘Ezek’, who appeared to be a middle-aged Deiran. ‘Why don’t you describe Caalador to me, Ezek? I’m not doubting your word, mind. It’s just that things are a little topsy-turvy right now, what with all the policemen we used to bribe either in jail or dead, so we all have to be careful.’
    ‘No offense taken at all, Order,’ Caalador assured him. ‘I wouldn’t trust a man