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It was a command, for all that it was phrased so politely; but Madelon gave him her most dazzling smile. “We will be delighted, Guildmaster—and will do it quite gladly, for, to tell truth, we are sore wearied. I thank you for all your great kindness.”

The Master actually blushed. “It is nothing, Lady; I delight in the doing of it. Do you seat yourselves now, and leave all else to me.”

He whirled about, ducked behind a tapestry, and was gone.

Madelon turned to Dirk, glowing. “You were magnificent, sir! You knew just what to say!” But in this case, Dirk didn’t.

CHAPTER 5

In the heat and bustle of the noonday crowd, no one took any particular notice of another brown-robed monk with a butcher’s apprentice at his elbow.

“Not far now,” the apprentice muttered. “We’ll be at the beginning of the downgrade in a moment. The arena lies below us.”

Dirk peered out of the brown wool hood. “I’ll be glad to get there, strange as that may sound. This sack itches like an army of fleas.”

They came to the rim of the hill, and Dirk stopped, appraising the stadium with an eye to a quick escape route.

Offhand, he didn’t see any. He looked through an iron-barred door in a ten-foot cellucrete wall, and stared down—a long way down. The Lords had been thrifty; they’d built their local coliseum in a natural bowl between the hilltop that held the town and the higher hill that held the King’s castle. Tier upon tier of seats fell away in a beige giant’s staircase, to a circle of white sand a hundred yards across and twenty feet down from the innermost tier of seats. That wall—and the whole stadium for that matter—was cellucrete: an unholy molecular alliance between cellulose and silicon, tough as armor, hard as tool steel, and slick as glass. A grappling hook might get a purchase on granite, but not on this stuff. Once a man was down in the circle of sand, he was there to stay. Oh, there were doors in its walls—a set that led to the Cages, and another set that led to freedom—but only the Lords passed through those last.

“No churl has ever escaped from there,” his guide informed him.

“Pleasant thought, isn’t it?” Dirk turned away. “Well, I always did want to set a precedent. Shall we go?”

They wound their way down to the bottom of the hill, where the street opened out into a cobble-stoned plaza before a huge iron door in the cellucrete wall. It was for wholesale transactions; it could be cranked up to admit a whole cartload of convicts, and often was. For the retail trade, there was a smaller, hinged door set into it.

The butcher’s apprentice ambled up to it, and on by, leaving Dirk standing by it in contemplation, like a moraine deposited by a glacier.

The ice, at the moment, was in Dirk’s feet. He folded his arms to keep his hands from trembling and propped his chin on his chest, reflecting that it was one thing to contemplate a damn-fool risk, but another to take it. But—the die was cast, and Dirk should’ve had his head thumped.

He glanced up at the sun just about high noon. Something was supposed to happen about now. Just what, the Guildmaster hadn’t informed him—but something, any minute …

Suddenly, through the small iron gate in the door, he heard a melee of bellowing, screaming, and the clash of steel. Then the lock growled, the door slammed open, and a brawny arm shot out to yank Dirk inside. The door crashed shut behind him—not that Dirk could hear; the fight was much louder in here.

He found himself facing a Soldier tastefully attired in crossed leather belts and breechcloth. Without a word, he yanked Dirk’s robe off, almost taking his arms with it. Dirk had to grind his teeth against pain—and to keep them from chattering; it was cold in here! After all, all he was wearing was a breechcloth, himself!

The guard grabbed him by the shoulder and hustled him away, shot a key into a lock, slammed open a door, and shoved him through. The door boomed shut behind him, and Dirk was in.

He immediately wished he wasn’t. By wavering torchlight, he saw a near-naked crowd of yowling devils battering at a wall of bars. Shrill whistle blasts answered them, and spears started poking through the bars. Strangely, each man seemed to step just a little aside a split-second before the barbed head came through.

Then—suddenly—the howling slackened, groaned, and ground to a halt, like a record shutoff halfway through. The prisoners turned away, shuffling toward Dirk, muttering. On the far side of the bars, the guards relaxed and strolled away, growling to one another.

“What made ‘em go like that?”

“Happens all the time …”

Dirk’s ears pricked up. “Happens all the time?” What illicit operations were the prisoners covering up?

Then he saw the earthenware bowls they were all shuffling back toward, saw the thin gruel they contained, and understood. Not covering up anything. Just a food riot.

The prisoners were sitting down on the filthstrewn floor and taking up their bowls. Dirk’s gaze zeroed in on the huge bulk of one man still standing—Gar! Dirk started toward him.

The steel door crashed open, and a monolithic guard strolled in, absentmindedly flicking a bullwhip. “All right, you hoghounds! You hate your grub so much, we won’t make you eat it! Line up and file out—we’ll start the afternoon session a little bit early.”

The prisoners bellowed profanity with one voice and rose up, arms swinging back with bowls poised.

The bullwhip cracked like a gunshot, building echoes into a cannonade.

When the echoes faded, the prisoners were standing slack, facing the guard.

“You’ll all be dead in less than a week. What difference does it make if you go a little early?” The bullwhip twitched.

The prisoners were silent, eyes glued to the flicking tip.

The guard nodded, satisfied., “All right, then. Line up.”

They put their bowls down and queued up in a silent, dispirited line. Gar waited till the others had shuffled into position, then tailed onto the end of the line.

He would, Dirk thought. He couldn’t have said why, but it seemed in keeping with Gar’s character.

Dirk moved out of the shadows and slid up behind Gar. He reached up and tapped the giant’s shoulder. Gar turned around with a slight smile of polite amusement—and froze, staring down in disbelief.

Dirk had to press his lips tight to squelch a laugh. It felt good to be one up on the big guy for a change.

Gar recovered, and smoothed the urbane smile back on. “Delightful. I trust you’ll explain how you managed it?”

Dirk frowned. “Managed what?”

“Being so nimble. You must remember that, when I saw you last, you were scarcely in any condition to be walking about. In fact, if I remember it rightly, you weren’t even in condition to breathe.”

“Oh.” Dirk pursed his lips. “Well, I don’t know. Matter of fact, I was hoping you could tell me.”

He saw the flicker in Gar’s eyes and knew he’d struck pay dirt. But then why the look of shock when Gar saw him?

Acting, of course—and not a bad job, either. But why? What was the big guy trying to hide? “How did you manage my ‘death’?” Dirk murmured.

“I?” Gar’s eyebrows shot up in mock horror. “My dear fellow, how could I have had anything to do with it?”

“I was hoping you’d explain that.”

Gar frowned, but just then they came up to the door, and he had to cut off the conversation to turn and file through. Dirk stepped through right behind him; and a pair of boxing gloves slapped him in the midriff. His belly sucked in with the slap, and he looked up into the eyes of the guard who had let him in. There was a grim warning in the man’s eyes. Dirk straightened up and shuffled ahead.