Samlor's breath wheezed out. He had thought-
"Well, Star," said the Napatan scholar, "I might be able to keep the wraith from moving for a time, long enough for us to get past the… zone of which it's a part. 1 might. But I think we'd best not go in by this door until Setios permits us to pass."
The two of them smiled knowingly at one another.
Samlor restrained his impulse to do something pointlessly violent. He looked at the blade of his knife instead of glaring at his companions and began in a very reasonable tone, "In that case, we'd best get some sleep and-"
"Actually," said Khamwas, not so much interrupting as speaking without being aware that Samlor was in the middle of a statement, "neither of us have business with Setios himself, only with items in his possession. I wonder…"
"I want my gift now," said Star, her face set in the slanting lines of temper. Either she tossed her head slightly, or the whorl of white strands in her curly black hair moved on its own.
Go in now read the iron letters on the blade at which Samlor stared in anger. There was too little light for the markings to be visible, but he saw them nonetheless.
"Heqt take you all to the waters beneath the earth!" shouted the Cirdonian in fury. He slashed the air with his dagger as if to wipe away the message crawling there in the metal. "I'm not a burglar, and coming to this damned city doesn't make me one."
"When you are hungry, eat what you despise," said the manikin on Khamwas' shoulder. "When you are full, despise it."
"Anyway," said Star, "it's going to rain, Uncle Samlor." She looked smug at the unanswerable truth of her latest argument.
The caravan master began to laugh.
Khamwas blinked, as frightened by the apparent humor as he had been by the anger that preceded it. Emotional outbursts by a man as dangerous as the caravan master were like creakings from the dike holding back flood waters.
"Well," the Napatan said cautiously. "I suppose the situation may change for the better by daylight. Though of course neither of us were considering theft. I want to look at a slab of engraved stone, and you simply wish to retrieve
your niece's legacy from its caretaker-who seems to be absent."
"We don't know what it is," said Star. "My gift."
"Ah," said Khamwas, speaking to the girl but with an eye cocked toward her uncle. "That shouldn't be an insurmountable problem. If we're inside-" he nodded toward the door " – and the object is there also, I should be able to locate it for you."
"Will you show me how?" Star begged, clasping her hands together in a mixture of pleading and premature delight.
"Ah. .," repeated the Napatan scholar. "I think that depends on what your uncle says, my dear."
"Her uncle says that we're not inside yet," Samlor stated without particular emphasis. "And he'll see about getting there."
Without speaking further to his companions, the Cirdonian walked to the corner of the building.
The sidewall of Setios' house was not common to the building beside it. Each was a self-standing structure set back a foot from the property line between them. That air space provided insulation in event of a fire and prevented the occupants of one house from invading their neighbors after tunneling at leisure through a common wall.
In Sanctuary, the second was apt to be a greater threat than the first.
There were no ground-floor windows in the sidewall, but the second story was ventilated by barred openings. Samlor stepped through the gap, too narrow to be called an alley anywhere but in the Maze. He ignored his companions, though they followed him gingerly in lieu of any other directions.
The vertical bars of the window above him were thumb-thick and set with scarcely more room between them. Star might have been able to reach through one of the spaces, but the caravan master was quite certain that his own big hands would not fit.
"Are there going to be things like that door-monkey waiting by the windows?" Samlor asked the other man
quietly. He nodded upward to indicate the opening he had studied.
Khamwas shrugged in darkness relieved only by the strip of clouded sky above them. "I would expect human servants if anything," he said. "They're-more trustworthy, in many ways. And from what I've gathered, Setios is a collector the way I'm a scholar. Neither of us, you understand, are magicians of real power."
He paused and tucked his lip under his front teeth in doubt, then added, "The way your niece here appears to be, Master Samlor."
"Yeah," said the caravan master without emotion. His left hand tousled Star's hair gently, but he did not look down at the child. "And he collected a demon in a bottle, among other things."
Samlor grimaced, then went on. "Let's get out t' the, street again. You wait, and I'll go talk to the fellow across the way there."
CHAPTER 5
WITH HIS COMPANIONS shuffling ahead because the passageway was too strait to let him by, Samlor returned to the front of the house. The two adjacent buildings, Setios' and the one beside it, were of similar construction, but they felt radically different to the Cirdonian as he stood between them. Neither showed signs of life or activity at the moment, but a hand on the other building's stonework transmitted hints of movement. Something was alive there.
But not in Setios' house.
"If he thinks," said the caravan master in a conversational tone, "that he can skip to avoid paying over Star's legacy, then that's something we'll discuss when I find the gentleman.
"Which I will."
Samlor shrugged, settling his cloak and disengaging his mind from a doubtful future. There was the present to deal with, and that was quite enough.
"Ah, Samlor. .?" Khamwas said.
"Just wait here," the Cirdonian repeated. "I'm going across the street to talk with the watchman there." He nodded toward the guard shack on the construction site opposite.
"Yes, of course," Khamwas said with enough disinterest to hint at irritation. "But what I wanted to say was-Setios, you see, may not be avoiding you. There's been a recent upheaval in the structure of, you see-magic. He may have been frightened and fled from that."
The Napatan grinned. "He'll have left behind the stele 1 want to read, surely. Probably his whole collection, if that fear is why he left. And, as for this child's legacy-" he touched Star's cheek affectionately " – if we don't find it here, I'll help you locate it. Because you've helped me. And because I am honored to help someone as talented as your niece."
"The plans of god are one thing," said the manikin on his shoulder. "The thoughts of men are another."
"Yeah, well," said the caravan master as he slipped the dagger back under his belt. It was the least obtrusive way to carry the weapon until he got a proper sheath. "Best get on with it unless we want t' grow roots down into the pavement."
He strode across the street with a swaggering assurance which immediately set him apart in a city where lone men habitually slunk. The watchman edged back from his window so that his eyes no longer reflected light.
"Ho, friend," Samlor called a half step back from the high iron fence. He spoke loudly enough for the watchman to hear him without difficulty; but he didn't want to arouse the entire street. There was a lot he had yet to do around here, and the last thing he needed was for somebody to start hammering on an alarm gong.
"Git yer butt away er I'll stitch ye right through the middle wi' me crossbow!" crackled a terrified voice from within the guard shack.
The air was dead still now, under heavy clouds, and noticeably warmer than it had been during the early evening. Samlor shivered, though the concern did not show on his face.
It wasn't likely the watchman had a crossbow; that was an expensive piece of equipment and not at all suited to the job for which he had been hired.
Besides, if the nervous bastard had a missile weapon chances were he'd've cut loose at the caravan master as he crossed the street. There were a lot of people who hadn't any business being armed. Through some sort of cosmic balancing of accounts, they tended to be the folks who most wanted enough hardware to equip an assault company.