Dagger Read Online Free PDF Page B

Samlor—
    ?"
    The caravan master nodded curtly to indicate that he would not take offense at what he assumed would be a tense question.
    "I will pay him well for the look," the Napatan said. "It's of no value to him—
    not for the purpose I intend it—
    without other information. It will give me
    the location of a particular tomb, which is significant to me for other reasons."
    The light in Star's hands was growing brighter, throwing the men's shadows onto the wall of the alley. Khamwas' face looked demonically inhuman because it was being illuminated from below.
    Samlor touched his niece's head. "Not so much, dearest," he murmured. "We don't want anybody noticing us here if we can help it."
    "But—
    " Star began shrilly. She looked up and met her uncle's eyes. The light shrank to the size of a large pearl, too dim to show anything but itself.
    "She didn't know how to do that before," said Samlor, as much an explanation to himself as one directed toward the other man. "She picks things up."
    "I see," said Khamwas, and maybe he did. "Well." 26
    David Drake
    He shook himself, to settle his cape and to settle himself in his resolve.
    "Well, Master Samlor," the Napatan continued, "I must be on." He nodded past Samlor toward the head of the alley.
    "Not that way," said the caravan master wryly, though he did not move again to block the other man.
    "Yes, it is," Khamwas replied with a touch of astrin-gence. He stiffened to his full height. The manikin on his shoulder mimicked the posture, perhaps in irony.
    "The direction of Setios' house is precisely—
    " he extended his arm at an angle
    toward Samlor; hesitated with his eyes turned inward; and corrected the line a little further to the right "—
    this way. And this passage is the nearest route to
    the way I need to follow."
    "Do not do a thing you have not first considered carefully," Tjainufi suddenly warned.
    The caravan master began to chuckle. He clapped a hand in a friendly fashion on Khamwas' left shoulder. "Nearest route to having your head stuck on a pole, I'd judge," he said. The Napatan felt as fine-boned as he looked, but there was a decent layer of muscle between the skeleton and the soft fabric of his cape.
    "Look," Samlor continued, "d'ye mean to tell me you don't know where in the city Setios lives, you're just walking through the place in the straightest line your—
    friends, I suppose—
    tell you is the way to Setios? Are these the same
    friends who gave you wisdom?"
    The caravan master nodded toward Tjainufi.
    "I think that's my affair, Master Samlor," said Khamwas. He strode forward, gripping his staff vertically before him. His knuckles were white. The manikin said, " 'What he does insults me,' says the fool when a wise man instructs him."
    Khamwas halted. Samlor looked at the little figure with a frown of new surmise. There was no bad advice—
    only advice that was wrong for a given set of
    circumstances. And, just possibly, Tjainufi's advice was more appropriate than the Cirdonian had guessed.
    "All I meant, friend," Samlor said, touching and then removing his hand from the other man's shoulder, "was that

DAGGER
    27
    maybe there aren't any good districts in Sanctuary—
    but your straight line's sure
    as death taking you through the middle of the worst of what there is." Star had stood up when Khamwas started to walk away. The light which now clung to her left palm had put out tendrils and was fluctuating through a series of pastels paler than the colors of a noontime rainbow. Impulsively, she hugged the Napatan's leg and said, "Isn't it pretty? Oh, thank you!"
    "It's only a—
    little thing," Khamwas explained apologetically to the child's uncle. "It—
    I don't know how she learned it from seeing what I did." Samlor noticed that the staff glowed only when Khamwas could concentrate on it, but that the phosphorescence in Star's hand continued its complex evolutions of shape and color even while his niece was hugging and smiling brightly at the other man.
    The