Chapter two

Of emperors in a thieves tavern

Apart from the too-obvious fact I was in a tavern, I had absolutely no idea where on Kregen I was. Well, that was the usual engaging way of the Star Lords. The Everoinye would drag me off from whatever I happened to be doing and chuck me down somewhere to do their dirty work for them. It was beginning to look as though they were genuinely incapable of doing that work themselves.

Instead of their habitual practice of tossing me in at the deep end to face horrendous perils stark naked, this time I still possessed the scarlet breechclout and the longsword, the belted loincloth and the sailor knife.

Everyone in the tavern must have thought I’d fallen from the balcony along this side of the taproom.

I regained my balance and, rather naturally, the longsword remained in my fist. The blade snouted up and the samphron oil lamps caught and runneled in a golden silver glitter.

An absolute — a deathly — hush fell over the tavern.

No one spoke. No one moved. All that raucous laughter, the screaming of insults, the savage words that must inevitably lead to a fight, all the hullabaloo died as though a giant door had slammed.

They were a rough old lot. Most of them would cross the road to avoid the Watch. There was probably more stolen property about their persons, and no doubt in the landlord’s cellars, than would comfortably fit into a six-krahnik wain. Their faces showed the marks of hard experience, of cunning and skullduggery, of thievery and mayhem. Also, they were not too clean and many were scarred and more than a few one-eyed.

In this company the sudden arrival of a stranger was like to see that foolhardy wight with a second mouth to laugh with, a mouth stretching across his throat.

The immediate action into which I had dropped was pitifully obvious. A young lad was being bullied by a hulking brute and in the next few moments would have had his head knocked in and the purse removed from his belt. If this was the state to which the Star Lords had reduced me, then I was very deep down indeed.

Then I contumed myself for a proud idiot. Any injustice must be fought, and if the injustice close to hand appears pitifully insignificant, it is not, and must be fought as hard as the greatest of injustices. For of the small the great are fashioned.

And still that cutthroat crew stood silent and still, glaring on me as though I was a ghost, an ib broken from the flesh and blood body.

Suddenly, as though flung from a catapult, the lad pushed himself up from where the bully had bent him back over the table. He leaped up and instantly dropped down and went into the full incline, nose in the fi