“Do you give up?” Nahala asked.
“King’s palm,” the boy said. Then, “Name’s Sliv.”
“Nahal.”
“Where you goin’ with that bag?”
“To the beach to gather pebbles. Wanna come along?”
“I guess.”
Which was how Nahala and Sliv became friends of a sort. Not close ones, however, but wary allies.
When Olav returned to their room after a prolonged bout of wenching, Nahala had arranged two handfuls of pebbles in neat rows on the table that, along with a pair of simple but sturdy chairs, were the result of an extra coin’s rent a month. When Olav saw them, he said, “What’s this?”
“Pretend each pebble is a drachm. This is how many you had on our first day in Kheshem.” Nahala swept four back into the bag. “The feast.” Another two. “The baths.” Six. “The room.” One. “A week’s feed and stable for Bastard.” Two more. “A woman. Wine. Wine. Wine. Another woman.” Item by item, the pebbles dwindled, until there were but fourteen. “This is how much remains.”
“I could have told you that by looking in my pouch.” Amused, Olav slid three more pebbles away. “You forgot tonight’s woman. I gave her an extra coin because she . . . Well, anyway, now there are only eleven.”
“Rent comes due in three days, both for us and the stable. Plus, we have no food. Nor any work. The old men who sit by the docks and watch the boats say that only smugglers will be risking their ships until the Sea Lords and the Khesh make peace, and smugglers trust no one they’re not related to.” She swept the last pebbles into the bag. “It’s time we left Kheshem.”
Olav rubbed his beard. “Yes, well, about that . . . I have been having dreams these past few weeks—nightmares—I’m sure you’ve noticed. There is something coming for me out of the desert. Something powerful. Something no man wishes to face. It cannot enter the city—too many wizards here, too much power. But if I leave, it will find me. So I must stay. It seems that I have no choice but to resume my career as cutpurse.”
At which exact instant, the darkness to one side of the room swirled, lofted upward, spread outward, and gave birth to twin pinpricks of light—a pair of eyes, both hard and unblinking. Stepping out of the shadows, a man in wizard’s black robes, with a ruby talisman hung on a chain about his neck, said, “That would be unwise.”
Nahala shrieked and fell back against the bed. Olav grabbed at his side for the sword he had removed upon entering the room.
The wizard held up his hand. “Let me tell you what will happen if you do. As you are cutting purse strings, an incense vendor will happen to glance your way. Her shout will begin a hue and cry and though you bolt and fight like a demon, you will be run down and overwhelmed. I have just returned from your execution, a week from now. First you were flogged. Then your arms were broken. Then your abdomen was sliced open and, seizing your intestines—”
“Stop! I have seen enough executions to know what happens.” A shrewd look came over Olav’s face, though to Nahala’s eyes it looked feigned. “But why should I believe your wild story of seeing things that have not yet happened?”
“Tell me this. How did I learn the exact moment you decided to try your hand at thievery again? By bribing the guards to let me interview you while you awaited execution and then walking back in time to your room just now. But I will give you stronger proof than that.” The wizard put one hand on Olav’s shoulder and with the other clutched his amulet.
They disappeared.
They reappeared.
The magician was unchanged. But Olav’s face was ashen and his eyes were wide with horror. He seized a chair with one blind hand and crashed down onto it. “Wine!” he gasped. “There should be some left in the jar by the door.”
While Nahala poured, the wizard spoke: “You killed eight men, trying to make your escape. Two of them were of the Harbor Guard and heavily armed.”
“I . . . have no memory of that.” Olav drank deeply. Then, looking thoughtful, “Still, I regret it. A man will do evil things in the heat of passion. But I could wish to have killed fewer.”
“All the deaths have been unmade, as has your execution.” The wizard gestured and coins rained down upon the table. “They call me Ushted the Uncanny. I have decided that a more decorous title would be Ushted the Protector. But to achieve that honorific, I need a servant whom I know can kill.”
“He acts like a great wizard,” Sliv said when Nahala saw him next. “But he’s not. Most towns have two or three wizards. Kheshem has dozens and every one of them is better at it than Ushted. If it weren’t for that time-walking stunt of his, he’d be in a small village somewhere selling poisons, love potions, and balms to cure warts.” Sliv had wanted to spend the day spying on the blood huts at the edge of town, where menstruating women went to spin and exchange gossip until their bodies were clean again. Somehow he’d conceived the notion that they did so naked. But Nahala had distracted him with the idea of instead exercising Bastard by taking turns riding him as he swam in the otherwise idle harbor. Now they sat dangling their feet from a dock, talking.
As an afterthought, Sliv added, “The balm for warts is a good one, though. I’ve used it myself.”
“How do you know so much about Ushted?” Nahala asked.
“I’m his apprentice. Any other wizard, I’d be set for life. But none of them will take me. I’ve made the rounds and asked.” Sliv spat into the water. “Someday, when I’m grown, I’ll cut his throat, chop up his body, and take his amulet. Then everything he owns will be mine.”
Nahala wondered, not for the first time, why boys’ fantasies were always so violent. But she said only, “Be sure to do it in such a way that no suspicion falls upon you.”
Sliv looked at her in surprise, as if his pronouncements had never before been taken seriously—which, she realized, was probably true. Then he said, “If they come after me, I’ll just go back to before they do and run away.”
Olav, meanwhile, was finding his new life as the wizard’s hireling an undemanding one, though it did nothing to assuage his nightmares. At first, he was occasionally summoned, in the twilight hours, to wait motionless in an alleyway off a courtyard for bravos to set upon a wealthy citizen hurrying to get home before nightfall. At which, he would leap out with fierce cries, chasing off most of the assailants and cutting down any who loitered. The victim was always happy to send Ushted the Protector a lavish gift in gratitude for saving his life.
Later, however, as the number of assailants, never great to begin with, dwindled and those who remained grew warier, the game darkened. Olav would be sent to a rich man’s mansion to smash in its door and murder its master. Always, just as he was arriving at his target’s domicile, Sliv would come running with the news that the man had been shown his own death and agreed to pay generously for it not to happen.
In this manner, for a season, Olav prospered and his benefactor even more. Twice Ushted moved his alembic-filled elaboratory uphill to larger and more splendid quarters. Olav stayed where he was, but frequented a better class of courtesans. All those deaths, both the permanent ones and those that were unmade, seemed to weigh increasingly heavily on him. But he never spoke of them, nor did Nahala ask.