Nobody argued. When things get tight the guys do become less fractious.

I descended the stairway to the street.

25

I played the game the way I thought the Nyueng Bao would want. Ever since childhood I have suspected you get along better if you respect people’s ways and wishes regardless of your apparent relative strengths.

That doesn’t mean you let people walk on you. It doesn’t mean you eat their pain for them. You need to demand respect for yourself, too.

Dejagore’s byways are close and fetid. Typical of a fortified city. I went to an obscure intersection where under normal circumstances I could expect to be seen by Nyueng Bao watchers. They are a cautious people. They watch all the time. I announced, “I would see the Speaker. Harm is headed his way. I would have him know what I know.”

I didn’t see anybody. I didn’t hear anybody. I expected nothing else. Someone who strolled into my territory would see and hear nothing, either, but death would be nearby.

The only sounds came from fighting several blocks away.

I waited.

Suddenly, in that instant when my attention finally wandered, Ky Dam’s son materialized. He made no more noise than a tiptoeing moth. He was a wide, short man of indeterminate age. He carried an unusually long sword but it remained sheathed across his back. He stared at me hard. I stared back. It cost me nothing. He grunted, indicated that I should follow. We walked no more than eighty yards. He indicated a doorway. “Keep smiling,” I told him. I couldn’t resist. He was always around somewhere, watching. I never saw him smile. I pushed the door inward.

Curtains hung two feet inside. Very weak light slipped through a rent. I closed the door carefully once I understood that I would be entering alone, before I parted the curtains. Wouldn’t do to let light splash into the street.

The place turned out to be about as pleasant as you can get in a city.

The Speaker sat on a mat on a dirty floor near the one candle offering light. There were about a dozen people visible, of all ages and sexes. I saw four children, all small, six adults of an age to be their parents, and one old woman of granny age who glowered like she had a special bunk in Hell reserved for me even though she’d never seen me before. I saw nobody who could pass as her husband. Maybe he was the guy outside. Then there was a woman as old as Ky Dam, a fragile flower time-diminished to little more than skin-covered sticks, though an agile intelligence still burned in her eyes. You would get nothing past this woman.

Of material things I saw little but the clothing the people wore, a few ragged blankets, a couple of clay cups and a pot maybe used for cooking. And more swords nearly as long and fine as that carried by the Speaker’s son.