“Friends! Please, I beg you, peace!” Sir Croy shouted. He wanted to wave his hands in the air to gain the attention of the throng, but of course could not, as his hands were bound. The noose around his neck didn’t help either. The executioner beside him looked confused, uncertain as to whether he should release the trapdoor that would drop Croy to his fate.

Somehow Anselm Vry managed to climb up onto the gallows. The bailiff was the city’s chief administrator and keeper of the peace, answerable only to the Burgrave. Sallow-skinned and lean of features, Vry looked like the kind of man who should spend his whole life with his nose in a book, but Croy had known him once and could see beyond the man’s looks. Vry was an able administrator, a skilled organizer of men and matériel. He was above all a rational man. Croy couldn’t resist beaming at someone whom he had once called his friend. The bailiff whispered in the executioner’s ear, and at once the hooded man jumped down from the gallows and waded into the riot, aiding the watch.

“Anselm!” Croy called. “I knew you wouldn’t let this— Oh.”

Vry had taken up the executioner’s post, his hand on the lever that would release the trapdoor.

“I see,” Croy said. “You’ve come to see me off personally.”

“Indeed,” Vry said, shaking his head in disgust. “I hope you understand this was not my choosing. I pleaded with Tarness not to slay you, in fact.”

“I’m much obliged.”

Vry snorted. “I told him we could simply give you a commission and ship you off to fight barbarians in the eastern mountains. They would have killed you for us. But that wouldn’t have worked, would it? You would have deserted your post and returned here in haste.”

“Defy a commission of duty? Never!”

“Oh? Truly, you would have gone away and never returned?”

Sir Croy was not a man for deep thoughts or meditations on the future. He pondered this for a moment, then smiled. “I would have whipped the barbarians in six months. Then I could have come back here with a clear conscience.”

Vry rubbed at his eyes with one hand. “Croy, please, for once in your life try to be realistic. Whatever quest is driving you this time won’t let you stay away. Yet Tarness cannot allow you inside the city walls. You know things he wishes kept secret. I know you would never betray him, but there’s always the chance someone would get the information out of you—if not by torture, then by wizardry. Banishing you the first time was an act of great mercy on his part, and it will not be repeated.”