Kosar handed over a coin. “One for yourself,” he said, and he enjoyed the flash of gratitude in the barman’s eyes.

There was a sudden burst of laughter from a corner of the tavern, and Kosar spun around. How can they laugh, he thought, when Trengborne lies dead, massacred? How can they laugh like that? But of course they did not know, nobody knew other than himself and the boy Rafe Baburn. Kosar looked at the group with envy. Three men, three women, comfortable in one another’s company, casual with their affections, their conversation easy and light. If only he had so few concerns, and so many friends.

“I don’t suppose you know A’Meer Pott?” he asked the barman. “She’s a Shantasi, used to come here three years ago.”

“Still does,” the barman said. “In fact, she works for me now and then.”

Kosar frowned, trying not to imagine what that work entailed.

“Don’t worry, thief,” the big man said. “Not that sort of work. I leave that side of things to the Twitching Twat down the road. The Broken Arm is a place to rest the mind, not exercise the body. No, she collects glasses, works the bar, makes food sometimes if there’re those here who’ll buy it.”

“Will she be in today?”

“She should be, come sunfall. Nice one, A’Meer. Very knowledgeable. A real traveler, so she keeps telling us. Though the fact that she’s stayed here so long seems to mar that image a little.”

“She is a real traveler,” Kosar said, smiling at the memory of her telling those stories, the disbelief of people when she openly proved them as true. “But for a Shantasi, a few years is nothing. They live a long time.”

The barman leaned over the bar and motioned Kosar closer. “She once told me,” he whispered conspiratorially, “that she’s been right to the end of The Spine.”

Kosar nodded. “She told me that too.”

The barman frowned and stood back up, picking a jug from a hook to serve another customer. “The Spine has no end,” he said.

“That’s what we’re supposed to believe,” Kosar hefted his jug in a toast and then left the bar, searching for a free table, finding one beneath the wooden staircase that led up to another level of tables above. He sat there alone, looking around, blending in with little effort. He caught a few patrons’ eyes, but there was neither threat nor any real interest in their gaze. Most of them were here to forget old trouble, not make new.