“Thank you, no,” the man said. “Marshal Perin, that’s my name. Evening, rockbrothers.” He spoke in Common, not their tongue, and the two merely nodded. He turned back to Arvid. “You’ve a horse needs stabling, I understand?”

“Yes, if you’ve room. I’ve paid a night’s bait for him here, but since I’m moving, I’d prefer to take him along.”

“No problem. Settled?”

“Oh, yes. My pack’s just here—” Arvid plucked it from the shelf that ran along the wall, and handed the landlord the wooden tag on a thong that proved it his.

By the time they reached the complex of buildings where the former king’s palace had once been, Arvid had told Marshal Perin about the dwarf, the apparent dwarf who was really a gnome.

“Really? He’s not wearing gray, and he’s with a dwarf; I didn’t know they did that.”

“He’s a kteknik,” Arvid said. “A spy. It’s his punishment for something he did in his own tribe—Aldonfulk, he said.”

Marshal Perin scowled. “They punish their people by making them spies?”

“For some crimes, yes. Service to the prince, it’s called. He can’t wear his tribe’s uniform—”

“They’re all just gray, aren’t they?”

Arvid sighed to himself. “Not quite, Marshal. They’re all gray or black, but each princedom has a uniform—it may be the lay of the collar, the buttons, the cuffs—and it is death for a gnome to wear the uniform of another tribe, to which he is not entitled. He cannot wear his own again until his prince decides the information he brings back balances whatever it was he did. The usual thing is for a kteknik to work with a dwarf, because in colored clothes he can pass for a young dwarf.”

“How many of the beardless dwarves we see are ktet-ketick-whatevers?”

“Most to all,” Arvid said. “Didn’t you know that?”

“No, I did not,” Marshal Perin said. “We did not.”

“It’s true,” Arvid said. “Young dwarves do not go out into the world until they have beards, and they grow beards early. Only very rarely will you see a true dwarf lad out with his father, and never in a large city. They’re very protective, dwarves.”

A groom came to take Arvid’s horse. He followed into the stable to see where it was stalled.

“You will be sleeping in the School dormitories,” Marshal Perin said. “You will have your own room, of course. But please do not mingle with the students. They are apt to fall on any guest or traveler and ask questions when they should be studying.”

“School?” Arvid said.

“We’re the training facility for the Knights of Gird, also paladins—though they’re housed separately—and we also have a junior school where Girdish … I suppose I must say nobles, mostly from Tsaia … send boys for whom they cannot find acceptable fosterage. Wealthier Finthans, as well. Most end up as Knights of Gird or Knights of the Bells.”

“Only boys?”

“For the younger ones, yes. For knights’ training and paladin candidates, we have both—as you must know, because of Paksenarrion.” Marshal Perin paused in the great forecourt. “Would you like to see the High Lord’s Hall?”