Keshad sheathed his sword and slung the sword belt over his back. He eased into the courtyard and padded cautiously to the doubled wall that funneled traffic to the double gates, locked and barred for the night. Indeed, they had been locked and barred for eight days, since the night when trumpets and horns had disturbed the peace and all the markets had been closed. He counted eight figures huddled by the gates, muttering to each other as one of their number lit a lamp and raised it.

By its light, the other merchants recognized him.

“Is that you, Master Keshad? Maybe you can get these cursed guards to talk to you, since they favor you so much.”

The other Hundred merchants didn’t like him any better than he liked them. They thought him a traitor for abandoning the gods of his birth for the empire’s god, but what did it matter to them what god he chose to worship or what benefit that worship brought him? There were a pair of outlanders as well, a man out of the Mariha princedoms and one from the western desert who had slaves languishing in the slave pens he hadn’t seen for days. For that matter, the drivers and guardsmen he and Eliar had hired in Olossi were confined in a different housing establishment altogether, and he’d had no contact with them since the citywide curfew was imposed.

He rang the bell at the guardhouse. A guard in one of the watch platforms above turned to look down into the forecourt at them, then twisted back to his survey of the streets and the turbulent city. Within moments, bars scraped and locks rattled. The door scraped open and the sergeant pushed into the forecourt, a pair of armed guards at his back and another guard holding high a lamp.

“Get inside your cells!”

“What is happening? We heard the commotion—”

“Get inside!”

His angry words drove them back into the main courtyard, all but Keshad, who held his ground. “Honored one, may I ask if we are in any danger here? How can we protect ourselves against these alarms?”

“Get inside,” said the sergeant, but less gruffly now that he only faced one man. “I know nothing. Men have broken curfew. That is bad. Best you get inside until the storm passes.”

The storm roared closer. A burst of running feet in a nearby street was followed by a chorus of shouts so loud the sergeant flinched. Kesh took a step back from the gate, wondering if the tumult was about to blow the gates off their hinges. The distinctive clamor of swords and spears in melee hammered the night, the skirmish racing as though one group was chasing another. The guards drew their swords; a fifth man popped out of the guardhouse.

“All ranks at the ready,” snarled the sergeant, and the man vanished back into the tower. “They may try to break in.”