Screaming, the man spun and staggered, slamming into six or ten of the men around him, half of whom had also been splashed by the oil of naya. The conflagration spread. The mob disintegrated as most fled in terror. The stench was horrible, and the screams were worse. But the street was clearing fast.

Keshad tossed the second vessel away and ran back to the platform, swung his legs over, and paid out the rope to let himself down. As he touched earth, his legs gave out. He pitched forward, caught himself on the wall, and leaned there as the merchants babbled and cried.

Eliar bent over him. “Keshad? Are you hurt?”

He could only grunt, “Neh. Neh.” His speech was gone. His limbs were weak. He shut his eyes, but the fire still burned and he still heard screams.

“That saved us,” added Eliar.

“For now.”

“Clever of you to think of it. Just like at Olossi.”

The door to the guardhouse scraped open. Kesh opened his eyes and looked up. The sergeant stumbled out, blood splashed all over him. Eliar stepped back. Past the sergeant, a whitewashed room looked like a slaughterhouse, with tumbled corpses, the hazy smoke of torches, and a guardsman kneeling beside a fallen comrade.

“What do you? What do you?” demanded the sergeant, his facility with the trade language vanishing under the stress. He gestured to the merchants now backing away from him.

On the other side of the gate, several men were still wailing; then came shouts of anger, and silence in the street. A distant clamor told them of riots spreading elsewhere. What of the humble barracks where he had stabled the guards and drovers and beasts?

He raised his head just as the sergeant loomed over him, swiping smears of blood from his beard.

“Good, good,” the sergeant said. He offered a hand. Hesitantly, Keshad extended his own, and the man clasped elbows in the grasp of kinship, seen in the market among believers but never extended to foreigners.

SOON AFTER DAWN, a squad of mounted soldiers resplendent in green sashes and helmets trimmed with gold ribbons clattered up to the closed gates. Smoke drifted over the rooftops. The guardsmen and merchants who had sat the rest of the night on watch on the roofs hastily clambered down the interior ladder and stood with the others as the gates were opened.

The sergeant knelt and genuflected before the squad’s captain. They exchanged a running jabber in their own language as the sergeant kept his head bowed. An older merchant murmured a translation in a low voice for those around him to hear.

“The officer says there was trouble in the market district last night. Many compounds attacked. Only compounds sheltering foreigners. Report came at night that this compound and several others had driven away the attackers. Some local men were killed. There is to be an inquiry.”

“Against the mob, or against us?” Kesh muttered.