Volias snorted. “That came out smoothly. Getting your revenge on me?”

Joss felt the sweetness of this petty victory. He smiled, as at a woman he was seeking to win over. “I wish it were so, but the truth is, you’ve the experience to do a proper job.”

“Smile that pretty smile all you want,” said Volias, “and I hope you end up sucking on it for a cursed long time, because I know it will turn sour. Still, I admit I’ll be glad to be out of this pus-hole.”

Siras grunted as though he had swallowed a nasty-tasting grub. Out in the marshal’s garden, voices rose as two men laughed at a shared joke; they were coming closer. Siras glanced out the crack in the door that let him see outside, but he shrugged and did not rise, so with no great surprise Joss watched as the door was slid open and Askar walked in with the informality of a man accustomed to his voice being heard.

“Heya!” Askar looked at the table as he wiped his hands on a linen scrap. “Any chance there’s wine, Marshal?”

Siras leaped up, grabbed the ceramic bottle, and left.

“No surprise but that the mess this place is in, it builds a strong thirst,” remarked the fawkner, ignoring Volias’s smirk. “And I do have a tale to tell.”

He patted his lips with the cloth, then wiped his brow. “I’m back from Olossi. Cursed merchants and guildsmen running around like ants with their hill smashed. So it happens, Marshal, that I went to the temple of Sapanasu, and explained your situation, and cursed if the hierophant didn’t tell me they would be best pleased to send a clerk to be at your disposal.”

“Surely that’s good news,” said Joss.

“Wait for it,” murmured Volias, who had the instincts of a stoat when broken eggs are about to be revealed.

“Which they did say they would do as soon as they have cleared all the contract work to do with the burning of the outer city and the tangle of contracts and legal claims that the siege has brought to Olossi’s assizes.”

“That could take weeks!”

“Sure enough. They were quick about dismissing me, too, leaving me with my hair on fire, I don’t mind telling you. I had to go cool my head with a few drinks.”

“Too bad the marshal couldn’t have joined you,” said Volias with a foul smile.

Joss curled a hand into a fist, but he let it go. “Then we’ll wait a week, to be polite. I’ll go next week myself, once the worst of the disorder in Olossi is put to rest. They’ll not be so quick to push aside my request if I come in person.”

Volias opened his ugly mouth, no doubt to make a retort about some attractive clerk being taken with Joss’s charms, but Askar cut him off in the manner of a man who hasn’t heard a thing.

“So there I was, drinking in the Demon’s Whip, which is not the kind of establishment you might think it is from the name, and a hierodule walks right up to me and says I’m to come to the delta, to Ushara’s temple. She says the Hieros has a message to be delivered personally to a representative of Argent Hall so I can bring it personally to the marshal. Naturally, I went. The Hieros is not a woman to cross, and it seems some crossing has been done. She wants to see you immediately.” He scratched his neck.