His foot caught the bodyguard in the chest. Though the guard was a big man, Kylar could feel ribs cracking. The man flew backward into the wall. He slid down and lay on the floor, unmoving.

Scanning the rest of the room in an instant, Kylar saw no other threats. Jarl had his hands spread to show he had no weapons.

“He wasn’t going to attack you. He was just making sure you didn’t have weapons. I swear it.” Jarl looked at the man on the floor. “By the High King’s balls, you’ve killed him.”

Scowling, Kylar looked at the man, sprawled unconscious in the corner. He knelt by him and put fingers against the man’s neck. Nothing. He ran his hands across the man’s chest to feel if one of the broken ribs might have penetrated his heart. Then he slammed his fist down the man’s chest. And again.

“What the hell are you—” Jarl cut off as the man’s chest suddenly rose.

The bodyguard coughed and moaned. Kylar knew that every breath would be agony for the man. But he’d live.

“Get someone to take care of him,” Kylar said. “His ribs are broken.”

Eyes wide, Jarl went into the main room and came back a few moments later with two more bodyguards. Like the first, they were big and brawny, and looked like they might be able to use the short swords at their sides. They merely glared at Kylar and picked up the big man between them.

They carried him out of the room and Jarl closed the door behind them. “You’ve learned a thing or two, haven’t you?” Jarl said. “I wasn’t testing you. He insisted on being here. I didn’t think . . . never mind.”

After a moment of staring at his friend, Kylar said, “You look well.”

“Don’t you mean, ‘How in the nine hells did you find me, Jarl?’” Jarl laughed.

“How in the nine hells did you find me, Jarl?”

Jarl smiled. “I never lost you. I never believed you were dead.”

“No?”

“You never could get anything past me, Azoth.”

“Don’t say that name. That boy’s dead.”

“Is he?” Jarl asked. “That’s a shame.”

Silence sat in the room as the men looked at each other. Kylar didn’t know what to do. Jarl had been his friend, Azoth’s friend anyway. But was he Kylar’s friend? That he knew who Kylar was, maybe had known for years, told Kylar that he wasn’t an enemy. At least not yet. Part of Kylar wanted to believe that Jarl just wanted to see him, wanted a chance to say goodbye that they’d never been afforded on the street. But he’d spent too many years with Master Blint to take such a naive view. If Jarl had called him in now, it was because Jarl wanted something.