'As is only right and proper, for men in service of so great a lord.' Kheda tried to sound suitably humble.

Unexpectedly, Shek Kul laughed. 'Don't seek to flatter or grovel, traveller. It doesn't become you.'

Kheda ducked his head submissively.

'A traveller from the south,' Shek Kul continued thoughtfully. 'That's something in your favour, at least.'

Kheda couldn't help himself. He looked up.

Shek Kul was no longer smiling. 'You arrive on my shores, alone. No one knows where you've come from and you certainly don't care to share that information with anyone. You say you're looking for passage onwards but no one sees you talking to newly arrived shipmasters. No one knows which domain you're trying to reach. All I hear is that you read palms to fill your belly, which I find sufficiently curious to want to know more. You make safe enough predictions, I hear, nothing too outrageous, no promises of startling good fortune just beyond the turn of the stars. Any inadequate preying on men who prefer to work their way through life can do as much.' The warlord paused, eyes keen. 'Yet such parasites are far keener than you to spread word of their talents, hoping to bleed more victims dry with promises and blandishments. They don't, as a rule, insist on sufficiently unfavourable readings to be left abused and hungry. How will you win the reputation to keep you in idle luxury?'

Kheda kept his face impassive and his mouth shut.

'Still, you've avoided gloomy prognostications of general doom,' Shek Kul continued. 'As far as I've been able to ascertain, you haven't predicted death by disease or starvation or even drowning for anyone, though by all the stars, those travelling between the domains can fear that fate. My thanks for not casting such shadows over my domain with your skills.' The warlord's sarcasm cut like a lash.

'You might care to be grateful in return. If you were sharing your skills with an eastern accent, had your insights promised ill fortune for those drifting through my waters, you'd have vanished from my beach before the tide had washed away your footsteps. I'll not have my enemies sending false augurs to spread ill feeling in my domain, stirring up dissatisfaction and dissension where they may. I find even the cleverest, most treacherous tongue can be stilled by decapitation.'

Shek Kul paused to let the threat hang menacing in the empty hall. 'I have to ask myself though, are you merely biding your time before setting rumblings of disquiet along my beaches, rumours casting doubts over my future and that of all who stay loyal to me?' He leaned back, face hard. 'I'll have your answer to that, traveller, or my men will beat it out of you.'

'I am no soothsayer to speak ill of your domain.' Kheda shook his head vehemently. 'I only read palms and those can show no more than the life of one person.'

'So say all the sages,' agreed Shek Kul, voice cold. 'And those books that none outside a domain's inner circles generally ever see. There's another puzzle for me.

'You're a man of many puzzles, traveller. You deny you're a soothsayer yet you wear a dragon's tail around your neck. Granted, a galley rat might wear such a trinket, if he had won it in trade, but he'd just as readily trade it for a full belly and a night out of the rain. You won't give it up, preferring to chance the mercy of the skies and grubbing up weeds in a reckal patch for the sake of a meal.'

Shek Kul leant back in his throne, folding his formidable arms. 'More puzzles. You'll scrabble in the earth willingly enough but you show more interest in healing plants than those that'll fill a hungry belly. You're also a slow and clumsy worker. Do you realise what a poor bargain you offer? Is that why you can't accept what you earn with dignity?'

Kheda was stung into replying. 'I offer the best bargain I can.'

Shek Kul nodded as if the younger man had confirmed something. 'Ah, but you are just not accustomed to trading your labour. You're not in the habit of fleeing a domain's swordsmen either. Sezarre tells me you plainly had no expectation that they might be coming for you, until they were all but on you.' Shek Kul nodded beyond Kheda to the slave guarding the door and smiled.

'Everyone else on that beach ran, either from knowledge of their own guilt or, to be fair, from simple prudence. There are lords in these reaches who'll beat everyone friendless on a trading beach, for the supposed sins of one or two. Indai Forl tells me it helps keep the innocent honest as well as rebuking the guilty.' He raised a hand. 'But I am straying from the question. Other puzzles hang around you, traveller. Your workmate yesterday might be more used to trading his labour but he's not in the least accustomed to dogs. Few travellers are. Why else do you think I keep those particular islanders so well provided with the largest and most intimidating hounds I can breed? Though you didn't find them in the least unnerving. I ask myself this: where would you have learned such familiarity with dogs other than inside a warlord's compound? So I ask you once more; where is your home domain?'

Kheda swallowed. 'I have no home.'

'You've your own jewels safe between your legs, I'll say that much for you.' Shek Kul sounded more curious than approving. 'Do you realise what you risk by defying me like this? Do you want me to turn you over to Sezarre, to Delai, to have them wring the truth from you?' The warlord nodded again towards the door and then jerked his head towards his own bodyguard, Kheda's erstwhile jailer. 'Of course you don't. Then why are you prepared to run that risk?'

This was plainly no rhetorical question. Kheda chose his words with exquisite care. 'For the present, I have no home. I have no domain. I did once, obviously. There are those I left behind. I would not see them suffer for my sake.' As soon as those words left his mouth, he regretted them.

Shek Kul bent forward in one swift movement. 'You've done something that warrants punishment?' Delai clapped a hand to a sword hilt before he could restrain himself and a shiver of chainmail from the door suggested Sezarre had done the same.

A guilty quiver ran down Kheda's spine. 'I have nothing to answer for in your domain,' he managed to say.

Not as long as Godine sailed north as he said he would.

'You seem to speak the truth and yet not all of the truth, if I am any judge.' Shek Kul relaxed in his throne again. 'You have remarkable eyes, do you realise that?'

Kheda was startled by the abrupt change of subject. 'I'm sorry?'

'There's no question over your southern origin,' mused Shek Kul. 'Your skin makes that plain, as does your speech. You're recently come north too, no local dialect's coloured your words. But those eyes show mixed blood, there's no question of that.' He waved a ring-laden hand in an airy gesture. 'Hereabouts, that much closer to the barbarians, we see all shades of skin, hair and eye, thanks to slaves traded down from the unbroken lands. Plenty get traded further on south. Are you some slave's get? Are you some slave? That would explain your familiarity with the ways of a warlord's compound. Should I be sending word south to enquire if any of my brother rulers seek a runaway of your description? Such a runaway must have committed a grave crime, to be fleeing so far north. I am not inclined to shelter such a guilty man, even if he has done nothing to warrant punishment in my domain.' His words were chilling.

'I am no slave.' Kheda lifted his chin and stared defiantly at Shek Kul.

Read the truth in my eyes if you can.

'No, you'd have had that arrogance beaten out of you, if you were.' A slow smile curved Shek Kul's generous lips. 'So where did you get those curious green eyes? Hereabouts, our wives heed their duty to bring new blood into the domain and many choose their own body slaves to do the honours. Is that the way of the southern reaches? Let's consider that notion. If you'd been born into a warlord's household, that would solve a great many puzzles. It might even answer the greatest mystery of all. Just how is it that you know how to draw the entire compass of the heavens from the barest squint at the skies? Come now, you don't imagine I would imprison you and not have someone keep a watch on you? Delai was quite fascinated, especially when you set your dragon's tail in the circle. He knows enough to recognise such things, though he would never presume to try them himself. That does incline me to believe your assurance that you are no slave.'