The man looked past the brigand to Dario. “You want us to help you, lad?”

“I think you’d better not. But I’ll remember the offer, my friend. You can count on that.”

The man nodded. He cast a dark look at Dario’s two assailants, but then he and his companions backed away.

“We’d better go out the way you came in,” the bearded one said. “We’ll never get through that crowd.”

The man holding Dario began to drag him toward the tavern’s rear door.

“Wait!” Dario said. “My lute and pipe.”

“You won’t have much use for them as a corpse, boy.” The man looked at the instrument briefly. “But we’ll bring them just the same. They may fetch a few qinde in the markets when we’re through with you.”

The man stuffed Dario’s pipe into his pocket and grabbed the lute roughly, banging it against a chair as he did. As an afterthought, he also picked up Dario’s daggers off the table. Then he gave a nod to the other man, who turned toward the corridor leading to the rear door. He still held a fistful of Dario’s hair, and had shifted his dagger once again so that it now pushed against the center of the lutenist’s back.

Dario racked his brain trying to think of any way he could break free of the men and flee, or better yet, kill them before they killed him. He hadn’t much time. The narrow byway just behind the tavern was dark and usually deserted, even at midday. If they did it there, no one would find his body for hours. It might have helped him had he known who this Crebin was, or why he thought Dario had his gold. But the only gold pieces Dario could call his own were the ones still owed to him by the owner of the Red Boar for this day’s performance.

“What’s a lute worth?” the man holding Dario asked.

“I don’t know,” the bearded one said. “This one looks to be a bit worn, but I’d wager we could get eight or ten qinde for it.”

“Eight or ten?” Dario repeated incredulously, stopping so abruptly that the man’s dagger jabbed painfully through his shirt. “It’s worth thirty qinde if it’s worth one!”

“Keep walking!” the man said, shoving him forward. They were near the end of the corridor. The door stood just before him, slightly ajar. So Dario did the one thing he could. Stumbling as if from the force of the man’s push, he fell to his knees, wincing when the brigand failed to let go of his hair.

“Get to your-!”

Before he could finish, Dario threw his elbow back with all the force he could muster, catching the man fully in the groin. This time the man did let go, grunting in agony and falling against the corridor wall. The lutenist scrambled to his feet and sprinted toward the door, throwing it open and racing out into the byway, just as the bearded man would expect. He had no intention of running far, however, not so long as the brigand had his lute. He pressed himself against the outside wall of the tavern, just to the left of the door, praying to all the gods he could name in that moment that the bearded brigand was better with his right hand.

It seemed the gods were with him.

The man burst through the door, Dario’s lute in his left hand and a blade in his right. Immediately the lutenist grabbed the arm and hand that held the lute, using the man’s own forward motion to swing him in a swift arc into the wall, his head hitting the wood with a dull thud.

The brigand staggered back for an instant, just long enough for Dario to grab his other hand-the one with the blade-and hammer it into the man’s gut, steel first. The bearded man gasped, his eyes widening and holding Dario’s gaze for a moment before rolling back into his head as he collapsed to the ground.

Dario retrieved his lute and examined it closely. There were a few new scratches on the underside, but otherwise it appeared to be fine. He placed it carefully on an empty ale barrel that stood nearby. Then he returned to the corridor and dragged the other man into the byway.

“Your friend’s dead,” he said, kicking the man in the stomach. “If you ever come near me again, I’ll kill you, too. Understand?”

The brigand looked up at him and nodded weakly.

Dario took his pipe and daggers from the dead man, picked up his lute, and went back into the Red Boar.

Another man had taken his seat at his table, so Dario chose one near it and started to sit.

“You handled that well,” the stranger said, watching him, a mild smile on his face. He was lean and tall, but broad in the chest and shoulders, like a warrior. He wore a beard and his long dark hair was tied back. But it was his pale blue eyes, the color of the sky on a frigid day, that held the lutenist’s attention. Dario had never seen eyes so cold.

“Thank you,” he said after a moment.

“I take it both men are dead?”

“Only one of them. I let the other go. I doubt he’ll bother me again.”

The dark-haired man frowned. “I’m sorry to hear that. I had hoped to retrieve my gold, but I can only assume that the one who survived has already taken it and fled.”

Dario narrowed his eyes, feeling his body grow tense. “You’re Crebin?”

“It’s a name I use. Some know me as Corbin. My friends call me Cadel.”

The lutenist nodded, though it struck him that a man with such eyes couldn’t have many friends. He stepped free of the table and pulled out his dagger once more. “Why did you send them for me?”

Cadel looked at the dagger and shook his head, his face hardening. “Don’t be a fool. I’d kill you even more easily than you killed the man in the alley.”

From another a man it might have seemed an idle boast. But something in Cadel’s tone and expression convinced Dario that in this case it was true. After a moment he slid the blade back into its sheath.

“Answer me,” he said. “Why did you send them?”

Cadel opened a hand, indicating the chair across from him, the chair in which Dario had been sitting before all this began. The lutemst took a slow breath and sat.

“Forgive me,” Cadel said, smiling once more. “I sent those men as a test.”

“A test?”

“Yes. I’ve heard you play, and you’re very good, just as your reputation said you would be. Your reputation as a hired blade is a bit less sure. I wanted to see for myself how you’d handle such a situation.”

“A test,” Dario said again, shaking his head. “Who in Bian’s name are your

“Someone who can make you very wealthy very quickly.”

Dario knew he should have been suspicious-a man who would send murderers after him and then call it a test was not to be trusted. But his pockets were empty, and he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life playing lute in the Red Boar.

“You have a job for me?”

“I might have several, though not as you’re thinking of it. I’m not looking to hire you. I’m looking for a partner, someone to guard my back and help me with more difficult tasks.”

“So you’re a blade yourself.”

“Yes, I am.”

“And you’re making enough to make me wealthy?”

“I’ve made over four hundred qinde in the last five turns,” he said in a low voice. “I expect I’ll make nearly as much in the next five. My partner’s share of that would be somewhere around one hundred and fifty.”

Dario gaped at him. One hundred and fifty qinde! That was more gold than he had made in the last four years. And here Cadel was offering him the chance to make that much by the plantings.

“I’d say you’ve found yourself a partner,” he said with a grin.

Cadel smiled thinly. “Not yet, I haven’t.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Well, for one thing, I still haven’t decided that you’re the man I want.”

Dario sat forward. “But your test! I bested both men without so much as a scratch from either of them.”

“And then you let one of them go.”

“You wanted me to kill them both?”

“Not necessarily. But I want to know that you didn’t kill the second man for the right reasons. I agree with you that this man posed no threat to you. Seeing what you did to his friend, he’ll probably be happy never to meet up with you again. But another man, a more accomplished killer perhaps, would almost certainly come after you again, either to finish the job he’d been hired to do, or to avenge his companion. By letting him live you could have been endangering your own life. And if you did something similar as my partner, you’d be endangering my life as well.” He watched Dario for several moments, then raised an eyebrow. “So? Why did you do it?”