“Thanks a lot,” he snapped angrily.

“My pleasure to serve you, Master,” Hammen replied with a cackle, steering Garth away from the shadow of a woman who lingered on the other side of the street.

“I want a full check on him,” Zarel Ewine, Grand Master of the Arena, snarled.

Uriah Aswark, captain of the fighters of the Grand Master, bowed low in fear, for the Grand Master was known to lash out at whoever was nearby in moments of rage, and this was clearly a moment of rage since the august presence had been publicly humiliated.

“As you wish, sire,” Uriah whispered.

“Go to our usual contacts in the city and the Houses, pay the usual sums, but I want a full accounting of every silver spent”-he paused-“and you know what happened to your predecessor on that score.”

“I would never think of cheating you, sire.”

Zarel looked down at his captain with contempt.

“No, of course you wouldn’t. Because if you did, especially now, I think I’d throw you in with the others for the entertainment of the Walker. Now get out of here.”

Uriah started to back out of the room, his head still kept down in the proper show of obeisance, eyes averted from the Grand Master’s visage.

“Uriah.”

He froze in place.

“Yes, sire.”

“I am holding you personally responsible for this. I want him. I want to know who he is and what his game is. There is something there to him. I don’t know what; I tried to probe but he had enough power to block me. I couldn’t take him because he was a member of a House and is protected as long as he wears colors.”

Uriah looked up cautiously at the Grand Master, surprised at the admission that a mere hanin had sufficient power to block his power. His features looked somehow distant, as if lost in a memory that was somehow clouded and unable to be clearly pierced.

“Who is he?”

Uriah was startled to see the Grand Master looking directly at him, his features filled with doubt.

“I will find out, Master.”

“Do it. Arrange an expulsion so that he no longer has House protection and is mine. I don’t care how it’s done; I just want it done. And do it right, Uriah, for I really don’t think you would enjoy providing entertainment for the Walker when he arrives. I have to provide the usual fare for him and there’s always room for one more at the party. It’s either this one-eye or it’s you.”

Uriah withdrew from the room, not ashamed of the fact that the guards outside the door could see the trembling of his knees. The Walker was always hungry for the power that could be drained from souls and those who were the enemies of the Grand Master usually provided the feast… along with those who had simply failed.

Zarel watched the dwarf who was his commander of fighters withdraw from the room.

Why should this fighter trouble me? he wondered. Something was alerted by his mere presence and Zarel knew that such a sensing almost always had a truth behind it.

Had he met him before?

Zarel cast through his memory. Since the man was a fighter who controlled mana, his mere physical appearance was not an accurate gauge of his age. He could be around twenty-five as he looked, or he could be a hundred, maybe even older.

To remember all who might be enemies across a hundred years was nearly impossible. Was it from before, when Kuthuman was still the Grand Master? There were many enemies, to be sure, from that time, when the climb for power as assistant to the Grand Master had resulted in more than one body being found floating in the harbor.

He tried to focus his thoughts, searching. A one-eye. But for how long? He might have lost it last year or scores of years ago. A one-eye. He had helped to gouge out the eyes of many men and women, for as assistant to the Grand Master it was his task to be the administrant of justice. Eyes, hands, feet, and heads, that was his trade.

Or was it afterward? After the downfall of Oor-tael, Kuthuman had ascended to the power of a demigod, becoming a Walker, and left Zarel in charge of this realm as a reward for helping it to be possible. Thousands had died in the first days, the settling of old scores that were impossible to settle while Kuthuman still walked the world. Deaths as well to insure power and to wipe out disloyalty. Could the one-eye be from that time?

Zarel sat in silence, disturbed that the answer could not be found.

It would have to be found, he realized; it would have to be found before Festival.

“There’s been inquiries about you.”

Garth nodded.

“The Grand Master of the Arena, I assume.”

Tulan, Master of the House of Kestha, looked at him in surprise.

“My lord, isn’t it obvious? I humiliated him in public and you had the courage to back me up. I know there is no love lost between the Grand Master and the House Masters and he is looking for a means of retrieving his honor. I must assume you were offered a bribe to discharge me.”

Tulan stiffened slightly.

“House Masters do not accept bribes.”

“Of course not, sire,” Garth said calmly.

“To even imply such a motivation is a dishonor to me and to my House.”

“No dishonor was ever intended,” Garth replied smoothly. “I know that of course you would refuse since no House Master would ever want to be thought of as being in the pocket of Zarel.”

Tulan paused for a moment to drain his goblet of mead and then to wipe his greasy fingers on his tunic. The clutter of half a dozen plates before him was filled with the remnants of his breakfast.

“Though the questions posed by the captain of his fighters were, in fact, most curious.”

“Such as who am I?”

“Precisely,” Tulan rumbled, pausing for a moment to emit a long rumbling belch that gurgled and rattled.

“You came to me unknown, a hanin. I took you in because you displayed remarkable skills, not only before the doorstep of my very House but in regaining the prestige of my House in defeating that Orange brawler who bested my man. Then to top it off you all but tell the Grand Master to go to the demons. I would have lost honor and prestige in turn if I had not taken you in while you stood upon the gray flagstones before my House.”

Tulan paused and looked at him closely.

“On the one side I could call it innocent, the fact that you fought Fentesk the way you did, all over a minor point of honor, innocent as well that as a hanin you came to my House seeking employment and that the confrontation that ensued happened as it did.”

“But then again you could call it something else,” Garth replied calmly.

“Yes, damn you,” Tulan snapped. “I won everything out there yesterday. I bearded the Grand Master and Fentesk; I won an edge in the games. But I’ve also won the increased enmity of the Grand Master for harboring you. So was this innocent?”

“But of course, my lord.”

Tulan poured himself another drink and looked up coldly at Garth, while draining it off in a single gulp.

“Who are you?”

“I was a hanin, my lord, from the back country of Gish near the Endless Sea and the Green Lands.”

“Who was your yolin, your master trainer? What was his House, the origin of his mana, the contracts he held?”

“I had none, my lord. I learned on my own that I had the power to draw on the mana. I practiced my skills alone; I acquired my spells and amulets in the challenging of other hanin. When I found myself ready I came here to join a House. The fight I picked with Orange was simply convenient to demonstrate my skills and also a touch of revenge for that past humiliation regarding the Orange Master’s wife and daughters.”

“You expect me to believe that?” Tulan roared.

Garth bowed low.