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"I don't believe they do."
"The people here now are regulars. None of them would betray you. I will try to warn you if someone dangerous comes. What did you wish to eat?"
"A great deal of food. I will leave the choice to you. About twice as much carbohydrate as protein. No stimulants."
"What do you mean by a great deal, sir?"
"Keep bringing it until I tell you to stop ... or until you feel I have overstepped your generosity."
"In spite of appearances, sir, this is not a poor establishment. The extras here have made me a rich man."
Score one for his assessment, Teg thought. The thrift here was a calculated pose.
The waiter left and again spoke to the man at the central table. Teg studied the man openly after the waiter went on into the kitchen. Yes, that was the man. The diner concentrated on a plate heaped with some green-garnished pasta.
There was very little sign in this man of a woman's care, Teg thought. His collar had been closed awry, the clingstraps tangled. Spots of the greenish sauce soiled his left cuff. He was naturally righthanded but ate while his left hand remained in the path of spillage. Frayed cuffs on his trousers. One trouser hem, partly released from its threaded bondage, dragged at the heel. Stockings mismatched--one blue and one pale yellow. None of this appeared to bother him. No mother or other woman had ever dragged this one back from a doorway with orders to make himself presentable. His basic attitude was announced in his whole appearance:
"What you see is as presentable as it gets."
The man looked up suddenly, a jerking motion as though he had been goosed. He sent a brown-eyed gaze around the room, pausing at each face in turn as though he looked for a particular visage. This done, he returned his attention to his plate.
The waiter returned with a clear soup in which shreds of egg and some green vegetables could be seen.
"While the rest of your meal is being prepared, sir," he said.
"Did you come here directly after Renditai?" Teg asked.
"Yes, sir. But I served with you also at Acline."
"The sixty-seventh Gammu," Teg said.
"Yes, sir!"
"We saved a good many lives that time," Teg said. "Theirs and ours."
When Teg still did not begin eating, the waiter spoke in a rather cold voice, "Would you require a snooper, sir?"
"Not while you're serving me," Teg said. He meant what he said but he felt a bit of a fraud because doubled vision told him the food was safe.
The waiter started to turn away, pleased.
"One moment," Teg said.
"Sir?"
"The man at that central table. He is one of your regulars?"
"Professor Delnay? Oh, yes, sir."
"Delnay. Yes, I thought so."
"Professor of martial arts, sir. And the history of same."
"I know. When it comes time to serve my dessert, please ask Professor Delnay if he would join me."
"Shall I tell him who you are, sir?"
"Don't you think he already knows?"
"That would seem likely, sir, but still ... "
"Caution where caution belongs," Teg said. "Bring on the food."
Delnay's interest was fully aroused long before the waiter relayed Teg's invitation. The professor's first words as he seated himself across from Teg were: "That was the most remarkable gastronomic performance I have ever seen. Are you sure you can eat a dessert?"
"Two or three of them at least," Teg said.
"Astonishing!"
Teg sampled a spoonful of a honey-sweetened confection. He swallowed it, then: "This place is a jewel."
"I have kept it a careful secret," Delnay said. "Except for a few close friends, of course. To what do I owe the honor of your invitation?"
"Have you ever been ... ah, marked by an Honored Matre?"
"Lords of perdition, no! I'm not important enough for that."
"I was hoping to ask you to risk your life, Delnay."
"In what way?" No hesitation. That was reassuring.
"There is a place in Ysai where my old soldiers meet. I want to go there and see as many of them as possible."
"Through the streets in full regalia the way you are now?"
"In any way you can arrange it."
Delnay put a finger to his lower lip and leaned back to stare at Teg. "You're not an easy figure to disguise, you know. However, there may be a way." He nodded thoughtfully. "Yes." He smiled. "You won't like it, I'm afraid."
"What do you have in mind?"
"Some padding and other alterations. We will pass you off as a Bordano overseer. You'll smell of the sewer, of course. And you'll have to carry it off that you don't notice."
"Why do you think that will succeed?" Teg asked.
"Oh, there's going to be a storm tonight. Regular thing this time of year. Laying down the moisture for next year's open crops. And filling the reservoirs for the heated fields, you know."
"I don't understand your reasoning, but when I've finished another of these confections, we'll go," Teg said.
"You'll like the place where we take refuge from the storm," Delnay said. "I'm mad, you know, to do this. But the proprietor here said I was to help you or never come here again."
It was an hour after dark when Delnay led him to the rendezvous point. Teg, dressed in leathers and affecting a limp, was forced to use much of his mental power to ignore his own odors. Delnay's friends had plastered Teg with sewage and then hosed him off. The forced-air drying brought back most of the effluent aromas.
A remote-reading weather station at the door of the meeting place told Teg it had dropped fifteen degrees outside in the preceding hour. Delnay preceded him and hurried away into a crowded room where there was much noise and the sound of clinking glassware. Teg paused to study the doorside station. The wind was gusting to thirty klicks, he saw. Barometric pressure down. He looked at the sign above the station:
"A service to our customers."
Presumably, a service to the bar as well. Departing customers might well take one look at these readings and return to the warmth and camaraderie behind them.
In a large fireplace with inglenook at the far end of the bar there was a real fire burning. Aromatic wood.
Delnay returned, wrinkled his nose at Teg's smell and led him around the edge of the crowd into a back room, then through this into a private bathroom. Teg's uniform--cleaned and pressed--was laid out over a chair there.
"I'll be in the inglenook when you come out," Delnay said.
"In full regalia, eh?" Teg asked.
"It's only dangerous out in the streets," Delnay said. He went back the way they had come.
Teg emerged presently and found his way to the inglenook through groups that turned suddenly silent as people recognized him. Murmurous comments swept through the room. "The old Bashar himself." "Oh, yes, it's Teg. Served with him, I did. Know that face and figure anywhere."
Customers had crowded into the atavistic warmth of the fireside. There was a rich smell of wet clothing and drink-fogged breaths there.
So the storm had driven this crowd into the bar? Teg looked at the battle-hardened military faces all around him, thinking that this was not a usual gathering, no matter what Delnay said. The people here knew one another, though, and had expected to meet one another here at this time.
Delnay was sitting on one of the benches in the inglenook, a glass containing an amber drink in his hand.
"You put out the word to meet us here," Teg said.
"Isn't that what you wanted, Bashar?"
"Who are you, Delnay?"
"I own a winter farm a few klicks south of here and I have some banker friends who will occasionally loan me a groundcar. If you want me to be more specific, I'm like the rest of the people in this room--someone who wants the Honored Matres off our necks."
A man behind Teg asked: "Is it true that you killed a hundred of them today, Bashar?"
Teg spoke dryly without turning. "The number is greatly exagger
