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That was the limit of caution or discretion. Once the bright, belled kanks were on the road, rumor traveled with them through the irrigated fields. Pavek spotted the isolated dust plumes as runners spread the word, and before long there were gawkers on the byways. They kept their distance, of course, even the noble ladies in their distinctive gauze-curtained howdahs, but curiosity was the strongest mortal emotion and a parade of the Lion-King's decorated bugs was almost as fascinating as the Lion himself. Pavek, Ruari, and Zvain were nothing to look at, but Mahtra, the eleganta with her stark white skin and unusually masked features, captured the onlookers' attention. She certainly did when they reached Modekan, the village where, in the past, Quraiters had registered their intent to bring zarneeka into Urik the following day.
Pavek had no idea what day it was as they approached Modekan, but the village was quiet. The Modekan registrators weren't expecting visitors, at least not visitors riding the sorcerer-king's kanks. Pavek began to regret his decision to pass through Modekan, where their impending arrival had all the earmarks of the event of the year, if not the decade.
Every village templar was lined up at the gate, wearing tattered, wrinkled yellow robes that would never pass muster at Pavek's old barracks. The rest of Modekan mobbed behind the line, necks craning and heads bobbing for a good look. Three strides through the gate, and every pair of eyes was fastened tight on Mahtra. A burly human woman with a bit more weaving in her yellow sleeve than the others hurried forward to crouch beside Mahtra's kank, offering her own back as a dismounting platform. Mahtra's bird's-egg eyes fairly bulged with surprise, and rather than dismounting, she pulled her feet up onto the saddle
.
It was an insult, a breach of tradition. Pavek didn't imagine that registrators liked being treated as kank-furniture— regulators certainly didn't—but having humiliated oneself, no low-rank templar like to be refused. Confusion reigned and threatened to turn ugly with the village's ranking templar groveling in the dust and Mahtra trying to keep her balance. Pavek had his eye particularly focused on another templar in the crowd, young enough and angry enough to be the crouched woman's son, who'd turned a dangerous shade of red.
When the furious templar began to move, Pavek moved as well, dismounting in the war bureau style—off leg swinging forward over the pommel, rather than backward over the cantle, so the rider landed with the kank at his back and eyes on his enemy. He'd seen the method, but never tried it before. Success made him bold.
"Who's in charge here?" he demanded with his arms bided over his chest. No one answered. Mahtra looked like someone important; he looked like a farmer. Pavek hooked the leather thong around his neck and brought the gouged medallion into the light. "Who is in charge?" he repeated.
Audacity often succeeded in the Tablelands because the price of failure was so high that few would dare it. Templar and villager alike knew the punishment for impersonating a high templar. They stared at Pavek brandishing his ceramic medallion as if it were made of gold. After a long moment during which his heart did not beat at all, the crouching woman got to her feet. There was a smile on her face as she came toward him. The earlier insult was forgotten; now she expected to have the honor of turning an imposter over to higher authorities.
Then she saw the gouge in the medallion he held out to her, and her smile wavered. Pavek didn't need magic or mind-bending to hear the doubts contending in her mind as she extended her arm. They were, however, equally shocked when crimson sparks leapt from the gouge to her fingertips, sparks bright enough to make them both blink.
"Great One!" she cried, nursing burnt fingers as she dropped to her knees. "Great One, Lord, forgive me. I meant no disrespect."
All the others followed her example, parents grabbing their children as they knelt and holding them close. The children cried protest at the rough handling, but there were adult sobs, also. Pavek could slay them all with his own hands, no questions asked nor quarter given. He could enslave them on the spot, selling them or keeping them without regard for kinship. Such were the ingrained powers of the Lion-King's high templars.
Pavek chewed his lower lip, sickened by what he'd done, uncertain how to rectify it. The only high templar he'd met in the flesh was Elabon Escrissar, whose example he'd sooner die than follow.
"Mistakes happen," he muttered. Mistakes did, of course, and people died for them. "You weren't expecting us." They should have gone to Khelo. "There's been no harm done, to us or you. No reason to sweat blood."
Slipshod and undisciplined as the registrators were, they were templars, and they knew about sweating blood. Here and there, a head came up to stare at him. If mekillots would fly before a high templar showed mercy to fools, then Pavek had just sprouted wings.
"We'd like water to drink and to wash off the dust, and a hand-cart for our baggage. Then we'll be on our way. We have business in Urik."
More heads had come up, more folk questioning fortune. The burly registrator got to her feet, still cradling her hand against her breast. She looked at the medallion, then at Pavek's face.
"Whatever you wish, Great One, Lord. Whatever your dreams desire. Please, Great One, Lord, tell us who are you or—?"
"Pavek," he replied, almost as uncomfortable as she was.
Judging by the lack of reaction, his name, which had been associated with a forty-gold-piece reward less than a year ago, had been forgotten. The registrator's lips worked, summoning up the fortitude for another question:
Of course. Like the nobility living on their estates, high templars had a second name engraved on their medallions. Pavek could have made one up out of whole cloth to satisfy these nervous registrators, and he would have, for their sakes and his, but his mind had gone completely blank.
"By decree of Hamanu, Lord of the Mountains and the Plains, King of the World—"
They'd all forgotten Mahtra, still sitting cross-legged atop her kank. Lord Hamanu must have prepared her for this moment, at least Pavek hoped the sorcerer-king had taught her the words when he gave her the message she brought to Quraite. The alternative was that Lord Hamanu was bending Mahtra's thoughts at this very moment. Pavek noticed he wasn't the only one looking for sulphur eyes in the skies over her head. He didn't find any.
"—Lord Pavek is sole inheritor of House Escrissar. You may call him Lord Escrissar."
There was a name everyone recognized, feared and rightly despised, Pavek included. The Modekaners looked at him, more uncertain than before, and even Ruari and Zvain seemed taken aback. It shouldn't have been such a gut-numbing surprise—the Lion-King had all but told him he was replacing the half-elf—but it was. Pavek felt as if he'd been stained with a foul dye that would never wash off.
The woman registrator retreated a full stride. "We will send to Khelo for sedan chairs, Lord Escrissar." She flashed a hand-sign and two elven templars took off running. "There are none here."
Another reason they should have gone to Khelo. Draft and riding animals were outlawed in Urik and in the belt of land between the city and its market villages. High templars and nobles got around that law with slave-labor sedan chairs, which could be hired at Khelo.
"There's no time for that," Pavek protested, finding his voice too late to recall the elves. "Water and a hand-cart, that's all we want; then we'll be on our way."
They got their water, and all the succulent fruit they could eat, but not the hand-cart. There was no way Modekan's chief registrator was going to let a high templar, especially a high templar calling himself Lord Escrissar, leave her village pulling his own baggage in a rickety two-wheeled bone-and-leather cart. The village had twenty hale men who'd be honored to pull their cart. Her very own son would be especially honored to pull a second cart for the eleganta, whose rank they'd mistaken earlier.
"Surely, Lord Escrissar, you can't expect her to walk?"
Pavek knew Mahtra wasn't nearly as frail as she appeared to be, but her sandals weren't suited for the long walk to the city. After a futile grumble, he bowed his head, accepting the registrator's advice. The bloody sun hadn't moved twice its breadth across the cloudless sky, and already he was being told what to do again, respectfully and correctly, but told, nonetheless.
