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"Boy?" he called into the shadows. "Janni?" He thought that was the boy's name; you or bay were usually sufficient to get his attention when he sat on the stoop. "Don't be afraid, boy. Are you hurt, boy?"
Then, fearing the worst—that he'd been too late—Nouri set down both mallet and crutch. He waded into the shadows and began flinging rubbish aside before familiar sounds snared his attention: tap, thump, and drag; tap, thump, and drag again. The cold hand of fear clutched the baker's heart as he turned toward the light and the street.
Janni, the crippled boy, reached the stoop while Nouri watched. He lowered himself to the flat stone, same as he did each morning, and secured his crutch behind him before arranging his twisted leg on the cobblestones where passersby and Nouri's customers could see both it and the wrapped-straw begging bowl.
"Whim of the Lion," Nouri whispered. His hands had risen of their own will to cover his heart. He forced them down to his sides, though his fear had not abated, and the foreboding had only just begun.
"What have I done?" he asked himself.
The kneading mallet lay where he'd left it, bloodstained the same as Nouri's shirt. But the crutch... was gone. The only crutch Nouri could see was the one propped against his shop's wall.
"Whim of the Lion," he repeated and turned back to the shadows as his gut heaved.
* * *
Hamanu, the Lion of Urik, King of the World, King of the Mountains and the Plains, and a score of other titles claimed during his thousand-year rule of the city, could soften be found on the highest roof of his sprawling palace. The royal apartments were on the roof. The doors and chambers could have accommodated a half-giant, though the furnishings were scaled for a human man, and austere as well, despite their gilding and bright enamel.
The king sat at a black marble table outside the lattice-walled apartments and stared absently toward the east, where the sun had risen an hour earlier. Hamanu hummed a tune as he sat, an eight-tone trope. A hint of midnight's coolness clung to the shadow behind him. A robe of lustrous silk hung loosely about his powerful torso. Its dull crimson color perfectly complemented his tawny gold skin and the black mane that swept back from a smooth, intelligent forehead to fall in thick, shiny elflocks against his shoulders.
There was no softness anywhere about him. His eyes held the deep yellow color of ripe agafari blossoms; his lips were firm and dark above a beardless chin. The faint crinkles around his eyes might have marked him as a man of good humor, who enjoyed a frequent, hearty laugh—but they could as easily be the brands of a cruel nature.
A sword of steel so fine it shone like silver in the sun rested blade-up in an ebony rack behind the king. Two darkly seething obsidian spheres sat on cushioned pedestals, one at the sword's tip, the other beside its hilt. Suits of polished armor in various sizes and styles stood ready on the backs of straw men. The armor showed signs of wear, but not a trace of the gritty, yellow dust that was the bane of Urik's housekeepers, as if the king's mere presence were enough to control the vagaries of wind and weather—which it was.
Hamanu blinked and stirred, shedding distraction as he rose from his chair. A balustrade of rampant lions defined the roof's edge. He leaned his hand on a carved stone mane and squinted hard at his domain until he'd seen what he needed to see, heard what he wanted to hear. His face relaxed. His thoughts drifted to more familiar places: the mind of his personal steward these last hundred years. Enver, it's time.
Hamanu smiled and patted the stone lion lightly on its head. He'd had a satisfying night, last night. This morning he was disposed to indulgence and good humor.
He was seated behind the marble table again when Enver made his appearance, leading a small herd of slaves bearing breakfast trays and baskets filled with petitions and bribes.
"Omniscience, the bloody sun of Athas shines brightly on you and all your domain this morning!" Enve
r announced with reverence and a well-practiced bow from the waist.
"Does it, now?" Hamanu replied with arch inflection. "Whatever has happened, dear Enver?" Indulgence did not preclude—and good humor well-nigh demanded—a taste of mortal fear before breakfast.
"Nothing, Omniscience," the dwarf replied, flustered with piquant terror.
The slaves behind Enver clumped into a cowering mass that endangered the safe arrival of Hamanu's breakfast. He didn't need to eat. There was very little that Hamanu needed to do. But he wanted his breakfast, and he wanted it on the table, not the floor or splattered across the day's petitions.
"Good, Enver." Hamanu's smile had teeth: blunt, human teeth, though, like everything else about him, that could change in a eye blink. "Exactly as it should be. Exactly as I expect."
Enver bobbled a less-enthusiastic smile and the slaves shuttled trays and baskets to the table before scurrying to the far corner of the roof and the out-of-sight safety of the stairway. Hamanu caught their relieved sighs in his preternatural hearing. He could hear anything in Urik, if he chose to listen; his vision was almost as keen. More than that, he could kill with a thought and draw sustenance from a mortal's dying breath.
And sometimes he did—for no reason greater than whim or boredom or aching appetite. But today, a loaf of fresh-baked bread was the only sustenance that interested him. With manners to equal the most pampered noblewoman's, the king broke the loaf apart, then dipped a small, steaming chunk in amber honey before raising it to his lips.
Fear was intoxicating, but fear could not compare to the changeable taste and texture of a yeast-risen mixture of flour and water when it was still hot from the oven..
"Enver," Hamanu said between morsels, "there's a bakery at the northeast corner of Joiner's Square—"
"It shall be closed at once, Omniscience, and the baker sent to the mines," Enver eagerly assured him, adding another bow and an arm-wave flourish for good measure.
The dwarf was more than Hamanu's steward; he was a templar, an executor, the highest rank within the civil bureau. Enver's left sleeve was so laced with precious metal and silk that it fell a handspan beyond his fingertips as he remained folded in the depth of his bow. It was a ridiculous pose and a futile attempt on Enver's part to hide his disapproval behind an obsequious mask. The fear was back as well, a fetid vapor in the warming air.
Hamanu ignored the temptation, trying instead to remember if he'd been either more capricious or predictable of late. He strove to remember each day precisely as it happened, but after thirteen ages it was difficult to separate memory from dreams. A man like Enver, or the druid-templar Pavek, or any one of his score of current favorites, had simpler memories and a more reliable conscience.
Today, however, Enver had exercised his conscience needlessly.
"I have something else in mind, dear Enver. The baker there—" He paused, casting his thoughts adrift in Urik until they found the mind he wanted—"Nouri Nouri'son, he saved my life this morning."
