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Enver straightened his spine and his sleeve. "Omniscience, may I inquire how this occurred?"
"Oh, the usual way." Hamanu sopped up honey with another morsel of bread, chewed it slowly, savoring both it and the dwarf's bursting curiosity. "The streets were dirty. I'd retreated into an alley to cleanse them, but this baker, Nouri Nouri'son, took it upon himself to rescue me with a kneading mallet."
"Remarkable, Omniscience."
"True. All-too-sadly true. He was so intent on saving me that he let the criminals get away." "Get away, Omniscience? Not for long, surely."
Enver shook his head. "But you're watching them, Omniscience?"
"Dear Enver, of course I'm watching them. Even now I'm watching them. But, we were talking about the baker, weren't we? Yes. I have a task for you. I want two sacks of the finest flour—not warehouse flour, but my flour, white himali from the palace—taken to that baker's shop on Joiner's Square, and a purse of silver, too—else he'll fire the ovens with inix dung! Tell him he is to bake a score of loaves, the best loaves he's ever baked, and to deliver them to the palace before sundown."
The dwarf's grin was as broad and round as Guthay on New Year's Eve. The executor was quick with numbers and devious despite his rigorous conscience. Nouri Nouri'son could buy a year's worth of charcoal with a purseful of silver, and unless the man were a complete failure at his trade, he could make a hundred loaves with two sacks of palace flour.
"I shall be seen, Omniscience," Enver said, more eagerly than before. "The merchant lords, the high templars, the nobles, too, and all their cooks, I shall be seen by them all, Omniscience. By sundown the entire city will know you're eating bread baked by Nouri Nouri'son. They'll stand in line outside his doors."
"Mind you, dear Enver, it's a small shop on a small square. I think, perhaps, half the city would be sufficient. A quarter might be wiser."
"Word will spread, Omniscience."
Hamanu nodded. No one would have noticed three bodies in an alley. No one had noticed the solitary corpse he'd left in a doorway somewhat south of the square. But a generous gesture, that would change lives in ways not even he could predict.
"Is that all, Omniscience?"
The king nodded, then called his steward back. If he was going to make a generous gesture to the man who saved his life, he might as well make a similar gesture to the one whose life he'd borrowed. "There'll be a beggar on the stoop. A human youth with a crippled leg. Put something useful in his bowl."
"Oh, yes, Omniscience! Will that be all, Omniscience?"
"One last thing, before you return to the palace, hie yourself to the fountain in Lion's Square and throw a coin over the edge."
Enver's grin faded as his eyes widened. "Omniscience, what should I wish for?"
"Why—that Nouri Nouri'son's bread is as good as his kneading mallet, what else?"
Chapter Two
Hamanu's morning audiences began when Enver left the roof. They ended when the king had broken the seal on the last scroll in the baskets on his marble table and had summoned, by a mind-bending prick of conscience, the last petitioner in the unwindowed and, therefore, stifling, waiting chamber below.
Sometimes petitioners abandoned their quest for a private audience before they felt the unforgettable terror of their king's presence in their thoughts. Sometimes Hamanu didn't second-guess a petitioner's misgiving. Other times he pursued the tender-hearted spirit throughout Urik and beyond; he had that power. After thirteen ages of practice, Hamanu could give his whims wills of their own and set them free to wander his city as he himself did almost every night, borrowing shape and memory—stealing them—and making another life his own for a moment, a year, or a lifetime.
Hamanu had a handful of willful whims and stolen shapes loose in the city just then, and touched them lightly as the day's last petitioner climbed the stairs. A thief who'd shown creative promise in his craft had seized a woman—a child, really, half his age—and forced her to the ground in the kitchen yard of her own modest home.
The king seared the thief's mind and flesh with a single thought. The last image that passed through the thief's senses was the woman screaming as her rapist's hot blood burst over her. Then the thief was thoroughly dead, and the last petitioner was walking across the palace roof.
Deceit was another matter.
He watched the merchant—Eden—lift the hem of her gown and step over the blasted remains of the day's most unfortunate petitioner. Most unfortunate, so far.
Her mind was filled with disgust, not fear. For the corpse, Hamanu hoped. As himself—as Hamanu, King of Urik—he dealt with few women, save templars and whores. His reputation was burdened with an ancient layer of tarnish. Respectable families hid their wives and daughters from him, as if that had ever protected anyone.
This Eden, with her white linen gown, pulled-back hair, and unpainted face, was the epitome of respectability. Far more respectable than the young nobleman—the late, young nobleman—whose bowels were beginning to stink in t
he brutal sunlight.
Hamanu didn't truly mind that Renady Soleuse had inherited his estate through the proven expedient of slaughtering his father and his brothers and the rest of his inconvenient kin; link's king didn't meddle in family affairs. And Hamanu wasn't outraged that the accusations of water-theft Renady leveled against his neighbors were whole-cloth lies; audacity was, in truth, a reliable pathway to royal favor. But the young man had lied when Hamanu had asked questions about the financial health of the Soleuse estate, and worse, the fool had counted on a defiler charlatan's lizard-skin charm to protect him while he lied.
Hamanu killed for deceit.
The hereditary honor of Soleuse had been extinguished with thought and fire, both somewhat sorcerous in origin and wielded with a soldier's precision. Now, Hamanu and Urik were short a noble family to manage the farms and folk the Soleuse had been lord to. Most likely he'd offer the honor to Enver. After more than an age overseeing a king's private life, Hamanu judged that the affairs of a noble estate should be child's play for the likes of Enver. But, perhaps he'd offer the spoils of Soleuse to this Eden, this plain half-elf woman with a man's name.
