Chapter seventeen
EspionageNothing useful came out of that trip back up the River Havilthytus. Nothing useful, it seemed to me, was coming out of my entire spying efforts in Hamal. The news with which Chido greeted me, although I had heard rumors before I slung my coat down onto the bed for Nulty to clear away in my room in The Kyr Nath and the Fifi, was that something of a reverse had been suffered by the army of Pandahem. That is what the Hamalians called their forces operating in Pandahem; it was not the army of the Pandaheem. I grimaced, thinking, good for them, the Hamalian cramphs.
Chido noticed the glitter of gold falling from my coat as Nulty cleared it away.
“Oh,” I said, offhandedly. “Just a souvenir I picked up.”
“It is magnificent, Hamun!”
Well, I was not about to tell Chi
