Chapter three“Tiri!” I yelled back over my shoulder. “Look out for our smelly young friend.”
“Yes. You — I hope the young prince is — all right.”
There was no point in recovering my shamlak, that had already pinched in the nostrils of my friends. There was just time to grab a replacement and then we all hurried out and down the steps from Nandisha’s palace. People in the normal course of the day do not walk about clad in full plate armor and carrying an arsenal of weapons; when they do so other folk know they are engaged on urgent business of a lethal kind. All I had was the new shamlak — a tasteful mid-blue in color — and my rapier and main gauche, with the heavy knife over my right hip. Fweygo, Ranaj and the bunch of fighting men from Princess Nandisha’s guard were armored and armed —
