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.After a moment of tense thought, Habiba shifted into a waiting mode with a little shrug.“We will know soon enough what the ambassador makes of us.”There was something brewing beneath Habiba’s impassive exterior.Llesho couldn’t figure out exactly what it was, but he figured that, if the witch was suspicious, he was well advised to stay on the defensive.He let his hand drift to the hilt of his knife.“Five thousand to our twenty.” Habiba did not turn to look at him, but offered the reminder as if to the wind.Llesho took the hint—a dead prince was no use to his people—and let his hand drop once again to the reins.It was as well that he did so, for they had arrived in front of the yellow silk tent, and soldiers poured out on every side to surround them.Llesho slid from his saddle, leaving his sword where it lay.When one of the imperial guard would have taken his knife, however, he reached it faster, not unsheathing it, but holding it tight to his side with the flat of his open hand.“It is a symbol of rank,” Habiba explained, and the soldiers backed off, letting one of authority among them come forward.“No one may approach the emperor’s ambassador while armed,” the sergeant of the guard instructed.Habiba waved a careless hand.“He is but a boy, the knife a mere trinket, but important as a symbol.You understand?” he lied.The sergeant turned to examine the Thebin prince, who looked younger than he was because of his short stature.Llesho smiled back at the sergeant with his most vacuous grin.I’m harmless, he thought at the man.Quick as a striking snake, the sergeant made a grab for Llesho’s throat.Just as quickly, Llesho had the knife out.If the sergeant had not anticipated the move, he would have been dead, but he clasped Llesho’s wrist in both of his hands and managed to stop the knife with just the tip bloodied.The wounded soldier exerted pressure on the nerves that ran close to the surface of Llesho’s knobby wristbone, but the knife did not fall.“Give.” the soldier said.“Give!”They stayed like that, frozen for an endless second, until Llesho’s eyes cleared, and he realized that he was standing in the center of a shocked and silent circle, his hand still wrapped around his knife, while a bleeding soldier clung to his wrist as if his life depended on it.Slowly, Llesho realized that it probably did.“I’m sorry,” he whispered, horrified at what he had done.But he did not drop the knife, even now that he was aware of the painful pressure the sergeant was exerting on the nerves in his wrist.“Please let me go!” he cried.“I’m not going to hurt you.”The sergeant snorted indignantly.“Let go of the knife first, then we’ll see.”Llesho stared with growing horror from the knife in his frozen hand to the sergeant.“I can’t,” he said.The soldier frowned, and glanced away to call for aid from the men who surrounded them.Habiba stepped forward, however, with both hands out to show that he carried no weapon.Moving slowly so that he startled neither Llesho nor the tense guards who awaited only the command of their sergeant to cut down the Thebin prince, he slipped one hand over that of the soldier holding Llesho’s wrist.“Let go, very slowly.” He pinned the man with a hypnotic stare, and the soldier’s hand relaxed.Llesho pulled away, but he could not escape Habiba’s hold, which had replaced that of the damaged soldier.“Now, give me the knife, Llesho.You can trust me.” Gradually, Llesho felt the soft, low words lulling him into a warm sense of security.Relieved, he turned his bloodied palm up, offering the knife.With no outward show of urgency Habiba took it.“I hope that whatever you learned was worth the cost,” he said to the sergeant, holding the knife out to him.The sergeant looked from the witch to Llesho and back again, his face set in hard lines.He didn’t have to say anything.It was obvious to everyone who had seen it that the man had learned exactly what he wanted to know from the exercise, and that he treated that knowledge with deadly seriousness.“I truly am sorry.” Llesho sighed, certain that they had just lost something more important than his Thebin knife, but not sure what it could be.They wanted the ambassador to believe that Llesho was a true prince of Thebin.If the sergeant knew enough about the raising of young princes on the high plateau to test him with the knife, he had only learned what they wanted the emperor to know anyway.Whatever it was, Habiba had his “making the best of a plan gone awry” face on when he held out a cloth to the bleeding sergeant.“Bind that up; you are dripping on your uniform,” he said when the sergeant had thrust Llesho’s knife into his own belt.“And watch that blade—it’s sharp.”The sergeant gave him a dark look, but accepted the cloth.When he had wrapped it around the wound in his arm, he directed his soldiers to surround Habiba’s party.“Hold their guards here,” he ordered the greater number of his men, and marked out half a dozen to accompany Llesho and Habiba.“These two, come with me.”“These three.” Master Den gave the sergeant a respectful bow marred only by the quirk of an eyebrow.The sergeant laughed.“Master Den! Ill met as always! I should have realized you would be a part of this!”“Not by choice, my lad, not by choice.” Master Den shook his head mournfully, but he was smiling as he did so.“I’ll keep an eye on things for you.”“Go,” the sergeant concluded.“Before I change my mind and have you clapped in chains for the last time we met.”“A man shouldn’t wager what he can’t afford to lose,” Den suggested with another deep rumble of a laugh.He fell in next to Llesho before the sergeant could respond.When the imperial guard had the party sorted out, the sergeant held aside the tent flap and announced their arrival to the house guards standing at attention just inside [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]