“How did you get that scar?” Jardir asked, pointing at the crippled hand Rojer had raised, missing two fingers and part of the palm besides. “It looks old, too old for you to have gotten it fighting alagai as a man, and it hinders you little, as if you’ve had it for many years.”

Rojer felt his blood run cold. His eyes flicked to the fat merchant prince in his bright silks; treated with such derision by his fellows because he was crippled. He wondered if the Krasians thought him less a man for having only half a hand.

Everyone else had stopped talking, waiting on Rojer’s answer. They had all been half listening anyway, but now everyone stared at them openly.

Rojer scowled. Are the Hollowers so different? he wondered. None of them, not even Leesha, had ever so much as mentioned his crippled hand, trying to pretend it didn’t exist, and then staring when they thought he wasn’t watching.

At least he’s honest about his curiosity, Rojer thought, looking back to Jardir. And I don’t give a coreling’s shit what he thinks of me.

“Demons broke through our wards when I was a child of three,” he said. “My father stood with an iron fireplace poker to hold them off while my mother fled with me. A flame demon leapt upon her back, biting though my hand and into her shoulder.”

“How did you survive this?” Jardir asked. “Did your father save you?”

Rojer shook his head. “My father was dead by then. My mother killed the flame demon, and pushed me into a bolt-hole.”

There were gasps around the table, and even Jardir’s eyes widened sharply.

“Your mother killed a flame demon?” he asked.

Rojer nodded. “Pulled it off me and drowned it in a water trough. The water boiled and left her arms blistered and red by the time its thrashing stopped.”

“Oh, Rojer, how terrible!” Leesha moaned. “You never told me any of that!”

Rojer shrugged. “You never asked. No one’s ever asked me about my hand before. Everyone, even you, avoids it with their eyes.”

“I always thought you wanted privacy,” Leesha said. “I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable by calling attention to your…”

“Deformity?” Rojer supplied, irritated by the pity in her voice.

Jardir stood sharply, his face enraged. Everyone on both sides of the table tensed, ready in an instant to fight or flee.

“That is an alagai scar!” he shouted, reaching across the table and grabbing Rojer’s hand, holding it up for all to see. “Nie take any who look upon you in pity; this is a badge of honor!

“Scars show our defiance of the alagai!” he shouted. “And of Nie Herself! They tell Her we have looked at the maw of Her abyss, and spit in it.

“Hasik!” Jardir pointed to the largest of his warriors. At his command, the warrior stood and opened his armored robe, showing a semicircle of tooth marks that covered half his torso.

“Clay demon,” he said, his accent thick. “Big,” he added, spreading his arms.

Jardir turned to Gared and narrowed his eyes in challenge.

“Not bad,” Gared grunted. “Reckon I got it beat, though.” He pulled the shirt from his muscled chest, turning to reveal a thick line of claw marks running from his right shoulder to his left hip. “Woodie got me good,” he said. “Smaller man mighta been cut in half.”

Rojer watched in wonder as it went around the room like a little ripple, people on both sides of the table standing up to show scars and shouting their stories, arguing over whose were bigger. After the last year in the Hollow, there was hardly a person in town who didn’t have at least one.

But there was no air of regret in the room. People were roaring with laughter as near misses were recalled and sometimes pantomimed, even the Krasians slapping their knees in delight. Rojer looked to Wonda, the girl’s face horribly scarred, and saw her smiling for the first time he could recall.

When the cacophony was at it highest, Jardir stood upon his bench like a master Jongleur. “Let the alagaisee our scars, and despair!” he cried, removing his own robe.

Muscles rippled along his olive skin, but it was not that which drew amazed gasps from every mouth in the room. It was his scars. They were wards. Hundreds of them, perhaps thousands, cut into his skin like the tattoos of the Painted Man.

“Night, maybe he is the Deliverer,” Rojer muttered.

CHAPTER 25

ANY PRICE

333 AR SPRING

“YOU’D BEST LIMP QUICKER,” Hasik told Abban with a laugh, “or you will be left behind in the darkness.”

Abban grimaced in pain, sweat running in rivulets down his thick-jowled face. Ahmann set a brutal pace back to the Krasian camp, and he strode ahead with Ashan, leaving poor Abban stuck between Hasik and Shanjat, two men who had tortured him since childhood and did worse now.

Just a week earlier, Hasik had raped one of Abban’s daughters when he came to their pavilion to deliver a message. The time before, it was one of his wives. Jurim and Shanjat had made a point of taking Abban’s nie’Sharum sons under their wing in the Kaji’sharaj, instilling in them such a disgust of their khaffit father that Abban’s heart felt torn. All the Spears of the Deliverer jeered and spat at him, striking him at their pleasure when the Shar’Dama Ka was not about. They all knew Ahmann from of old, and resented that Abban had the Deliverer’s ear as they did not. Abban knew that if he ever fell from Ahmann’s favor, his life would be short indeed.

But the moment they left the forbidding generated by the giant ward of Deliverer’s Hollow, Abban felt his skin crawling, and he was forced to accept that there was nothing the Sharum could do to him that would make him too prideful to beg their protection in the night.

Such was the fate of khaffit.

“I do not understand why you treat these chin weaklings as though they were true men,” Ashan said to Ahmann as they walked.

“These people are strong,” Ahmann replied. “Even their women have alagai scars.”

“Their women are brazen like harlots,” Ashan said, “and should see more of the back of their husbands’ hands. The one who leads them is worst of all! I cannot believe you let her scold you like a…a…”

“Dama’ting?” Ahmann asked.

“More like the Damajah,” Ashan said. “And this woman is neither.”

Ahmann’s face twitched slightly, a barely noticeable sign of irritation that nevertheless would have sent Abban running for cover if there had been any to run to.

But Ahmann kept his temper. “Think, Ashan,” he said. “Should I waste warriors conquering these people for Sharak Ka when they fight the alagai already?”

“They do not fight under you, Shar’Dama Ka,” Ashan pointed out. “The Evejah commands that all warriors obey the Deliverer for Sharak Ka to be won.”

Ahmann nodded. “And so it shall be. But I did not unite the tribes of Krasia by killing men. Unity came from mixing my blood with theirs by marrying their dama’ting. I see no reason not to do the same in the North.”

“You would marry that…that…” Ashan was incredulous.

“That what?” Ahmann asked. “That beautiful woman who kills alagai with a wave of her hand, and wards like a sorceress of old?” He lifted the warded cloak she had given him and held it up to his face, closing his eyes and inhaling deeply. “Even the scent of her intoxicates me. I must have her.”