A Fantasy Reader

He found the pawn shop easily enough – there were several on that stretch of the An-Monal road, but only a couple offered rooms above. Counting the time spent to climb one of the staircases in the dizzying Kiriath architecture and then walk the Black Folk Span across, the whole search took him not much more than an hour.

The pawnbroker, a wiry old man with a patched eye, bought the line about family the same way the Lizard’s Head publican had. He waved Egar through musty gloom and out again to the shop’s backyard. Rickety outside stairs went up the wall above them to a row of doors under the eaves.

“Second room,” he said wheezily. “Tell him I’ll need him tonight.”

Egar went up the stairs. Laid knuckles on sun-bleached wood a couple of times.

“Fuck do you want?” someone bellowed, in bad tethanne.

Sounds like a hangover in there. Egar grinned and called back through the door in Majak.

“Is that any way to talk to a brother?”

Sudden quiet. He thought he heard the creak of someone moving off a cot. Sensed the weapon lifted stealthily from its resting place against the wall.

“Harath? Let’s not get off on the wrong foot here, son.”

The voice behind the door came back, matching Egar’s change of tongue.