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someday." There was more irony in his voice than he'd intended, and more
anger than was wise.
    "I didn't send a messenger," Metica replied, losing her smile.
    * * *
    Pavek was acutely conscious of the little wax lump in his sleeve as he made his way past the customhouse-he
hadn't stopped to see if the girl was waiting or if she'd stolen all the salt-to the western gate. Modekan was west of the
city. Its villagers used the western gate when they brought their produce to market. So did anyone who'd registered at
the Modekan inn, unless they wanted to walk the extra distance to one of the other three midwall gates.
    The city's main avenues were filling quickly with the usual market-day traffic, but a templar in his yellow robes
had little difficulty moving against the traffic-as long as he didn't mind the glowers of contempt and the constant
splatter of hawking as his shadow passed.
    A regulator had the right to answer any challenge to templarate authority with a fine or corporal punishment. But,
like the right to call upon King Hamanu for magical aid, it was a right that only a fool would choose to exercise. Pavek
contented himself with a purposeful scowl and kept an eye out for two men and one woman pulling a cart loaded with
cone-bottomed clay pots. Unless they'd chosen to drag their heavy cart along the narrower side streets, the zarneeka
traders had yet to pass through the gate.
    The regulator in charge of the western gate, a grizzled human whose robe sleeves matched Pavek's except that
they were frayed and threadbare, accepted Metica's wax without enthusiasm. He snapped the wax in half and tossed
the pieces into a filthy bowl where they were lost in a handful of similarly broken lumps.
    "What're you looking for?" he asked Pavek, hawking into a fire pit for good measure.
    "The usual. I'll know them when I spot them. Give me an inspector. I'll keep him busy. Anything in particular
you're on watch for?"
    "The usual," the older regulator replied with wink, then he shouted a name, "Bukke!" and an inspector joined
them in the gatehouse.
    The new man was human with spiked, sun-bleached hair and pale, mean-spirited eyes. There was a distinct family
resemblance between the two, especially when they stared. Bukke was a big man, accustomed to looking down into
another man's eyes, but he wasn't bigger than Pavek, who let his scarred lip curl and held Bukke's stare until the
younger man turned away.
    "I'll tell you which ones to roust out of line. You lead them aside for a shakedown, and do a thorough job of it,
like I'm sure you can, while I watch from here."
    "What am I looking for?"
    "You're not. You do what you're told until I give you the sign to stop. Understand?"
    The inspector looked around, but his father had left the gatehouse, and he was alone with someone who gave
every indication of being at least as mean as he was. "Yeah. Right."
    * * *
    Throats grew parched and tempers frayed as the bloated red sun climbed toward noon. At the nod of Pavek's
head, Bukke harassed every threesome composed of two men and a woman, every jug-filled cart, and a few hapless
journeyers who didn't fit the pattern at all, just to confound any rumors that might be drifting back along the road to
Modekan. Squinting toward the horizon, Pavek saw an occasional swirl of dust where someone turned around.
    Three someones?
    Three someones with a cart of zarneeka? They were itinerants, people who dwelt in the trackless land beyond
Urik's verdant belt. They'd come a long way to register their intent at Modekan. Pavek was counting that they'd come
the rest of the way no matter what rumors filtered down the road. Metica said their amphorae were bonded and sealed;
by rights they had nothing to fear from King Hamanu's templars.
Pavek's gaze fell upon a family of farmers-a man with a withered arm, his wife, grown children, half-grown
children, and a suckling infant. They were too poor to have a cart, but carried their goods on their bent