"Where has my youth gone?" he complained as he began dressing. "When I was fresh down from Trolledyngjan, still in my teens, I was leading troops against El

Murid ... Hire? Did you say hire, woman?" A heavy, hard face encompassed by shaggy blond hair and beard momentarily joined hers in her mirror. She touched his cheek. "Bring in some thief who'll rob me blind with numbers on paper?

"When me and Mocker and Haroun were stealing the fat off Itaskian merchants, I never dreamed I'd get fat in the arse and pocket myself. Those were the days. I still ain't too old. What's thirty-one? My father's father fought at Ringerike when he was eighty..."

"And got himself killed."

"Yeah, well." He rambled on about the deeds of other relatives. But each, as Elana pointed out, had died far from home, and not a one of old age.

"It's Haroun's fault. Where's he been the last three years? If he turned up, we could get a good adventure started."

Elana dropped her brush. Cold-footed mice of fear danced along her spine. This was bad. When he began missing that ruffian bin Yousif the fever had reached a critical pitch. If by whim of fate the man turned up, Bragi could be lured into another insane, Byzantine scheme.

"Forget that cutthroat. What's he ever done for you? Just gotten you in trouble since the day you met." She turned. Bragi stood with one leg in a pair of baggy work trousers, the other partially raised from the floor. She had said the wrong thing. Damn Haroun! How had he gotten a hold on a man as bull-headedly independent as Bragi?

She suspected it was because bin Yousif had a cause, a decades-deep vendetta with El Murid which infected his every thought and action. His dedication to vengeance awed a man like Bragi.