Free The Brazen Gambit by Lynn Abbey

street.
    "What's Elabon Escrissar going to say when he finds out that you've lost me, Sassel?" Pavek retreated while he
taunted the half-giant. The street was wide enough that he should be able to side-step and get clean shot at the back
of Sassel's head, when the half-giant lost his temper and charged. "What kind of reward will Escrissar have for a
clumsy oaf? Maybe he'll take Sassel to the boneyard himself. Maybe he'll find something worse. Poor, stupid Sassel."
    Sassel bellowed and charged. Pavek held his ground until there was no way the half-giant could stop or turn,
then he launched himself to one side. Sassel had the templar's arm for a scant moment. Pavek made a spinning escape,
but he lost his balance for a heartbeat. His elbow led the rest of his body into a collision with coarse stucco wall.
White agony exploded behind his eyes, but fortunately for him, he'd only wrecked his left arm; and, conquering the
pain, he managed to hurl the masonry with his right hand at the base of Sassel's skull with sufficient force and
accuracy to drop the half-giant to his knees, then to his face on the cobblestones.
    Pavek let his head hang a moment, until his heart beat less furiously. He couldn't move his left arm from the
shoulder down. Something was crushed, and he'd need a healer, but other things came first. Wobbling on jelly-filled
legs, he staggered to Sassel's side.
    Blood flowed through the half-giant's matted hair. He was still alive, but unconscious and wheezing. There'd be
more mercy in running his metal-blade knife across Sassel's throat than leaving him to die like an animal, but Pavek
couldn't afford mercy. While Sassel lived, he would lie to stay alive. Let the dead-heart slay his servant, if he wanted to
read the truth from the last images in his memory.
    "A templar and a half-giant. Down here! Down Customs Row!"
    Half-giants were unmistakable, but so was a templar in his sulphur-yellow robe; and, given the templars'
reputation, anyone answering that alarm would take Sassel's side. Pavek tore off bis robe. He mopped Sassel's wounds
with the cloth, adding the half-giant's blood to his own. Then he looped it over Sassel's fingers.
    Eventually, whether Sassel lived or died, the robe would wind up in Escrissar's hands. Maybe it would be
enough to convince the interrogator that an inconvenient regulator had bled to lonely, unobserved death.
    Footsteps echoed near the customhouse. Cradling his left arm with his right, Pavek escaped into the night.

Chapter Four
    Pavek's first hours of fugitive exile within Urik were the hardest. Panic clung to his shoulder, whispering dire
warnings after every sound, glimpsing the sulphurous yellow of the robe he no longer wore in every half-seen
movement, His entire body protested the beating it had taken; his elbow protested loudest. Escrissar's cuts on his
cheek seeped fresh blood each time he swallowed the panic; they burned as sweat, hot and cold, mingled with the
blood.
    He didn't know where to go, wasn't even sure where he was. Streets and quarters that he'd known all his life had
gone suddenly strange. Crouched in an airless alley, he beat his head gently against the wall, hoping to loosen
something useful from his panic-bound thoughts. He'd been among templars for twenty years, always above Urik's
laws, never outside them.
    Finally his mind produced a coherent thought-a long-forgotten memory from his early childhood: a horrible day
when he'd gotten separated from his mother near the elven market. Tears leaked from his eyes, stinging sharper than all
the sweat.
    Shame seized Pavek's gut, forcing him to choose between nauseous surrender and a fight against his burgeoning
fears. He chose to fight and broke panic's siege. He recognized the alley where be cowered and heard the night sounds
for what they were: ordinary and nonthreatening.
    He remembered that there was a place in Urik where a fugitive could hide: the squatters' quarter.
    * * *
    Guthay had