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Icy water splashed his face as he caught hiround still seemed to tilt and rock

Captain Lukas swore "Bitch of a weather! Feel that rain! You’d think it was still winter, by how cold it is!"

Alain blinked rain out of his eyes and shook his head to clear it The shower had taken thes and hed and sha at the first cold drop? What, are you prissy snails?"

The vision, cohts and smells of the compound drowned hie and smoke, and a storehouse, whose door was propped open Inside, a score of folk huddled in the interior around a cluster of beds, sitting, lying down, coughing: a sickroom, perhaps A child at the door watched them walk by ide eyes and a somber expression

"You’ve been on the road too many days," said the captain "The lady does not like the se, Captain?" asked one of the escorts

"Eh! I’d like a good washing, Captain!" said another

"There’s sohed a third "Not like in the old days, if you take "

"Hush," Captain Lukas said, but he wasn’t angry at his , the cohtful silence

These barracks lay near the southern gate and were not particularly close to the palace complex, which sat on a hill The streets had little traffic considering the tiuarded by a dozen soldiers

"What do they guard?" Alain asked

"Grain As precious as gold"

A few folk tended garden spaces in empty lots Autun had not quite filled out the space between the walls built in the days of Taillefer, or else old buildings had fallen down and not been reconstructed, with the dirt around the foundations left to go to seed A wohs to watch the soldiers pass Like the child at the storehouse door, they called out no greeting, nor did the captain nod at thee their presence Their silence troubled Alain, who had an idea that relations between townsfolk and soldiers had once been easier

The baths lay at the base of the palatine hill The original structure was built by the old Dariyans, but it had been refurbished a hundred years ago and had not deteriorated overly e sat under a portico with a pair of nervous uard them Within the stone halls a pair of old woh it was true they were assisted by a quintet of younger, fairer lasses, banished to the back chambers as soon as the soldiers ca Alain forward "I’ll be back to fetch him"

They took him to a room where he stripped The attendants examined hi the world has to offer They even pinched his buttocks andenough," the taller commented to the shorter in a murmur he was not meant to hear "Too thin"