The Phoenix Guards by Steven Brust Page B

stood behind a long counter nearly as high as his chest, noticed the two men in gold cloaks at once, and nodded to them. Walking down to the end of the counter and reaching under it, he appeared to pull on something. Khaavren was at a loss to know the result of this at first, but Frai continued to the far wall, through a door in it, and came at last to a hallway, where he stopped opposite a part of the wall that appeared no different from the rest of the passage. Frai glanced at Khaavren as if to say, “watch closely,” then clapped his hands five times in a particular sequence. Almost at once, a door was revealed in the wall, and the two Guardsmen passed through.
    Khaavren found himself in a large room set in the back of the inn. There were six or seven round tables, and seated at each were five or six persons, mostly Jhereg and Dzur, and they appeared to be playing with the Sivali-Yangorra Stones, which were at that time becoming one of the more popular means of parting with or gaining excess funds.
    For an instant, Khaavren wondered why the gamblers had taken the trouble to conceal themselves, as apparently they had done, but the idea suddenly came to him that a game thus concealed would be safe from Imperial taxes, and this would allow the inn to keep a larger portion of the profits. He was on the point of asking Frai how he had uncovered this
place, and if they were to arrest all of the participants as well as the owners, when he noticed that no one in the room seemed surprised or concerned by their presence. In fact, at that very moment, a short, pale Jhereg approached them, with an ingratiating smile on his lips.
    “Good evening, my lords,” he said.
    Frai said, “You will be so kind, my good Corris, as to keep your pleasantries to their home within your mouth, and merely hand over to me that for which I have come.”
    “With pleasure, my lord,” said the Jhereg, giving Frai a moderately heavy purse. “Is it your pleasure to stay for a few hours and increase this amount, or to offer us the chance to regain some portion of it?”
    Frai only growled and signified to Khaavren that the interview was at an end. As they passed back into the main part of the inn, and presently, back onto the street, Khaavren said, “Tell me, my friend Frai, does what I have just had the honor to witness represent a common occurrence?”
    They crossed the street and were immediately inside another inn, almost identical to the first, save that the counter was lower, darker, and on the other side of the doorway. The floor had once been tiled, which indicated that the inn used to be of the expensive sort, but the tiles were now broken and chipped, and the plain hardwood of the walls seemed in need of some repair. Light was provided by lamps hung along the walls, as well as a large one in the center of the single large room. This hostelry was, like the first, filled nearly to overflowing, although Khaavren noticed only a few Chreotha and Vallista among the throng of Teckla.
    “I do not believe, my lord Tiassa,” said Frai, “that I have done you the honor of calling you my friend. And as to your question, I think you will soon learn the answer.”
    “A moment, sir,” said Khaavren, who suddenly felt his blood rushing to a spot behind his eyes. “Could it be that I have the misfortune to have done you some injury of which I am unaware? If so, I hope you will do me the honor of telling me of it. Yet, if I may say so, it seems unlikely that I could have yet had the chance to have given you an injury, since all we have had to do with each other is to collect a few gold Imperials, which you have not even deigned to share with me, as, I think, a good comrade would.”
    “You have done me no injury, sir,” said Frai, who, stopping just inside the doorway of the inn at the beginning of Khaavren’s speech, had become more than a little warm by the end of it. “You have done me no injury, yet I confess that I think little enough of