Warlock's shadow

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Kasmin didn’t see the three men come into the tavern but he knew they were there almost at once. There was a subtle stutter in the mood of the place, a difference in tone, conversations falling quiet, tankards pausing for a moment as heads turned. Strangers. He didn’t get strangers very often. The press of dark narrow streets and alleys that was The Maze had made an unfriendly name for itself, one it mostly deserved. The inside of the Barrow of Beer was a safe enough place to be — it was Kasmin’s place and he had a reputation to keep — but the outside was a wholly different matter.

He tried not to look but he couldn’t resist. Three men had come in together. He couldn’t make out much through the press of his regulars but they had an air to them, the sort that said they were used to trouble. They didn’t look like they were local, either. Not city folk. Most likely they were sailors up from the docks, although the Barrow of Beer was closer to the market side of the Maze and not many sailors made it this far. The taverns and the Moongrass dens and the brothels and the muggers and the press gangs saw to that.

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