"These are Khaseem Bai's men," Anya muttered pointing to a red banner that fluttered from a spear that was thrust into the earth. The silken flag was emblazoned with a black lions head that almost seemed to snap and snarl as the wind worked the fabric. Khaseem Bai was a name much on the tongues of the Iristani. It was said that he had come down from the deserts beyond the Ilbar mountains after the tribes of that inhospitable waste had put aside their ancient blood feuds to drive the renegade from their sands. Since that time he had preyed on the caravans and herdsmen of the step, snatching up city-dwellers and ransoming them for supplies and silver. It was said, among the hokah dens and drinking houses of Kafir, that no blade had ever drawn blood from Khaseem Bai and that he was protected by black and malign spirits. It did not surprise Anya that it had been he who had sent assassin's to kill them after learning Ibn-vakir had sold the same goods three times.

"If they know their footpads have failed they don't show it," Anya observed. Indeed, the mood in the camp was alert but the men did not seem alarmed. As she watched a paunchy man hauled a cauldron of soup from the fire and bawled something unintelligible from this distance. The various cut throats ambled towards him to take their mourning meal. 

"Strange, I don't see Khaseem Bai among them," Anya noticed, her keen eyes having finished their survey of the camp.

"Indeed you do not," came a deep basso voice from behind them. Anya whirled her hand going to her blade but freezing as the point of a spear pressed against her throat. Two similar weapons were leveled at Abelard. The men holding them had the dark sun burned skin of desert tribesmen and the hooked noses and slightly slanted eyes of the lands beyond the Ilbar mountains.  Their leader was a muscular man in a tunic of white silk. His eyes were dark and burned bright with intelligence and his face was handsome in a brooding way. His legs were covered with armor of tooled leather that gripped the side of a galloping horse so a man could use the short recurve bows in fashion in these parts. The thugs with him were dressed less finely, but Anya wagered all of them were veterans who had come south with Khaseem Bai. The must have snuck around them through some hidden ravine, though they had done so with so little sound that even Anya's razor keen senses had been deceived.

"But do not worry," he said with a formal bow that would not have been out of place in the court of Aquilonia, "Khaseem Bai sees you."