He laughed and made the sword flash in the lamplight, “Don’t worry, little one. I’ll keep the ghosts away. Think of the money. You can have your own palace with a hundred lovely slaves to keep you happy.”
He watched fear struggle again with greed in the Martian’s face.
“I saw something there, Carse. Something that scared me, I don’t know why.”
Greed won out. Penkawr licked dry lips. “But perhaps, as you say, it is all only legend. And there are treasures there—even my half share of them would make me wealthy beyond dreams.”
“Half?” Carse repeated blandly. “You’re mistaken, Penkawr. Your share will be one-third.”
Penkawr’s face distorted with fury, and he leaped up. “But I found the Tomb! It’s my discovery!”
Carse shrugged. “If you’d rather not share that way, then keep your secret to yourself. Keep it—till your ‘brothers’ of Jekkara tear it from you with hot pincers when I tell them what you’ve found.”
“You’d do that?” choked Penkawr. “You’d tell them and get me killed?”
The little thief stared in impotent rage at Carse, standing tall in the lamp glow with the sword in his hands, his cloak falling back from his naked shoulders, his collar and belt of jewels looted from a dead king flaring. There was no softness in Carse, no relenting. The deserts and the suns of Mars, the cold and the heat and the hunger of them, had flayed away all but the bone and the iron sinew.
Penkawr shivered. “Very well, Carse. I’ll take you there—for one-third share.”