"Because I'll pay you well," the Shamon priest croaked eagerly. Coins clinked onto the table. "Here, look! Two hundred samori, Sha Haral! So much for such a simple task—enough to send you out again from Ulna, to put you once more on the road to wealth and power, ambition...."
Broodingly, Haral stared down into the kabat's green, too-potent depths. Of a sudden he was acutely conscious of the smoke and stench and jarring sound that eddied through the shadows of this filthy, frowsy deadfall that passed as a cafe. 'Wealth and power, ambition?' He laughed aloud, knowing as he did it that his tongue had grown too thick with kabat. This was the road down which ambition led—the road to stinking drinking dives, and dreary nights and drearier days on an outlaw world called Ulna. The road to blood and valor, a warrior's name—and proposals of woman-murder.
Ambition? Two hundred samori-worth of ambition! Bitterly, he laughed again, deep in his throat. There were other, better things to call it: greed; thirst for blood; a cursed, insatiate lust for power.
The old priest gripped his arm. "Three hundred, then! Three hundred samori, Sha Haral!"
Somberly, the blue man stared off into the crowd and smoke and shadows. It dawned on him that already new faces had sifted in; new forms, all arrogance and swagger.
The forms and faces of Gar Sark's raiders.
"Three hundred samori? Three hundred—to challenge Gar Sark and all his crew, as well as murder?" He smiled a thin, bleak, mirthless smile and shook his head. "No, old man. What you want is a madman, not a warrior."
"Four hundred—four hundred samori for a single blow!" In his eagerness the priest was slavering. "No? Five, then, Sha Haral! Five hundred, all for you. I have no more."
For the first time, Haral looked full at the Shamon. "Why do you want her dead?" he challenged. He brought his fist down with a heavy thud upon the table. "Why? That's what I want to know! Who is she? What has she done that calls for killing?"