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You rush into the small bakery and your sudden appearance startles the baker’s wife. She gasps when she sees your soaked and slime-smeared features, and nervously she snatches up a knife and threatens to use it if either of you come a step closer. You can understand her reaction; after your dip in the citadel moat, you and Karvas look more reptilian than human.
‘Calm yourself, good lady,’ you say, in as soothing a tone as you are able to muster. ‘My companion and I may appear a little wretched but we mean you no harm.’ The woman is not convinced. She raises the knife in her trembling hand and begins shouting hysterically for her husband. Moments later, a portly man in a white smock and cloth hat emerges from an open doorway at the rear of the shop. He is brandishing an iron skillet and comes at you like a charging bull.
‘Hold there, Barwick!’ shouts Karvas, and to your astonishment the baker skids to a halt and drops his iron pot to the floor.
‘Prince Karvas … is it you?’ he stammers. Karvas uses his sleeve to wipe some of the slime from his face, and then he gives the baker a broad smile.
‘Yes, Barwick, it is I.’
‘Thank Ishir,’ gasps the baker, and he falls to his knees. ‘We have prayed that you would return home and save us from Sadanzo. We of Cavalia have suffered his tyranny for too long. He is an evil man and we fear that he will bring ruin to Siyen when he is crowned king. But now our Prince has returned to stop him. Ishir be praised!’
The sound of horses galloping to a halt outside the bakery alerts you to the fact that you and the Prince are still in great danger. The baker bolts the door and then urges you and Karvas to follow him as he hurries out of the shop, past his baking ovens, and through a rear door that leads to a walled yard scattered with chickens. He pulls open the door of an outbuilding and he offers you and Karvas the two young horses that are stabled inside. They are his most valuable animals and Karvas is impressed by the man’s generosity.
‘I’ll not forget this, Barwick,’ says Karvas, as you and he quickly saddle the two colts. The baker pulls open one of a pair of gates at the rear of his yard. Proudly he salutes you as you steer your horses through the gap and gallop away along a passageway that leads to one of Cavalia’s city streets.
