Sabin, he called himself. A man who, despite his stature and bearing, Shadow instantly had pegged in a single word: Soft. Soft eyes, soft smile. He put everything up front to start, in a soft voice, perhaps as if to make himself less threatening; he was even disappointed when Shadow didn’t do the same. The princeling could survive in the wild, maybe, where things were clear-cut and defined, but he was gullible. Therefore, he was weak – a liability.

Not that it mattered to Shadow. He didn’t need compassion for his patron’s enemy; he was paid to be going that way.