Was this the hoped-for mastermind behind all of this?
"'Ere's th' last on 'em, milord," said the man who'd brought Skif out. "The fust two ye said weren't good fer yer gennelmen. This a good 'nuff offerin'?"
Skif looked up from his fellow captives. For a moment, he couldn't see the man's face, but he knew the voice right enough.
"Very nice," purred the man, with just an edge of contempt beneath the approval. "Prime stock. Yes, they'll do. They'll do very nicely."
It was the same voice that had spoken with Jass in the tomb in the cemetery. And when "milord" came into the light, Skif stared at him, not in recognition, but to make sure he knew the face later. If this man was one of those that had attended Lord Orthallen's reception, Skif didn't recall him… but then, he had a very ordinary face. What Bazie would have called a "face-shaped face" with that laugh of his—neither this nor that, neither round nor oblong nor square, nondescript in every way, brown hair, brown eyes. He could have been anyone.
The man was wearing very expensive clothing, in quite excellent taste. That was something of a surprise; Skif would have expected excellent clothing in appalling taste, given the circumstances.
Milord—well, the clothing was up to the standards of the highborn, but something about him didn't fit. Since being at the Collegium, Skif had met a fair number of highborn, and there was an air about them, as if everyone they met would, as a matter of course, assume they were superior. So it was second nature to them, and they didn't have to think about it. This man wore his air of superiority, and his pride, openly, like a cloak.
So what, exactly, was he? He had money, he had power, but he just didn't fit the "merchant" mold either. Yet he must have influence, and someone must be feeding him information, or he never would have been able to continue to operate as successfully and invisibly as he had until now.
The man gestured, and one of the four men with him grabbed the shoulder of the girl he pointed at, hauling her to her feet. She couldn't have been more than eight or nine at most, thin and wan, and frightened into paralysis. The man walked around her, surveying her from every angle. He took her chin in his hand, roughly tilting her face up, even prying open her mouth to look at her teeth as tears ran soundlessly down her smudged cheeks, leaving tracks in the dirt. He didn't order her to be stripped, but then, given that she wasn't wearing much more than a tattered feed sack with a string around it, he didn't really need to.
"Yes," the man said, after contemplating her for long moments, during which she shivered like an aspen in the wind. She was a very pretty little thing under all her dirt, and Skif's heart ached for her. Hadn't her life been bad enough without this descent into nightmare? How could a tiny little child possibly deserve this?
And this was the man who had ordered the deaths of Bazie and the two boys with no more concern than if he had crushed a beetle beneath his foot. This man, with his face-shaped face—this was the face of true evil that concealed itself in blandness. No monster here, just a man who could have hidden himself in any crowd. He would probably pat his friends' children genially on the head, even give them little treats, this man who assessed the market value of a little girl and consigned her to a fearful fate. He was valued by his neighbors, no doubt, this beast in a man's skin.
Skif hated him. Hated the look of him, the sound of his voice, hated everything about him. Hated most of all that he could smile, and smile, and look so like any other man.
"Yes," the man said again, with a bland smile, the same smile a housewife might use when finding a particularly fat goose. "Pretty and pliant. This one will be very profitable for us."
"Oh—it is that I think not, good Guildmaster," said a highly accented voice from the doorway. Skif's heart leaped, and when Alberich himself walked through the door, sword and dagger at the ready, it was all he could do to keep from cheering aloud.
20
THERE was a moment of absolute silence, as even the Guildmaster's professional bodyguards were taken by surprise. But that moment ended almost as soon as it began.
The man who'd brought Skif out bolted for the door behind the Guildmaster, disappearing into the darkness. All four of the bodyguards charged Alberich, as the Guildmaster himself stood back with a smirk that would have maddened Skif, if he hadn't been scrambling to get out of the way. He pushed the three little girls ahead of him into the partial shelter of the wall, and stood between them and the fighting. Not that he was going to be able to do anything other than try and push them somewhere else if the fighting rolled over them.
Not that he was going to be able to do anything to help Alberich. He knew when he was outweighed, outweaponed, and outclassed. This fight was no place for an undersized and half-trained (at best) adolescent. Besides, Alberich didn't look as if he needed any help, at least not at the moment.
The Weaponsmaster had been impressive enough in the salle and on the training ground; here, literally surrounded by four skilled fighters, Skif could hardly believe what he was seeing. Alberich moved like a demon incarnate and so quickly that half the time Skif couldn't see what had happened, only that he'd somehow eluded what should have killed him—
Still—four to one—maybe he'd better do something to try and drop the odds.
Skif slipped the catches on his knives and then hesitated. The combatants were all moving too fast and in unpredictable ways. He'd never practiced against anything but a stationary target; if he threw a knife, he could all too easily hit Alberich, and if he threw a knife, he'd also throw away half of his own defenses.
:Skif, get the children out now!:
Cymry's mental "shout" woke him out of his indecision; with a quick glance to make sure the Guildmaster (what Guild was he?) was too far away to interfere, Skif grabbed the wrists of two of the three—the third was clinging to the arm of the second—and pulled them onto their feet. Then he got behind them and slowly—trying not to attract the eye of their chiefest captor—he herded them in front of him, along the wall, and toward the door that Alberich had entered by.
One of the three, at least, woke out of her fear to see what he was trying to do. She seized the wrists of both of the others and dragged them with her as they edged along the wall. Her eyes were fixed on that doorway; Skif's were on the fight.
It was oddly silent, compared with the tavern- and street-fights he was used to. There was no shouting, no cursing, only the clash of metal on metal and the occasional grunt of pain.
And it was getting bloody. All of the bodyguards were marked—not big wounds, but they were bleeding. It looked as if the four bodyguards should bring Alberich down at any moment, and yet he kept sliding out from beneath their blades as Skif and his charges got closer and closer to their goal. Skif wanted to run, and knew he didn't dare. He didn't dare distract
Alberich, and he didn't dare grab the attention of the Guildmaster.
Ten paces… five…
There!
The girl who was leading the other two paused, hesitating, on the very threshold, her face a mask of fear and indecision. She didn't know what lay beyond that door—it could be worse than what was here.
"Run!" Skif hissed at her, trusting that Alberich had already cleared the way.
The girl didn't hesitate a moment longer; she bolted into the half-lit hallway, hauling the other two with her. Skif started to follow—hesitated, and looked back.
There was a body on the floor, and it wasn't Alberich's. While Skif's back was turned, the Weaponsmaster had temporarily reduced the odds against himself by one.
But Alberich was bleeding from the shoulder now. Skif couldn't tell how bad the wound was, and Alberich showed no sign of weakness, but the leather tunic was slashed there, and bloody flesh showed beneath the dark leather whenever he moved that arm. Skif's throat closed with fear. Somewhere deep inside he'd been certain that Alberich was invulnerable. But he wasn't. He could be hurt. And if he could be hurt—he could die.
At that moment, the Guildmaster finally noticed that his prizes had
escaped.
"Stop them!" he shouted at his men. "Don't let them get away!"
Skif froze in the doorway, but he needn't have worried. No one was taking orders now. The fighters were too busy with Alberich to pay any attention to Skif, although they redoubled their efforts to take the Weaponsmaster down.
:Skif, run! Get out of there now!: Cymry cried.
"No!" he said aloud. He couldn't go—not now—he might be able to do something—
The lantern flames flickered, and shadows danced on the walls, a demonic echo of the death dance in the center of the room. It was confusing; too confusing. Once again Skif felt for his knives and hesitated.
Alberich was tiring; oh, it didn't show in how he moved, but there was sweat rolling down his face. He had taken another cut, this time across his scalp, and blood mingled with the drops of sweat that spattered down onto the dirt floor with every movement.
Skif still didn't dare throw the knives, even with one of the opponents down. He edged away from the door, and looked frantically for something else he could throw.
Alberich's eyes glittered, and his mouth was set in a wild and terrible smile. He looked more than half mad, and Skif couldn't imagine why his opponents weren't backing away just from his expression alone, much less the single-minded ferocity with which he was fighting. He did not look human, that much was certain. If this was how he always looked when he fought in earnest, no wonder people were afraid of him.
No wonder he had never needed to draw a blade in those tavern brawls.
Skif's eye fell on a pile of dirty bowls stacked against the wall on the other side of the doorway—the remains, perhaps, of a meal the child snatchers had finished. It didn't matter; they were heavy enough to be weapons, and they were within reach.
He snatched one up and waited for his opportunity. It came sooner than he'd hoped, as Alberich suddenly rushed one of the three men, making him stumble backward in a hasty retreat. That broke the swirling dance of steel for a moment, broke the pattern long enough for Skif to fling the bowl at the man's head.
It connected with the back of his skull with a sickening crack that made Skif wince—not hard enough to knock him out, but enough to make him stagger, dazed.
And that moment was just enough for Alberich to slash savagely at his neck, cutting halfway through it. The man twisted in agony, dropping to the floor, blood everywhere as he writhed for a long and horrible moment, then stilled.
Skif froze, watching in fascination, aghast. Alberich did not. Nor did the two men still fighting. They reacted by coming at Alberich from both directions at once, and in the rain of blows that followed, Alberich was wounded again, a glancing slash across the arm that peeled back leather and a little flesh—but he delivered a worse blow than he had gotten to the head of the third man, who dropped like a stone. At which point the first man who'd been felled stood up, shaking his head to clear it, and plunged back into the fray.
Skif shook himself out of his trance and flung two more bowls. Neither connected as well as the first; the first man remaining was hit in the shoulder, and the second in the back. But the distraction was their undoing, for they lost the initiative and Alberich managed to get out of their trap, nor could they pin him between them again.
The fight moved closer to the Guildmaster—Alberich got the second man in the leg, leaving his dagger in the man's thigh, and the bodyguard staggered back.
Skif threw his last bowl, which hit the man nearest the Guildmaster in the side of the face. Alberich saw his opening, and took it, with an all-or-nothing lunge that carried him halfway across the room.
Skif let out a strangled cry of horror—
If any fighter Skif had ever seen before had tried that move, it would have ended differently. But this was Alberich, and he came in under the man's sword and inside his dagger, and the next thing Skif knew, the point of Alberich's sword was sticking out of the man's back, and the man was gazing down at Alberich with an utterly stupefied expression on his face.
Then he toppled over slowly—
But he took Alberich's sword with him.
And now the Guildmaster struck.
Because he had done nothing all this time, Skif had virtually forgotten he was there, and had assumed that he was harmless. Perhaps Alberich had done the same. It was a mistaken assumption on both their parts.
The Guildmaster moved like a ferret, so fast that he seemed to blur, and too fast for Alberich, exhausted as he was, to react. The Guildmaster didn't have a weapon.
He didn't need one.
Skif didn't, couldn't see how it happened. One moment, Alberich was still extended in his lunge; the next, the Guildmaster had him pinned somehow, trapped. The Guildmaster's back was to the wall, his arm was across Alberich's throat with Alberich's body protecting his. Both of Alberich's hands were free, and he clawed ineffectually at the arm across his throat. The Weaponsmaster's face was already turning an unhealthy shade of pale blue.
"Kash," the Guildmaster said, in a tight voice. "Get the brat."
But the last man was in no condition to grab anyone. "Can't," he coughed. "Leg's out."
Given the fact that his leg had been opened from thigh to knee, with Alberich's dagger still in the wound, he had a point. The Guildmaster's gaze snapped back onto Skif.
"Well," he said, in that condescending voice he'd used with Jass, "I wouldn't have expected the Heralds to use bait. It's not like them to put a child in danger."
Skif bristled. "Ain't a child," he said flatly.
"Oh? You're a little young to be a Herald," the man countered in a sarcastic tone. Then he punched Alberich's shoulder wound with his free hand, making him gasp, and putting a stop to Alberich's attempts to claw himself free. "Stop that. You're only making things more difficult for yourself."
"What has age to do with being a Herald?" Alberich rasped.
Skif said nothing, and the man's eyes narrowed as his arm tightened a little more on Alberich's throat. "Be still, or I will snap your foolish neck for you. A Trainee, then. But still—that's quite out of character—unless—"
He stared at Skif then, with a calculating expression, and Skif sensed that he was thinking very hard, very hard indeed.
It was, after all, no secret that the latest Trainee was a thief. But what that would mean to this wealthy villain—and whether he'd heard that—
Then the Guildmaster's eyes widened. "Well," he said, and his mouth quirked up at one corner. "Who would have thought it. The Heralds making common cause with a common thief. Oh, excuse me—you're quite an uncommon thief. Old Bazie's boy, aren't you? Skif, is it?"
Skif went cold with shock and stared at the Guildmaster with his mouth dropping open. How'd he know—how—
The Guildmaster smirked. "I make it my business to know what goes on in my properties, as any good landlord would," he said pointedly. "Besides, how do you think that cleverly hidden room got there? Who do you think arranged for the pump and the privy down there?"
"But you killed him!" Skif cried, as Alberich tried to move and turned a little bluer for his trouble.
"I had no intention of doing so," the Guildmaster pointed out, in reasonable tones. "That was Jass' fault. If he'd obeyed orders, everyone would have gotten out all right, even Bazie."
Since Skif had heard the truth of that with his own ears, there was no debating the question of whether Jass had gone far beyond what his orders had been. But—
How would Bazie have gotten out in time, even so? How? The boys couldn't have carried him—
The Guildmaster interrupted his thoughts. His expression had gone very bland again. He was planning something…
"You've been very clever, young man," he said, in a voice unctuous with flattery. "I don't see nearly enough cleverness in the people I hire—well, Jass was a case in point. Now at the moment, we seem to be at a stalemate."
Alberich writhed in a futile attempt to get free. His captor laughed, and punched the shoulder wound again, and Alberich went white. "If I kill this
Herald," he pointed out, "I lose my shield against whatever you might pick up and fling at me. You can't go anywhere, because Kash is between you and the door. Stalemate."
Skif nodded warily.
"On the other hand," he continued. "If you decided to switch allegiances, I could strangle this fool and we could all escape from here before the help he has almost certainly arranged for arrives."
Skif clenched his jaw. In another time and place—"An' just what'm I supposed to get out of this?" he asked, playing for time to think.
Cymry was oddly silent in his mind. In fact—in fact, he couldn't sense her at all. For the first time in weeks he was alone in his head.
"What do you get? Oh, Skif, Skif, haven't you learned anything about the way Life works?" the Guildmaster laughed. "Allow me to enlighten you. No matter what these fools have told you, the only law that counts is the Law of the Street. What you'll get is to be trained by me, in something far more profitable than the liftin' lay."
"Oh, aye—" Skif began heatedly.
"No. You listen to me. This is what is real. These are the rules that the real world runs by." He stared into Skif's eyes, and Skif couldn't look away, couldn't stop listening to that voice, so sure of itself, so very, very rational. "Grab what you can, because if you don't, someone else will snatch it out from under you. Get all the dirt you can on anyone who might have power over you—and believe me, everyone has a past, and things they'd rather not have bruited about. Be the cheater, not the cheated, because you'll be one or the other. There's no such thing as truth—oh, believe me about this—there are shades of meaning, and depths of self-interest, but there is no truth."
Skif made an inarticulate sound of protest, but it was weak, because this was all he'd seen at Exile's Gate, this was the way the world as he had always known it worked. Not the way it was taught in the Collegium. Not the way those sheltered, idealistic Heralds explained things—
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