their trades in a more open fashion might not.
Come to that, Skif knew a few of the other thieves who might trade a word or two with him. You never knew what you were going to find yourself in possession of when you were a thief. It might could be that one of them would have run across something to put Skif on the trail.
Particularly intriguing was that thread of information that Alberich had let fall — how the trade in children stolen off the streets and the trade in slaves taken by bandits might be linked. It made a certain amount of sense, that, if you assumed that the slavers were all working together.
Skif hummed to himself tunelessly as he considered that. Who would know, if anyone did? There were always rumors, but who would be able to give the scrap of foundation to the rumor?
One by one, he ran down the list of his acquaintances, those who had always seemed to know where to start, when you were looking for someone or something — most particularly, those who had pointed him on the trail of Jass. And he dragged out all of the tag bits of information he'd been given that hadn't led him to Jass, but into other paths that had seemed at the time like dead ends.
At the moment, he couldn't imagine anything more bizarre than that he, reclining at his ease in his own room of a wing attached to the Palace itself, should be running down the lists of those who owed him favors (and those whose cooperation could be bought) in the most miserable quarter of Haven. Nevertheless —
Alberich does it all the time. So I ain't the only one.
None of the things he'd been told seemed to lead him to child stealing, nor could he think of anyone he knew likely to really know anything other than just rumors. Reluctantly, he found himself thinking that if there was one black blot in the alleyways of Exile's Gate that might hide part of the answer, it was his own uncle Londer. Londer Galko always skirted the fringe of the quasilegal. Londer was not brave enough to dare the darkest deeds himself, but Skif could tell, even as a child, that he yearned to. The older Londer got, the less he dared, but the more he yearned.
Bazie had hinted, more than once, that Londer would have sold Skif in a heartbeat if Skif hadn't already been registered on the city rolls. And even then, if he could have manufactured a believable story about Skif running away —
Skif was not at all surprised now that half-witted Maisie had been illegally under-age — perhaps not for the employment at the Hollybush, but certainly for the uses that his cousin Kalchan had made of her. She hadn't looked under-aged, what there was of her was woman-sized, but Londer had to have known. Skif wouldn't be surprised now to learn that Londer himself had sampled Maisie's meager charms before passing her on to his son. Londer had never given his sons anything he hadn't already used (Beel being the exception, but then the idea of Londer attempting the life of a priest was enough to make a cat laugh) and Londer didn't exactly have women lining up to keep him company. In the years since running off, Skif had learned a lot about his uncle, and he'd learned that when it came to women, Londer had to pay for what he got. Since he'd already paid for Maisie, it followed that he'd probably seen no reason why he shouldn't have her first. Not that he'd shown any interest in anything too young to have breasts, but half-wits often matured early, and Londer probably wouldn't even think twice about her real age if he'd taken her.
Londer had more-than-dubious friends, too, even by the standards of Exile's Gate. And after the raid on the Hollybush — well, he'd lost what few friends he had around there. Not only because of Maisie, but because he had laid all the blame on his own son, and left him to rot and eventually die in gaol. Kalchan had never recovered enough even to do the idiot's work of stone picking, and Londer had done nothing to help him recover. Business was business, but blood was blood, and people didn't much care for a man who disclaimed responsibility for things that people knew he was responsible for because his unconscious son couldn't refute them. A good thing for Londer that his son never did wake to full sense and died within three moons. The case against Londer died with him, and Skif could only wonder who Londer was friendly with now, given how many people that callousness had offended. Or had that just freed his uncle to edge a little nearer to those dark deeds he secretly admired?
Given all of that, Londer probably didn't engage in child snatching for his own puerile entertainment. But that didn't mean he didn't help it along, just because he got a thrill out of doing so. He probably had been frightened enough by his brush with the law not to do anything so dangerous for his own profit either. But it was increasingly likely, in Skif's estimation, that he knew something about it. The Hollybush hadn't, by any means, been Londer's only property. He owned warehouses in places where there wasn't anyone around to notice odd things going on at night.
So, a very good place to start would be with his uncle. Skif knew the ins and outs of Londer's house, for more than once, he'd contemplated getting some of what he considered that he was owed out of his uncle. He'd eventually given up on the idea, for the fact was that anything Londer had of value was generally too big to be carried off easily. But because of that, Skif knew the house, and he knew the twisty ways of Londer's mind almost as well as he knew the house.
The best way to get information out of him would be to frighten it out. Londer was good at keeping his mouth shut, but not when he was startled, and not when he was genuinely frightened.
So Skif set himself to figuring out exactly how he could best terrify his uncle into telling Skif everything he might know or guess about the child stealing and the slavery ring.
In his bed, in the dead of night, Skif decided. Skif was short, even for a boy his age — but a shadowy figure dressed in black, waking you up with a knife to your throat, was likely to seem a whole lot bigger than he actually was. And a hoarse whisper didn't betray that he was too young for his voice to have broken yet.
Alberich had brought the all-black night-walking suit when he'd collected Skif's clothing. Skif knew a way into Londer's house that not even Londer knew about. Good old Londer! Every window had a lock, every door had two, but he forgot completely about the trapdoor onto the roof. All Skif had to do was get into the yard and shinny up the
