Take A Thief

Not a very well-constructed cell, though. Rough brick made up the walls, and the floor was nothing more than pounded dirt with the straw atop it. And when Skif got to the door, he finally felt some of his fear ebbing. The lock on this door had never been designed with the idea of confining a thief. He could probably have picked it in the pitch-dark with a pry bar; the throwing daggers he wore were fine enough to work through the hole in the back plate and trip the mechanism.

I can get out. That was all it took to calm him. These people never intended to have to hold more than a few frightened children down here. As long as they thought that was what he was, he'd be fine. If this was their child brothel, he could get out of it.

:Or you can jam the lock and keep them out until we get in,: Cymry pointed out, and he nearly laughed aloud at what a simple and elegant solution she had found for him. Yes, he could, he could! Then help could take as long as it needed to reach him. Even if they set fire to the warehouse to cover their tracks, he should be safe down here. He remembered once, when one of the taverns had caught fire, how half a dozen of the patrons had hidden in the cellars and come out covered in soot but safe — and drunk out of their minds, for they'd been trapped by falling timbers and had decided they might as well help themselves to the stock.

:Will you be all right now?: Cymry asked anxiously.

:Right and tight,: he told her. And he would be, he would.

He had to be. Everything depended on him now.

He would be.

* * * * * * * * * *

He heard the men enter and leave again twice more, and each time a door creaked open somewhere and he heard the thump of some small load landing in straw. He winced each time for the sake of the poor semiconscious child that it represented.

Between the first and the second, Cymry told him that Alberich had gotten into the building, but could tell him nothing more than that. It was not long after that the men arrived with the second child — and soon after that when the cellars awoke.

There was noise first; voices, harsh and quarrelsome. Then came heavy footsteps, and then light. So much light that it shone under Skif's door and through all the cracks between the heavy planks that the door was made up of.

Then the door was wrenched open, and a huge man stood silhouetted against the glare. Skif didn't have to pretend to fear; he shrank back with a start, throwing up his arm to shield his eyes.

The man took a pace toward him, and Skif remembered his knives, remembered that he didn't dare let anyone grab him by the arm lest they be discovered. He scrambled backward until he reached the wall, then, with his back pressed into the brick, got to his feet, huddling his arms around his chest.

The man grabbed him by the collar, his arms and hands not being easy to grab in that position, and hauled him out into the corridor and down it, toward an opening.

The corridor wasn't very long, and there were evidently only six of the little brick cells in it, three on each side. It dead-ended to Skif's rear in a wall of the same rough brick. The man dragged Skif toward the open end, then threw him unceremoniously into the larger room beyond, a large and echoing chamber that was empty of furnishings and lit by lanterns hung from hooks depending from the ceiling. Skif landed beside three more children, all girls, all shivering and speechless with fear, tear-streaked faces masks of terror. Facing them were five men, four heavily armed, standing in pairs on either side of the fifth.

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