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.
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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.
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.
