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 —
“And there is no faith either,” the Guildmaster continued, in his hard, bright voice. “Faith is for those who wish to be deceived for the sake of a comforting, but hollow promise. Think about it, boy — think about it. It's shadow and air, all of it. Cakes in the Havens, and crumbs in the street. That is all that faith is about.”
The priests — oh, the priests — how many of them actually helped anyone in Exile's Gate in the here and now? Behind their cloister walls and their gates, they never went hungry or cold — they never suffered the least privations. Even the Brothers at the Priory never went hungry or cold…
Skif's heart contracted into an icy little knot. Alberich's eyes were closed; he seemed to be concentrating on getting what little air the Guildmaster allowed him.
“Throw your lot in with me. I won't deceive you with pretty fictions. You'll obey me because I am strong and smart and powerful. You'll learn from me to be the same. And maybe some day you'll be good enough to take what I've got away from me. Until then, we'll have a deal, and it will be because we know where we stand with each other, not because of some artificial conceit that we like each other.” He laughed. “The smart man guards his own back, boy,” the insidious voice went on. “The wise man knows there is no one that you can trust, you take and hold whatever you can and share it with no one, because no one will ever share what he has with you. Hate is for the strong; love is for the weak. No one has friends; friend is just a pretty name for a leech. Or a user. What do you think Bazie was? A user. He used you boys and lived off of your work, kept you as personal servants, and pretended to love you so you would be as faithful to him as a pack of whipped puppies.”
And that was where the Guildmaster went too far.
Bazie, thought Skif, jarred free of the spell that insidiously logical voice had placed on him. Bazie had shared whatever he had, and had trusted to his boys to do the same. Bazie had taken him in, with no reason to, and every
