Like the rest of the inn, it was deserted — when the chief cook left, everyone else had taken the excuse to run out, too. There must have been a big delivery not long before, since the kitchen was full of unwrapped and partially unwrapped parcels of food.
It was like being turned loose in the best market in town. Skif had grabbed a wrapped block of butter, a cone of sugar, and a ham, and a handful of the brown paper the stuff had come wrapped in. Deek had gone for a whole big dry-cured hard sausage, a string of smaller ones, and half a wheel of cheese. Then out the back and over the wall they went, into an alley that was full of smoke and hid them beautifully. As soon as they were in the smoke, Skif and Deek pulled out the string bags they always brought with them just in case something in the nature of foodstuffs presented itself. Quickly wrapping up the articles in paper under cover of the smoke, they stuffed their booty into the bags, then came running out of the smoke into the crowd, coughing and wheezing far more than was necessary, acting like innocents who'd gone shopping for their mums and been caught in the alley. No one paid them any mind — they were all too busy ogling the fire and the bucket brigade or craning their necks to see if the fire brigade had gotten to the burning inn yet. Skif and Deek had strolled homeward openly, carrying enough food to last them all for weeks. All of it luxury stuff, too — not the sort of thing they got to taste more than once in a while. They had eggs a lot, since they were pretty cheap, with just about anyone who had a bit of space keeping pigeons or chickens, even in the city.
Bread was at every meal; bread was the staple of even the poorest diets.
Roots like tatties and neeps were cheap enough, too, and cabbage, and onions — even old Kalchan had those at the inn. Dried pease and beans made a good soup, and Kalchan had those, too, though more often than not they were moldy.
Skif had eaten better with Bazie than he ever had in his life, even allowing for what he'd snitched from Lord Orthallen's kitchen. Good butter, though — butter that was all cream and not mixed half-and-half with lard — they didn't see much of that. Deek's cheese wasn't the cheap stuff that they generally got, made after the cream had been skimmed from the milk. And as for ham and sausages — sausages where you didn't have to think twice about what might have gone into them — well, those were food for the rich. And sugar —
Skif had never tasted sugar until he started snitching at Lord Orthallen's table. Bazie had a little screw of paper with some, and once in a while they all got a bit in their tea. Now they'd be able to sweeten their tea at every meal.
Each of them had a slice of bread well-buttered, with a thin slice of onion atop, and a slice of hard sausage atop that. The aroma of sage and savory from the sausage made Skif's mouth water. Bazie had put some of his sprouting beans on his slice, and had taken a second slice of buttered bread to hold it all together. Skif hoped the sprouts wouldn't taste bad with all that good stuff in and around it. They were going to eat like kings for a while.
“Kalchan croaked.” That was from Lyle, with his mouth full. “They sez. Nobuddy sez nothin' 'bout Londer. I ast 'round 'bout Skif. Don' seem nobuddy's lookin' fer 'im now. Reckon they figger 'e saw t'set-to an' run off.”
“Huh.” Skif shrugged. “Tol' ye about th' fire. Tha's all we saw.” Deek nodded agreement, but his mouth was full, so he added nothing.
“White shirt's sniffin' 'round Little Puddin' Lane,” said Raf. “Dunno why; askin' a mort'uv questions, they sez.”
Huh. Wonder what Herald wants down there? There wasn't anything down in that part of town that a Herald should have been interested in; Little Pudding Lane was just a short step above the neighborhood of the Hollybush so far as poverty went.
“Stay clear uv them for now,” Bazie advised. “They got ways'uv tellin who's lyin'.”
“No fear there!” Raf promised. “Ain't gonna mess wi' no witchy white shirt!”
Be stupid to, Skif reflected. Not that he'd ever actually seen a Herald, except once, passing at a distance. Even then, he wasn't sure it had been a Herald. It could just have been a pale-colored horse.
Bazie shrugged. “Dunno they be witchy, jest sharpish. Ah, like's not, 'tis summat got nawt t'do wi' likes uv us. When any'un seed a white shirt down here, eh?”
“Not so's I kin ‘member,” Raf, the oldest, said at last. Skif and Deek both shook their heads.
“Saw 'un oncet, passin' through,” Lyle offered, and grinned. “Passin' fast, too! Reckon had burr under 'is saddle!”
“White shirt's don' bother wi' us,” Bazie said with certainty, and finished the last bite of his supper with great satisfaction. “Slavers, raiders, aye. Big gang'uv bandits, aye. E'en summat highwayman, e'en footpad, 'f 'e's stupid 'nuff to murder along'uv robbin'. But us? A bit'uv cheese here, a wipe there? Nothin' fer them. Tis th' beaks we gotta watch for. But all th' same — ,” he finished, brow wrinkling, “steer clear'uv 'em. They nivir done me no 'arm, e'en wi' me an' the' rest fightin' 'em, but they nivir done me no favors either, an' Kar-sites allus said they was uncanny.” He laughed. “Well, demons is wut they said, but figger the source!”
When Skif went to bed that night, though, he wondered what would have brought a “white shirt” — a Herald — down as close to their territory as Little Pudding Lane. It had to be something important, for as Bazie said, the Heralds didn't bother themselves about petty thieves as long as it was only a crime against property and not against a person.
