another fire t' start right whiles I was listenin'! An' I wanta know who he is cuz I'm gonna get 'im, an' then I'm gonna get Jass, an — ,”
“Enough.” The man held up a sword-callused palm, and Skif found his flood of angry words cut off again. Just in time, too; there had been tears burning in his eyes, and he didn't want the man to see them. He blinked hard to drive them away, but he couldn't do much about the lump in his throat that threatened to choke him.
Wut in hell is happenin' to me?
But the man darted out a hand, quick as a snake, and grabbed Skif's shoulder and shook it. That hand crushed muscle and bone and hurt —
“Now, to me you listen, boy, and engrave my words on your heart you will — ,” the man said, leaning forward until all Skif could see were his hawk-sharp, hawk-fierce eyes. “You playing are in deeper waters than you know, and believe me, to swim in them you cannot hope. Your nose out of this you keep, or likely someone is to fish you out of the Terilee, with a rock around your ankles tied, if find you at all they do.”
Skif shuddered convulsively, and an involuntary sob fought its way out of his throat. The man sat back on his heels again, satisfied.
“Jass will to worry about shortly, much more than the setting of fires have,” the man said darkly. “And he will answer for the many things he has responsible been for.”
“But — ”
“That is all you need to know,”; the man said forcefully, and the words froze in Skif's throat.
The sell-sword pulled out a knife, and for one horrible moment, Skif thought that he was dead.
But the man laid it on the floor, just out of reach, and stood up. “Too clever you are, by half,” he said, with a grim little smile. “Now, about my business I will be. The moment I leave, getting yourself loose you can be about. Manage you will, quite sure I am.”
He dropped the shield over the dark lantern, plunging the chapel into complete blackness. In the next moment, although Skif hadn't heard him move, the door opened, a tall, lean shadow slipped through it, and it closed again.
Skif lost no time in wriggling over the stone floor to the place where the man had left the knife. When he was right on top of it, he wriggled around until he could grab it. As soon as he got it into his hands, he sawed through the cord binding his wrists to his ankles. Not easy — but not impossible. The man had left him enough slack in his ropes to do just that.
Once that was cut, he managed to contort his body enough to get his arms back over to the front of himself and then sawed through the bindings at ankle and wrist. It was a good knife; sharp, and well cared for. If it didn't cut through the cords holding him as if they were butter, he wasn't forced to hack at them for candlemarks either.
But all the time his hands were working, his mind was, too.
Who — and what — was that man? How had he managed to get Skif to tell him everything he knew? Why did he want to know so much about Jass?
Why'd 'e lemmego? Why'd 'e warn me off?
Not that Skif had any intention of being warned off. Oo's 'e think 'e is, anyroad? Oo's 'e think 'e was talkin' to? If there was one thing that Skif was certain of, it was his own expertise in his own neighborhood. However clever this man thought he was, he wasn't living right next door to his target, now, was he? He hadn't even known that Jass was the one who'd set that fire — Skif had seen a flicker of surprise when his own traitorous mouth had blurted that information out. He might think himself clever, but he wasn't as good as all that.
But 'ow'd 'e make me talk? More to the point, could he do it again if he got Skif in his hands?
Best not to find out.
'E won' catch me a second time, Skif resolved fiercely, as he cut through the last of the cords on his wrists and shook his hands free.
He stood up, sticking the knife in his belt. No point in wasting a good blade, after all. His anger still roiled in his gut; by now Jass was far off, and his employer probably safe in his fancy home.
I’ll know 'is voice, though, if I ever hear it agin. Small consolation, but the best he had.
He slipped out the door of the chapel and closed it behind himself, not caring if he left this one unlocked or not. Around him the dead kept their silence, with nothing to show that there had ever been anyone here. Crickets sang, and honeysuckle sent a heavy perfume across the carefully manicured lawn. Jass had picked a good night for a clandestine meeting; the moon was no bigger than a fingernail paring.
