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the
next, and the next and then came to the door.
A few moments more of exploring by touch proved that this wasn't a room, it
was
a cell; it couldn't have been more than three arm's lengths wide and twice
that
in length.
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 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
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