Kalchan never asked him where he's been, so long as he came back before dark. He just welcomed Skif back with a cuff to the ear, and shoved him into the kitchen. By now, the kitchen was full of smoke, and the cook coughed and weezed while she worked. It wasn't just the fault of the chimney, which certainly could have used a cleaning--the cook routinely burned the bottom crust of the bread, burned what was on the bottom of the pot, dripped grease on the hearth, which burned and smoked.

   Skif didn't have to be told what to do, since his duties were exactly the same thing every day. Poor half-witted Maisie, on the other hand, had to told carefully how to go about her business, even though it was all chores she'd done every day for the last however-many years. That was why, if Skif wasn't back by dark and the time when the big influx of custmers came, he'd get more than a cuff on the ear. If you gave Maisie one thing to do, then interrupted her with something else, she became hysterical and botched everything.

   First, the water barrel had to be filled again--not because anyone had used much of it in cleaning, but because like everything else in the Hollybush, it was old, used, and barely functional. It had a slow leak, and it cost nothing to have Skif refill it. To have it mended would have meant paying someone.

   So back and forth Skif went, doing his best not to slosh the icy water on himself, particularly not down his boots. When the barrel was full, the next chore was to take the bundle of twigs on a stick that passed for a broom and sweep the water and whatever else was on the floor out into the courtyard, where the water promptly froze (in winter) or turned into mud (in summer). Since Skif was the one who went into and out of the courtyard most often, it behooved him to at least sweep it all to one side if he could.

   Next was to bring wood in from the woodpile in the courtyard and mend the fire in the common room, which was also ful of smoke, but not as bad as the kitchen. Then he collected the wooden plates left tables, carried them to the kitchen and thriftily scraped the leaving back in the stew pot over the fire. It didn't matter what went in there, since it all blended into the anonymous, lumpy brown muck, well flavored with burned crud from the bottom, that was already there. A quick wipe with a rag, and the plates were "clean" and ready for the next customer.

   Mugs were next; he'd figured that it was better to take plates in stacked and not try to mix mugs and plates, for if he tried, he'd drop something and get beaten for breaking it. These were crude clay mugs with thick bottoms to make the customer think he was getting more beer than he was. Those didn't even get a wipe with the rag, unless they'd been left in a plateand had greasy gravy all over them; they were just upended and stacked beside the plates. There was no tableware to bother collecting; Londer wouldn't have anything that could be so readilystolen. In this, however, he was exactly like every other tavern keeper around this area. Customers ate with their own wooden spoons, usually hung on the belts beside their money pouches. Some ate with their personal belt knives, although these useful inplements were used less often. The food in cheap taverns was generally soup or stew, and didn't need to be cut up--nor was there often anything in the bowl or on the plate large enough to be speared on the point of a knife. Those who had no spoon shoveled the food into their mouths with improvised implements of heavy black bread. Black bread was all that was ever served at the Hollybrush; made of flour that was mostly made of rye, buckwheat, and wheat chaff, like everyhing else associated with Uncle Londer, it was the chepest possible bread to make. The strong taste covered a multitude of culinary sins, and since it was already black, it had the advantage of not showing how badly it was burned on the bottom.

   When mugs and plates were collected, it was time to add to the stew in the cauldron. The cook put Skif to work "chopping vegetables" while she cut the meat scraps. The stew kept going day and night over the fire had been depleted by lunch and early dinner, and now had to be replenished. Londer's picks at the market were like everything else; more of what better inns and kitchens threw out. With a knife that had been sharpened so many times that it was now a most peculiar shape and as flexible as a whip, Skif chopped the tops and tails of turnips, carrots, whiteroots, and beets and flung them into the cauldron, along with the leftover crusts of burned bread to hard to serve even their customers. The cook added her meat scraps, and began stirring, directing him to deal with the bread she had removed from the bake oven built into the side of the chimney. There were only three rather lumpy loaves, but they wound't need more than that. The bread was used mostly as an implement, and secondarily to soak up the liquid part of the stew so that every drop paid for could be eaten.

   Skif sawed at the bread--better bread would not have held up under the treatment he gave Kalchan's loaves, but this stuff was as heavy and dense as bricks and just as edible. Every slice was thriftily measured out to the minimum that the customers would stand by means of two grooves cut in the table top and once cut, was "buttered" with a smear of fat and stacked up waiting to be slapped onto a plate. No one ever complained that it was stale; Skif was not certain that it would be possible to tell a stale slice from one freshly cut off of these loaves.

   When the bread was done, it was time to go get plates again; business was picking up.

   Skif could not imagine what brought all these customers to the Hollybush, unless it was that Kalchan's prices were cheaper than anyone else's. it certainly wasn't the food, which would have poisoned a maggot, or the drink, which would have gagged a goat. And Maisie was no draw, either; plain as a post,with her dirty hair straggling down her back and over her face, she skulked among the tables like a scared, skinny little starling, delivering full plates and empty mugs while Kalchan followed in her wake, collecting pennybits and filling mugs from his pitcher. Only Kalchan dispensed drink; the one time that Skif had dared to do so in Kalchan's momentary absence, his cousin had left stripes on his back with his leather belt. No one actually ordered anything--there wasn't anything to order by way of choice. You sat down at a table and got beer, bread, and stew--or beer alone, by waving off Maisie's proffered plate or sitting at the fireside bench with the steady drinkers. When customers were done, Skif came around and collected their plates and mugs. If one wanted more, he waited until Maisie came around again and took another laden plates from her; if not, he took himself off. This way Kalchan never had to worry about a customer complaining he hadn't been served when he'd paid, or about a customer sneaking off without paying. the only exceptions to this rule were the folk occupying the two benches in front of the fireplace. They got beer, period, and signified they wanted refills by holding up their mugs to Kalchan. When they were done, they left their mugs on the floor--which were usually claimed by another bench warmer before Skif could collect them.

   Skif made his rounds in an atmosphere thick with smoke and the fug of unwashed bodies, grease, stale beer, and burned food. Light came from tallow dips held in clamps on the wall, and from the fire in the fireplace. it wasn't much, and the smoke dimmed the light further. He couldn't have made out the faces of the customers if he'd wanted to. They were just an endless parade of dark-shrouded lumps who crammed food into their mouths and went their way without ever saying anything to him if he was lucky. Every so often one would fondle Maisie's thigh or breast, but if Kalchan caught him at it, he would have to pay an additional pennybit for the privilege.

   There wasn't any entertainment in the Hollybush. Kalchan didn't encourage self-entertainment either, like singing or gaming. Most of the customers didn't know each other, or didn't care to, so conversation was at a minimum. As for fighting--it was wisest not even to consider it. Kalchan discouraged fighting by breaking the heads of those who fought with the iron-headed club he carried at his side, and dumping the unconcious combatants outside. The drunks here were generaly morose and quiet, and either stumbled out of the door on their own two feet when their money ran out, or passed out and were unceremoniously dumped in the street to free up space for another customer. Once in the street, an unconscious former customer had better hope that friends would take him home, or the cold would wake him up, because otherwise the thieves would strip him of everything of value and drop him in the gutter.

   Difficult as it was to believe, customers kept coming in, all night long. The benches and the tables were never empty until just before closing; Skif and Maisie never had a moment to rest. He'd tried once to reckon up how much money--in the tiniest of coins, the pennybit--Kalchan took in of a night. There were four pennybits to a penny; beer was two a mug, bread and stew were three for a plate. Just by way of comparison, a mug of good, clean water from something other than a pump in dubious proximity ot a privy cost two pennybits (but wouldn't get you drunk--and a mug of sweet spring water was three) and a bun like the one that Deek had brough him this afternoon was a full penny. So you could have something wholesome, though not much of it, for the same price as a full meal in the Hollybrush. Evidently, bad as it was, there were enough people who felt they were getting value for their money to keep coming. The two fireside benches sat four each, and the four tables accommodated six eaters. Unless they planned a night to get drunk, the tables cleared pretty quickly. Skif figured that there were probably a couple hundred customers in here over the course of a day.

   That was were Skif's grasp of numbers broke down--but he reckoned that the Hollybush brought in a couple hundred pennies in a night, and maybe a third of that during the day. Uncle Londer obviously had a good thing going here. His costs were low, buying cheap as he did, and the hire of his help was even lower. Maisie was a half-wit; Uncle Londer paid some relative of hers for her services. Whatever he paid, it wasn't much, and she never saw any of it; all she got was food and a place to sleep. Skif's labor was free, of course and he seldom ate here. And the cook---

   Well, he didn't know what the cook got. He never saw her getting paid, but she stayed, so she must have been getting something. It couldn't have been that much; even he could cook better than she did.

   Maybe the attraction for her was the unlimited supply of beer. he never saw her without a mug somewhere nearby, and she had the yellowish color of someone who was drinking herself to death, although her shuffling footsteps were steady and she never seemed drunk.

   The upshot was, this place was mostly profit for Londer, that much was for sure. Skif wasn't going to feel at all guilty about vanishing in a moon. Uncle Londer could just find himself another boy or do without.

   What Kalchan was getting out of the situation was less clear; certainly he had Maisie's dubious charms to enjoy whenever he cared to, he did get real food rather than tavern swill, and he had his own special butt of drink that no one else touched, but what else was he getting? Every night after he locked the front door, he waddled down to his father's home with the night's takings, and came back empty-handed except for the box that held his own diner. He slept in the common room on a greasy featherbed piled high with blankets that were stored during the day in the unused staircase. Was Londer splitting the profit with his son? If he was, what in Havens was Kalchan spending it on? It wasn't clothing, it wasn't women--not even the shabbiest streetwalker would touch Kalchan with a barge pole without a lot more up front than the penny or two Kalchan was likely to offer.

   It had occured to Skif recently that maybe Cousin Kalchan was just as stupid as he looked, and Uncle Londer gave him nothing in return for his labors at the Hollybush. If so, he didn't feel in the least sorry for him.

   By the time that Kalchan dumped the last of the bench warmers outside and locked the front door, Skif was absolutely dead on his feet. Not tired--he'd had that nap in the wash house--but aching from neck to toes and longing for a chance to sit down.

   Kalchan threw the bolt on the front door, and waddled out the back; when Skif heard the door slam shut behind him, he dropped down onto a bench to rest for a moment. The cook brought in three plates of stew and bread, and dropped them on the table. Skif took one look at the greasy, congealing mess, and pushed it toward Maisie, who had come to rest across from him and was already shoveling her food onto her mouth as if she was afraid it was going to be taken from her at any moment. The cook had brought her own mug and picked up ther beer pitcher that Kalchen had left on a table, shaking it experimantally. Finding there was still beer in it, she took it, her mug, and her plate to the fireside and settled down facing the remains of the flames, her back to her fellow workers.

   Maisie finished her plate, picked up the platter in both hands and licked it, then went on to Skif's portion. She never said thank you, she never said anything. She never even acknowledged his presence. Skif shuddered, got to his feet, and plodded into the now-deserted kitchen.

   From his cubby, he took a tiny tin pot and a packet of chava leaves that he'd filched from Lord Orthallen's kitchen. Dipping water out of the barrel, he added the leaves and breved himself a bedtime cup of bitter chava. The stuff was supposed to be good for you and make you feel relaxed and calm; at any rate, at this time of year it made a nice warm spot in his belly that let him get off to sleep.

   He drank it quickley to get it down before Kalchan came back and then retreated to the cubby. The tin pot was shoved into the farthest corner where he kept a few other things that Kalchan didn't think worth taking--his own wooden spoon, a couple of pretty pebbles, some bird feathers, a spinning top he'd found. Then he wrapped himself up in his cast-off blankets, pillowed his head on his arms, and waited for Kalchan to get back, feigning sleep.

   The only light in the kitchen came from the fire, and it was dying. It was the cook's job to bank it for the night, but she forgot more than half the time, which was why he had to start it again in the morning. When Kalchan came back, grunting and snorting, it was hardly more than a few flames over glowing coals. Kalchan pulled the door shut and dropped the bar over the inside, paying no attention to Skif. Which meant that ih had been a good night by Kalchan's standards. If it hadn't been, he would either have hauled Skif out and knocked him around a bit before letting him get back into his bed, or he would have bawled for the cook and had her lay into Skif.

   Kalchan's return was the cook's signal to go on up to her loft. She shuffled in, dropped the curtain over the doof, shoved ashes over the coals, and limped up the stairs. There was some sound of fumbling with cloth overhead, then silence.

   Meanwhile, Kalchan settled down with his dinner, which he had brought back from his father's kitchen. In theory, half of that dinner was supposed to be Skif's, but in all the time he'd lived here, he'd never gotten a morsel of it. Kalchan "shared" it with Maisie--that is, he dropped tidbits to her as if she were a dog, in return for which-- Skif generally tried to be asleep by that time, the moment when Kalchan's bedding was arranged to his satisfaction beside the fireplace, and Maisie was arranged to his satisfaction in it. And tonight, both exhaustion and the unusual circumstance of having had three decent meals in a day conspired to grant him his wish for slumber.

   ---------

   He woke from the oddest dream that morning--a dream he couldn't quite fathom, unless it had come from yesterday's encounter with Bazie. He had been climbing like a spider along the ledge of a building, several stories up. It was the dead of a moonless night, and he was dressed all in black, including a black hood that covered everything except for a slit for his eyes. And he had the impression that there was a girl behind him, although he hadn't seen any girls at Bazie's.

   It was an interesting dream, though, wherever it had come from.

   He heard Kalchan snorting and moving around in the next room, slowly waking up; it must be morning, then. Somehow Kalchan had the knack of being able to wake up at exactly the same time every morning, although it usually took him some time to go from sleep to full wakefulness. The one and only time that knack had failed him, he'd been dead drunk after swilling himself senselesson the free wine given out at some Guild Midwinter Feast three years ago. Not that Kalchan belonged to any Guilds, but he'd somehow managed to get himself invited or sneak in, and he'd certainly drunk far more than his share. He'd gotten back to the tavern on his own two feet, but had fallen straight onto the bedding that Skif and the cook had laid out in anticipation of his return, and he hadn't awakened until noon. Then, between anger at losing a whole morning's custom, and the temper caused by his hangover, he'd beaten Skif black and blue, blackened Maisie's eyes, and kept them all working and away from the Temple largess of Midwinter Day. All taverns closed the afternoon of Midwinter Day-- there was no point in remaining open, since there was a Feast laid out at the temples for anyone who attended the Service beforehand. It was the one time of the year that Skif, Maisie, and the cook got a chance to stuff themselves sick on good, toothsome food, and Kalchan kept them from it, and beat them again the next day for good measure. That had marked the lowest point in Skif's life, and if he'd been bigger or older, he'd have run away and damn the consequences.

   They'd never let him oversleep by that much again, not even though it meant a beating for awakening him. Not even broken bones would keep Skif from a Temple Midwinter Feast.

    He was already up and waiting for Kalchan to unbar the kitchen door by the time his cousin waddled into the room. Kalchan looked at him with nothing other than his usual irritated glare, and performed that office, then turned and went back into the common room, leaving Skif to start the fire of go wait for the pony cart in the yard as he preferred.

   For a wonder, when the cook had remembered to bank the fire, she'd actually done it right. There must not have been as much beer in the pitcher as she had thought. There was one coal left, not a lot, but enough to get some flames going with the help of some lint, straw, and a little tallow. For once, Skif was done with his morning duties early, and he dashed out before Kalchan noticed.

   That meant he was waiting at the Temple door long before any of the other pupils, and decided against his usual custom to go into the sanctuary and watch Beel and his fellow priests perform the service. Not that he cared one way or the other about religion, but the sanctuary was a place to get out of the cold an sit down.

   For a service like this one, where no one was realy expected to come join in the worship, there was no grand procession up the center of the Temple. Instead, a few priests came in from doors on either side of the altar, lit candle and incense, and began very quiet chanting. If you knew the chants and wished to join, you could--otherwise, you could observe and pray, according to your own nature.

   He was the only person in the sanctuary other than the priests, and he had found a marginally warm place in the shadow of a pillar, so they probably didn't even notice him. They certianly didn't make any effort to pitch their voices to carry, and the distant murmur, combined with the fact that he could lean up against the pillar, allowed him to drop into a drowse again.

   He drifted back into the dream of this morning; it seemed to be a continuation of the same story. This time he and the girl were crouched together in a closet, listening to something in the next room. The murmer of the priests at their devotions blended with the murmurs in the dream. Then the dream changed abruptly, as dreams tended to do, and he found himself incongruously staring deeply into a pair of large, deep blue eyes that filled his entire field of vision.

   Blue eyes? Whose blue eyes? He didn't know anyone with blue eyes.

   Abruptly, the bell signifying the end of the service rang, and he started awake.

   Huh, he thought with bemusement. Haven't dreamed this much in--can't 'member when. Must've been ev'thin' I et!

   He got to his feet when the priests were gone, sauntered out of the sanctuary, and joined the rest of the pupils now gathering for their lessons.

   But today was going to be different. For the first time ever, he put real effort into his attempts to master numbers. If he was going to have a position with Basie's gang, he didn't want the authorities looking for him to clap him back into lessons. There was always a chance that they would catch him. If that happened, his uncle would know exactly where to find him.

   No, the moment that Bazie had a place for him, he wanted to be able to pass his test and get released from school. Then he could disappear, and Uncle Londer could fume all he wanted. At the moment, he couldn't see how hanging with Bazie's gang could be anything but an improvement over the Hollybush.

   His determination communicated itself to his tutor, and the younger boy put more enthusiasm into the lesson than Skif had expected. By the end of it, he'd made more progress in that single morning than he had in the four years he'd been taking lessons.

   When lessons were over and the bell rang, he got ready to shoot out the door with the rest, but before he could, he felt a heavy had on his shoulder, holding him in his seat.

   Beel. He must have noticed something was different. Skif's stomach knotted, and his heart sank. He was in trouble, he must be--and for once, he didn't know why, or for what reason. And that made it worse. "You can all go--" said Beel, whose hand, indeed, it was--but Beel's hand kept Skif pinned where he was. Only when the room had emptied did Beel remove his hand from Skif's shoulder, and the young priest came around in front of him to stand looking down at him soberly.

   "Skif--do you do work at the tavern in the afternoons?" Beel asked, a peculiarly strained expression on his face. What?

   Skif hesitated. If he told the truth, surely Beel would tell his father that Skif was a regular at playing truant from the Hollybush, and he would be in trouble. But if he didn't--Beel was a priest, and might be able to tell, and he would be in worse trouble.

   But Beel didn't wait for him to make up his mind about his answer. "I want you to do something for me, Skif," he said urgently, his eyes full of some emotion Skif couldn't recognize. "I want you to promise me that today you won't go near the tavern from the time lessons let out until the time darkness falls."

   The look Skif wore on his face must have been funny, since Beel smiled thinly. "I can't tell you why, Skif, but I hope that you can at least trust the priest if you can't trust your cousin. My father . . . is not as clever as he thinks he is. Someone is angry, angry at him, and angry at Kalchan. I think, unless he can be persuaded to curb his anger, that he is going to act this afternoon. You have nothing to do with all this, and you do not deserve to be caught in the middle."

   And with those astonishing words, Beel turned and left, as he always did, as if nothing out of the ordinary had ever transpired between them.

   After a moment, Skif shook off his atonishment and slowly left the building. Once out in the sunlight, he decided that whatever Beel was hinting at didn't really matter, because he had no notion of going back to the tavern during the day anyway. He was going to meet Deek, and get his first lessons in the fine art of thievery!

   Deek wasn't lurking anywhere on the way to the building where Bazie's "laundry" was, but Skif remembered the way back to Bazie's, including the secret passages, perfectly. He suspected that this was his first test, and when he rapped on the door in an approximation of Deek's knock, it was Deek himself who opened it with a grin. "I tol' ye 'e'd 'member!" Deek crowed, drawing Skif inside.

   "An' I agreed we' ye," Bazie said agreeably. "If 'e hadn', 'e wouldn' be much use, would'e?" There was new laundry festooning the ceiling today--stockings and socks. Only Lyle was with Bazie and Deek; the third boy was nowhere to be seen.

   " 'J'eet yet?" asked Lyle, as Deek drew him inside. At Skif's head shake, the other boy wordlessly gestured at the table, where half of a decent cottage loaf of brown bread waited, with some butter and a knife. Beside it was a pot of tea and mugs. Buttered bread, half eaten, sat bon a wooden plate next to Bazie. All in all, it was the sort of luncheon that wouldn't disgrace the table of a retiring spinster of small means.

   Not that Skif cared what it looked like--he'd been invited to eat, and eat he surely would. He fell on the food, cutting two nice thick slices of bread and buttered them generously, pouring himself a mug of tea. Bazie watched him with an oddly benevolent look on his face.

   "Eat good, but don' eat full afore a job," he said, in a manner that told Skif this was a rule, and he's better pay close attention to it. "Nivir touch stuff as makes ye gassy, an' nothin' that'll be on yer breath. WHut if ye has t' hide? Summun smells onions where no onions shud be, or wuss--" He blew a flatulent razz with his lips, and the other boys laughed. "Oh, laugh if ye like, but I heerd boys been caught that way! Aye, an' growed men as shoulda knowed better!"

   Skif laughed, too, but he also nodded eagerly. Bazie was no fool; no matter what his gang purloined was small beer compared with jewels and gold--it was obviously supplying tham with fair living, and at the moment, Skif wouldn't ask for more.

   "Nah, good gillyflar tea, tha's the stuff afore a job," Bazie continued with satisfaction. "Makes ye keen, sharp. Tha's what ye need." He waited while Skif finished his bread and butter and drank a mug of the faintly acidic, but not unpleasant, tea. He knew gillyflower tea from the Temple, where it occasionally appeared with the morning bread, and it did seem to wake him up when he felt a little foggy or sleepy. "Nah, t'day Deek, I don' want wipes," Bazie continued. "I got sum'thin' I been ast for, special. Mun wants napkins. Ye ken napkins?"

   Deek shook his head, but Skif, who had, after all, been serving in Lord Orthallen's hall as an ersatz page, nodded. "Bits uv linen--'bout so big--" He measured out a square with his hands. "Thicker nor wipes, kinda towels, but fine, like. Them highborns use 'em t' meals, wipes their han's an' face on 'em so's they ain't all grease an' looks sweetly."

   "Ha!" Bazie slapped his knee with his hand. "Good boy! Deek, where ye think ye kin find this stuff?" Deek pondered the question for a moment, then suggested a few names that Skif didn't recognize. "We h'aint touched any on 'em for a while."

   "Make a go," Bazie ordered. "I needs twa dozen, so don' get 'em all in one place, eh?"

   "Right. Ye ready?" Deek asked, looking down at Skif, who jumped to his feet. "We're off." "Not like that 'e ain't!" Lyle protested. "Glory, Deek, 'e cain't pass i' them rags!"

   Bazie concurred with a decided nod. "Gi'e 'im summat on ourn. "Ere, Lyle--i' the cubberd--"

   Lyle went to the indicated alcove and rummaged around for a moment. " 'Ere, these're too small fer any on' us--"

   The boy threw a set of trews and a knitted tunic at Skif who caught them. They were nearly identical to Deek's; the same neat and barely-visible patches, the same dark gray-brown color. Happy to be rid of his rags, Skif stripped off everything but his smallclothes and donned the new clothing.

    Now Bazie and Lyle nodded their satisfaction together. "We'll boil up yer ol' thin's an' mend 'em a bit--ye kin 'ave 'em back when ye get back," Bazie said. "We don' wan' yer nuncle t' wonder where ye got new close." "Yessir," Skif said. "Thenkee, sir!"

   Bazie laughed. "Jest get me napkins, imp."

   Now properly clothed so that his ragged state wouldn't attract attention, Skif was permitted to follow Deek out into the streets.

   They walked along as Skif had already learned to, as if, no matter how fine the neighborhood, they belonged there, that they were two boys who had been sent on an errand that needed to be discharged expenditiously, but not urgently.

   Deek, however, knew every illicit was into the laundries and wash houses of the fine houses on these streets, and he led Skif over walls, up trees, and across rooftops. Together they waited for moments when the laundresses and washer-women were otherwise occupied, and dropped down into the rooms wher soiled linnens were sorted for washing.

   It was Skif who picked out the napkins from among the rest--no more than two or three lightly soiled squares of linen at each place. He chose nothing that was so badly grease-stained that it was unlikely it could be cleaned, nor did he pick out items that were new.

   Once retrieved, Deek did something very clever with them. He folded them flat, and stuffed them inside the legs of his trews and Skif's, so that there was no way to tell that the bits of fabric were there at all without forcing them to undress. When they had the full two dozen, with no close calls and only one minor alarm, Deek called a halt, and they strolled back to Bazie's.

   Skif was tired, but very pleased with himself. He'd kept up with Deek, and he'd been the ones to pick out the loot Bazie wanted. Nothing new, nothing over-fine, nothing that would be missed unless and until a housekeeper made a full inventory. Not likely, that; not in the places that Deek had selected.

   They made their way up, over and down again, and back to Bazie's den. This time when Deek knocked, it was Bazie himself that opened the door for them, and Skif watched with covert amazement as he stumped back to his seat like some sort of bizarre four-legged creature, supporting himself on two wooden pegs strapped where his legs had been, and two crutches, one for each arm.

   "Aaa--" Bazie said, in a note of pain, as he lowered himself down to his seat and quickly took off the wooden legs. "When ye brings back th' glimmers, young'un, I'll be gettin' proper-fittin' stumps, fust thing." He gestured in disgust at the crude wooden legs. "Them's no better nor a couple of slats. How's it that a mun kin be sa good wi' needle an sa bad wi' whittlin'?"

   He put the crutches aside, and looked at them expectantly.

   "Here ye be, Bazie!" said Deek, taking the lead, and pulling napkins out of his trews the was a conjure mage at a fair pulled kerchiefs out of his hand. Skif did the same, until all two dozen were piled in front of their mentor.

   "Hah! Good work!" Bazie told them. "Nah, young'un--ye look an ye tell me--wha's the big problem we got wi' these fer sellin' uv 'em?"

   That was something Skif had worried about. Every single napkin they'd taken had been decorated with distinctive embroidered initials or pictures on the corners. "Them whatchacalls in th' corners,; Skif said promptly. "Dunno what they be, but they's all different."

   "They's t' show what owns 'em, but ol' Bazie's gotta cure for that, eh, Deek?" Bazie positively beamed at both of them, and took out a box from a niche beside his seat. He opened it, and Skif leaned forward to see what was inside.

   Sewing implements. Very fine, as fine as any great lady's. Tiny scissors, hooks, and things he couldn't even guess at.

   Bazie took out the tiniest pair of scissors that Skif had ever seen, and a thing like a set of tongs, but no bigger than a pen, and several other implements Skif had no names for. Then he took up the first of the napkins and set to work on it.

   Within moments, it was obvious what he was doing; he was unpicking the ebroidery. But he was doing it with such care that when he was finally done, only a sightly whiter area and a hole or two showed where it had been, and the threads he had unpicked were still all in lengths that could be used. "Nah, I'll be doin' that t' all uv them, then into th' bleach they goes, an' no sign where they come from!" Bazie rubbed his hands together with glee. "An' that'll mean a full five siller fer the lot from a feller what's got a business in these things, an' all fer a liddle bit uv' easy work for ye an me! Nah, what sez ye t' that, young'un?"

   Skif could only shake his head in admiration. "That--I'm mortal glad I grabbed fer Deek's ankle yesterday!" And Bazie roared with laughter. "So'm we, boy!" he chuckled. "So'm we!"

   —Reprinted from Take a Thief by Mercedes Lackey by permission of DAW, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc. Copyright © 2001 by Mercedes Lackey. All rights reserved. This excerpt, or any parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.