At that moment, the Guildmaster finally noticed that his prizes had escaped.
“Stop them!” he shouted at his men. “Don't let them get away!”
Skif froze in the doorway, but he needn't have worried. No one was taking orders now. The fighters were too busy with Alberich to pay any attention to Skif, although they redoubled their efforts to take the Weaponsmaster down.
:Skif, run! Get out of there now!: Cymry cried.
“No!” he said aloud. He couldn't go — not now — he might be able to do something —
The lantern flames flickered, and shadows danced on the walls, a demonic echo of the death dance in the center of the room. It was confusing; too confusing. Once again Skif felt for his knives and hesitated.
Alberich was tiring; oh, it didn't show in how he moved, but there was sweat rolling down his face. He had taken another cut, this time across his scalp, and blood mingled with the drops of sweat that spattered down onto the dirt floor with every movement.
Skif still didn't dare throw the knives, even with one of the opponents down. He edged away from the door, and looked frantically for something else he could throw.
Alberich's eyes glittered, and his mouth was set in a wild and terrible smile. He looked more than half mad, and Skif couldn't imagine why his opponents weren't backing away just from his expression alone, much less the single-minded ferocity with which he was fighting. He did not look human, that much was certain. If this was how he always looked when he fought in earnest, no wonder people were afraid of him.
No wonder he had never needed to draw a blade in those tavern brawls.
Skif's eye fell on a pile of dirty bowls stacked against the wall on the other side of the doorway — the remains, perhaps, of a meal the child snatchers had finished. It didn't matter; they were heavy enough to be weapons, and they were within reach.
He snatched one up and waited for his opportunity. It came sooner than he'd hoped, as Alberich suddenly rushed one of the three men, making him stumble backward in a hasty retreat. That broke the swirling dance of steel for a moment, broke the pattern long enough for Skif to fling the bowl at the man's head.
It connected with the back of his skull with a sickening crack that made Skif wince — not hard enough to knock him out, but enough to make him stagger, dazed.
And that moment was just enough for Alberich to slash savagely at his neck, cutting halfway through it. The man twisted in agony, dropping to the floor, blood everywhere as he writhed for a long and horrible moment, then stilled.
Skif froze, watching in fascination, aghast. Alberich did not. Nor did the two men still fighting. They reacted by coming at Alberich from both directions at once, and in the rain of blows that followed, Alberich was wounded again, a glancing slash across the arm that peeled back leather and a little flesh — but he delivered a worse blow than he had gotten to the head of the third man, who dropped like a stone. At which point the first man who'd been felled stood up, shaking his head to clear it, and plunged back into the fray.
Skif shook himself out of his trance and flung two more bowls. Neither connected as well as the first; the first man remaining was hit in the shoulder, and the second in the back. But the distraction was their undoing, for they lost the initiative and Alberich managed to get out of their trap, nor could they pin him between them again.
The fight moved closer to the Guildmaster — Alberich got the second man in the leg, leaving his dagger in the man's thigh, and the bodyguard staggered back.
Skif threw his last bowl, which hit the man nearest the Guildmaster in the side of the face. Alberich saw his opening, and took it, with an all-or-nothing lunge that carried him halfway across the room.
Skif let out a strangled cry of horror —
If any fighter Skif had ever seen before had tried that move, it would have ended differently. But this was Alberich, and he came in under the man's sword and inside his dagger, and the next thing Skif knew, the point of Alberich's sword was sticking out of the man's back, and the man was gazing down at Alberich with an utterly stupefied expression on his face.
Then he toppled over slowly —
But he took Alberich's sword with him.
And now the Guildmaster struck.
Because he had done nothing all this time, Skif had virtually forgotten he was there, and had assumed that he was harmless. Perhaps Alberich had done the same. It was a mistaken assumption on both their parts.
The Guildmaster moved like a ferret, so fast that he seemed to blur, and too fast for Alberich, exhausted as he was, to react. The Guildmaster didn't have a weapon.
He didn't need one.
Skif didn't, couldn't see how it happened. One moment, Alberich was still extended in his lunge; the next, the Guildmaster had him pinned somehow, trapped. The Guildmaster's back was to the wall, his arm was across Alberich's throat with Alberich's body protecting his. Both of Alberich's hands were free, and he clawed ineffectually at the arm across his throat. The Weaponsmaster's face was already turning an unhealthy shade of pale blue.
“Kash,” the Guildmaster said, in a tight voice. “Get the brat.”
But the last man was in no condition to grab anyone. “Can't,” he coughed. “Leg's out.”
Given the fact that his leg had been opened from thigh to knee, with Alberich's dagger still in the wound, he had a point. The Guildmaster's gaze snapped back onto Skif.
“Well,” he said, in that condescending voice he'd used with Jass, “I wouldn't have expected the Heralds to use bait. It's not like them to put a child in danger.”
Skif bristled. “Ain't a child,” he said flatly.
“Oh? You're a little young to be a Herald,” the man countered in a sarcastic tone. Then he punched Alberich's shoulder wound with his free hand, making him gasp, and putting a stop to Alberich's attempts to claw himself free. “Stop that. You're only making things more difficult for yourself.”
“What has age to do with being a Herald?” Alberich rasped.
Skif said nothing, and the man's eyes narrowed as his arm tightened a little more on Alberich's throat. “Be still, or I will snap your foolish neck for you. A Trainee, then. But still — that's quite out of character — unless — ”
He stared at Skif then, with a calculating expression, and Skif sensed that he was thinking very hard, very hard indeed.
It was, after all, no secret that the latest Trainee was a thief. But what that would mean to this wealthy villain — and whether he'd heard that —
Then the Guildmaster's eyes widened. “Well,” he said, and his mouth quirked up at one corner. “Who would have thought it. The Heralds making common cause with a common thief. Oh, excuse me — you're quite an uncommon thief. Old Bazie's boy, aren't you? Skif, is it?”
Skif went cold with shock and stared at the Guildmaster with his mouth dropping open. How'd he know — how —
The Guildmaster smirked. “I make it my business to know what goes on in my properties, as any good 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 t
he 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 reason to turn him into the street, knowing that Londer would be looking for him to silence him.
And Beel — Beel had protected him, Beel could have reported a hundred times over that Skif had fulfilled his education, but he didn't. And when Beel could have told his own father where Skif was, he'd kept his mouth shut.
And the Heralds —
Oh, the Heralds. Weak, were they? Foolish?
Skif felt warmth coming back into him, felt his heart uncurling, as he thought back along the past weeks and all of the little kindnesses, all unasked for, that he'd gotten. Kris and Coroc keeping the highborn Blues from tormenting him until Skif had established that he was more amusing if he wasn't taunted. Jeri helping him out with swordwork. The teachers taking extra time to explain things he simply had never seen before. Housekeeper Gaytha being so patient with his rough speech that sometimes he couldn't believe she'd spend all this time over one Trainee. The girls teasing and laughing with him in the sewing room. The simple way that he had been accepted by every Trainee, and with no other recommendation but that he'd been Chosen —
Cymry.
Cymry, who had rilled his heart — who still was there, he sensed her again, now that he wasn't listening to the poison that bastard was pouring into his ears. Cymry, who cared enough for him to wait while he listened — to make his own decisions, without any pressure from her.
No love, was there? Self-delusion, was it?
Then I'll be deluded.
Did the Guildmaster see his thoughts flicker across his face? Perhaps —
“Kash, now!”; he shouted. The wounded bodyguard lunged, arms outstretched to grab him —
But Skif was already moving before the bodyguard, clumsy with his wounds and pain, had gotten a single step. He jumped aside, his hands flicking to each side as he evaded those outstretched arms.
And between one breath and the next —
The bodyguard continued his lunge, and sprawled facedown on the floor, gurgling in agony, one of Skif's knives in his throat.
The Guildmaster made a strangled noise — and so did Alberich.
The arm around Alberich's throat tightened as the Guildmaster slid down the wall.
Skif's other knife was lodged to the hilt in his eye.
But Skif's dodge had been deliberately aimed to take him to Alberich's side. The Guildmaster had been a stationary target. And at that range, he couldn't miss.
In the next heartbeat he had pried the dead arm away from the Weaponsmaster's throat, and Alberich was gasping in great, huge gulps of air, his color returning to normal.
Skif helped him to his feet. “You all right?” he asked awkwardly.
Alberich nodded. “Talk — may be hard,” he rasped.
Skif laughed giddily, feeling as if he had drunk two whole bottles of that fabulous wine all by himself. “Like that's gonna make the Trainees unhappy,” he taunted. “You, not bein' able to lecture ‘em!”
The wry expression on Alberich's face only made him laugh harder. “Come on,” he said, draping his teacher's arm over his shoulders. “We better get you outside an' get back to where th' good Healers are afore your Kantor decides he's gonna put horseshoe marks on my bum.”
They got as far as the door when Skif thought of something else. “I don' suppose you did arrange for help, did you?”
“Well,” Alberich admitted, in a croak. “It comes now.”
:Cymry?:
:Half the Collegium, my love.:
Skif just shook his head. “Figgers. Us Heralds, we just keep thinkin' we gotta do everything by ourselves, don't we? We can't do the smart thing an' get help fixed up beforehand. Even you. An' you should know better.”
“Yes,” Alberich agreed. “I should. We do.”
We. It was a lovely word.
One that Skif was coming to enjoy a very great deal
* * * * * * * * * *
A Herald he didn't recognize b
rought Skif his knives, meticulously cleaned, as the Healer fussed over Alberich right there in the street, which was so full of torches and lanterns it might have been a festival. Well, a very grim sort of festival.
It actually looked more like something out of a fever dream; the street full of Heralds and Guards, more Guardsmen swarming in and out of the warehouse, a half-dozen Heralds and their Companions surrounding Alberich — who flatly refused to lie down on a stretcher as the Healer wanted — while the Weaponsmaster sat on an upturned barrel and the Healer stitched up his wounds. Four bodies were laid out on the street under sheets; one semiconscious bullyboy had been taken off for questioning as soon as he recovered. Not that anyone expected to get much out of him. It wasn't very likely that a mere bodyguard would know the details of his master's operations.
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