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 the 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.