“It’s for taking hats,” Slag said, hefting the pole. “You know the arch under the Royal Ditch bridge? Aye? Windy fucking place. You crouch up in the supports, in the shadows, and you pluck the hats off the wealthy shits as pass underneath, and they think the wind took them.”

“Brilliant,” Malden said.

“It’ll fucking do. What do you want now?”

Malden described his needs while the dwarf scowled at him.

“The climbing gear I have in stock, no problem. This other thing, though—it’ll take a week, maybe more,” Slag told him.

“I can give you no more than three days,” Malden told the dwarf. Even that was pushing things—it meant he would not be ready until the eve of Ladymas.

“Fine. Now pay me. Gilding metal’s not bloody cheap, if you want it to look right.”

“Ah,” Malden said. “Well, perhaps I can owe you.”

It was commonly believed that dwarves never laughed. This was perhaps because most people were not so foolish as to ask them for credit. Slag did laugh at the idea, though the sound was not like a human laugh. It sounded more like a squeaky wheel coming free of a rusted axle.

“It really is important,” Malden said. “Perhaps there is some way we—”

“Sod off,” Slag said, turning back to his fishing pole.

It seemed to be a day for marvels. Lockjaw had given away a secret (or part of one), a dwarf had laughed—and now the door to Cutbill’s office swung open and the guildmaster of thieves leaned out.

“I’ll pay for the work,” Cutbill said.

Malden bowed low toward his master.

“Of course, Malden, you’ll pay me back,” Cutbill said.

“Of course.”

Cutbill shook his head. “At a rather ruinous level of interest.”

Malden bowed lower. “Of course,” he said again.

His business in the lair done, he headed back to the surface. Perhaps Croy had been filleted by the beggar children, he thought. Or maybe they’d just doused him with lamp oil and set him on fire.

One could hope.

Yet when he returned to where he’d left the knight, he stopped in his tracks and just stared. A score of the vile little children had emerged from their hiding places and gathered around Croy. They sat in the dust, staring up at him with rapt faces.

While Croy told them a story.

“. . . the dragon came swooping down,” Croy was saying as Malden approached, “with fire in his jaw, ready to roast the king’s men in their armor. It was fifty feet from wingtip to wingtip, and its eyes blazed red in the dark as its tail swung out behind it like a pennon flapping in the breeze. And then—”

“It breathed fire and they all died. The end,” Malden said.