By spring he had gone back to roof work, although he kept his thefts modest and more a matter of opportunity than planning. What he did mostly was listen, for it was remarkable what information could be gleaned at open windows now that the weather was warm. Some of that, he sold to others, who trafficked in such information. Why should he care who paid to keep a secret love affair secret, or who paid to avoid tales of bribery or cheating or other chicanery quiet? It was all incidental to his hunt for Bazie’s murderer, but if he could profit by it, then why not? When a valuable trinket was left carelessly on a table in plain sight, though, it usually found its way into his pocket, and then to a fence. His own needs were modest enough that these occasional thefts, combined with his information sales and garden-variety raids on laundry rooms, kept him in ready coin.

The beauty of it all was that the three activities were so disparate that no one who knew one of them was likely to connect him with the other two. If it became too dangerous to filch silks, he could step up his roof work. If he somehow managed to get hold of some information that proved dangerous, he could stop selling it, and filch more laundry. And if rumors of a clever sneak thief sent the Watch around on heightened alert, he could stop going for the trinkets and confine himself to listening at chimneys, which sent up no smoke in this lovely weather, but did provide wonderful listening posts.

Unfortunately, although he had cultivated acute hearing, it wasn’t good enough to enable him to hear what it was that the dour sell-sword was saying.

However, it did seem as if the man was buying, not selling, information. When the surreptitious motion that marked the passing of coins from hand to hand finally took place, it was the sell-sword who passed the coins to Skif’s target, and not the other way around.

Might could be I could sell ’im a bit, it’s Lord Qrthallen he’s wantin’t’ hear about, Skif thought speculatively. He decided to investigate chimneys at the manse at the next moon-dark. They might prove to be useful.

“Fire,” he heard then, which brought him alert again, and he closed his eyes and put his head down, the better to concentrate.

“Bad enough,” the sell-sword grunted. “Ye’d’a seen me a-passin’ buckets that night.”

Skif’s target, who Skif knew as “Tain Kelken,” but who the sell-sword addressed as “Jass,” laughed shortly. “Could’a bin rainin’ like ’tis now, an’ ye’d nawt hev got it out,” he replied, with a knowing tone. “Reckon when a mun hev more’n twenny barrels uv earth tar an’ wax painted on mun’s buildin’, take more’n bucket lines t’douse it.”