That’s Jass! Skif thought in shock. What’s he doing here?

Surely not grave robbing—the amount of work it would take to get into one of these tombs was far beyond anything the Jass that Skif knew would be willing to do! Even supposing there was anything of value interred there…

“I’m quite sure,” said a smooth and cultured voice. “Rovenar and his family are at his country estate, and none of his father’s friends are still alive to pay him a graveside visit. Besides, it would hardly matter if anyone did come. I have the key; Rovenar trusts me to see that no one gets in here to work any mischief in his absence. If anyone should appear, I am simply doing him that favor, and you, my servant, have accompanied me.”

“Servant?” Jass growled. It was amazing how well the stairs worked to funnel sound down here; Skif would have thought they were in the same room with him.

The voice laughed. “Bodyguard, then.” The voice was clearly amused at Jass’ attitude toward being taken as a servant.

It occurred to Skif that if he was seeing the light of a candle up there, it must be later than he’d thought when he was initially startled awake. It must have been the turning of the key in the lock on the chapel door that woke him, and he blessed the owner who had put in a door that locked itself on closing.

Whatever brought Jass and the unknown gentleman here, it had to be something out of the ordinary.

“What’d ye want t’ meet here for?” Jass grumbled. “Place fair gives me th’ creeps.”

“It is cool, it is private, and we stand no chance of being overheard,” the voice replied. “And because I have no mind to pay a call on you. I pay you; you can accommodate yourself to me.”

Skif winced. Nothing could have been clearer than the contempt in those words.

But either Jass was inured to it, or he was oblivious to it.

Mebbe he just don’t care. Anyone who’d been entrusted with the key to a lordling’s chapel had to have money, at least, and the song of that money must ring in Jass’s ears, deafening him to anything else.

“So wut’s th’ job this time that you don’ want ears about?” Jass asked bluntly. “It better pay better nor last time.”

“It will,” the voice said coolly. “Not that you weren’t paid exactly what the last job was worth—and I suspect you made somewhat more, afterward. I’m given to understand that you are considered something of an information broker.”

“Ye never give me enuff fer quiet,” Jass said sullenly.

Skif felt as if he’d been struck by lightning. Bloody ’ell! This’s where Jass gets ’is stuff about th’highborns!