Hellfires, Skif thought grumblingly, as he returned from an errand to the market, through streets that the noon heat had left deserted. It’d be easier to make a run by day than by—

Then it hit him. Of course! Why not make his raids by day? He was supposed to be resting, like everyone and everything, during the heat of the day. No one would miss him at the Priory, and there would be no one around to see him in the deserted mansions, not with the skeleton staffs spending their time in the cool of the wine cellars, most of them asleep if they had any sense!

That’s pro’lly what the Master Thief’s doing! he thought with glee. He was delighted to have thought of it, and enjoyed a moment of mental preening over his own cleverness.

Well, he certainly would not be wearing his black “sneak suit” for these jobs. His best bet was to look perfectly ordinary. The fact was, he probably wouldn’t even need to get in via the rooftops; the doors and windows would all be unlocked. After all, who would ever expect a thief to walk in the kitchen door in broad daylight?

He brought the bag of flour and the basket of other sundries he’d been sent for to the kitchen and left it on the table. The Brother who acted as cook had changed the routine because of the heat. A great many things were being served cold: boiled eggs, cheese, vegetables and so forth. Actual cooking was done at night and in ovens and on brick stoves erected in the kitchen courtyard. The biggest meal of the day was now breakfast; the noon meal was no longer a meal, but consisted of whatever anyone was able to eat (given the heat, which killed appetites), picked up as one got hungry, in the kitchen. Big bowls of cleaned, sliced vegetables submerged in water lined the counters, loaves of bread resided under cheesecloth, boiled eggs in a smaller bowl beside them. There was butter and cheese in the cold larder if anyone wanted it, which hardly anyone did.

Skif helped himself to carrot strips and celery and a piece of bread; he ate the bread plain, because he couldn’t bear the thought of butter either. The place might just as well have been deserted; the only sign that there had been anyone in the kitchen was the lumps of bread dough left to rise under cloths along their shelf.

Skif wasn’t all that hungry either, but he ate and drank deeply of the cooled water from yet another terra-cotta jar. Then he went straight back out, as if he had been sent on a second errand. Not that there was anyone about to notice.