But that was not what he wanted to think about; it was what had happened at that reception tonight. The whole thing had been good, in that it proved Weaponsmaster Alberich had every intention of using him. But it hadn’t gotten them any results. And what could be done within the wall around the Palace wasn’t anything near enough, and he knew that Alberich knew that it wasn’t enough. One end of the trail might be here, but the other was down near Exile’s Gate. Here, there was likely only one person, the man behind it all. There—well, there were a lot of people, there had to be, and plenty of ’em with loose tongues, if you could catch ’em right, or get enough liquor into ’em.

Now, Alberich could go down there, fit in, and be talked to. He’d already proved that. But the question was not whether he’d be talked to, the question was who would talk to him. Jass had spoken to him, sold him information, and now Jass was dead. Had anyone made that connection? Skif didn’t know, and it was certain-sure that no one was going to tell Alberich if they had. Take it farther; if Alberich pressed too hard and in the wrong direction, someone might decide he was too dangerous to let alone. Now; old Alberich wasn’t very like to get himself in serious trouble, not with Kantor to come rescue him at need, but if a white horse came charging into Exile’s Gate and carrying off a fellow who was hard-pressed in a fight, there weren’t too many folks down there that couldn’t put two and two together and come up with the right number.

There was that, but there was more. The kinds of people that Alberich would talk to were the bullyboys, other sell-swords. If he was lucky, possibly, the tavernkeepers would talk to him. They wouldn’t necessarily have the information he needed. There was, however, another set of people who might. The whores, the pawnbrokers, the people who bought and sold stolen goods—they all knew Skif, and they knew things that the folks who practiced their trades in a more open fashion might not.

Come to that, Skif knew a few of the other thieves who might trade a word or two with him. You never knew what you were going to find yourself in possession of when you were a thief. It might could be that one of them would have run across something to put Skif on the trail.

Particularly intriguing was that thread of information that Alberich had let fall—how the trade in children stolen off the streets and the trade in slaves taken by bandits might be linked. It made a certain amount of sense, that, if you assumed that the slavers were all working together.