“I had no intention of doing so,” the Guildmaster pointed out, in reasonable tones. “That was Jass’ fault. If he’d obeyed orders, everyone would have gotten out all right, even Bazie.”

Since Skif had heard the truth of that with his own ears, there was no debating the question of whether Jass had gone far beyond what his orders had been. But—

How would Bazie have gotten out in time, even so? How? The boys couldn’t have carried him—

The Guildmaster interrupted his thoughts. His expression had gone very bland again. He was planning something…

“You’ve been very clever, young man,” he said, in a voice unctuous with flattery. “I don’t see nearly enough cleverness in the people I hire—well, Jass was a case in point. Now at the moment, we seem to be at a stalemate.”

Alberich writhed in a futile attempt to get free. His captor laughed, and punched the shoulder wound again, and Alberich went white. “If I kill this Herald,” he pointed out, “I lose my shield against whatever you might pick up and fling at me. You can’t go anywhere, because Kash is between you and the door. Stalemate.”

Skif nodded warily.

“On the other hand,” he continued, “if you decided to switch allegiances, I could strangle this fool and we could all escape from here before the help he has almost certainly arranged for arrives.”

Skif clenched his jaw. In another time and place—“An’ just what’m I supposed to get out of this?” he asked, playing for time to think.

Cymry was oddly silent in his mind. In fact—in fact, he couldn’t sense her at all. For the first time in weeks he was alone in his head.

“What do you get? Oh, Skif, Skif, haven’t you learned anything about the way life works?” the Guildmaster laughed. “Allow me to enlighten you. No matter what these fools have told you, the only law that counts is the Law of the Street. What you’ll get is to be trained by me, in something far more profitable than the liftin’ lay.”

“Oh, aye—” Skif began heatedly.

“No. You listen to me. This is what is real. These are the rules that the real world runs by.” He stared into Skif’s eyes, and Skif couldn’t look away, couldn’t stop listening to that voice, so sure of itself, so very, very rational. “Grab what you can, because if you don’t, someone else will snatch it out from under you. Get all the dirt you can on anyone who might have power over you—and believe me, everyone has a past, and things they’d rather not have bruited about. Be the cheater, not the cheated, because you’ll be one or the other. There’s no such thing as truth—oh, believe me about this—there are shades of meaning, and depths of self-interest, but there is no truth.”