Not that anyone in the Arms was going to do any business. That sign over the door wasn’t there for a joke. That was what made and kept the Arms so popular; when you walked in here, you knew you’d come out with your purse no lighter than the cost of your food and drink. The women wouldn’t try and get you drunk so they could talk you into paying for wine for them either. The wenches here weren’t hired for their looks, gods knew—absolute harridans, most of ’em. They’d been hired because they knew the liftin’ lay, and how to spot someone at business. One whistle from one of them, and the miscreant would find himself on the street with his own arms looking just like the ones on the sign. It was a good dodge for the wenches, for certain-sure; a young thing, plain though she might be, would still have an excuse to come sidling alongside of a fellow with a bit of an invitation. An old hag wouldn’t; and though her fingers might still be wise, they weren’t as nimble as a young thing’s, so if she tried the old dodge of stumbling into a fellow, the odds were that he’d be clapping his hand to his belt pouch before she could get into it. And if he didn’t, and she got it, her feet wouldn’t carry her as far or as fast anymore. The older you got in the trade, the likelier it was you’d be caught that fatal third time, and unless she got herself a gaggle of littles to teach the trade to—taking everything they lifted, of course—there wasn’t much an aging woman could do to turn a penny. There weren’t a lot of women who learned the high roads or the ketchin’ lay, professions that could keep you going for a long time, so long as you were limber enough to climb or bold enough to cosh.

Not that Skif held with the ketchin’ lay. Bazie’d turned up his nose at it; didn’t take a mort of skill nor brains to take a cosh to a fellow’s head and make off with his goods. And the Watch and the Guards didn’t give a third or even second chance to anyone caught at that trade; caught once, you saw ten years of hard labor for the Guard.

The women Skif knew didn’t hold with the ketchin’ lay either, though he wasn’t sure what the difference was between laying a fellow out with a cosh and taking his goods when he was drunk dead asleep. Whatever, that was still another trade, and an old hag couldn’t ply it either.