SKIF had every intention of beginning his campaign of sabotage that very night, but when he tried to get near the district where the homes of the great and powerful were, he found the Watch was unaccountably active. There were patrols on nearly every street, and they weren’t sauntering along either. Something had them alerted, and after the third time of having to take cover to avoid being stopped and questioned, he gave it up as hopeless and headed back to his room with an ill grace.

He got some slight revenge, though; as he turned a corner, a party of well-dressed, and very drunk young men came bursting out of a tavern with a very angry innkeeper shouting curses right on their heels. They practically ran him over, but in the scuffle and ensuing confusion, he lifted not one, but three purses. Making impotent threats and shouting curses of his own at them (which had all the more force because of his personal frustrations), he turned on his heel and stalked off in an entirely different direction.

Once out of sight, he ducked into a shadow, emptied the purses of their coins into his own pouch, and left the purses where he dropped them, tucking his pouch into the breast of his tunic. Then he strolled away in still another direction. After a block or two, there was nothing to connect him with the men he’d robbed. That was a mistake that many pickpockets made; they hung onto the purses they’d lifted. Granted, such objects were often valuable in themselves—certainly the three he’d taken had been—but they also gave the law a direct link between robber and robbed.

As he walked back toward his room, he managed to get himself back under control. Taking the purses had helped; it was a very small strike against the rich and arrogant bastards, but a strike nevertheless. Just wait till they get to a bawdy house, an’ they’ve gotta pay—he thought, with grim satisfaction. They better ’ope their friends is willin’ t’ part with th’ glim! Skif had seen the wrath of plenty of madams and whoremasters whose customers had declined to pay, and they didn’t take the situation lightly—nor did they accept promissory notes. They also employed very large men to help enforce the house rules and tariffs. When young men came into a place in a group, no one was allowed to leave until everyone’s score had been paid. Those who still had purses would find them emptied before the night was over.

The thought improved his humor, and that restored his appetite. Now much fatter in the pocket than he had been this afternoon, he decided to follow his nose and see where it led him.