“Ah—” Skif stammered, before he got his wits together. “But I’ve got no training, sor. Dunno much but burthen beasts, and never learnt to drive.”

Halcom waved that aside as of no consequence. “Nor have most boys your age when they go into service. As small as you are, though—learning to handle the reins could be problematic. I’m not sure you could control a team.”

“I be stronger nor I look, sor,” Skif said, stung.

Halcom laughed, but it didn’t have that sly, mean sound to it that Skif had half expected. “Oh, you’d make a fine smart little footman, sitting up beside your master on a fashionable chariot, but I’ll tell you the truth, lad, there is not a single highborn or man of means and fashion that I’d feel comfortable sending you to in that capacity. The good men have all the loyal footmen they need—and the others—” he shook his head. “I won’t send you to a bad master.”

“Ye might tell me who they be, sor?” Skif offered tentatively. “If I didna know it, I might take a place I was offered—”

“So you can avoid them?” Halcom nodded thoughtfully. “That’s no bad idea. Clever of you to think of it.” And he proceeded, with forthright candor, to outline the character of every man he thought Skif ought not to take service with. He was so candid that Skif was, frankly, shocked. Not at the litany of faults and even vices—his upbringing in the worst part of Haven had exposed him to far worse than Halcom revealed. No, it was that Halcom was not at all reticent about unrolling the listing of faults of his “own kind.”

As Halcom spoke, Skif found himself at war within himself. He wanted to trust Halcom, and he had sworn never to trust anyone. More than that, he wanted to like Halcom. It seemed to him that Halcom could easily become a friend.

And he did not want any more friends.

“That leaves plenty of good masters to take service with, mind,” Halcom pointed out when he was finished, and smiled. “And for all my differences with my own family, I can quite cheerfully recommend you to take service with them. They’re quite good to those who serve them well.”

Huh. It’s only their own flesh’n’blood that they muck about with, eh? Skif thought. Guess you’n’me have more in common than I thought.

“It was your own uncle that turned you out, wasn’t it?” Halcom said suddenly, startling Skif again with his knowledge of Skif’s “background.” Halcom laughed at his expression, wryly. “I suppose we have more in common than either of us would have suspected.”

“’Twas your nuncle sent ye off?” Skif ventured.