Alberich brought him to an inn where a Herald and a Trainee could ride into the stable yard unremarked. No surprises there; the innkeeper greeted him by name, and they took Cymry and Kantor to the stable, to special loose-boxes without doors. Then came the surprise, in the form of a locked room at the back of the stable to which Alberich had the key, and which contained both a trunk of disguise material and a rear entrance onto an alley. A beggar boy slipped out that entrance into the shadows of dusk somewhat later, and after him, a disreputable sell-sword whose face would be moderately familiar in the Exile’s Gate quarter. Another purpose for all that soot on Skif’s features was to disguise them. It wouldn’t do for him to be recognized.

Skif made his way quietly to Exile’s Gate itself; then as if he had come in the Gate, he wandered the street in his old neighborhood, training his voice into a tremulous piping as he begged from the passersby. Mostly he got kicks and curses, though once someone gave him an end of a loaf, and two others offered a rind of bacon and a rind of cheese. Beggars here got food more often than coin, though there was little enough of the former. Skif went a little cold when he thought about a child trying to live on such meager fare.

He got a drink at a public pump and wandered about some more as the streets grew darker and torches and a few lanterns were put up outside those businesses that were staying open past full dark. There were streetlights, but they were very few and often the oil was stolen, or even the entire lamp. He was ostensibly looking for a place to sleep on the street, out of the way of traffic. Actually he knew exactly where he was going to go to sleep, but he had to make a show out of it, because the child snatchers were almost certainly watching him. He also kept hunched over, both to look more miserable and to look smaller. The younger the children were, the more timid they were, the better the snatchers liked them.

And behind him, going from drink stall to tavern, was Alberich. There was great comfort in knowing that.

:Kantor says Alberich is very surprised at how good you are at this.: