He heard the men enter and leave again twice more, and each time a door creaked open somewhere and he heard the thump of some small load landing in straw. He winced each time for the sake of the poor semiconscious child that it represented.

Between the first and the second, Cymry told him that Alberich had gotten into the building, but could tell him nothing more than that. It was not long after that the men arrived with the second child—and soon after that when the cellars awoke.

There was noise first; voices, harsh and quarrelsome. Then came heavy footsteps, and then light. So much light that it shone under Skif’s door and through all the cracks between the heavy planks that the door was made up of.

Then the door was wrenched open, and a huge man stood silhouetted against the glare. Skif didn’t have to pretend to fear; he shrank back with a start, throwing up his arm to shield his eyes.

The man took a pace toward him, and Skif remembered his knives, remembered that he didn’t dare let anyone grab him by the arm lest they be discovered. He scrambled backward until he reached the wall, then, with his back pressed into the brick, got to his feet, huddling his arms around his chest.

The man grabbed him by the collar, his arms and hands not being easy to grab in that position, and hauled him out into the corridor and down it, toward an opening.

The corridor wasn’t very long, and there were evidently only six of the little brick cells in it, three on each side. It dead-ended to Skif’s rear in a wall of the same rough brick. The man dragged Skif toward the open end, then threw him unceremoniously into the larger room beyond, a large and echoing chamber that was empty of furnishings and lit by lanterns hung from hooks depending from the ceiling. Skif landed beside three more children, all girls, all shivering and speechless with fear, tear-streaked faces masks of terror. Facing them were five men, four heavily armed, standing in pairs on either side of the fifth.

Was this the hoped-for mastermind behind all of this?

“‘Ere’s th’ last on ’em, milord,” said the man who’d brought Skif out. “The fust two ye said weren’t good fer yer gennelmen. This a good ’nuff offerin’?”

Skif looked up from his fellow captives. For a moment, he couldn’t see the man’s face, but he knew the voice right enough.

“Very nice,” purred the man, with just an edge of contempt beneath the approval. “Prime stock. Yes, they’ll do. They’ll do very nicely.”