The packs made negotiating the stairs a little awkward, but they got out all right, and Lyle strode down the street with the air of someone who had a place to get to in a hurry. Skif had to trot to keep up with him. For all that Lyle acted lazy back in the room, he could certainly put out some energy when he chose to!

He didn’t waste any breath on talking either. What he did was to keep his eyes moving, up and down the street, peering at doorways, watching for trouble. Skif followed his example. Until now, he hadn’t been out on the street much at night, and he was very conscious of how vulnerable two boys were. There wasn’t much light. Nobody wasted much money on streetlamps around these neighborhoods. What little there was came from windows and a few open doors, and from the torches people carried with them.

They didn’t have a torch, but Skif didn’t really want one. Certainly having a torch or a lantern made it easier to see your way, but it also made it very clear how many people were in your group and whether or not you had anything that looked worth stealing. Plus you couldn’t see past the circle of light cast by the torch, which made it easier for you to be ambushed.

The street was anything but deserted, despite the darkness. People came and went from cookshops and taverns, groups of young toughs strolled about looking for whatever they could get into, streetwalkers sauntered wherever there was a bit of illumination, with their keepers (if they had one) lurking just out of sight of potential customers. There were ordinary working men and women, too, coming home late from their jobs. For a bit it would only be a little more dangerous to be out on the street than it was during the day.

Skif had figured that this “Jarmin” would be somewhere nearby, but apparently he was wrong. They must have gone a good ten blocks before Lyle made a turn into a dead-end street that was very nicely lit up indeed.

If the dim and sullen Hollybush had been at one extreme of the sorts of taverns frequented by the poor, this was at the other. The whole back of the cul-de-sac was taken up by a tavern blazing with tallow-dip lights; that had torches in holders right outside the door, and light spilling from parchment-covered windows. There was music, raucous laughter, the sounds of loud talk. A group of men were betting on a contest between two tomcats out in the street, and with them were three or four blowsy females of negotiable virtue, hanging on their arms and cheering on the two oblivious cats.

On either side of the tavern were shops, still open. Skif never got a chance to see what the one on the left sold, because they turned immediately into the one on the right.

This was their goal; an old-clothes shop that specialized in fancy goods of all sorts, but mostly for women. Skif had a shrewd idea where most of the females from the tavern spent their hard-earned coins.