It was all far more than he could wrap his mind around, and eventually he just had to give up on it all.

Maybe someday he’d have some answers. For right now, he had food in his belly, a warm place to sleep, and friends.

And what more could anyone ask for, really? Gods and honor and all the rest of that stuff could go hang. He would put his loyalty with those who earned it.

6

SKIF was excited; finally, two weeks after he had officially joined the gang, something he had been hoping for all along happened. Bazie decided that when the boys returned from their own forays into the streets, although his talent probably lay in the area of burglary, he ought to have training in “the liftin’ lay”—the art of the pickpocket.

All three of the boys were enthusiastic when Bazie put it to them. “‘E might’s well as not!” Raf exclaimed. “Ain’t no ’arm, an’ ‘e might ’ave th’ touch arter all.”

Deek nodded. “‘Sides, Bazie, any mun kin run shake’n’snatch. An’ fer that, we orter ’ave a new’un anyroad.”

So Raf and Deek got out some bits and pieces from various cupboards, and began to put together a most peculiar object. When they were done, there was something like a headless man standing in the middle of their room, one hung all over with bells.

“There!” Bazie said, looking at their handiwork with pleasure. “Mind, yon’s not wut a mun wants t’ ‘ave in ’is place when beaks come callin’. Dead giveaway, that. But I do sez, I done good work wi’ that lad. Ye’ll no find a better ’un this side uv th’ Border.”

So Bazie had built this thing in the first place? It was very sturdy, in spite of being assembled from a lot of apparently disparate bits. In the mannequin’s pockets were handkerchiefs, around his “neck” was a kerchief, and he had two belt pouches slung from his belt and a third tucked into the breast of his tunic.

Skif could not imagine how anyone could get at any of these tempting articles. Even the belt pouches were slung right under the mannequin’s stuffed arm. But Raf, their expert, was about to show him.

“Watch close, young ’un,” Bazie chuckled. “Yon Raf’s slick.”

He strolled up to stand beside the mannequin, looking from side to side as if he was observing the traffic in a street. Meanwhile—without ever so much as glancing at his quarry—his hand moved very, very slowly toward one of the handkerchiefs just barely hanging out of a pocket. Thread by thread, almost, he delicately removed it, and when it fell free of the mannequin’s pocket, he whisked it into his own so quickly it seemed to vanish. As slowly as it had seemed to move, the whole business had not taken very long—certainly it was reasonable to think that a target would have remained standing beside the thief for that period of time, especially in a crowd or at the side of a busy street with a lot of traffic on it.