The bed was easy enough to see, even in the dim light from the three unshuttered windows, for the curtains hadn’t been drawn since the mistress wasn’t home. There was plenty of moonlight in this enormous room, which faced south and west—poor little maid, she had her window on the east side, where the sun would smack her right in the eyes if she hadn’t gotten up by dawn. Skif kept his head down, though, and still moved cautiously, traveling crabwise below the level of the windows. The bed was one of those fashionable, tall affairs that you needed a set of steps to get into—

—so that you could get to the safe-cupboard under it, of course—

—and Skif slid beneath it with plenty of room to spare.

Now, for the first time, he drew an easy breath. If he found what he thought he was going to find, this one haul of loot would keep him and the two new boys Bazie had taken in, and do so in fine style for a year or more.

Which we need. They ain’t liftin’ enough t’keep us in old bread.

He slipped off one glove, and felt along the floorboards for the tell-tale crack that would show him where the edge of the lid was, and whatever sort of mechanism there was to lock it shut.

He was the last of the old lot; Deek had undergone an unexpected growth spurt that turned him into a young giant and made his intended occupation of house thief entirely impractical. He served as a guard for a traveling gem merchant now—who better to watch for thieves than a former pickpocket? Last Skif had heard, he was on his way to Kata’shin’a’in.

Raf had gotten caught, and was currently serving out his sentence on the Border with Karse, for he’d made the mistake of getting caught with his hand on the pouch of a Great Lord.

Lyle had given up thievery altogether, but only because he’d fallen in love instead. He’d gone head over heels with a farmer’s daughter one Fair Day in the cattle market, and she with him, and over the course of six weeks had managed to charm her old father into consenting to marriage. Lyle had taken to country life as if he’d been born to it, which amazed all of them, Lyle himself not the least.