But there was a remedy for that, too. Two streets over was that wonderfully handy cavity in Lord Orthallen’s wall, and that was where he’d left a set of breeches and a tunic. In the safety of the utter blackness, he pulled the bricks loose and extracted them. The hood of his shirt became a high collar, the scarf around his face and throat went around his waist beneath the tunic. He wiped the charcoal from his face with the inside of the tunic, and in very little time, a perfectly respectable young lad was strolling down the street with a bundle under his arm. He could be anyone’s page boy or young servant on any of a dozen errands, and he even passed patrols of the Nightwatch twice without any of them stopping or even looking at him.

If they had, they’d have found nothing worse than a bundle of gentleman’s underthings. And if he was asked, he’d mumble and hide his face and say he couldn’t rightly say, but his mistress had told him to take them quietly to a certain gentleman and there wasn’t anything else he could tell them.

The Watch would, of course, assume that the gentleman in question had been forced to make a hasty exit from a bedroom where he’d had no business being and had left the least important of his clothing behind. As it was no business of the Watch to oversee the morals of anyone, Skif would be sent on his way, perhaps with a laugh.

The closer he got to his destination, the more relaxed he felt. Already he was planning where to take the metal, how to show the two boys to pound the gold and silver into flat, indistinguishable sheets.

Hunger caught up with him then; he hadn’t eaten much, following Bazie’s dictum that a full stomach made for a slow thief. Bazie wasn’t actually expecting him for some time yet, since it was always his habit to go home by as circuitous a route as possible. A thief might be expected to hurry back to his den to hide his loot—and so a thief who feared pursuit would do. But no one knew that Skif carried a small fortune about his person, nor did any sign of it show. No one knew that the Kalink household had been robbed this night. There was no pursuit.

So why hurry back? A thief runs when no one chases him, was another of Bazie’s dictums, and he was right. If Skif looked guilty, acted guilty, the Watch might detain and search him, just on principle.