They’s a right couple ’uv conies! he thought, wondering which of the lads who worked this inn on the liftin’ lay would lighten their pockets before they found work. Not that it was inevitable of course, but it was likely. You had choices in the liftin’ lay; you could work half a dozen of easy marks like these two, or you could go for one big score who’d be cannier, better guarded. In either case there was about the same amount of risk, for each time you worked a mark in a crowd, you increased the risk of getting caught.

Well, that wasn’t his outlook. He didn’t work the liftin’ lay anymore, and the two lads back with Bazie were too ham-handed for it right now. He finished the last of his cider, shoved the pottery mug to the middle of the table, and extracted himself from the bench, taking his bundle with him.

From here on, his story—if he was caught by the Watch—would change. Now he was bringing his father’s clothing home from the pawnshop. It wasn’t at all unusual for a family to have articles of clothing in and out of pawn all the time, and in some families, in more often than out.

And as he stepped out into the street, sure enough, a Watchman across the street caught sight of him, frowned, and pointed his truncheon at him.

“You! Boy!” he barked. “Halt there!”

Obediently, and with an ingratiating, cringing smile, Skif obeyed.

“What’ve ye got there?” the Watchman asked, crossing the street. Skif held out his bundle, hunching his shoulders, and the Watchman poked it with his truncheon. “Well? Speak up!”

“’S m’ Dad’s shirt ‘n’ smalls, m’lor’,” Skif sniveled. “Jest got ’em f’om Go’den Ball, m’lor’.” With the fall hiring fairs going on all over Haven, the set of good linen smallclothes that had been in pawn all summer would come out again, for someone who was going to a hiring fair would be dressed in his best.

Then they’d go right back in again, if the job was only until winter and the end of hunting season.

“Open it,” the Watch demanded. Skif complied; no one paid any attention to them as he did so, firstly because you didn’t interfere with the Watch, and secondly because you didn’t want the Watch’s attention brought down on you.

The Watchman’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “If yer Dad’s smalls ’ve been in the nick, what’re ye doin’ eatin’ at yon Rider?” he demanded.