The worst thing about being in chains in Lord Carricks dungeon… well, it was hard for Renard to pin it down to just one, really, although hed had plenty of time to choose since theyd caught him trying to steal the gold Lord Carrick had taken from a wrecked ship bound for King Ravin. There was the strange abandonment of it, which meant that Renard probably looked even wilder than usual, red hair flying everywhere, beard crusted with mud and worse.

There were the occasional beatings, which had added a patina of bruises to his face, probably rendering his rugged good looks more rugged, but on average less… good.

Yselle will not be happy with you! he called out into the dark. None of the women will be!

Not that it made any difference. There was no answer.

The dark and the silence were definitely on the list. If hed had his lute, Renard would have broken the silence with song, but he hadnt, and in any case, his wrists were chained, chafing and restricting his movement. That was on the list of worst things as well. Then there was the part where hed been sober for longer at a stretch than ever before in his life, the occasional presence of rats, the cold…

Oh, and the part where Lord Carrick would probably have him executed at some point. As worst parts went, that one had a certain… finality to it, although given the slow ways a man could be executed, there was no guarantee that a man couldnt find worse things still before the end.

Oh well. It had to happen sometime.

That was the problem with Renards chosen profession: very few thieves got to retire comfortably at the end of it all. Those who didnt end up swinging on nooses tended to be killed by whatever protections rich folk had set around their goods. It was almost, almost enough to make Renard wonder why hed chosen to be a thief at all.

Idly, he started to go back over the choices that had led to this, but the trouble was that so few of them had really counted as choices at all. Theyd just been… things hed done, things that had seemed obvious at the time, or that he hadnt been able to keep from doing because his fingers had been too itchy not to take a purse, or pick a lock, or climb a wall. Trying to make any of that sound like hed actually made a decision about it would be far too much.