![]() "And among thieves, loyalty to the Guild is our first duty, is it not?" He slid that dagger into his boot, drew another from his sleeve. "We are all thieves here, are we not?" Arvid said. Right now, in this city full of angry Girdish Marshals, the merest rumor of a Horned Chain tattoo would lead to arrest and discovery.and death. "And what would I find if I slit your shirt below the waist, Harsin? Is there by any chance a Horned Chain tattoo just there at the small of your back? Or is yours lower down?" Many thieves died the very night the paladin's torture ended, for the Girdish had stormed the underground hall barely a ladyglass after the pledge was redeemed. Though he could imagine the burly man killing another to gain a rank or two, he doubted Harsin had killed them. I was thirteenth in line from Terin Guildmaster Galat there can vouch for it. " I'm the ranking member left," the tall man said. "And, at the moment, the man you most want to be Guildmaster." There it was, his reason for being in the city at all. Arvid had learned from another much like her. "I heard about you." She was a plump, motherly woman and the best pickpocket in the city street boys learned from her. "You're the enforcer!" said one of the women. He blew on the tip of the dagger, and smiled over the blade at the others. "I collected accounts due the Guild all over Tsaia," Arvid said. ![]() It would not be the first time a Guildmaster was killed by someone who wanted his position. His successor, the late-and by Arvid unlamented-Terin, had welcomed the red priests and their Horned Chain symbol. ![]() Galin had been an orthodox follower of Simyits, the traditional patron of thieves, not Liart the Bloodlord. "You don't know me because I was Guildmaster Galin's appointment." Galin, who had died four years before, supposedly of a fever. How do we know it's not all your fault?"Īrvid smiled. "You never been around Vérella that much. "You!" The speaker was the tallest of the group, a heavy-shouldered man Arvid knew had led the local guild's rougher members. "But I may be able to get us out of it." He polished the dagger he held with scrap of silk, turning it to catch the light as if to be sure no speck marred it. "I didn't cause this mess," Arvid Semminson said to the group of thieves crammed into a small back room above a weaver's workshop, two hands of days after the paladin had escaped alive. ![]()
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