Thief's War: A Knight and Rogue Novel by Hilari Bell Read Free Book Online Page B

city, I shouldn’t have been. But eventually, Chant, Tipple and True found a home in a garden shed, and pasture in the rooming house’s fallow garden. The landlady had once been a countrywoman, and had no problem taking care of our horses for a reasonable fee. And her son was enchanted with the idea of having a dog, even if ’twas only for a time.
    True was equally enchanted with the idea of having a boy, so I left them to each other. Fisk and I settled into our two meager rooms, with a plan to seek out employment in the morning—as an excuse for seeking the information we had really come for.
    The landlady served breakfast, for yet another modest sum, to any tenants who didn’t cook for themselves. Given the size of her house and the good quality of the meal, I was surprised how few showed up for it.
    “It’s a bit expensive for most, day to day,” a thin, middle-aged clerk told me, stirring butter and honey into his porridge. “Not that they can’t afford it now and then. Just not every day.”
    Several other men, seated around the long table, gave the self-satisfied nods of those who could afford it. They willingly held forth on our prospects for employment, until they learned that Fisk and I weren’t interested in joining a guild.
    “You’ve got t’ be in a guild,” a red-faced butcher said. “No one’ll take you on, not for any decent job, if you’re not.”
    Fisk asked how much the guild fees were in Tallowsport, and the answer made him choke on his porridge. Then he asked how we could get an indecent job, which sparked a roar of laughter. Though I’m not sure he was joking.
    We decided to seek work at a tavern. I’ve hired on as a bouncer in such places often enough that Fisk has learned to make himself useful behind a bar, and there’s no better way to learn what’s happening in a town. And those jobs don’t require guild membership, though brewing does.
    However, we soon found that in Tallowsport you had to be guild certified to get almost any job. Or, some told us, you had to be “approved.” When we asked who had to approve us they changed the subject, usually by telling us about some less respectable establishment that we might try.
    It was from other tenants in our rooming house that we got some of the answers. The landlady’s son wasn’t the only child who liked playing with a dog, and within a few days I was meeting their parents, and talking to them about our failure to find work.
    They told me that the guilds ran the town, which was common enough. But there was another power in the town as well. If “they” approved, you were in. And if “they” disapproved, best leave town quickly! Sometimes this mysterious “they” became “he,” and once, “the boss.”
    “Do you think they’re talking about your Jack’s employer?”
    Fisk and I were settling into bed, after our third day of failing to find work.
    “I’d give it better than even odds,” Fisk said. “But where under two moons is the rest of the town government? Nobody talks about the mayor, the council, the town guard—or the Liege Guard, and they’ve got to have post in a town this size. I’ve been wondering if I shouldn’t try to find employment on my own.”
    “Not with this boss,” I said. “We don’t know enough. ’Tis too risky.”
    Fisk said nothing.
    “Do you really think your friend would look out for you?” Jack Bannister had, after all, tried to recruit Fisk for his employer the last time they’d met. ’Twas the fact that Jack had been willing to let the wreckers kill me that had gotten in the way.
    “I know he wouldn’t,” Fisk said. “But I might be able to learn something from him.”
    “’Tis too dangerous,” I insisted. “You’d be on your own, in a nest of vipers.” For there was no way they’d also hire me.
    “It would be safer than burgling the man’s offices,” said Fisk. “I warn you now, I’m not going to do that. I hate burglary. I gave up burglary!”
    “I’ve