You made a choice to try anyway, and now you are under his most exacting scrutiny. You have another choice to make, right now. You can get up, and walk into that building over there.” Malden pointed at the ruin of a feed store across the street. It had no roof, but three of its walls still stood. Only darkness lay within. “A little girl will take you from there to a place where you can sign on with my crew. Your other option is to walk back up that hill,” and here he pointed behind him, “and look for honest work, and forswear ever taking up thieving again.”

“Do you know how hard it is to get a decent position just now?” one of the thieves demanded. “The trade guilds say who may work, and who must starve. And you have to pay them just to get on a list of men waiting for a chance.”

Malden felt little pity for the men. He himself was the son of a whore. He’d never known who his father was, had never had any family to fall back on. He’d been far more desperate once than these men would ever get. Yet he was going to offer them the same hope he’d clutched to himself.

“My guild,” Malden said, “is willing to welcome you in, tonight.”

The thieves fell to communing with each other, in the mode of desperate looks and shrugs and shaking of heads. The one with the hurt tongue-the valet’s cousin-seemed to be their leader, since the others turned to him as if begging him to make a decision. He ended this silent conversation with a grudging nod.

“You’ll not regret this, good sir,” one of the others said. He jumped down from the back of the wagon and ran toward the ruined feed store.

Another laughed out loud. “When I saw you on that bed, I thought I was dead as an elf,” he announced, and followed his accomplice.

That just left the leader, whose tongue was still swollen in his mouth. He stared at Malden for a very long time. He was making it clear he didn’t think Malden had done him any favors. But eventually he, too, took what was offered.