"Cerril," Kerrin called out in an anxious whisper. "There's your sister."

The other boy's words drew Cerril's attention. He gave Two-Fingers a quick, cold smile.

"Just you mark my words, Two-Fingers. I'm not going to put up with being questioned."

"I won't question you again, Cerril. I swear."

Two-Fingers touched his maimed hand to his chest. Most of his pride and spirit had gone with those missing fingers, and his father kicking him out of the house had robbed the tall boy of whatever hadn't been taken by the accident.

"If you do," Cerril said, unable to leave it alone, "you'll be back to hiring yourself out to them old sailors."

Two-Fingers's face flushed with rage and shame. All that had been a year ago, before Cerril had accepted him into their group. No one ever spoke of that time again. At least, not to Two-Fingers's face. Cerril didn't allow it.

In the beginning, Two-Fingers had been deathly loyal to Cerril for letting him join the gang. It meant he got to eat without selling himself. The other boys stole food from their own homes and brought it to him in the streets. Cerril had established that routine as well. As hard as he was on them, Cerril also took care of them.

"Cerril," Kerrin called again. He waved frantically. "It's your sister."

Blowing out an irritated breath, Cerril turned from Two-Fingers and quickly joined Kerrin at the front of the alley again. He pressed himself against the wall and hid in the shadows.

"So do you think this man has gold?" Hekkel asked again.

Cerril resisted the impulse to cuff the younger boy again. Hekkel's thoughts invariably turned to gold. Before he'd been slain by a thief, Hekkel's father had been a jeweler in Alagh?n's Merchant District. When Hekkel's father was alive, the family lived in a fine house, and members of the Assembly of Stars-the freely elected ruling body of Turmish-had shopped there. That was six years ago, and Hekkel's family had discovered that the city wasn't generous to widows and half-grown children. Hekkel remained convinced that gold could change someone's life. He was living proof that not having it could change lives, too.

As for himself, Cerril knew that having gold only changed a person's life as long as that person had gold and spent it freely. Gold seldom came his way, but he took the coppers and the occasional silver without complaint. Unfortunately, coppers and the occasional silver spent quickly.

"Do you see your sister?" Hekkel asked from behind Cerril.

"Yes," Cerril growled. "Now shut up before I have Two-Fingers bust your nose for you." He said the last because he knew it would give Two-Fingers back some of his self-respect and standing among the group.

"Just let me know when you need it done, Cerril," Two-Fingers offered. "I'll smash the little bastard's nose good and proper."

Cerril ignored them, seeking out Imareen at the back of Elkor's Brazen Trumpet just across the broad cobblestone street leading down to the docks and shipyards. His sister, fathered by another sailor than the one who had fathered Cerril, stood limned in the shadow of the alley behind the tavern.

Imareen's thin, straight figure rarely drew even the drunkest sailor's eye, but she was one of the fastest serving wenches in the city. She'd inherited her lashing tongue from their mother, and her skill with verbal abuse was legendary. Cooks and merchants feared her, and the small bit of power given her by Elkor himself sometimes went to her head.

But Elkor didn't increase her tenday draw at the tavern, and all the other serving wenches at the Brazen Trumpet got large tips. When Cerril had suggested that he and his band would reward her for pointing out potential robbery victims, Imareen had hesitated only momentarily. They'd been working together the last four months.

Imareen had let them know that a man-alone, deeply in his cups, and possessing at least a little in the way of gold or silver-was at one of the tables nearly an hour ago.

An hour, Cerril thought in quick anticipation, is more than enough time for a single drinker to get drunk.

Covering his excitement, Cerril whispered, "Stay here," to the others, then stepped out of the alley and crossed the street.

A dwarven wagon driver rattled across the street from around the nearest corner before Cerril got halfway across. Cerril had to scramble to avoid being hit. The stench of the sweating horses filled his nose.

The dwarf didn't mark his wagon with a lantern or a torch. That, plus the fact that the dwarf whipped the horses and cursed at them, led the young thief to believe the dwarf was about a bit of foul business as well.

The black markets throughout Alagh?n had increased since the Inner Sea War had taken place, and Cerril had occasionally managed to hire his group to hard-knuckled merchants as lookouts. The pay for the work they did was meager, but it also marked targets they considered and sometimes went back to rob.

Cerril's heart beat rapidly with anticipation as he joined Imareen at the back of the tavern. There was nothing better than being a thief in Alagh?n. At least, not to his way of thinking.

"Hurry, you damned child," Imareen chided.

That was their mother's voice, Cerril knew. The tone and the words rankled him, but he managed to ignore them for the moment. He jogged to the back of the tavern and joined his sister.

The fragrant aroma of pipeweed clung to Imareen's hair and clothing. Cerril enjoyed the smell, and when he had coins enough, he often indulged in the habit himself. Of course, if his mother found his small store of pipeweed she kept it for herself, chiding him for experimenting with such a vice-and she said all that with a plume of smoke wreathing her head.

Imareen emptied a slop bucket onto the alley. The splashing noise of the liquid striking the hardpan startled a cat rummaging through a pile of refuse behind the tavern. The feline leaped into the air and dashed up the sagging fence marking the alley's end. Despite her authority with the cooks and the merchants, Elkor still expected her to empty out the privies.

The stench of the slop filled the alley, turning the still air thick and tickling Cerril's nose into a sneeze.

"Listen to you," Imareen groused. "Honking like a goose and making noise enough to wake the dead."

Her foot remained in the back door so it wouldn't close on her. The rumble of men's voices and the ribald strain of dwarven drinking songs echoed out into the alley. Cerril doubted anyone inside the tavern could have heard him sneeze.

"Do you want to talk," he asked, "or do you want to divvy whatever we find in some man's pouch?"

Imareen didn't even hesitate. "Divvy, and you'd better not short me. I'll know if you do."

Cerril nodded. Both times he'd tried to make off with part of his sister's cut, she had known. If she could have made merchants realize the power she had to know a lie when she heard it, she could have made a large stipend. However, her unnatural skill seemed only to work with Cerril.

"Who's the man?" he asked.

"A stranger."

He said, "Strangers are good."

"I know, Cerril. I know what I'm doing."

Cerril didn't rise to the old argument that existed between them. Since she was four years older than he was, she'd always told him what to do and not to do, but she knew since he'd taken to making his way in the shadows that the balance between them had shifted. She just didn't want to act like it had.

"Give me some measure of respect in this," Imareen said.

"I do," Cerril said.

He sorely wished that cuffing his sister would work as well as it did with the members of his gang, but Imareen would never stand for it. There was a good likelihood that she'd get up in the middle of the night to stick a knife between his ribs and tell their mother that Malar the Stalker, god of marauding beasts and bloodlust, had taken him in the night.