The rogue tapped his temple. The man was right on.

"Why? Now's time we deserve to know."

Looking at their hard faces now that the question had come up, Pinch shrugged.

"They're Manferic's spawn. It's in their blood, I think. There's not a measure of kindness granted by them that doesn't pass unwaged. Their hate's like a snake, cold and slithery."

"So why do they hate you?" Sprite pressed.

"I ran away; they couldn't."

"This king of yours must have been the dark one's own kin." Maeve sniffed a bit, sounding positively touched. She'd always been like that, the softest touch for a story. "What'd he do to you, Pinch?"

Pinch glared at the intrusion. His past wasn't any of their business. But now he'd started down the path and, like the genie from the bottle, opening it was a lot easier than pushing all the vapor back in.

It was an impossibility to try telling them, though. There was no way to adequately explain Manferic's cold, manipulative heart. On the surface, he'd been raised with kindness and generosity, far more than was warranted to an orphaned boy-even if his father had been a knight and his mother a lady. He had no memory of them. Cleedis said his father had died on campaign, carried off by a swamp troll; his mother had died in childbirth. Manferic himself had taken the foundling in and raised him as one of his own.

When he was little Jan, as he was known then, he never wondered, never questioned. In his eyes, the king was kind and good, his "brothers" mean. He quickly learned their meanness stemmed from arrogance and jealousy. He was the intruder at their hearth, a thief of privilege duly belonging to them.

It was only later that he learned a harsher lesson: that kindness and love were only masks for cold self-interest. That was the day he learned the true reason that the old king had raised him with such care.

"He was… evil." It was what he meant, but Pinch couldn't say it with the conviction the word needed. Good, evil were no longer for him the sharp lines of separation they once were.

"Enough wasted time. There's more I want you to do. The three princes are likely to make trouble. An ear to the wind should give good warning of any moves." The rogue turned to his lieutenant. "There's three idiot courtiers in Throdus's camp-Treeve, Kurkulatain, and Faranoch. Make a conveyance to know them, Therin; they may be ripe informers."

"Sprite, find us a hole in the city." Pinch tapped his temple. "My memories are past use. After fifteen years, things change."

Finally he turned to the hung-over sorceress, who winced at every sound, and in his gentlest voice said, "Now, dear, I want you to dress your finest and make friends here in the court. Use your spells. Find out what these fine people are really thinking. I may need to know where everybody stands."

"Me? Out there with them? They's a bit above my rank, Pinch. I won't know how to behave like a proper gentry mort."

The rogue touched her reassuringly. "There now, you'll do fine. A little touch of makeup and some new clothes and you'll be sitting right beside them at their tables. You always were a quick doxy."

There were no more orders to be said. Each of his journeymen nodded off on their part. The roles were not new to them; each had the eye and skill for the part Pinch gave them. With no questions, Pinch went out onto the balcony again. Just before slipping over the rail, he added one last caveat. "Therin, mind your sword. There'll be no blood in the house. Sprite, mind where you filch, too. They draw and quarter thieves here without waiting for the start of term-time. And Maeve," he added lastly, "keep yourself sober. Drink despoils a lady."

And then, like a morning mist, the rogue melted through the rail and away.

Iron-Biter

"Well indeed, Iron-Biter, see who comes upon us."

The voice rang clearly through the hallways as Pinch made his way back to his apartment. It resounded from the smooth surfaces, as cold as the gleaming marble was even in the generous sun.

Pinch's first reaction was that the subject was someone else, and he could still divert his track down another hallway before he was made. There was no need to hide, no one had restricted his movements, but it was the natural urge of a man who has spent his life in hiding.

There was no place to escape. The click of boots on stone told him his captors were already there, coming upon him.

True enough, there ahead was Prince Vargo and a stocky dwarf. Vargo was every bit the lord of the manor, casually dressed in green hunting breeches, shirt, and riding cloak that was anything but casual. The material was brushed to a dazzling sheen so that if the day's light had managed to angle through the narrow windows and strike him he would have burned with the fire of a roman candle, flooding everything with reflected green.

The dwarf was a barrel overturned and given legs. His chest was broader than he was tall and carved to Herculean proportions, and his little arms could barely touch fingers in the center. The traditional dwarven beard and braids formed a golden-hued knot for a head. Here was a dwarf who probably cracked his dinner bones with his fingers just to suck out the marrow.

They formed an improbable couple, the lean and the tall, the short and the blocky.

Pinch hadn't noticed them because they'd been hidden behind a statue.

"Well, little Jan," Vargo hailed with unexpected good cheer, "it is a surprise to meet you here. Quite surprising, don't you think, Iron-Biter?"

The dwarf looked over Pinch, starting at his toes then moving upward, assessing every bone for its likely resistance to his marrow-popping fingers.

"An unexpected occurrence," the dwarf said after finishing his scan of Pinch's curled head, more interested in the cranium beneath the scalp.

"Iron-Biter, Master Janol. Janol, Iron-Biter. Iron-Biter's my right hand, useful in all manner of things. A master of useful trades. Janol is the late king's ward, Iron-Biter. I'm sure you've heard me speak of him."

The dwarf made a sharp, precise bow to Pinch. He moved far more gracefully than his squat little body should have allowed. "It is a pleasure. I seldom meet worthy adversaries."

"Indeed," was all Pinch could manage. Two lines into a conversation and already he was being challenged.

"Iron-Biter's just a little overanxious," Vargo purred. "We heard about your meeting with Throdus."

"Oh."

"Throdus is an idiot. He should not have wasted time talking to you."

"No?"

"If it had been me, I would have gutted you on the spot."

That got Pinch's bristle up. "If you could have."

Vargo examined the ceiling for a moment. Iron-Biter did nothing but glare at Pinch. Finally the prince said, "You remember our fencing instructor? The one you could never beat?

"Yes…"

"A month after you left, the fool irritated me. I ran him through at our next lesson. I still remember the look on his face when he realized it was no longer a lesson."

"It's been fifteen years, Vargo. Thing change."

"I've only gotten better," the prince replied with complete confidence. "Haven't I, Iron-Biter?"

The dwarf, who to that point had never taken his eyes from Pinch, spared the briefest glance toward his lord. "Certainly, Prince Vargo."

"I think, Jan, that you are not worth bloodying my hands. Iron-Biter, show him why I drag you around."

The dwarf barely acknowledged the insult. There was in him the devotion of a killer mastiff, the beast eagerly awaiting its master's command. A grim smile crossed his lips as now he got to perform. Gesturing to the statuary that filled the niches of the hall, he asked the rogue, "Do you like art?"

"Only for its resale value."

"Ah, a true connoisseur. So, which one has the most worth?"