“I thought I’d be strong and silent,” Lorzok said.
Kell paused to let people pass them before answering. “Right. Traders from out of town with the nerve to crash a party.”
Saeldian walked ahead, bored with the details.
Kell was in the sunshine. From all around him came music—tuning lutes, a duet rehearsing, a trio of women in petticoats out on the balcony heckling the rest. He was far from the dark memories of Wyrm’s Rock. He couldn’t dwell on Saeldian. It was time to move, so he moved. It was time to act, so he would meet whatever faced him.
“You are trying very hard to pretend you’re fine, Kell.”
The trouble with having a druid come along just when you needed a friend more than anything in the world was that they were very difficult to fool after ten years. “Yeah. I am.”
“Can you talk about it?”
They walked another eighteen paces before Kell said, “No.”
Chapter Four
The Benefits of Patronage
In Which Saeldian Saves a Cat, and Kell Curses a Rooster
Now that Kell and Lorzok were walking just outside Saeldian’s Major Image spell, they had turned west off the wide High Road and onto a street full of shops for people with too many gold dragons and not much restraint. Saeldian glanced longingly at a jewelry shop with no mention of a Goldenight sale and waited for Jubilee to match their stride. Jubilee leaned close and asked, “What’s the story—”
“With me and Kell?” Saeldian finished. “He covered it pretty well already.”
“I mean, how did it start?” Jubilee pressed.
How did you meet?People liked to know that about someone who hated you just as much as someone who loved you, and the information was about as useful. “It’s a long story, but it condenses like this. Kell was an urchin. I was an urchin with pretensions.”
“So you met when you were children?”
Saeldian winked at a gentleman who looked at Saeldian with interest. He looked hastily away. “Not quite young enough for the sad widows to dote on us. Old enough for—other attentions. We had to stick together.”
Jubilee nodded. “That’s why you give gold to the older ones.”
Saeldian continued down the comfortable beggar-less street. “Right. We ran small swindles and petty thefts until we were running full scams and legendary burglaries down in Baldur’s Gate. We juggled the guild and the Zhents and did enough favors for the Harpers that we stayed up on that tightrope.”
“Until you left?”
Saeldian answered the question wedged in Jubilee’s tone. “I didn’t sell him out. By my word and my oath. I just left.”
“Why?”
Saeldian shook their head. “Patron stuff.”
Jubilee sighed. “Are you saying your patron ordered you to desert your partner and never look back?”
Not exactly, but Saeldian couldn’t explain the truth. “I didn’t know what was going to happen.”
“If you had, would you have made sure he didn’t get caught?”
The thorny pain in Saeldian’s throat was tiny, but they couldn’t speak around it.
“Sheld.”
More barbs sprouted. It hurt to swallow. Kell had gotten caught with the loot.How?They’d been careful. No, they had been perfect. Flawless. They had built their cover identities impeccably for months. They never dropped a cue, never faltered in character, never mixed up when they were supposed to be whom. It was the greatest job the Silver Cat had ever pulled—the theft that would have passed into legend, and no one would have had the least idea they were the ones who did it.
They’d left Kell everything. They wanted to set him up for life, at least, before they stole away in the soft gray dawn on a ship set down the coast.
