Page 153 of Time's Fool

It would pass eventually, but until it did, and until he could find some witch to take over, Kit was the proprietor based on the fact that he’d rebuilt the place.

“That,” Elinor said, and pointed at the front of the house, which was not noticeably of better quality than it had been before a dragon rampaged through it. Kit had been afraid to change too much, in case it caused the parts still standing to collapse in on themselves, and take the surrounding houses along with them.

“What about it, sweetheart?”

“It’s bright.”

“It’s new wood,” Kit told her, as they headed inside.

“Why isn’t the whole street nice and clean?” she asked, wrinkling her nose at the smells.

“Cause that would attract attention, love,” a woman said, and Kit looked up to see Leta coming downstairs. “And then the nasty Circle might come nosing about—”

“And nobody wants that!” Elinor said, causing the former doxy to laugh.

“No, they don’t,” she said, and took the girl from Kit. “You’re getting heavy. Last time I saw you, I swear you were half this size!”

“She growing out of everything,” Kit said. “We’re off to the shops now as she needs new gloves, when I just had some made for her a few months ago. I am become the tradesmen’s friend. They light up when they see me coming.”

“Cause they know they’ll take you for a fool. I’ve told you to wait ‘til I can come with you.”

“I can bargain for myself—”

“Aye, badly. It takes a bandit to know one!”

Kit sighed, and hoped he was misinterpreting that. “Tell me you aren’t thieving again.”

She looked offended. “Not now!”

He let his skepticism settle onto his face.

“We’re not, none o’ us,” she insisted. “We’re spies these days.”

“And what do my spies have for me that was so important that I must come down here to see it?” he asked.

“This way,” she said, and put Elinor down.

“Kitties!” the girl said delightedly, running up the stairs to where half a dozen were lounging about, ostensibly guarding the way.

“Yes,” Kit said, following her, and eyeing the creatures warily. “The kitties need to play nice.”

One raised a leg and licked its arsehole at him, which . . . was par for the course.

“There’s more upstairs,” Leta told Elinor. “They always want to know what’s going on.”

“What is going on?” Kit demanded again, and was shot an amused look and nothing more.

But he didn’t have long to wait, for at the top of the stairs . . .

“What is this?” he asked, as Elinor squealed and went to play with the dozen or so cats prowling about what had once been Rilda’s bedroom. And now . . . he didn’t know what it was.

“Your new study,” Leta said proudly. “We left the bed, in case you want to sleep over.” She indicated Rilda’s dilapidated four-poster, which a pile of former thieves were currently drinking on top of.

“And I need this why?” he asked, as the ex-friar hoisted a tankard at him.

“It’s getting harder to slip in t’see you at t’other place,” John, the ex-Abraham man, said. “And the ship’s even worse.”

“Aye,” Dick, the former courtesy man, agreed. “A boatman asked me if it was a floating brothel, so many men he’d rowed out there recently.”

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