Tehol hitched up his trousers. ‘Thank you one and all-’
‘You’re Tehol Beddict,’ cut in the woman seated on the far left. She was mostly a collection of spherical shapes, face, head, torso, breasts, her eyes tiny, dark and glittering like hardened tar. There were at least three rats in her mass of upright, billowed black hair.
‘And I’m curious,’ Tehol said, smiling. ‘What are all these rats doing here?’
‘Insane question,’ snapped the man beside the roundish woman. ‘We’re the Rat Catchers’ Guild. Where else are we supposed to put the ones we capture?’
‘I thought you killed them.’
‘Only if they refuse avowal,’ the man said, punctuating his words with a sneer for some unexplainable reason.
‘Avowal? How do rats make vows?’
‘None of your business,’ the woman said. ‘I am Onyx. Beside me sits Scint. In order proceeding accordingly, before you sits Champion Ormly, Glisten, Bubyrd and Ruby. Tehol Beddict, we suffered losses on our investments thanks to you.’
‘From which you have no doubt recovered.’
‘That’s not the point!’ said the woman called Glisten. She was blonde, and so slight and small that only her shoulders and head were above the level of the tabletop. Heaps of squirming rats passed in front of her every now and then, forcing her to bob her head up to maintain eye contact.
‘By my recollection,’ Tehol said reasonably, ‘you lost a little less than half a peak.’
‘How do you know that?’ Scint demanded. ‘Nobody else but us knows that!’
‘A guess, I assure you. In any case, the contract I offer will be for an identical amount.’
‘Half a peak!’
Tehol’s smile broadened. ‘Ah, I have your fullest attention now. Excellent.’
‘That’s an absurd amount,’ spoke Ormly for the first time. ‘What would you have us do, conquer Kolanse?’
‘Could you?’
Ormly scowled. ‘Why would you want us to, Tehol Beddict?’
‘It’d be difficult,’ Glisten said worriedly. ‘The strain on our human resources-’
‘Difficult,’ cut in Scint, ‘but not impossible. We’d need to recruit from our island cells-’
‘Wait!’ Tehol said. ‘I’m not interested in conquering Kolanse!’
‘You’re the type who’s always changing his mind,’ Onyx said. She leaned back and with a squeak a rat plummeted from her hair to thump on the floor somewhere behind her. ‘I can’t stand working with people like that.’
‘I haven’t changed my mind. It wasn’t me who brought up the whole Kolanse thing. In fact, it was Champion Ormly-’
‘Well, he can’t make up his mind neither. You two are made for each other.’
Tehol swung to Bugg. ‘I’m not indecisive, am I? Tell them, Bugg. When have you ever seen me indecisive?’
Bugg frowned.
‘Bugg!’
‘I’m thinking!’
Glisten’s voice came from behind a particularly large heap of rats. ‘I can’t see the point of any of this.’
‘That’s quite understandable,’ Tehol said evenly.
‘Describe your contract offer,’ Ormly demanded. ‘But be advised, we don’t do private functions.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I won’t waste my breath on explaining… unless it turns out to be relevant. Is it?’
‘I don’t know. How can I tell?’
‘Well, that’s my point exactly. Now, about the contract?’
‘All right,’ Tehol said, ‘but be warned, it’s complicated.’
Glisten’s plaintive voice: ‘Oh, I don’t like the sound of that!’
Tehol made an effort to see her, then gave up. The mound of rats on the tabletop in front of her was milling. ‘You surprise me, Glisten,’ he said. ‘It strikes me that the Rat Catchers’ Guild thrives on complications. After all, you do much more than, uh, harvest rats, don’t you? In fact, your primary function is as the unofficial assassins’ guild – unofficial because, of course, it’s an outlawed activity and unpleasant besides. You’re also something of a thieves’ guild, too, although you’ve yet to achieve full compliance among the more independent-minded thieves. You also provide an unusually noble function in your unofficial underground escape route for impoverished refugees from assimilated border tribes. And then there’s the-’