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Chapter 1

Renato's door was guarded. Nothing Ruin could not handle, but still, it rankled to have to bend down and put his ear to the hole in the brick near the mossy ground. What was he, a Red Hand? Some wet-behind-the-ears novice? He was Ruin, by goddess, bad in the blood and a thief to the bone!

"Hullo?" he sang out, loud in case the rat had gone deaf.

A scritching of tiny, clawed feet answered him. "Orright, orright. Ent deef, ye know."

Ruin withdrew and the Great Rat, fat as a rabbit and oily-sleek as a seal, oozed himself out of his hole.

"It's me, Ruin" he said, thumbing his chest. The rat might not be deaf, but he was notoriously near-sighted.

Rat squinted at him, drawing his whiskers up. "So ‘tis."

Silence fell. Ruin waited. March was not so patient. "For Crime's sake, we're hungry! Open the door an' let us in!" He shivered and stamped his boots, which nearly fell apart then and there.

The rat tsk'ed. "Pitiful," he opined. "What's Renato thinkin'? Standards are down, I tell ye. Down in the gutter!"

"Enough a' yer lip!" Ruin snapped. "Jus' open the rutty damned door ‘fore I get me a taste for rat stew!"

"Rat stew is it?" the rat demanded, rearing up on his hind legs and swiping a minuscule claw through the air. "I'd stick in yer craw! I'd curdle yer gut! I'll give ye such indigestion-"

"Just knock," March whispered.

"-I'll make ye burp toads, I will! An' then-"

Ruin knocked. The door opened aside, squashing the rat unceremoniously against the brick. "- make ye fart mushrooms!" came muffled and outraged from behind the door.

Renato the whoremaster, all six feet of him poured into red-dyed doeskin and black satin, stood gazing down at the shorter thieves."March!" he said brightly, ruffling the golden curls. "Ruin," he said on another note, looking down his aristocratic nose.