The peacekeepers had stuck Xigbar in a brick and mortar box of a cell with a solid wooden door. There was no window, so the only light came from outside through a thin slit in the door's upper half, and his arms had been shackled behind his back and to the floor. The bolt wound in his arm throbbed when he moved the arm. The peacekeepers had bandaged it at least, but nobody was going to spring for priestly healing for a prisoner. His armband was gone, along with just about everything else he'd had on his person save his shirt and pants.

In its snake form, the armband could eventually find his way back to him, but it wasn't going to get through the door with the slit so high off the ground, and a snake slithering through the halls of a jail was liable to get killed, or at least thrown out. Which was a shame, because without the ability to turn into a snake himself, getting out of the cell was going to be annoying.

Not difficult, mind. Just annoying.

With grimace and a brief pop of pain, Xigbar dislocated his thumbs, and moved to slip his hands free.

The cuffs of the shackles tightened.

Xigbar stopped, surprised by the cold metal flexing around his wrists. His newly dislocated digits throbbed in agitation, but even with them now loose, the cuffs were too narrow to pull out of, and trying just hurt. He stopped pulling, and the grip of the cuffs loosened. He pulled, they tightened.

He relaxed his arms one last time, until he was sure the cuffs were as loose as they'd ever been. Then he yanked his arms as fast as he could—and was barely able to bite back his scream of pain as his dislocating thumbs jammed up against the tight bands of metal.

"That looks like it hurts."

Larian Masters appeared in front of Xigbar in the space of a blink, crouched, but still looming over him. Xigbar grimaced. As much as he held most of the Pavers in contempt, he had to admit, Larian was still the real deal.

Xigbar knew the way some thieves could use the power of shadows to blink between spaces and shroud their movements. He'd always been jealous of it, but he'd never found anyone willing to teach him the trick.

"Quicksilver shackles," Larian explained, indicating Xigbar's bonds with a nod. "The metal conforms to you, even through shapeshifting. Completely impossible for a physical body to slip out of."

"Hey boss man." Xigbar gave the leader of the Lochmire Pavers a bitter smile. "Long time no see."

Larian's resting bitch face upgraded to a genuine glare. "I'm not your boss anymore, Xig."

"Whatever story Arty fed you, it was bullshit," Xigbar said. "He stabbed me in the back, not the other way around."

"And you ambushing my people, sniping their job, killing their backup?" Larian asked. "Arty make that up too?"

Between the fight with the other Pavers, the blow he'd taken from the peacekeepers, and whatever magic that death mage and his creepy friends had unleashed, Xigbar was frayed, but the accusation in Larian's words burned him. A bit of the anger he'd been nursing against the Pavers returned, bringing new resolve.

"Would you roll over and die just because someone wanted you to?" Xigbar said. "Yeah, I pulled Emerald and Soris's job out from under them. But they were the ones with a plan so sloppy they had to turn to the first replacement they could find, and they let their guard down. They had me outnumbered and outarmed. If I managed to pull one over on them, I say that's on them."

Larian's glare intensified, but he didn't interrupt, so Xigbar kept going. "I left them alive. They could have walked away with wounded pride and one lost job, but they came at me with a whole gang, and they still lost. If that was their idea, their mistake was poking a snake and not expecting to get bit. And if it wasn't their idea—"

Xigbar met Larian's eyes for this next part. "If someone else told them to come at me like that, dangled a bounty in front of them for it, then that person threw them to the wolves. No surprise some of them got eaten. But I bet whoever pushed them knew that already."

To his immense surprise, Larian Masters didn't backhand him hard enough to break his jaw. In fact, his glare softened back to his usual resting bitch face.

"I can't let you get away with this, Xig."

"Then it's a good thing I didn't," Xigbar said, and he shook his chains for effect. "And stop calling me Xig."

Larian took a breath. "If nothing else, the job you and Arty pulled at the Chosen's place got the message across. Zaman's remembered not to take our partnership lightly. He's decided to go back to working with us instead of against us."

"Good for you."

"In fact, with all the noise that's been building about dissent in the province, and the shit you stirred up tonight, he needs us now more than ever. I've got leverage to ask for favors," Larian said. "I'm going to ask him to have you hang. Considering you robbed him a few months ago, I doubt he'll have a problem with that."

A weight settled onto Xigbar that made him more aware than ever of the cold metal binding his wrists. For the first time since waking up, it sank in how truly stacked this deck was against him.

He was tired. Hurt. He didn't have any of his tools, he couldn't get out of his bonds, and even if he could, he had no idea what kind of security he was looking at outside of his cell. Despite all of that, if it were just the peacekeepers holding him, he might have had a chance.

But it wasn't just the local peacekeepers. He'd earned the ire of the King's Chosen and Larian, two men with influence that spanned the province.

And he was alone.

He was in deep shit, and he didn't see a way out. In a matter of days, he'd have a noose around his neck. And that would be the end of it.

He felt cheated.

He always knew he led a dangerous life, and while he would have loved to see a ripe old age and die fat, drunk, and happy, on some level he'd assumed that if he couldn't have that, he'd at least have an exciting death. Killed in a bitter fight to the death, or maybe incinerated in an explosion after stealing something he shouldn't have from a mage's lair.

After everything he'd been through—in the last twenty four hours alone, to say nothing of his whole life—sitting in a jail cell waiting to hang felt . . . mundane.

He wished he'd gone to church more as a child. If he had, he might have known what he'd done to make the gods hate him so much.

"Why are you here?" Xigbar asked bitterly.

"I wanted you to know that I'm sorry it had to be this way," Larian said. "You were a good operator. You could have been a real asset to the guild. But when Arty accused you of turning on us, you had a choice of how to react. And you chose wrong."

"If I'd actually come back," Xigbar said, "what do you think would have happened? Who would the guild have believed?"

"We'll never know now," Larian lied.

Xigbar immediately called him out. "Horseshit. Arty had friends in the guild ready to back him up. I didn't."

"And who's fault is that?" Larian asked. "You're a good thief and a decent talker. Arty's a little shit. How do you reckon he has friends and you don't?"

"Because 'Arty's family,'" Xigbar quoted Emerald. "And I'm an outsider."

Larian nodded.

"Yeah, you are. But not for the reason you think," Larian said. "Being an outsider isn't about where you were born, Xigbar. It's about where you choose to belong. And you never wanted to belong with us."

Xigbar's first instinct was to tell Larian to go to the hells, but he thought better of it. Instead, he drew up as straight as he could while still shackled, turned up his chin, and with a constriction of his throat, spat straight into Larian's eyes.

The leader of the Lochmire province Pavers cursed as the venom Xigbar had mixed into his saliva burned his eyes, and Xigbar took a moment to relish the man's pain—before Larian's boot crashed against his face. And then crashed into it again.

And again.

Larian alternated between rubbing at his eyes and kicking Xigbar, swearing profusely all the while. Xigbar curled onto the floor, trying to protect himself as best he could with his hands still bound behind his back. It didn't really work, and it was several minutes, and at least one cracked rib, before the pain in Larian's eyes finally subsided enough to dull his fury.

The guild boss's breath heaved as he got control of himself again. He gave his eyes one last wipe, and gave a grunt. One of his eyes was still squinted near shut, and the other was so bloodshot there wasn't any white visible.

"You enjoy that?" Larian asked.

"A bit," Xigbar croaked from the floor.

"See you at the gallows, Snake."

Then, in a blink, Larian was gone, and Xigbar was alone again.