Villains by Necessity Read Online Free PDF

Arcie tried his best innocent eyes at her. She met them with frost. "As for breaking into houses..."
    "And murder ..." Sam mumbled the word distastefully.
    "Myself, I dinna usually kill people. I steal things so well that I surely dinna need to beat someone over the head to take his wealth away. Myself, I've only killed once or twice, p'raps, and that fully in self-defense .. well, mostly," Arcie shrugged.
    "And neither I nor any of my compatriots has ever murdered an entire family in their beds," said Sam. "We kill whom we must, whom we are hired to, and we do it well and mercifully. Torture is not a service we provide.
    We never kill on a whim or for fun. We are hired, just as mercenaries are. If you are not strong enough or skilled enough to build your own barn, you hire someone to build a barn for you. If you lack the will and strength and training needed to kill someone whom you need to. kill, you hire someone to kill him for you."
    Arcie continued, "Spying and riots and loansharking, miss, them's not our trade ... not usually, anyway. Not many people exists as trusts a thief to spy without robbing the place blind and so gets noticed. Assassins are too stuck up taste do anything but what as they're trained for, and even if ye can convince them, they charge far too dear." Arcie glanced over at the assassin as he spoke.
    Sam ignored the comment. He was noticing that his boot dagger, his three specialized throwing knives, his two cuff blades and his camelian-pommeled dagger seemed to be missing.
Damn you, Arcie, you thief
he thought. He'd deal with this later.
    The thief continued. "And no one's loan-sharked since the Victory, not with the government's handing out welfare to get everyone back on their feet... everyone except those of us what can't claim a legitimate occupation."
    Sam's voice was cold and distant, his eyes flashing a strange anger and bitterness as he spoke.
    "And neither of us has ever raped anyone or anything, at least I assume Arcie hasn't been..." He glanced at the Barigan, who shook his head.
    "I'm only insistent about money and meals. Besides, women are nothing but trouble. My father always did say..."
    "Rape and brutal murder and mugging and other violent, unprofessional acts ... those are unorganized crime," interrupted Sam. "Crimes of insanity, or rage.
    The people who do that sort of thing often aren't criminals beforehand. Just jealous spouses, angry young men, and people who aren't quite swimming in the same river as the rest of us. They give us criminals a bad name."
    "Sometimes us has to weed them out, ye ken ..."
    "Yes," nodded Sam. "... if they persists. Our Guilds dinna put up with that kind of dangerous action from their members, and we don't like getting the blame for actions o' nonmembers."
    Arcie managed to look noble.
    "Admittedly," added Arcie, "we've had less work for ourselfs since the Victory. The system are breaking apart, and we're becoming obsolete."
    The woman's eyes watching them widened slightly.
    "You are speaking the truth," she noticed, seeming somewhat surprised. "More or less, anyway ..."
    Sam relaxed a little, and concluded, "In the society in which we evolved, we were a vital part, somehow ... law and crime and disorganized anger, and the civilians milling through it all. It was a sort of balance."
    "Yes. A balance." The wildcat curled up again, and Sam and Arde breathed deep sighs of relief.
    The woman pulled up a log and sat at the table. "I had hoped you were such ones, a dark element but not to the extent that you would not comprehend what I must tell you. Continue your meal, and I will explain." The Barigan grinned and snagged a loaf of bread from a nearby shelf and began sawing it in half with a knife that Sam recognized as one of his own, but the assassin was feeling too tired to bother with it now. Sam sipped his stew and watched the woman warily as she began to speak.
    "My name, if you wish to know it, is Kaylana. I am what in the olden days was known as a