Free Master and Fool by J. V. Jones

kicked his stick near the base, stopping him from gaining his
balance. He didn't wait around to see if it worked. Gathering all his strength,
Nabber sprang for the tunnel. Skaythe sprang after him. Nabber knew what to do
this time. Sprinting forward, he brought up his legs and leapt into the tunnel
feet first. The cool filth enveloped him. Skaythe grabbed at his hair. Much
though Nabber was attached to it, he snapped his head forward and let the locks
go.
    Sidling down the
tunnel he made his escape. He was missing a fistful of hair, a cupful of blood,
and about ten years from the lifespan of his heart. It was time he went home to
Tawl.
    Jack had, by means
most extraordinary, gained entry into the city of Annis. He was sitting around
a large, well-lit, well-burdened banquet table enjoying the somewhat skeptical
company of the Baking Master's Guild.
    "How would
you slow down a dough that rises too fast?" asked Barmer, a baker with a
huge, bristling mustache and a face as red as the wine he was drinking.
    "You put it
in a tub full of water and wait until it rises to the top." Jack's answer
met with grudging nods of approval.
    He was getting
quite used to the interrogation. For the past hour and a half-ever since he was
caught outside the wall and dragged through a cleverly concealed gate into the
east side of the city-the members of the baking guild had been throwing him
questions to test his claim. It wasn't enough to say he was a baker, he had to
prove it as well.
    "Any miller
could know that," said the only slim baker in the room, a hollow-cheeked
man named Nivlet.
    "Let the lad
off the hook," said Eckles, the baker who had first slapped his pudgy hand
on Jack outside the city. "It's obvious he's one of us."
    "No,
Eckles," countered Scuppit, a short baker with forearms as broad as hams.
"Nivlet's got a point. That is the sort of thing that a miller might know.
Best to ask the lad one more question, just to be safe."
    "Aye,"
mumbled the rest of the bakers in disunion. They were about twenty in number,
and were all currently stuffing themselves with a banquet's worth of food. For
the first hour, Jack had looked on as the Baking Master's Guild discussed guild
business such as the rising cost of bread tax, the weight of a penny loaf, and
this year's candidates for apprenticeship.
    Millers were the
enemy. The main aim of the Baking Master's Guild was to outlaw, outwit, and
outdo the Milling Master's Guild. Millers mixed cheap grains in with good,
milled flour either too coarsely or too finely, and had an unbreakable monopoly
on the price of meal. If you told a baker that a miller had murdered his family
and ate them for supper, the baker would nod and say: "Aye, and I bet he
saved their bones for his mill. " Millers were notorious for grinding
anything that could be ground, and then passing it off as flour.
    Jack had stumbled
upon the Baking Master's Guild's monthly spying expedition. Eckles, who in
addition to being one of the guild chiefs was the only person who believed Jack
to be a baker from the start, had told him that once a month, when the Miller's
Guild were busy with their monthly meeting, the Baking Master's Guild sent
spies out to all the mills within a league of the city to check the miller's
stores. The number of grain bags at each mill was carefully counted and
recorded, and then, as the month progressed, the baker's would keep an eye to
the amount of flour produced from each individual mill, ensuring that any excess
was duly noted. Too much flour meant that foreign substances had been mixed in
with the grain.
    Each baking master
was assigned a specific mill, and when the counting was done they met in the
bushes south of the city and smuggled themselves through the wall via the
hidden gate. Spying on fellow guilds was considered a thoroughly dishonorable
crime punishable by lifetime expulsion from the professional classes. The
Baking Master's Guild were taking quite a risk.
    Jack rather
admired their nerve.
    "All