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His better-fed condition was not as easy to disguise but he shot up fast for a year or two and continued skinny, despite two hearty meals a day and a bed to doss on.
Thorby soaked up a gutter education beyond price. Jubbulpore, capital of Jubbul and of the Nine Worlds, residence in chief of the Great Sargon, boasts more than three thousand licensed beggars, twice that number of street vendors, more grog shops than temples and more temples than any other city in the Nine Worlds, plus numbers uncountable of sneak thieves, tattoo artists, griva pushers, doxies, cat burglars, back-alley money changers, pickpockets, fortune tellers, muggers, assassins, and grifters large and small. Its inhabitants brag that within a li of the pylon at the spaceport end of the Avenue of Nine anything in the explored universe can be had by a man with cash, from a starship to ten grains of stardust, from the ruin of a reputation to the robes of a senator with the senator inside.
Technically Thorby was not part of the underworld, since he had a legally recognized status (slave) and a licensed profession (beggar). Nevertheless he was in it, with a worm's-eye view. There were no rungs below his on the social ladder.
As a slave he had learned to lie and steal as naturally as other children learn company manners, and much more quickly. But he discovered that these common talents were raised to high art in the seamy underside of the city
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