passed

drawers scattered. "These things always have secret compartments," said Vossik. "And militia are hasty. Watch—" He wrenched a leg off a chair and smashed the desk apart. A handful of loose jewels bounced across the floor. "That's what I meant," he said. "Go on. Take 'em."
Paks scooped up the little chips of blue, red, and yellow: the first jewels she had ever held. Vossik looked at them critically.
"I'll take this—" he picked out a red one and a blue one, "as my share for showing you how. Get busy now, or these damned lazy militia will get all the good loot." He left Paks alone in the room. She put the stones in her pouch, and looked at the smashed desk. Was there another compartment? She picked up the chair leg.
By dawn, Paks had prowled through most of the rooms in the keep. Her pouch bulged with coins and jewels. She had a strip of embroidered silk wrapped around her neck, and a jewel-hilted dagger thrust into one boot. She could not bring herself to destroy furniture, so most of her finds were bits and pieces that had rolled out of sight of earlier plunderers. Now she headed downstairs, hoping to find something to eat. Along the way she passed drunken, sleeping fighters snoring beside the dead. Paks wrinkled her nose at the stench of blood, sour wine, vomit, and smoke. tsT