Uneasy alliances - Thieves World 11 by Robert Asprin, Lynn Abbey Read Free Book Online Page A

mischance no bribe could save him from, and Critias would be sorry and relieved, and the boil would be lanced, that was all, the pain stopped.
    That would never do.
    A change in fortunes for Critias, the man facing all directions; and absolute hell for Straton, the man who had lost his way. The very plan was an indulgence approaching the sensual for a man who had restrained

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    himself so long, so very long, and nightly prayed for his enemies, that they go on living.
    And it was so easy, for a man so like every other man in Sanctuary, to the eyes of the invaders.
    Wind and rain spatter at the eaves, rattle the shutters and bring cold into the room where Moria dresses, hastily, in the stink and the squalor of the tenement she shares with Stilcho, late oflschade's service. A gray,
    dim light reaches the bed where Stilcho rests, drugged with what krrfshe can buy him—sleep, peace which she can buy him, who has so little peace nowadays.
    He is so handsome, so very beautiful to her whose beauty a mage gave her, whose beauty, Rankene-fair, Haught bespelled with stolen magic; Stilcho's, she had never seen—had been terrified of him, whom Ischade had raised from the dead; she had dreaded the sight of him, shrunk from the chance touch of his hand, which in those days had been chill, had seen only his scars, which the beggar-king had given him, a Stepson, in the long, long night that he had been the beggar-king's prisoner, and they
    had taken out his right eye, and were about to take the other when Ischade had intervened.
    Ischade had claimed him then, since the Stepsons would not have him, a walking dead; and Ischade, whose curse took the life of her lovers, (except Strat, gods only knew why but Moria made guesses) had taken Stilcho in Straton's stead on those terrible nights when the black mood was on her, and she evaded Straton and drove all her servants from her presence—except Stilcho, on whom the curse fell with all its force, who could die, and die, and die, because she had strings on his soul, and could
    pull it up again from hell—
    Moria had seen him on such mornings, had seen his face and shuddered at that look, that bleak terror, that awful intensity with which he
    would sit and feel of things, the table, the texture of the cloth, the flesh of
    his arm—as if it were precious and all too fragile.
    She had heard him scream—had heard him, as no woman should hear a man, break down in tears and plead with Ischade, not again, not again, no more—
    She had shuddered at the mere sight of him in those days. But those arms, however chill, had been there to hold her when her own world came tumbling down. And his goodness, his loyalty, had touched even Ischade's sense of justice: she had brought him all the way back. She had set him free—free as a man could be, who had suffered what he had, and who still waked screaming of nights, seeing hell, and demons.

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    Krrf gave him peace. Krrf let him lie safe from his devils—so, so good to see, his quiet sleep, his face that was always so pale, at rest, the patched eye and the fall of dark hair, all that was dark about him: the rest was light, white-washed in the light that, like the chill wind, came
    through the shutter slats.
    She tied a ragged brown scarf about her blonde hair. And from its place in the corner, disguised with clay, she took a lump that was heavier
    than any rock ought to be, a lump that weighed like sin—or pure gold. She put it in the ratty basket she had, along with some rags of laundry, She was very careful going out the door, and left the latchstring inside, so
    only he could open it.
    He would know, she feared, when he woke. The first thing he would check would be that comer where they hid the lump she had salvaged from the Peres house. Last night she had begged him to let her take it to
    old Gorthis, who would give her, she argued, fair price for it. He had fenced for the gangs, back before the war. She knew