10 – Aftermath by Asprin, Robert

“What do you know about Setios?” the caravan master demanded, no more threatening than was implicit in the fact that he had already dem- onstrated his willingness and ability to kill,

Star was squatting, her skirts lifted and wrapped around her thighs to keep the hem from lying in the muck. A tiny glow spun within the globe of her hands as she cooed. Its color was more nearly yellow than the blue which had washed Khamwas’s staff.

The glow was reflected faintly by the eyes of the dead youth.

Khamwas’s face worked in something between a grimace and a moue of embarrassment as he watched the child. “Ah,” he said to Samlor. “That is, ah-are you . . . ?”

The caravan master shook his head, glad to find that the question amused him rather than arousing any of the other possible emotions. “On a good day,” he said, “I might be able to recite a spell without stumbling over the syllables-if somebody wrote ’em out for me really careful.” That was an exaggeration, though not a great one.

“My sister, though,” he added, embarrassed himself for reasons the other man should not be able to fathom, “that was more her line.”

To the extent that anything besides sex was Samlane’s line.

“I see,” said Khamwas, and he continued to glance down at the child even as he returned to the earlier question. “I don’t know Setios at all,” he explained, “but I know-I’ve been told by, well-“

He shrugged. Samlor nodded grimly; but if this fellow called himself scholar rather than wizard, he at least recognized that the latter was a term of reproach to decent men.