“Is he … ?” asked Khamwas as he stepped over his mind’s image of where the body lay. “One of those we … met a moment ago?”
“The gang who came after us with chains, sure,” said the caravan master as he followed with a long stride. The passageway was wide enough for him to spread his arms without quite touching the walls to either side; in the Maze, that made it a street. It held only the normal sounds of feral animals going about their business and, from behind shut- ters, bestial humans. “They’re all dead, the two who ran off as sure as the one who didn’t. Turn left here.”
“The House of Setios is more to the-“
“Turn fucking left,” Samlor whispered in a voice like stones rubbing.
“Do not be a hindrance, lest you be cursed,” said Tjainufi on the Napatan’s shoulder. The manikin bowed toward Samlor, but the caravan master was too angry to approve of anything.
Mostly he was angry at himself, because he’d killed often enough dur- ing his life to know that he really didn’t like killing. Especially not kids, even punk kids who’d have caved his skull in with weighted chains and raped Star until they sold her to a brothel for the” price of a skin of wine …
Sanctuary might be incrementally better off without that particular trio; but Samlor hil Samt wasn’t Justice, wasn’t responsible to his god for the cleansing of this hellhole.
They got out of the Maze with no problem worse than a pair of thugs -who fled in terror as Khamwas’s staff sent a manlike phantasm of light staggering down the street toward them. Broader pavements made walk- ing easier, and many housefronts were lighted by lanterns in barred niches.