Robert Asprin – Thieves World 09 – Blood Ties

“Help!” she yelled, a raw, animal sound. And gasped a mix of air and water as the chop hit her in the face and washed over her. Her voice was small in the wind and the night sky.

She gained enough strength to cast about her then, and blinked at the lights that she saw when she turned in the water, the distant line of the wharf, the

Beysib ships riding at anchor. She had not a stitch of clothing. She was chilled and bruised and half-drowned, and she had no idea in the world how she had come there, or whether she had gone mad.

She started to swim, slow, painful strokes, until she remembered that there were sharks in these waters. Then she threw all she had left into the drive across

Sanctuary’s very ample harbor, toward the distant lights.

NO GLAD IN GLADIATOR

Robert Lynn Asprin

Chenaya shivered, pan from her damp nakedness, part from fear, as she clutched the threadbare blanket more tightly about her. Fear? No, rather nervous anticipation.

The whole thing so far had a surreal, dreamlike quality to it. First the rude awakening, sans clothes, deep in Sanctuary’s less-than-fragrant bay, and then the long swim to shore, worrying all the while about the hunger and size of aquatic predators lurking below. There had been men waiting for her on the pier, three of them, one bearing the blanket she now wore. Nervousness made her declare her identity unasked, including all her ranks and titles, yet they seemed as unimpressed and unmoved by her station as they were by her nakedness.

The blanket itself was a silent statement of friendship, or at least sympathy, however, so it seemed natural to follow without protest as they hurried her through a bewildering maze of back streets and alleys to the room where she now sat waiting.