Robert Asprin – Thieves World 09 – Blood Ties

“It’d be too much bother to move in the middle of a work like this,” she said.

“Ah, yes. Another question I wish you would answer, with your obvious expertise.

What other jobs have you done?”

Better ones than you’re doing now, Siveni thought as she lifted the cup and smelled, very deep in the bouquet of the wine, an herb she recognized. She had invented it; and this was one use for it that she had never approved. “Stibium,” she said, answering his question and naming the drug, both at once.

“Torchholder, for shame. The preparation has to be started weeks in advance if you intend to have someone drink it and then spill out their life’s secrets to you. Though perhaps you just mean my next flux to be painless. A kind thought.

But I manage that for myself. And I’m pained that you don’t trust me.”

“You live with a common barber and a woman who was an idiot once,” said Molin.

“She’s whole now. How did that happen?”

“Good company?” Siveni said. Oh, for my lightnings; oh, for one good crack of thunder out of a clear sky, to back this impertinent creature down! “I’m no sorceress, if that’s what you’re thinking. Even if I were, what good would it do me these days? Most magicians are lucky if they can turn milk into cheese now.

Your problem,” she said, “is that I seem to have come out of nowhere, and you have no hold over me… and at the same time, no choice but to trust me; for

I’ve saved your wall from the rotten ground it stands on four times now, and will keep doing so until it’s whole.”

He gazed at her as levelly as he could, and made a point of drinking from his own cup. “You’ve taken arthicum, I imagine,” she said. “Mind that you don’t eat anything made with sheep’s milk for the next day or so; the results would be unfortunate. At least, inconvenient, for a man who has to spend more than an hour without running off to ease himself.”