Robert Asprin – Thieves World 09 – Blood Ties

Beyond? All the peace, the joy? You expect that in Sanctuary?”

Harran and Mriga looked at each other. “There’s something to be said for life,”

Harran said, as if doubting the words as they came out. “In heaven everything bends to suit you. Here, you bend-but you come back stronger sometimes-“

“Or you break,” said Siveni.

Silence. The firelight and candlelight wavered on the mural; Eshi seemed to sway a little.

“I’m going back,” Siveni said. “I know the spells. I wrote them. And you two-are you going to sit here and be miserable for all your short lives, on the off chance that it’ll make you stronger?”

Mriga let out a long breath. “Harran?”

His eyes were for Siveni, as they had been so many times before, in statuary or the flesh. “I wanted you,” he said.

They waited.

“It does seem selfish to want it all my way,” he said. “All right. We’ll try it.”

Mriga sat back down on the bed. Siveni shifted her weight again, and again the table crunched and sagged.

“When will the Wall be done?” Harran said.

“Weeks yet,” Siveni said, looking thoughtful. “It must be done before the frost sets in, or the mortar won’t set. But they have the plans. They hardly need me to complete them.” And she began to laugh softly, so that the table creaked.

Harran and Mriga exchanged looks. “You have to have known,” Siveni said. “There are passages hidden in those walls already, alterations I made in the building that don’t show in the plans. The wall is as full of holes as a bubble-cheese.

No one knows-not even Molin. I was most careful. He’ll think himself all secure, and until I choose to put the word in some oracle’s ear, he will be. But that day-let Sanctuary look to its walls.”