Robert Asprin – Thieves World 09 – Blood Ties

“Well,” Harran said, “one thing only. What about Tyr? She’s in hell. No one can go there anymore, from what I hear.”

“But people can come out,” Siveni said. “She’s of us. Where we go, she’ll go also, if she wants.”

It seemed likely enough. “At any rate,” said Siveni, “I shan’t wait for the walls. All the work that I needed to handle myself is done. Let’s get together the things we need and be gone tomorrow night. Not the mandrake spell, Harran.

The older one, that you didn’t have materials for the last time- the one that uses bread and wine and a god’s blood. There’ll be no accidents this time. We’ll storm heaven, and settle down once and for all, and leave this poxhole to its own devices.”

Harran shuddered once.

Mriga sighed and climbed back into the bed. “Come and get some rest, then,” she said.

“Oh, all right,” said Siveni, looking at them both with a lighter expression. It became apparent that rest was suddenly not on her mind.

Harran’s ironic young face got lighter, too. He slid under the sheet and said,

“Well, since it is my last night on earth…”

Siveni threw her chlamys over his head and put the candles out.

The old Temple of Siveni Gray-Eyes, near one end of the Avenue of Temples, was not what it once had been. Its brazen doors, struck down by its annoyed patroness’s spear, had been taken away and melted down as scrap. Its old storerooms had been looted, first by its last priest, then by everyone in

Sanctuary who could not resist an open door. Even the great gold-and-ivory statue of Siveni, armed and armored in splendor, had been stolen. Glass lay in bright shards on the dirty floor, fallen from the high windows; spiders wrought in every comer, and rats rustled here and there. There were fire-scorches in the comers from squatters’ fires, and the bones of roast pigeons and cats.