Robert Asprin – Thieves World 09 – Blood Ties

Walegrin now spied.

Once, not so long ago, he had discounted the influence of women both in his own life and in the greater realities of the universe; then he had returned to

Sanctuary. In this gods- and magic-cursed place, the worst always came from a woman’s hand. He’d learned to hold his tongue and his liquor with women whose naked breasts stared back at him; women whose eyes glowed red with immortal anger and women whose love-play left a man dead in the dawn light-and all of them were saner than Chenaya.

Rumor said, and the Torch confirmed, that she was favored of Savankala himself.

Rumor said she couldn’t lose, whatever that meant, because she and the few frightened remnants of an unlamented Imperial dynasty had fled the Rankan capital after Theron’s takeover and wound up here in Sanctuary which had never been known to attract anything or anyone but losers. But it meant something

Walegrin knew that personally. And out at the Land’s End estate, where she lived with her father, a small horde of gladiators, and the disaffected members of what had been the city’s Rankan upper crust, there was a god-bugged priest who was determined to make a mortal goddess of her.

He’d seen the shrine Rashan was building, with stones pilfered not only from the ramparts but from long-neglected, best-forgotten altars. He’d passed the word along to Molin and watched his mentor seethe with rage, but he hadn’t managed to pass along the danger-the awesomeness-he felt when Rashan made his Daughter-of the-Sun speeches or when Chenaya took him into her confidence and arms.