Robert Asprin – Thieves World 09 – Blood Ties

ASPRIN: I asked C. J. here to write for Thieves’ World and she turned me down.

CHERRYH: You did not.

ASPRIN: (feigning puzzlement) I didn’t?

CHERRYH: You never did.

ASPRIN: (more and more innocent) I thought I did.

CHERRYH: Never.

ASPRIN: (with predatory smile, playing to two hundred witnesses) Hey, C. J., how would you like to write for Thieves’ World?

As neat an ambush as any in Sanctuary. Thieves’ World was already a couple of volumes along, and dropping in on a town with this much going on in it is a ticklish business. So I played my opening gambit very carefully, determined to offend no one.

After alienating the gods of Ranke and Sanctuary, Shadow-spawn, and Enas Yorl, as well as the clientele of the Vulgar Unicorn, and discovering there was war brewing in town, all in my opening story, most of my characters decided to withdraw to somewhere less trafficked for the second round. Mradhon Vis went to

Downwind, where absolutely nothing could go wrong, right?

Wrong. It turns out Tempus is moving into this side of town and Stepsons are riding back and forth through Downwind like mad, feuding with the hawkmasks, two of which, thanks to a gift from Asprin, are mine.

We don’t plan these things. We just write our pieces and we try to mind our own business until someone drops a real mess in our laps, whereupon we sit in our living rooms like Ischade ticking off the town madmen on her fingers and deciding that she has quite well had it-

You get the picture. Live and let live is not quite the motto of the town; and any time you become tempted to let a round pass, you realize that no one else is going to pass, that your people are going to be sitting targets, and you are going to have to make some preemptive strikes or discover yourself in an insoluble mess.