Robert Asprin – Thieves World 09 – Blood Ties

Things were tough enough, these days in Sanctuary, that you took what you could get.

“You want us to what?” Crit’s disbelieving snort made Tempus frown.

For Tempus, the mercenaries’ hostel north of town evoked memories and ghosts as bloody as the rufous walls here, hung with weapons which had won so many days.

Here, Tempus and Crit had plotted to flush a witch without thought to the consequences; here, before Crit’s recruitment, Tempus had put together the core of the Stepsons and taken command of Abarsis the Slaughter Priest’s Sacred Band.

Here, even farther in the past, he’d burned a scarf belonging to a woman who was his most foul curse-a scarf that had been returned to him, magically whole and full of portent; a scarf he wore again around his waist, under his armor and his chiton, as if all between his first days in Sanctuary and the present were but a bad dream.

“I want you to protect, not hunt, this Zip, for one week,” Tempus repeated, then added: “If, at the end of that week, there’s no cease-fire coalition, no improvement, you can go back to collecting blood-debts.”

Crit was the brightest of the- Stepsons, a Syrese fighter who’d taken the Sacred

Band oath more than once and was now paired with Straton, who in turn was entangled with Ischade, the vampire woman who lived down by Shambles Cross.

No one wanted the Sacred Band out of Sanctuary more than Crit. And no one knew

Tempus’s heart better, or the specifics of what had transpired while the Emperor was in Sanctuary.

Crit pulled on his long nose and stirred his posset with a finger, staring into it as if it were a witch’s scrying bowl. “You’re not…” he said to the bowl, then looked up at Tempus. “You’re not thinking about using that bunch of Zip’s as some sort of Sanctuary defense force? Tell me you’re not.”