Robert Asprin – Thieves World 09 – Blood Ties

So she gave him comfort in the night. It was nothing.

Yet the memory sent her bolting from Molin’s doorstep, because the Torch was too intelligent to be fooled by mumbled excuses or headaches, because Kama just couldn’t fake it tonight.

She roamed night-hot streets, though she knew better, almost hoping that some pickpocket or zombie or Beysib would accost her: Like her father, when pushed too hard, Kama craved only open violence. She’d have killed a Stepson or a 3rd

Commando ranger, one of her own, if any dared cross her this evening.

She stopped in at the Unicorn, half-hoping for a fight, but no one paid attention to her there.

She wandered back streets on a borrowed horse, letting it drift barracks-ward, until she realized that it had brought her to the White Foal Bridge.

And then, as she gave the horse its head and it crossed the river bridge, she began in earnest to cry.

It was Crit she wanted now, whether to hold him or kill him, she couldn’t have said if her life depended on it. But Crit was, as Zip would say, old business, and Crit had noticed that she’d stayed with Zip.

Maybe she’d stayed with Zip because of Crit, brushing hips with his partner, and because even that partner, Strat, had sought warmer company than Critias’s

Ischade for warmth that Crit reserved to formed ranks and duty squadrons and the next covert operation on his docket.

So when the sorrel string-horse ambled toward Ischade’s funny little gate, as if by habit, Kama brushed her eyes angrily with her forearm and blinked away her tears.