Robert Asprin – Thieves World 09 – Blood Ties

If it wasn’t the same one that had been aimed at Straton from a rooftop last winter, it was a perfect copy.

“That doesn’t mean that Strat-or any of the Stepsons- are behind this,” Sync said, a stalk of hay between his teeth, an hour later as they walked their horses and men came in, sweating and dirty, giving desultory reports of no progress and grinning at Zip, the only Ilsig in the camp, with cold amusement in their meres’ eyes.

“Sure. I know. Probably somebody wants me to think it is. No sweat.” And he half-believed what he was saying. If Strat wanted a piece of him, the Sacred

Bander would take it with show and ceremony, lots of ritual, the whole exotic

Band code enforced so that murder wouldn’t be murder once it had been sanctified by the handy murderer’s god.

They had an altar to that purpose, out back of the training arena.

Arrow in hand. Zip walked over there with his new horse, thinking about making some kind of statement by kicking the piled stones apart.

Then he changed his mind, swung up on the horse, and loped it out of there.

He didn’t really care who’d tried to kill him. From the talk he’d heard while in the barracks, neither did the Stepsons: They were more concerned over walls and the weather.

He’d known that this whole business of putting him at the head of some cease fire coalition was just a roundabout way of executing him.

Ritual execution, political style, wasn’t a nice way to die. But then. Zip had killed enough to know there wasn’t one.

He rode all day, through the Swamp of Night Secrets, thinking about his chances slim-and his alternatives- none.