Thieves World 01 – Thieves World by Asprin, Robert

embroidered day-robes as was her custom but wore a Soberly cut dress of a

fashion outdated in Sanctuary at least twenty years before. She had taken off

her jewellery, knowing that its absence would cause more rumours than if she had

indeed sold a part of it to the gem-cutters. An atmosphere of austerity

enveloped the house and every other on the Street, as Mikkun could attest, for

he’d visited most of them.

‘But madame, I have already slaughtered two cows! For three years I have

slaughtered the cows first to assure you the freshest meat early in the day.

Today, for no reason, you say you do not want my meat! Madame, you already have

a debt to me for those two cows!’

‘Mikkun! You have never, in all the years I’ve known you, extended credit to any

house on the Street and now … now you’re asking me to consider my daily

purchases a debt to you!’ She smiled disarmingly to calm him, knowing full well

that the butcher and the others depended on the hard gold from the Street to pay

their own debts.

‘There will be credit in the future!’

‘But we will not be here to use it!’ “

Myrtis let her face take on a mournful pout. Let the butcher and his friends

start dunning the ‘respectable’ side of Sanctuary, and word would spread quickly

to the palace that something was amiss. A ‘something’ which she would explain to

the Hell Hound captain, Zaibar, when he arrived to collect the tax. The trades

man left her parlour muttering prophecies of doom she hoped would eventually be

heard by those in a position to worry about them.