Thieves World 01 – Thieves World by Asprin, Robert

also; she caught both in mid-air with stammered thanks and wolfed them down.

‘You need to have your strength built up,’ the portly scribe went on. ‘I have a

very responsible errand for you to undertake tonight.’

‘Errand?’

‘Yes. The imperial officer who lost the scroll is called Commander Nizharu. He

and his men are billeted in pavilions in the courtyard of the governor’s palace;

seemingly he’s afraid of contamination if they have to go into barracks with the

local soldiery.

‘After dark this evening you are to steal in and wait on him, and inquire

whether he will pay more for the return of his scroll and the name of the man

who filched it, or for a convincing but fraudulent translation which will

provoke the unlawful possessor into some rash action. For all I can guess,’ he

concluded sanctimoniously, ‘he may have let it fall deliberately. HmV

3

It was far from the first time since her arrival that Jarveena had been out

after curfew. It was not even the first time she had had to scamper in shadow

across the broad expanse of Governor’s Walk in order to reach and scramble over

the palace wall, nimble as a monkey despite the mass of scar-tissue where her

right breast would never grow. Much practice enabled her to whip off her cloak,

roll it into a cylinder not much thicker than a money-belt, fasten it around

her, and rush up the convenient hand- and toeholds in the outer wall which were

carefully not repaired, and for a fat consideration, when the chief mason

undertook his annual re-pointing.

But it was definitely the first time she had had to contend with crack soldiers