Thieves World 3 – Shadows of Sanctuary by Asprin, Robert

chill of the air. He was not sure at all now what side Yorl was … and it

occurred to him to tear the amulet from his neck, drop it in the alley and run.

But how far? And how long? He thought a second and chilling time of the wizard

and his connections; recalled Sjekso; and Kithakadis himself … a prince of

some small gratitude for services a thief had rendered; but more than dangerous

if certain rumours started, that Yorl could spread … effortlessly.

The pair headed back the way they had come, and he set out after them, seeing no

other course.

More and more bizarre, this midnight wandering. Cappen went rigid in his hiding

place first as the quarry passed, and then as he caught sight of Hanse again,

padding after them as before.

So there was no encounter. They went out and they did murder and came back,

while Hanse followed after having seen what Hanse had seen … very unlike

Hanse. Cappen suspected motives ill-defined, gave shape to nothing, only sure it

was something more than Hanse’s private impulses that moved him now. He recalled

the way in which the woman had passed a roomful of patrons at the Unicorn, in

which she and her companion went where they liked on the street, in which guards

died like slaughtered cattle…

The relief Cappen felt at seeing Hanse mobile and not lying stiff in the alley

further on, gave way to a horror at the silence of all that was done, the

neatness of it; and a subtle dread of this pacing about the streets. The

procession which had started to be humorous and might have become yet more so on