Thieves World 3 – Shadows of Sanctuary by Asprin, Robert

uninvited visitor knowing, quite knowing that at such times she was mad, and

what it cost to cure such madness for the time…

Attractive. Her tastes were broad, but in that curiously com-partmented mind of

hers, it pleased her … the mission done … that there was room for Mradhon to

go. Here stood instead an unmissable someone – he had all the marks of that

condition. It was justice owed her for her pains … twice as sweet when it all

came together just as it did now, her satisfaction and the last untidy threads

of a business, tied together and nipped short.

She held out her hand and came closer, feeling that sweet/sad warmth that sex

set into her blood … and had felt it, at every weakening moment, from the time

she had robbed the wrong wizard and left him living. In the morning she would

even feel some torment for it, a tangled regret: the handsome ones always left

her with that, a sense of beauty wasted. But for the moment reason was quite

gone.

And there had been so many before.

Hanse still held the knife and could not feel it; then heard the distant shock

it made hitting the floor. There was no pain of the bruises, no sensation but of

warmth and of the woman’s nearness, her dark eyes regarding him, her perfume

enveloping him. And the amulet at his throat, which gave off a bitter cold: that

was the one last focus of his discomfort. She put her arms about his neck and

her fingers found the chain. ‘You don’t want this,’ she said, lifting it ever so

gently over his head. He heard it fall, far, far away. Truth, he did not want