Thieves World 3 – Shadows of Sanctuary by Asprin, Robert

beggar, but he didn’t seem to starve.

‘Keep your money, Hakiem,’ the youth murmured, watching the now-empty beach.

‘I’ll give you the story.’

‘Eh?’

‘Yes,’ Hort smiled, tossing his gold coin in the air, catching it and putting it

in his pocket. ‘What’s more, I’ll buy you a cup of wine to go with it – but only

if you’ll teach me how to tell it.’

THE VIVISECTIONIST

Andrew Offutt

1

A minaret topped the Governor’s Palace, naturally. The narrow, eventually

pointed dome resembled an elongated onion. Its needle-like spire thrust up to

pierce the sky. That spire, naturally, flaunted a pennon. It bore the device of

Imperial Ranke (Ranket Imperatris). Below, the dome was clamped by a circular

wall like upended herbivorous teeth. If ever the palace were attacked, that

crenellated wall promised, beware archers in the embrasures between the merlons!

Beware dumpers of boiling oil.

Every bit of it was haughty and imperious, insultingly imperial. And high.

Even from the top of the (lower) wall of the granary across the avenue from the

wall surrounding the Governor’s Palace complex, no grapnel could be hurled, for

no human was so strong.

An arrow, however, could be shot.

On a night when the moon over Sanctuary was not a maiden’s pale round breast but

a niggling little crescent hardly worthy of the business end of a scythe, a bow

twanged like a dying lute. An arrow rushed at the pennon spire of the Governor’s

Palace. After it, like the web-trail of an industrious spider or a wind-blown

tent caterpillar, sped a silken cord so slim as to be invisible.