Thieves World 3 – Shadows of Sanctuary by Asprin, Robert

given to Gilla to wash.

Once, Lalo would have rejoiced in the play of light and shadow, or at least

reflected ironically on the relationship between illusion and reality. But he

was too familiar with the poverty the shadows hid – the sordid truth behind all

his fantasies. The only place he now saw visions was at the bottom of a jug of

wine.

He got up stiffly, brushing ineffectually at the blue paint smeared across the

old stains on his tunic. He knew that he should clean up the pigments spilling

across the floor, but why try to save paint when no one wanted his pictures?

By now the regulars would be drifting into the Vulgar Unicom. No one would care

about his clothing there.

Gilla looked up as he started towards the door, and the light restored her

greying hair to its former gold, but she did not speak. Once, she would have run

to kiss her husband good-bye, or railed at him to keep him home. Only, as Lalo

stumbled down the stairs, he heard behind him the vicious splatter of peas

hitting the cracked glaze of the bowl.

Lalo shook his head and took another sip of wine, carefully, because the tankard

was almost empty now. ‘She used to be beautiful…’ he said sadly. ‘Would you

believe that she was like Eshi, bringing spring back into the world?’ He peered

muzzily through the shadows of the Vulgar Unicorn at Cappen Varra, trying to

superimpose on the minstrel’s saturnine features the dimly remembered image

of the golden-haired maiden he had courted almost twenty years ago.

But he could only remember the scorn in Gilla’s grey eyes as she had glared down