Thieves World 3 – Shadows of Sanctuary by Asprin, Robert

‘Wess, I am tired. I won’t go far. But I can’t fly in the daytime, not here, and

the moon is waxing. If I don’t go now I may not be able to fly for days.’

‘It’s true,’ Wess said. ‘Be careful.’

‘I won’t be gone long.’ She slid sideways out of the window and climbed up the

rough side of the building. Her claws scraped into the adobe. Three soft

footsteps overhead, the shushh other wings; she was gone.

The others pushed the beds against the wall and spread their blankets,

overlapping, on the floor. Quartz looped the leather flap over a hook in the

wall and put the candle on the window-ledge.

Chan hugged Wess. ‘I never saw anyone move as fast as Lythande. Wess, love, I

feared he’d killed you before I even noticed him.’

‘It was stupid, to speak so familiarly to a stranger.’

‘But he offered us the nearest thing to news of Satan we’ve heard in weeks.’

‘True. Maybe the fright was worth it.’ Wess looked out of the window, but saw

nothing of Aerie.

‘What made you think Lythande was a woman?’

Wess glanced at Chan sharply. He gazed back at her with a mildly curious

expression.

He doesn’t know, Wess thought, astonished. He didn’t realize –

‘I… I don’t know,’ she said. ‘A silly mistake. I made a lot of them today.’

It was the first time in her life she had deliberately lied to a friend. She

felt slightly ill, and when she heard the scrape of claws on the roof above, she

was glad for more reasons than simply that Aerie had returned. Just then the

tavern-keeper banged on their door announcing their bath. In the confusion of