Thieves World 3 – Shadows of Sanctuary by Asprin, Robert

bring you His Majesty’s apologies, and true word, if you will heed it.’

The eunuch, no more than seventeen, gazed at him longingly. Kadakithis had

accepted this fancy toy from Jubal, the slaver, despite the slavemaster’s own

brand on its high rump, and the deeper dangers implied by the identity of its

fashioner. Tempus had marked it, when first he heard its lilting voice in the

palace, for he had heard that voice before. Foolish, haughty, or merely pressed

beyond a bedwarmer’s ability to cope: no matter; this creature ofJubal’s, he had

long wanted. Jubal and Tempus had been making private war, the more fierce for

being undeclared, since Tempus had first come to Sanctuary and seen the

swaggering, masked killers Jubal kept on staff terrorizing whom they chose on

the town’s west side. Tempus had made those masked murderers his private game

stock, the west end of Sanctuary his personal preserve, and the campaign was on.

Time and again, he had dispatched them. But tactics change, and Jubal’s had

become too treacherous for Tempus to endure, especially now with the northern

insurrection half out of its egg of rumour. He said to the parted lips awaiting

his permission to speak and to the deer-soft eyes doting on his every move that

the eunuch might dismount the car, prostrate itself before him, and from there

deliver its message.

It did all of those, quivering with delight like a dog enraptured by the

smallest attention, and said with its forehead to the sand: ‘My lord, the Prince

bids me say he has been detained by Certain Persons, and will be late, but