Thieves World 3 – Shadows of Sanctuary by Asprin, Robert

other, bagged trash ready to be dragged out into the street.

One-Thumb was behind his bar, big shoulders slumped, washing mugs while watching

everything through the bronze mirror he had had installed over his stock.

Tempus let his heels crack against the board and his armour clatter: he had

dressed for this, from a box he had thought he might never again open. The

wrestler’s body which Lastel had built came alert, pirouetted smoothly to face

him, staring unabashedly at the nearly god-sized apparition in leopard-skin

mantle and helmet set with boar’s tusks, wearing an antique enamelled

breastplate and bearing a bow of ibex-horn morticed with a golden grip.

‘What in Azyuna’s twat are you?’ bellowed One-Thumb, as every waking

customer he had hastened to depart.

‘I,’ said Tempus, reaching the bar and removing his helmet so that his

yarrow honey hair spilled forth, ‘am Tempus. We have not chanced to meet.’ He

held out a hand whose wrist bore a golden bracer.

‘Marshal,’ acknowledged One-Thumb, carefully, his pate creasing with his frown.

‘It is good to know you are on our side. But you cannot come in here … My -‘

‘I am here, Lastel. While you were so inexplicably absent, I was often here, and

received the courtesy of service without Charge. But now I am not here to eat or

drink with those who recognize me for one who is fully as corrupt as are they

themselves. There are those who know where you were, Lastel, and why -and one

who broke the curse that bound you. Truly, if you had cared, you could have