Thieves World 3 – Shadows of Sanctuary by Asprin, Robert

landed on top of the tent she would be well within range of arrows. Satan would

be in even more danger. It was up to Wess and Quartz and Chan to create enough

chaos so the archers would be too distracted to shoot either of the flyers.

Wess was rather looking forward to it.

She slipped under the rope when no one was looking and strolled through the

shadows as if she belonged with the troupe. Satan’s cart stood at the

performers’ entrance, but Wess did not go near her friend now. Taking no notice

of her, the children on their ponies trotted by. In the torchlight the children

looked thin and tired and very young, the ponies thin and tired and old. Wess

slid behind the rank of animal cages. The carnival did, after all, have a

salamander, but a piteous, poor and hungry-looking one, barely the size of a

large dog. Wess broke the lock on its cage. She had only her knife to pry with;

she did the blade no good. She broke the locks on the cages of the other

animals, the half-grown wolf, the pygmy elephant, but did not yet free them.

Finally she reached the troll.

‘Frejojan,’ she whispered. ‘I’m behind you.’

‘I hear you, frejojan.’ The troll came to the back of his cage. He bowed to her.

‘I regret my unkempt condition, frejojan; when they captured me I had nothing,

not even a brush.’ His golden grey-flecked hair was badly matted. He put his

hand through the bars and Wess shook it.

‘I’m Wess,’ she said.

‘Aristarchus,’ he said. ‘You speak with the same accent as Satan – you’ve come

for him?’

She nodded. ‘I’m going to break the lock on your cage,’ she said. ‘I have to be