Thieves World 3 – Shadows of Sanctuary by Asprin, Robert

Wess hitched her own pack higher on her shoulders and did not stop. ‘Not here,’

she said. ‘I’m tired of stale flatbread and raw vegetables. I want a hot meal

tonight.’

She tramped on. She knew how Chan felt. She glanced back at Aerie, who walked

wrapped in her long dark cloak. Her pack weighed her down. She was taller than

Wess, as tall as Chan, but very thin. Worry and their journey had deepened her

eyes. Wess was not used to seeing her like this. She was used to seeing her

freer.

‘Our tireless Wess,’ Chan said. ‘I’m tired, too!’ Wess said. ‘Do you want to try

camping in the street again?’

‘No,’ he said. Behind him. Quartz chuckled.

In the first village they had ever seen – it seemed years ago now, but was only

two months – they tried to set up camp in what they thought was a vacant field.

It was the village common. Had the village possessed a prison, they would have

been thrown into it. As it was they were escorted to the edge of town and

invited never to return. Another traveller explained inns to them – and prisons

– and now they all could laugh, with some embarrassment at the episode.

But the smaller towns they had passed through did not even approach Sanctuary in

size and noise and crowds. Wess had never imagined so many people or such high

buildings or any odour so awful. She hoped it would be better beyond the

marketplace. Passing a fish stall, she held her breath and hurried. It was the

end of the day, true, but the end of a cool late fall’s day. Wess tried not to

wonder what it would smell like at the end of a long summer’s day.