Thieves World 3 – Shadows of Sanctuary by Asprin, Robert

skills the northerner did not; and he knew how to get the most out of them.

He took most of his living from women, in one way or the other.

‘What’s your name?’ she asked him.

‘Sjekso Kinzan.’

‘Sjekso. I have a place … not the lodgings where I sent that fellow; that’s

business. But my real house… near the river. A little wine, a soft bed …

I’ll bet you’re good.’

He laughed. ‘I make it a rule never to go out of my own territory till I know

the terms. Here’s good enough. Right over here. And I’ll bet you don’t care.’

‘Mine’s Ischade,’ she murmured distractedly, as he put his hands up under the

robes. She swayed against him, her own hands on him, and he found the coin and

took it from her unresisting fingers. She brushed his lips with her own and

urged him on. ‘My name’s Ischade.’

2

A corpse was no uncommon sight in the Maze. But one sprawled in the middle of

the Serpentine, in the first light of the sun – the potboy of the Unicorn found

the blond male corpse when he came out to heave the slops, a corpse on the inn’s

very doorstep, a body quite stiff and cold, and he knew Sjekso Kinzan. He spun

on his heel and started to run back in – thought again and darted, back to

search for valuables … after all, some less acquainted and deserving person

might come along. He found the brass luckpiece, found the purse … empty,

except for an old nail and a bit of lint – dropped the luckpiece down his own

collar, jumped up and ran inside in breathless haste, to spill his news to the

morning’s first stirrers-forth in the tavern; and the fact of one of the