Thieves World 3 – Shadows of Sanctuary by Asprin, Robert

Unicorn’s regular patrons lying stiff at the door brought a stamping up and down

the stair and a general outpouring of curious and half-awake ovemighters.

That was how it came to Hanse, a disturbance under Minsy Zithyk’s rented window

next door.

The gathering around the body in the street was solemn … partly a kind of

respect and partly morning headaches, more and more onlookers arriving as the

commotion became its own reason for being. Hanse was one of the first, stood

with his arms clenched into a tight fold – he had his daggers: had them about

his person natural as breathing. His scowl and awakened-owl stare at the corpse

of Sjekso Kinzan, his arms about his ribs holding his spine stiff- warned Minsy

Zithyk off. She stood snuffling and holding her own ribs, doubtless with the

other half of a throbbing headache. Hanse wanted no hanging-on, now, of Sjekso’s

longtime woman. The dice game and the wager stuck in his mind and he felt eyes

on him, himself part of the morning’s gossip, with a man he had diced with lying

cold in the soiled stream of a drain.

‘Who got him?’ Hanse asked finally, and there was a general shrugging of

shoulders. ‘Who?’ Hanse snapped, looking round at the onlookers. A corpse was

indeed no novelty in the Maze, but an otherwise young and healthy one, with no

mark of violence on it… but a man on the doorstep of the tavern he frequented,

a turn or two of the alleys to his own lodgings …

There were amenities like territory. A man was never assured … but there were

places and places, and when he was in his own place, he was least likely to end