Thieves World 3 – Shadows of Sanctuary by Asprin, Robert

all sorts, no few of whom had had notions of refusing him his pay at the end …

one way and the other.

3

The Vulgar Unicorn still thumped with comings and goings, an untidy lot of

early-moming patrons and irregulars. For his own part Hanse drank down his ale

and nursed his head back to size, across the table from Cappen. He had no

inclination to talk or to be the centre of anything at the moment.

‘They’ve got him off,’ the potboy said from the door. So the corpse was gone.

That cleared out some of the traffic. Inquiry and snoopery might be close behind

the corpsetakers. ‘Excuse me,’ Cappen Varra said, likewise discreet, and left

his place at the table, bound for the door. Hanse recovered his equilibrium and

stood up from the bench amid the general flow of bodies outward.

Someone touched his arm, a feathery light hand. He looked back, expecting Minsy,

in no mood for her – and looked up instead into eyes like a statue’s eyes, as

unfocused and as vague, in a male face old/young and beardless. The man was

blind.

‘Hanse called Shadowspawn?’ The voice was like the man, smooth and sere.

‘What’s my business with you?’

‘You lost a friend.’

‘Ha. No friend. Acquaintance. What’s it to you and me?’

The groping hand caught his arm and directed it to the other hand, which caught

his fingers – he began to resist this eerie familiarity, and then felt the

unmistakable metal heaviness of a coin.

‘I’m listening.’

‘My employer has more for you.’

‘Where?’

‘Not here. Do you want a name? Come outside.’

The blind man would have taken him out the front, among the others, following