Thieves World 4 – Storm Season by Asprin, Robert

barely under way, they had already started. This night’s work was her pleasure

and his profit. When they reached his modest east-side estate, she showed him

the portion of what she had done to the First Hazard which he would like best

and most probably survive, if his heart was strong. For her service, she

demanded a Rankan soldat’s worth of black krrf, before the act. When he had paid

her, and watched her melt it with water over a flame, cool it, and bring it to

him on the bed, her fingers stirring the viscous liquid, he was glad he had not

argued about her price, or about her practice of always charging one.

2

Wizard weather blew in off the sea later that night, as quickly as one of the

Sanctuary whores could blow a client a kiss, or a pair of Stepsons disperse an

unruly crowd. Everyone in the suddenly mist-enshrouded streets of the Maze ran

for cover; adepts huddled under beds with their best warding spells wrapped

tighter than blankets around shivering shoulders; east-siders bade their jesters

perform and their musicians play louder; dogs howled; cats yowled; horses

screamed in the palace stables and tried to batter their stallboards down.

Some unlucky ones did not make it to safety before a dry thunder roared and

lightning flashed and in the streets, the mist began to glitter, thicken, chill.

It rolled headhigh along byway and alley, claws of ice scrabbling at shuttered

windows, barred doors. Where it found life, it shredded bodies, lacerating

limbs, stealing away warmth and souls and leaving only flayed carcasses frozen