Thieves World 4 – Storm Season by Asprin, Robert

look back to know that the Stepson obeyed.

Cime was blond, tonight, and golden-eyed, tall in her adept-chosen robe of

iridescent green, but he saw through the illusion to her familiar self. And she

knew it. “You come here without your beloved armaments or even the god’s amulet?

The man I used to know would have pulled rank and held on to his weapons.”

“Nothing’s going to happen here,” he murmured, staring off over her head into

the crowd looking for Niko; “unless the message I received was in error and we

do have a problem?”

“We have no problem-” glowered Lastel/ One-Thumb.

“One-Thumb, disappear, or I’ll have Janni, over there, teach you how to imitate

your bar’s sign.” With a reproachful look that Tempus would utter his alias

here, the man who did not like to be called One-Thumb outside the Maze lumbered

off.

Then he had to look at her. Under the golden-eyed illusion, her char-and-smoke

gaze accused him, as it had chased him across the centuries and made him content

to be accursed and constrained from other loves. God, he thought, I will never

get through this without error. It was the closest he had come to asking

Vashanka to help him for ages. In the back of his skull, a distant whisper

exhorted him to take his sister while he could … that bush on his right

would be bower enough. But more than advice the god could not give: “I have my

own troubles, mortal, for which you are partly responsible.” With the echo of

Vashanka’s last word, Tempus knew the god was gone.

“Is Lastel telling the truth, Cime? Are you content to face Askelon’s wrath, and