Thieves World 4 – Storm Season by Asprin, Robert

was best bestowed.

She kept a private den backstairs, that rag-piled, perfume-stinking boudoir with

the separate back door, out of which her Boys and Girls came and went on her

errands, out of which wafted the fumes of wine and expensive krrf-he lived

opposite that door like the maw of hell, had been inside once, when he let his

room. She had insisted on giving him a cup of wine and taking him to Her Room

when explaining the rules and the advantages her Boys’ protection afforded. She

had offered him krrf-a small sample, and given him to know what else she could

supply. And that den continued its furtive visitors, and Tygoth to walk his

patrol, rapping on the walls with his stick, even in the rain, tap-tap, tap-tap,

tap-tap in the night, keeping that alley safe and everything Mama owned in its

place.

“Come backstairs,” Mama would say when the money ran out. “Let’s talk about it.”

Grinning all the while.

He knew the look. Like Elid’s. Like-He drank to take a taste from his mouth,

made the drink small, because his life was measured in such sips of his

resources. He hated, gods, he hated. Hated women, hated the bloodsucking lot of

them, in whose eyes there was darkness that drank and drank forever.

There had been a woman, his last employer. Her name was Ischade. She had a house

on the river. And there was more than that to it. There were dreams. There was

that well of dark in every woman’s eyes, and that dark laughter in every woman’s

face, so that in any woman’s arms that moment came that turned him cold and