Thieves World 4 – Storm Season by Asprin, Robert

lighted windows casting a glow on the same black water. …

Ischade received quite another messenger, a slave and young, and handsome after

a foreign fashion, who appeared at her gate disturbing certain wards, who came

up the path only after hesitating some long time, and stood inside her dwelling

as if he were dazed.

He was a gift, constantly held out to her. He had come and gone frequently, sent

by those who had offered her employ, and stood there now staring at the floor,

at anything but herself. Perhaps he had known in the beginning that he was not

meant to come back to his masters; or that his handsomeness was to have

attracted her and offered a reward; he was not stupid, this slave. He was

scared, perpetually, sensing something, if only that his mind was not what it

ought to be when he was here, and he would not, this time, look at her, not at

all. She was, on one level, amused, and on another, vexed with those who had

sent him-as if she were some beast, to take what was thrown to her, even so

delicate an offering as this.

But they dared not come themselves. They were that cautious, these adherents of

Vashanka, not putting themselves within this room.

She was untidy, was Ischade; her small nest of a house was strewn not with rags

but with silks and cloaks and such things as amused her. Her taste was garish,

with unsubtle fire-colored curtains, a velvet throw like a puddle of emerald,

and it all undusted, unkept, a ruby necklace like a scatter of blood lying atop

the litter on a gilded table-a bed never made, but tossed with moire silks and