Thieves World 4 – Storm Season by Asprin, Robert

managed then to look past her.

“And were you born a slave?”

“I was a dancer in Garonne.”

“Debt?”

“Yes,” he said, and never looked at her the while. She had, she thought, guessed

wrong.

“But not,” she said, “Caronnese.”

There was silence.

“Northern,” she said.

He said nothing. The sweat ran on his face. He never moved: could not, while she

willed; but never tried: she would have felt a trial of her hold.

“They question you, don’t they, about me?- each time. And what do you tell

them?”

“There’s nothing to tell them, is there?”

“I doubt that they are kind. Are they? Do you love them, these masters of yours?

Do you know what you’re really for?”

A flush stained his face. “No,” she said sombrely, answering her own question.

“Or you’d run, even knowing what you’d pay.” She touched him as she might some

fine marble, and there was such hunger, such desire for something so fine-it

hurt.

“This time,” she said after measuring that thought, “I take the gift. . . but I

do with it what I like. My back door, Haught, is on the river, a great

convenience to me; and bodies often don’t surface, do they? Not before the sea.

So they won’t expect to find you … So just keep going, do you hear? Serves

them right. Go somewhere. I set you free.”

“You can’t-“

“Go back to them if you like. But I wouldn’t, if I were you. This message

doesn’t need an answer. Don’t you reckon what that means? I’d keep running,

Haught-no, here.” She went to the closet and picked clothing, a fine blue cloak

many visitors left such remembrances behind. There were cloaks, and boots, and