Thieves World 4 – Storm Season by Asprin, Robert

his companion and walked away.

* * *

“Drink,” Mradhon said. Moria drank, holding the cup herself this time, and

stared blearily at the two men, Mradhon leaning over her, Haught over against

the wall. It was decent food they gave her. She wondered where they got the

money, dimly, in that vague way she wondered about anything. She was curious why

these two kept treating her as they did, when it cost them, or why two men she

had never met had proved dependable when those she had known best had not. It

confounded her. They never used that language they both spoke, not since that

night. Haught had put on freeman’s clothing, if only that of Downwind. He had

scars. She had seen them, when he dressed. So did Mradhon Vis, but different

ones, made with knives.

So did she, inside and out. Maybe that was what they had in common, the three of

them. Or that they wanted what she knew, names and places. Or that they were

just different, thinking differently, the way people did who had not grown up in

the Downwind, and that kind of maze of foreignness she never tried to figure.

She just took it that they wanted something; and so did she, which was to fill a

nebulous and empty spot and to keep fed and warm and breathing.

Mor-am was dead. She hoped so. Or things were worse than she had figured.

A FUGITIVE ART

by Diana L. Paxson

The fleeing King ran towards the Gate, the strained lines of his back and arms,

and the bunched muscles of his thighs, eloquent of desperation. His face was

shadowed and his crown rolled in the dust; behind him lay a confusion of arms