Thieves World 4 – Storm Season by Asprin, Robert

One of Honald’s many nephews was on duty in the guardbox set into the massive

archway of the Palace Gate. Tonight the double doors were opened wide, and Lalo

passed through unquestioned, though he remembered a time when all he owned would

not have been enough to bribe the Gatekeeper to let him enter here. He felt

dizzy, although he had hardly had any wine.

Why can’t I be satisfied with what I have? he wondered. What is wrong with me?

He crossed the expanse of Vashanka’s Square more quickly, heading diagonally

towards the West Gate and the Governor’s Walk. For a moment the east wind

brought him the rank, fuggy smell of the Zoo Gardens, then it shifted and he

felt on his face the cool breath of the sea.

He halted just outside the Gate and with a sigh reversed his cloak so that its

dull inner lining concealed his festival clothes. It was well known in the

appropriate places that Lalo never carried money-in the old days he had never

had any, and now Gilla controlled the family treasury- but he would not want

anyone to make a mistake in the dark.

A waxing moon was already brightening the heavens, and the rooftops of the city

made a jagged silhouette against the stars. Not since he was a boy, slipping

from his pallet behind his father’s workbench to join his friends’ adventur-ing,

had Lalo seen Sanctuary at this hour with sober eyes. Just now, with all its

sordidness obscured by shadow, it seemed to him to be possessed of a kind of

haphazard but enduring integrity.

His feet had carried him almost to Shadow Lane without his attention when they