Thieves World 5 – The Face of Chaos by Asprin, Robert

You cure it. Hear? You get what you can, then you settle her. I want Stilcho

quiet, you understand: back here safe, number one; but if he’s become

expendable, expend him. You know the rule. Now move!’

There was flight from the doorway, a clatter in the outer room, one injudicious

unhappy oath. Dolon stood gathering his breath. Critias’s list of reliables was

itself the problem; unstable informants; men on double payrolls. A witch, for

the gods’ sake, an ex-slaver, a judge on the take.

There was, he began to reckon, a need to purify that list. His discretion,

Critias had said. Critias had delayed too long in passing power, that was what

it was. Uncertainty set in. The opportunists wanted convincing again.

Then the rest would fall in line.

It was near Becho’s. Mradhon Vis knew that much, and it set off nerves, this

approach. Tygoth would be in his alley, patrolling up and down, banging at the

wall with his stick to let all Downwind know that Mama’s property was secure.

The surviving crowd of drunks would have collapsed in the streets. Gods knew who

might have inherited that room in the alley now. He did not want to know. He

wanted out of this place, with all his soul he wanted out of it, and he was

where he had never looked to be again, following Mor-am through the labyrinth of

alleys, with Haught at his back – and Moria between them. He glanced back from

time to time, when there was too much silence; but they still followed.

And now Mor-am stopped. Waited, signalled silence, outside a street that had