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

secure place, in the madness of the hour, in streets insane with screams.

He stopped, seeing the way closed off. They were hawkmasks. four of them, who

began to come towards him; he turned, and there were Stepsons, armed with

swords.

In the guardroom a Hell Hound wakened, bleary-eyed from drink, looked up with

the interest of one who hears the step of a friend returning, a singular

pattern, so familiar and loved among a thousand others; and then with a sinking

of the heart remembered it impossible. But Zaibar looked all the same, and stood

up, overturning the chair with a crash.

Raskuli was standing there, unmarred, his head firmly on his shoulders. I can’t

stay long, he said.

And higher in the palace, Kadakithis screamed and yelled for guards, waking to

find strangers in his room, a horde of ghosts. some with ropes about their

necks; and soldiers all dusty in tattered armour; and his grandfather, who did

not belong in Sanctuary, wearing a shadow-crown.

Shame, his grandfather said.

Walegrin sat up in bed, in the barracks below the wall – heard the clash of

bracelets, ominous and clear. He reached for his knife, beneath the pillow. But

as the sound ceased, faint as it was, he heard screams from beyond the walls,

and leapt up, knife in hand, to fling the window wide.

Jubal the ex-slaver waked, hearing the murmur of a sea – and not a sea, but a

horde of slaves about his bed, lacking limbs, with scars, some clutching their

entrails to them. He spat at them, and felt the cold at the same time.

It’s your fault, Kurd said, and from that ghost the others fled, deserting the