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

vision. They chattered in undertones. Occasionally someone raised a voice to

call what might have been a name: ‘Shaushga!’ The corpse stiffening at Samlor’s

feet made no reply.

Then a hull grated on the strand. There were more voices, and more of the voices

were male. Water slopped between shore and hull as at least a dozen persons

dropped over the trawler’s gunwale. Then the temple floor rasped beneath the

horn-hard soles of barefooted fishermen. A tiny oil lamp gleamed like the sun to

light-starved eyes.

In the centre of the open room, a Beysib in red robes set down the burden he

carried. It was Star, had to be Star. She was dressed also in red. Her hair had

been plaited into short tendrils so that the blaze above her forehead seemed to

have eight white arms.

‘I don’t want to,’ the child cried distinctly. ‘I want to go to bed.’ She

refused to support herself with her legs, curling to the pavement when the

Beysib set her down.

The man in red and a woman as nondescript as the others in a brown and black

shawl bent to the child. They spoke urgently and simultaneously in Beysib and a

melange of local dialects. The latter were almost equally unintelligible to

Samlor for the accent and poor acoustics. The man in red held Star by the

shoulders, but he was coaxing rather than trying to force her to rise.

The trawler had been crabbed further into the cove so that Samlor could no

longer see it from his vantage point. The Cir-donian held his body in a state of

readiness, but at not quite the bowstring tautness of the instant before