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

watch the night and take them deep into shadowed alleys with all the confidence

a mage would flaunt. The youth had offered to teach him ‘controls’ of mind, to

take him ‘up through the planes and get your guide and your twelfth-plane name’.

But Janni was no connoisseur of witchcraft; like boy-loving, he left it to the

Sacred Banders and the priests. He’d gotten into this with Niko for worldly

advantage; the youth ten years his junior was pure genius in a fight; he’d

seen him work at Jubal’s and marvelled even in the melee of the sack. Niko’s

reputation for prowess in the field was matched only by Straton’s, and the

stories told of Niko’s past. The boy had trained among Successors, the

Nisibisi’s bane, wild guerrillas, mountain commandos who let none through

Wizardwall’s defiles without gold or life in tithe, who’d sworn to reclaim

their mountains from the mages and the warlocks and held out, outlaws,

countering sorcery with swords. In a campaign such as the northern one coming,

Niko’s skills and languages and friends might prove invaluable. Janni, from

Machad, had no love for Rankans, but it was said Niko served despite a blood

hatred: Rankans had sacked his town nameless; his father had died fighting

Rankan expansion when the boy was five. Yet he’d come south on Abarsis’s

venture, and stayed when Tempus inherited the band.

When they crossed the Street of Shingles and headed into Shambles Cross, the

pragmatic Janni spoke a soldier’s safe-conduct prayer and touched his warding

charm. A confusion of turns within the ways high-grown with hovels which cut off