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

embrace was all she craved. They’d leave a trail well marked in place and plane

for Tempus; she’d lie in high-peak splendour, with her lover-lord well pleased

by what she’d brought him: some Stepsons, and a Froth Daughter, and a man the

gods immortalized.

It took until nearly dawn to calm the fish-faces who’d lost their five best

ships; ‘lucky’ for everyone that the Burek faction’s nobility had been enjoying

Kadakithis’s hospitality, ensconced in the summer palace on the lighthouse spit

and not aboard when the ships snapped anchor and headed like creatures with

wills of their own towards the maelstrom that had opened at the harbour’s mouth.

Crit, through all, was taciturn; he was not supposed to surface; Tempus, when

found, would not be pleased. But Kadakithis needed counsel badly; the young

prince would give away his imperial curls . for ‘harmonious relations with our

fellows from across the sea’.

Nobody could prove that this was other than a natural disaster; an ‘act of gods’

was the unfortunate turn of phrase.

When at last Crit and Strat had done with the dicey process of standing around

looking inconsequential while in fact, by handsign and courier, they mitigated

Kadakithis’s bent to compromise (for which there was no need except in the

Beysib matriarch’s mind), they retired from the dockside.

Crit wanted to get drunk, as drunk as humanly possible: helping the Mageguild

defend its innocence, when like as not some mage or other had called the storm,

was more than distasteful; it was counterproductive. As far as Critias was