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

nothing, but he felt a deep unease, the same panic that he had felt seeing the

beggars moving through the dark. ‘Don’t let him talk you into it. It’s not safe.

We’ve got enough for a little while. Let him find us, this Jubal.’

‘I’ll find him,’ she said. ‘I’ll get money.’ But she said that often. She went

and picked up the cup again, wiped the spilled wine with a rag. Sniffed loudly.

Haught turned his back to her, staring at the fire, the leaping shapes. The heat

burned, almost to the point of pain, but it took that, to reach the cold inside

his bones, in his marrow; easier to watch the future than to dwell on the past,

to remember Wizardwall, or Carronne, or slavery.

This Jubal the slaver who was their hope had sold him once. But he chose to

forget that too. He had nerved himself to walk the streets, at least by dark, to

look free men in the eye, to do a hundred things any free man took for granted.

Mradhon Vis gave him that; Moria did. If they looked to Jubal, so must he. But

in the fire he saw things, twisted shapes in the coals. A face started back at

him, and its eyes –

Mradhon came over and dumped the boots by him, spread his clothes on the stones,

himself wrapped in a blanket. ‘What do you learn?’ Mradhon asked. He shrugged.

‘I’m blind to the future. You know that.’ A hand came down on his shoulder,

pressed it, in the way of an apology.

‘You shouldn’t talk to her that way,’ Haught said again.

The hand pressed his shoulder a second time. He shivered, despite the heat.

‘Scared?’ Mradhon said. Haught took it for challenge, and the cold stayed in his