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

Her pulse quickened as the visitor tried the latch. She relaxed the ward that

sealed the door, and it swung inward, a gust that guttered the candles, amid

that gust a cloaked, hunched man who smelled of fear. She tightened the ward

again and the door closed, against the wind, with a thump that made the visitor

turn, startled, in his

tracks.

He did not try it. He looked back again, cast the hood back from a face fire had

touched. His eyes were dilated, wild.

‘Why do you come?’ she asked, intrigued, despite a life that had long since

lacked variety. In the casual matter of the door she had dropped pretences that

she wore like robes; he knew, must know, that he was in deadly jeopardy. ‘Who

sent you?’ He seemed the sort not to plan, but to do what others planned.

‘I’m one of the h-hawkm-masks. M-mor-am.’ The face jerked, twisting the mouth;

the whole head nodded with the effort of speech. ‘M-message.’ He fumbled out a

paper and offered it to her in a shaking hand.

‘So.’ He was not so unhandsome, viewed from the right side. She walked around

him, to that view, but he followed her with his eyes, and that was error, to

meet her stare for stare. She smiled at him, being in that mood. Mor-am. The

name nudged memory, and wakened interest. Mor-am. The underground pricked up its

ears in interest at that name – could this man be running Jubal’s errands again?

Likely as summer frost. She tilted her head and considered him, this wreckage.’

Whose message?’ she asked.

‘T-take it.’ The paper fluttered in his hand.

She took it, felt of it. ‘What does it say?’ she asked, never taking her eyes