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

out of your minds?’

Mradhon fastened his belt and gathered up his boots, having no answer that made

sense. In some part of him panic existed, and hate, but it was a further and

cooler hate, and held a certain peace. He did not ask Haught his own reasons, or

whether Haught even knew what he was doing or why; he did not want to know. He

went in the way he would draw his hand from fire: it hurt too much not to.

And with scalding curses at them both, Moria began getting dressed, calling on

them to wait, swearing impotence on them both in Downwind patois, in terms even

the garrison had lacked.

‘Stay here,’ he said, ‘little fool; you want to save your neck? Stay out of

this.’

He said it because somewhere deep inside he understood a difference between this

woman and the other, which he had never fully seen, that Moria with her thin

sharp knife was on his side and Haught’s because they were fools themselves, and

three fools seemed better odds.

‘Rot you,’ Moria said, and when he took his muddy cloak and headed for the door,

when Haught overtook him in the alley, Mradhon heard her panting after, still

cursing.

He gave her no help, no sign that he heard. The rain had abated, sunk to a

steady drizzle, a dripping off the eaves, a river down the cobbled alley, which

sluiced filth along towards the sewers and so towards the bay where the foreign

ships rode, insanity to heap upon the other insanities that life was here, where

the likes of Ischade prowled.

If he could have loved, he thought, if he could have loved anything, Moria,