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

Haught, known a friend outside himself, he might have made that a charm against

what drew him now. But that had gone from him. There was only Ischade’s cold

face, cold purposes, cold needs: he could not even regret that Moria and Haught

were with him: he felt safe now only because she had summoned them together, and

not called him alone, not alone into that house. And he was ashamed.

Moria came up on his left hand, Haught on his right, and so they took that

street under the eaves of the Unicorn and passed on by its light, by its

shuttered, furtive safety that did not ask what prowled the streets outside.

‘Where?’ Dolon asked, at his desk, the sodden watcher standing dripping on the

floor before him. ‘Where has he gotten to?’

‘I don’t know,’ the would-be Stepson said: Erato, his partner, was still out. He

stood with his hands behind him, head bowed. ‘He -Just said he had a message to

take, to carry for her. He said her answer was maybe. I take it she wasn’t sure

she could do anything.’

‘You take it. You take it. And where did they go, then? Where’s your left-hand

man? Where’s Stilcho? Where’s our informer?’

‘I -‘ The Stepson stared off somewhere vague, his face contracted as if at

something that just escaped his wits.

‘Why didn’t you do something?’

‘I don’t know,’ the Stepson said in the faintest, most puzzled of voices. ‘I

don’t know.’

Dolon stared at the man and felt the flesh crawling on his nape. ‘We’re being

used,’ he said. ‘Something’s out of joint. Wake up, man. Hear me? Get yourself a

dozen men and get out there on the streets. Now. I want a watch on that bridge