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

not a guard, a watch. I want that woman found. I want Mor-am watched. Finesse,

hear me? It’s not a random thing we’re dealing with. / want Stilcho back. I

don’t care what it takes’

The Stepson left in all due haste. Dolon leaned head on hands, staring at the

map that showed the Maze, the streets leading to the bridge. It was not the only

thing on his desk. Death squads. A murder uptown. Factions were armed. The

beggars were on the streets. And somehow every contact had dried up, frozen

solid.

He saw things slipping. He called in others, gave them orders, sent them to

apply force where it might loosen tongues.

‘Make examples,’ he said.

The streets gave way to one naked rim along the White Foal shore, an openness

that faced the rare lights of Downwind, across the White Foal’s rain-swollen

flood. The black water had risen far up on the pilings of the bridge and gnawed

away at the rock-faced banks, trying at this winding to break its confinement

and take the buildings down, this ordinarily sluggish stream. Tonight it was

another, noisier river, a shape-changer, full of violence; and Mradhon Vis moved

carefully along its edge, in this soundless darkness of deafening sound, in the

lead because of the three of them, he was most reckless and perhaps the most

afraid.

So they came up in the place he had aimed for, in the underpinnings of the

bridge on the Mazeward side; in this deepest dark. But a star glimmered here

like swampfire, and above it was a pale, hooded face.

He felt one of his two companions set a warning hand on his arm. He kept walking