Thieves World 7 – The Dead of Winter by Asprin, Robert

He jogged off in the direction of the bridge, where a shadowy troop needed help

passing running water. His old partner was in the lead and the company insignia

was intact.

Behind him the ghosts did what everyone else in Sanctuary was busy doing: They

chose sides and took cover and had at one another.

Stilcho turned his own troop up the riverside and through the streets-slower

now, because they had a half-living man for a guide. But he would take them only

so far. They would have no trouble with Walegrin’s uptown barricades or the

Stepsons’ eastward; and they were not in a negotiating mood, having their

murders recently in mind. Teach the uptowners their vulnerability -show the

bastards who gave the orders that there were those who remembered their last

orders and their last official mistakes-

He jogged along, panting, limping-Ischade’s repair work was thorough, but a long

run still sent pain jolting through him.

Ghosts passed them, headed where they wished to be. They were polyglot and

headed for old haunts, former domiciles, old feuds. Sanctuary might get

pragmatic about its haunts, but the ghosts grew bolder and nervier in these

declining days of the Empire; and these were not the reasoning kind. These had

been walking patrol in Ischade’s service, or Roxane’s; and a few luckless ones

tried to go complain to Roxane about the matter.

Roxane cursed a blue streak (literally) and in a paroxysm of rage conjured a

dozen snakes and a demon, an orange-haired, grayskinned being named Snapper Jo

which ran rampaging up the riverside till it forgot quite what it was about and