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

clinically, while he ducked staggering away with a boy’s weight slung over his

shoulder. That’s an expert handling that sword, that is. Past that mere thought,

and a flash of pained concern for the arrow-shot boy he’d been trying to save,

there was no time for anything but confusion.

The confusion had been a fixture in his mind lately. For one thing, the real

Stepsons had come back, and Harran was not finding their return as funny as he’d

once thought he would. He hadn’t reckoned on being counted a traitor for

supporting the false Stepsons in the true ones’ absence. But he also hadn’t

reckoned on having so much trouble with his lost goddess Siveni when he summoned

her up. Her manifestation, and her attempt to level Sanctuary-foiled by the

clubfooted beggar-girl he’d been using as idiot labor and “mattress”-had left

him confused to a standstill. Now Mriga the idiot was Mriga the goddess, made so

by the same spell that had brought Siveni into the streets of Sanctuary. And,

involved in the spell himself, Harran had briefly become a god too.

But his short bout of divinity had made the world no plainer to him. Suddenly

bereft of Mriga, who had taken Siveni and gone wherever gods go-stricken by the

loss of a hand during the spell, and by its abrupt replacement (with one of

Mriga’s)-Harran had retreated to the fake Stepsons’ barracks. He had taken to

wearing gloves and drinking a great deal while he tried to think out what to do

next with his life. Somehow he never seemed to get much thinking done.

And then the real Stepsons stormed their old barracks, slaughtering in