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

had given him any peace over it since. It was that, as much as the conclusion

that the Temple teachers didn’t know how to train him, that had driven him home

again.

“How did you get that?” he asked sourly. “I thought His High and Mightiness kept

it closer than an Imperial pardon.”

“I borrowed it,” said Randal enigmatically. “Look at it!” He brandished the

paper under Lalo’s nose. “Do you understand what you have done?”

“That’s what Molin kept asking me-you should talk to him!”

“Perhaps I can understand your answers better than he did …”

“The answers are all no!” Lalo said harshly. “I don’t know what happens if you

destroy one of my portraits. I’ve never tried to animate a portrait, and I’m not

about to start experimenting. Not after the Black Unicorn…. You’re the mage

you tell me what I can do!”

“Perhaps I will,” Randal said winningly, “if you’ll help us in return.”

“Us? What ‘us’?” Lalo eyed him warily. Badly as he needed knowledge, he was even

more desperately afraid of being used.

This time it was Randal who hesitated. “Everyone who wants to see some kind of

order restored to Sanctuary,” he said finally.

“By kicking out the Fish-eyes? My daughter serves one of their ladies at the

Palace. They’re not all bad-“

Randal shrugged. “Who is?” Then he frowned. “We just don’t want them running us,

that’s all. But the Beysib are hardly the worst of our problems-” His long

finger stabbed at the woman’s face in the picture, that searingly beautiful face

whose eyes were like the eyes of the Black Unicorn.