Thieves World 8 – Soul of the City by Asprin, Robert

squatted down, gray gangly limbs akimbo in submission. “Roxane?” said the fiend

again. “Call Snapper, did you? Here I be, for what? Some murder? Murder do,

tonight?”

And the eagle cocked its head at him and let out a screech no fiend could

misconstrue, then took wing and flapped by him, out the door, leaving him

bleeding from a flesh wound made by claws much sharper than his own.

Muttering, “Damn and damn and murder damned,” the fiend scuttled after her.

Looking askance at her black shadow in the moonless sky. Snapper Jo chewed a

long orange lock of hair in dark frustration. To be human was his wish; to be

free of Roxane his hidden dream. But sometimes he thought he never would be free

of her.

And the trouble was, at times like these, he didn’t care. He was hungry as the

night for blood; just the thought of carnage made him giddy.

So he scuttled on, following the eagle in the night, cackling wordlessly under

his breath as Roxane, in eagle’s guise, led him toward the winter palace, then

lost him in Shambles Cross when he came across a fresh and bleeding morsel of a

corpse.

Jihan was alone with the two children, her scale-armor discarded, cuddling one

to either breast on Niko’s bed in the nursery when the snake, man-sized but

silent, slithered in.

The Froth Daughter was not human, but she was lonely. Tempus was no man for

progeny-he considered nothing but himself.

Jihan had wanted children of her own and been refused by him. Now, thanks to her

father, fate, and Niko, she had two fine boys to care for-one of them Tempus’s