Blood ties-- Thieves World 09 by Robert Asprin Page A

hand. Zip walked over there with his new horse, thinking about making some kind of statement by kicking the piled stones apart. Then he changed his mind, swung up on the horse, and loped it out of there. He didn't really care who'd tried to kill him. From the talk he'd heard while in the barracks, neither did the Stepsons: They were more concerned over walls and the weather.
    He'd known that this whole business of putting him at the head of some cease fire coalition was just a roundabout way of executing him. Ritual execution, political style, wasn't a nice way to die. But then. Zip had killed enough to know there wasn't one.
    He rode all day, through the Swamp of Night Secrets, thinking about his chances slim-and his alternatives-none.
    He was dead the minute he announced he wouldn't play the game; if he was dead a week or two later if he pretended to play along, that was a week or two of living he wouldn't have otherwise.
    It wasn't a great shot, but it was the only one he had. He didn't have anywhere to run; he had too many enemies without Tempus added to the list. If he diverged from the "arrangement," he'd have no chance at all of surviving. It would be open season on Zip-for professionals.
    He had one hole card, maybe, in Kama. He couldn't imagine she'd get that close with him for any kind of revenge.
    He wanted to see her, but by the time he got out of the swamp, the sun was going down and he knew he'd better head for Ratfall.
    Though Sync had proved Zip wasn't safe in Downwind, somebody had proved he wasn't safe out at the barracks, and he'd known for a long time that he wasn't safer anywhere than his own abilities could make him.
    So he went to ground in Ratfall, detouring only long enough to lay the arrow that had nicked his ear on the little pile of stones down at the White Foal River's edge.
    He used to bring blood sacrifices there-to something. He wasn't sure what. But it liked them. He thought maybe, if it liked him enough for bringing it presents, it might take of-fense at whoever had shot the arrow (which had his own blood on it still), and do its single servant a favor. Because without a god's help, a piece of alley-grime like Zip didn't have a whore's chance of making it through another Sanctuary night unmolested. Tempus had been right: Sanctuary was for lovers, not fighters, this season.

LOVERS WHO SLAY TOGETHER
    Robin Wayne Bailey
    Chenaya stretched in her bed as the morning sun centered itself in her east window. A mischievous little grin stole over her lips as she thought again about her encounter with Tempus Thales. Not so imaginative as Hanse Shadowspawn, not half so enchanting as Enas Yorl, and the poor madman had been disappointingly quick. If nothing else, she had added one more of Sanctuary's notables to her personal scorecard, and she was glad to have spotted him sneaking about in that gar-den, glad she had decided to intercept him.
    It had, after all, been a boring party until he showed up. Of course, he thought he'd raped her, and that only added to her amusement. The impish grin she wore blossomed into a truly wicked smile. What the poor fool didn't appreciate was the price he was going to pay for his brief pleasure. She sat up languidly, threw back the thin coverlet, rose, and pulled on a sleeveless robe of pale blue silk. On a small, ornately carved table beside her bed lay a bronze comb. She picked it up, began idly to tease it through the thick mass of her blond curls as she crossed the room and sat on the window sill. The sun felt wonderfully warm on her flesh. It would be a scorching day. She shut her eyes and leaned back. Her thoughts turned to the strange meeting in Ratfall. It was the first time she'd met or even seen Zip, the leader of the so
    -called Popular Front for the Liberation of Sanctuary. She smiled at the irony of the name. Zip wasn't particularly popular with anybody right now, and if Sanctuary wanted liberation from anything it was from the bloody terrorist tactics of his