Storm Season- - Thieves World 04 by Robert Asprin Page A

looked up at the noise, then went back to its meal. Lalo shuddered, visualizing death as a starving jackal-hound waiting to spring. There must be some other way-he told himself, for however much he hated his life, he feared death more.
    Human shadows slid from the shadows behind him, and he forced himself to walk steadily, knowing that at this hour, in this part of Sanctuary, it was indeed death to be visibly afraid. By daylight the area shared in the quasi respectability of the Bazaar, but by night it belonged to the Maze. From ahead came the sound of drunken song and a burst of laughter. Torchlight danced around the corner followed by the singers, a group of mercenaries emboldened by numbers to make the pilgrimage to the ale casks of the Vulgar Unicorn.
    As the light reached them, the shapes that had followed Lalo slipped back into alleys and doorways, and Lalo himself edged beneath the overhang of a tenement until the soldiers had gone by. He had almost reached Slippery Street now, and the cul-de-sac which for twenty years had been his home. Now, at last, Lalo allowed himself to hasten, for in all the ups and downs of his fortunes there had been one constant, and that was the knowledge that he had a home, and that Gilla waited for him there.
    The third step of the staircase squeaked, as did the seventh and the eighth. When Lalo had become fashionable and had, for the first time in his life, had money, he and Gilla had bought the building in which they lived and repaired, among other things, the staircase. But the stairs still squeaked, and Lalo, hearing the lullaby Gilla was singing to their youngest child halt a moment, knew that she had heard him coming home.
    Breathing a little faster than he would have liked after the climb, he opened the door.
    "You're home early!" The floor quivered beneath her steps as Gilla came through the door of what had once been the adjoining apartment. Lalo saw beyond her the curly head of their youngest, whom they still called the baby even though he was now nearly two years old, and the outstretched arm of an older child.
    "Is everything all right?" Lalo unfastened his cloak and hung it on the peg.
    "It was only a nightmare-" softly she closed the door. "And what about you? I was sure you would be at the Palace all night, imbibing the wine of paradise with all the great ones and their gilded ladies." The carved chair groaned faintly as she sat down and lifted her massive arms to pat the elaborate curls and coils of her hair.
    "There weren't any ladies-" tactfully he passed over the dancing girls, "just an unlikely mixture of military and priests and government men, like a stew from the Bazaar!"
    She set her elbow on the table and rested her head on her hand. "If it was such a bore why did you stay so long? Don't tell me they wouldn't let you go?" Her eyes narrowed and he flushed a little beneath the acuity of her gaze. Deliberately he began to unhook his vest, waiting for her to speak again.
    "Something happened-" she said then. "Something's troubling you." He draped his vest across another chair and sat down in it with a sigh.
    "Gilla, what would you say to the idea of leaving Sanctuary?" Beyond her he could see his first study for the picture of Sabellia which graced the great Temple now. Gilla had been his model, and for a moment he saw a double image of woman and Goddess, and her bulk took on a monumental dignity. She put down her arm and sat up straight. "Now, when we are secure at last?"
    "How secure can anyone be, here?" He hunched forward, running stubby craftsman's fingers through his thinning hair. Then he told her how they had praised his picture, and what the future Lord Raximander had offered him.
    "Ranke!" she exclaimed when he had finished. "Clean streets and quiet nights!
    But what would I do there? All the fine ladies would laugh at me...." For a moment she looked curiously vulnerable, despite her size. Then her eyes met his.
    "But you said he wanted a portrait-Lalo, you