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

can't do that-you'll end up in the Imperial dungeons, not the court!"
    "Even there? Surely there must be some honest men and virtuous women at the heart of the Empire!" Lalo said wistfully.
    "Will you never grow up? We are doing very well as we are-you have a position, people like what you do, and the children will be well-apprenticed and married when the time comes. And now you want to go chase some other dream? Why can't you make up your mind?"
    He put his hands over his aching eyes and shook his head. If only he knew-there was something missing in him, something that he sought in each new thing he tried to do ... What use has it been to have my heart's desire? he thought, if I myself am still the same?
    After a little he heard the chair scrape and felt her coming to him, and sighed again, more deeply, as the strength and softness of her arms enclosed him. She had scented her skin with oil of sandalwood, and he could feel the opulence of her body through the thin silk of the night-robe she wore. It changed nothing, but in her arms he could forget his perplexities for at least a little while. Gilla kissed him on his bald spot and drew away, and with a sense of having made a truce with fate he followed her into the other room.
    * * *
    "Thieves!"
    Lalo jerked upright, shocked from sleep by Gilla's scream and the crash that had shaken the room. Was it morning? But everything was still dark! He rubbed his eyes, still half-drugged by dreams of marble terraces and applause. Shadows moved and feet that no longer troubled to be stealthy thudded on the floor. . . hard hands grasped Lalo's shoulders and he cried out. Then something hit the side of his head and he sagged against the hard hands that prisoned him.
    "Murderers! Assassins!"
    His head still ringing, Lalo recognized Gilla in the voice, and in the dark bulk that heaved upward from the bed to fling another assailant against the wall. Water spattered his cheek and he smelt roses as the vase that had stood on the bedside table flew past him and shattered against someone's skull. Men caromed into each other swearing as Gilla groped forward. There was no sound from their neighbors-he had not really expected it-they would ask their questions when morning came.
    "In Vashanka's name, somebody silence the sow!" In the half-light a drawn sword gleamed dimly.
    "No!" he croaked, gasped in air and cried out, "Gilla, stop fighting-there are too many-Gilla, please!"
    There was a final convulsion, then silence. Flint rasped steel and a little light sparked into life. Gilla lay sprawled like a fallen monument. For a moment Lalo felt as if a great hand had closed on his chest. Then there was movement in the tangle of limbs. Gilla rolled over and levered herself to her feet without spending a glance on the man who had cushioned her fall.
    "Savankala save me, she's squashed me flat . . . Sir, help me-don't leave me here...."
    Sir? But the man on the floor was a Hell-Hound-Lalo recognized him now.
    "I don't understand..."he said aloud, and as he turned the light was quenched and he blinked at darkness again.
    "Carry him," said a deep voice. "And you, woman, be still if you want to see him whole again."
    Sick from the blow and aching from rough handling, Lalo did not resist as they shoved his sandals onto his feet and thrust an old smock over his head and marched him along the empty streets back to the Palace. But instead of rounding the outer wall to the dungeons, as Lalo had dismally expected, they hustled him through the Palace Gate and along the side of the building and down a little staircase to the basement.
    Then, still without a word of explanation, he was thrust into a dank hole smelling of dry rot and full of things to stumble over to shiver, and wonder why they had brought him here, and gnaw his paint-stained fingers while he waited for dawn ...
    * * *
    "Wake up, you Wrigglie scum? The Lord wants to talk to you-" Lalo surfaced, groaning, from a dream in which he had been taken prisoner