Robert Asprin - Shadow Of Sanctuary

'Shalpa,' Hanse swore silently, and with chilling appropriate-ness - let himself ever so carefully down from his vantage with one chill throbbing about his neck and another one travelling his backbone. So Enas Yorl wanted a report. And the gods of old Ilsig were plundered by a foreign witch while the Rankans moved in with their new lot of deities down the block, with scaffolds and plans and the evident intent of overshadowing the gods of Ilsig. Prince Kithakadis and the Rankan gods; and: 'recommended', Enas Yorl had said, sending a thief out to keep watch on this god-thievery.

Hanse flattened himself back into his concealment with a sense of a world amiss, of matters under way no mere thief wanted part of. He had mixed in Kitty-Rat's connivances once to his discomfort ... but now, now it was possible Enas Yorl had a side of his own.

And hired help.

A footstep towards the temple front warned him: he crouched low and held his breath - Ischade, rejoining Mradhon Vis. 'Done,' he heard her say; and 'here's an end. Let's be gone, and quickly.'

Of course an outsider like Mradhon Vis - of course a man not Ilsig, who would have no scruples in killing Ilsig priests or robbing Ilsig gods.

In the Emperor's hire? Hanse wondered, which was far too much and too clear wondering for a thief; the sweat was coursing down his ribs despite the misty chill of the air. He was not sure at all now what side Yorl was ... and it occurred to him to tear the amulet from his neck, drop it in the alley and run.

But how far? And how long? He thought a second and chilling time of the wizard and his connections; recalled Sjekso; and Kithakadis himself ... a prince of some small gratitude for services a thief had rendered; but more than dangerous if certain rumours started, that Yorl could spread ... effortlessly.

The pair headed back the way they had come, and he set out after them, seeing no other course.

More and more bizarre, this midnight wandering. Cappen went rigid in his hiding place first as the quarry passed, and then as he caught sight of Hanse again, padding after them as before.

So there was no encounter. They went out and they did murder and came back, while Hanse followed after having seen what Hanse had seen ... very unlike Hanse. Cappen suspected motives ill-defined, gave shape to nothing, only sure it was something more than Hanse's private impulses that moved him now. He recalled the way in which the woman had passed a roomful of patrons at the Unicorn, in which she and her companion went where they liked on the street, in which guards died like slaughtered cattle...

The relief Cappen felt at seeing Hanse mobile and not lying stiff in the alley further on, gave way to a horror at the silence of all that was done, the neatness of it; and a subtle dread of this pacing about the streets. The procession which had started to be humorous and might have become yet more so on the return ... now assumed a thoroughly macabre character, such that he forbore to contact Hanse when he had, for one instant, the chance. Hanse's face too, in the small glimpse he had had of it as he passed, had the wan, set look of terror.

They went back very much the way they had come, and long before they came close to the alley behind the Unicorn, Cappen had a sure idea that such was their destination.

6

The pair of them went well enough where Hanse had figured they would go, in the alley behind the Unicorn. He held back as he had been doing and kept them in sight... wished anew that he had had the chance during the day to creep up to Ischade's lodgings and have a closer look, but she had been there most of the day, and daylight and the fact that it was the second storey gave him no easy options. When she had left, towards evening, he had been obliged to follow, having no real idea other motives and habitual movements ... and well that he had followed, since this evening had turned out as it had.

But there was still, as there had been, a presence on his trail -and that was Cappen. Hanse knew that much, had caught sight of the minstrel out of his own territory and seen him more than once on streets where Cappen had no business being.

And who had hired Cappen?

It was not Cappen's custom to take employment; he diced and he sang songs; but never this kind of work. He was not suited for ft. Enas Yorl could have hired better. Far better.

But this Ischade -

Hanse refused the idea. And yet constantly nagging at him in that small nook of his mind where he tucked coincidences, was Cappen's presence that morning. But Cappen had been in the game too, like Mradhon Vis and Sjekso; and Cappen had get off with some profit, as Cappen usually did.

Cappen bought him a drink; and that was uncommon, that Cappen had that much to spare. But it was in Cappen's nature to play the lord and throw about what he had.

Cappen had ducked out of the Unicorn a scant moment before the blind man came, having assured Hanse's presence there with that drink... but that then circled the matter back to Yorl, where it made least sense.

Hanse forbore another glance over his shoulder, reckoning that even Cappen's unskilled stalking might pick that up. He kept his attention towards the pair in front of him, kept moving where necessary - watched them reach the steps and both of them start up the stairs towards the lady's lodgings, without any exchanged movement which might mean the passing of the loot.

Now ... now while the noise of the creaking stairs gave him sound to rely on in tracking them - he had his chance, and took it, a path he had marked out that afternoon. He carefully set his hands on a barrel, levered himself up into a tuck and sought the next level of debris, noiselessly, one after the other, holding his breath as one foothold rocked and the next proved stable.

He made the roof as the pair made the door and opened it; he edged along it with the greatest care - a wooden roof at least, and not the tiles some fancied uptown. Even now he would have preferred to be rid of the boots and to go barefoot, as he had worked in the days before prosperity, but he figured there was no time for such. He edged his way around the ell of the roof on wet shingles and out on to that section over the room itself.

There was noise inside, a sharp, animal sound which lifted his nape hairs and made him less certain he wanted near this place at all. He edged closer to the very edge of the eaves, put his head over, viewing upside down where only parchment covered the window and formed a scant barrier to sounds and voices from inside. He heard footsteps clearly, heard a napping sound... and suddenly a jolt and crack as an aged shingle snapped in two under his hand on the edge. It flung him overbalance, but he caught himself on his belly, spread-eagled on the roof. 'Hssst!' he heard from inside, and he swore silently by appropriate gods and began to work his way hastily back from the vulnerable edge.

His hands, his legs went numb; his breath grew short and the talisman at his throat became a lump of ice and fire. Magic, he thought, some warding spell flung his way ... he dealt with wizards; and it was a trap. He strove to make his limbs do what they well knew how to do: carefully he put a knee on a wet and worn row of shingles on the slant.

One broke; he slipped, a rattling loud career down the layered face of the shingles, his feet swinging into empty air, his wild final thought that if he fought the fall now he might go head downwards or on to his back. He let go, slid, expecting a dizzying long drop -the barrels, maybe, the debris of the alley might break his fall and save his back and legs -

He hit the edge of the porch unprepared, a shock that sent him tumbling a further few feet down the stairs backwards - a ridiculous lot of noise, his battered mind was thinking through the pain, an embarrassing lot of noise...