Storm Season- - Thieves World 04 by Robert Asprin

would follow him. His mind seethed with possibilities, and murder was one. -For less than the silver, any one of them would kill. He sensed that. But there was the chance too that the hire was real: their casualties were real, and they could not get too many offers now.
    He padded as quickly as he could toward his own territory down the main road, down which the last few stragglers moved, homeless and searching, muddle-minded, some, which kleetel left of one when its use had been too long; or moving with purpose it was unwise to stare at. He strode along in a world of faceless shapes and lightless buildings, everything anonymous as himself. Hooves sounded in the dark, moving in haste, and in a moment the streets were clear, himself among the lurkers that hid along the alleys: a. quartet of riders passed toward the bridge, Stepsons, Tempus' men. They were gone in a moment and life poured back onto the street.
    So the business out by Jubal's estate continued, and Tempus settled in. A shiver ran down Mradhon's spine, for the inconvenience of the neighborhood. He wanted out-desperately he thought of Garonne-if he had had the funds. But they hunted spies. War with Nisibis was on them. Any foreigner was suspect, and one who really happened to be NisibisiMost especially he avoided the main ways after that, grateful for the anonymity of Mama Becho's, which lay off the main track the carts and the riders took. Something in him shivered, remembering the hire he had just accepted, pay which had set him against the new occupants of the estate. Tempus' men hunted hawkmasks as they hunted spies and foreigners; and gods knew it was no prettier way to go.
    The alleyways unwound, almost home territory now. A beggar or two always huddled near Mama Becho's, one wakeful enough tonight to put out a claw and want a coin a true cripple, perhaps, or too sick to make the bridge to richer streets. A dry spitting attended his lack of charity.
    Then for one heart-stopped moment he heard a sound behind, and turned, but there was nothing but the moon on a muddy alley and the tilt-walled buildings leaning together like some fever dream of hell in the dark.
    Followed, he thought. He quickened his pace, on the verge of home, and came to the alleyway by Mama's, where the drinking continued, and the hangers-about-the door still loitered, but fewer of them. He walked into that alley and Tygoth was there, to his relief, a hulking stick-carrying shadow making his rounds.
    "It's Vis," Mradhon said.
    "Huh," was Tygoth's comment. Tygoth rapped against the wall with his stick.
    "Walk with you?"
    Tygoth did, taking his duty seriously, rapping the wall as he went, rapping at the door of his lodgings, opening the door for him like the servant of some palatial home, across from the lighted parchment window that was Mama Becho's own.
    "Coin," Tygoth said, and held out his hand. Mradhon laid the nightly fee in the huge palm, and the sturdy fingers closed. Tygoth went into the room and fetched the little light from its niche by the door, stumped away with it to Mama Becho's back door and opened that to light it from that inside, then came back again, shielding the flame with his monstrous hand. With greatest care he went inside and set it in its place.
    "Safe," Tygoth declared then, a murmurous rumble, and walked off tapping his stick against the walls.
    Mradhon looked after that shambling shadow, then went in and barred the door. Safe.
    So he had a bit of silver to bolster his dwindling coppers, and a bar on the door for the night, but it was in his mind that this Mor-am and Moria would change their lodgings tonight and not show up again.
    He hoped. It was more surety than he had had the day before. In the safety of his room he pinched out all but the nightwick and lay down to his sleep, hoping for sleep, but knowing that there would be dreams. There always were.
    * * *
    Ischade, the wind whispered coming from the river and riffling through the debris outside. He dreamed