Free Aftermath- - Thieves World 10 by Robert Asprin, Lynn Abbey

off the uneasy ocean with a chuckle on its breath; Tempus, his Stepsons, and the 3rd Commando have left the town to its fate, ridden off in disgust to new adventures capable of resolution, wars winnable, and glory attainable. Sanctuary is not only doomed. but shunned by its last best hope, the Riddler and his fighters. The wind thinks nothing of whipping the town vacant, of chilling its nobles to the bone, of locking the neutered sorcerers in the Mageguild 50

AFTERMATH
    and the impotent soldiers in their barracks. The wind is Sanctuary's own,
    wind of chaos, gale of gloom.
    Spring has never felt so ominous in the Maze as it does this season, where the first rough gusts blow more detritus than rotting rinds and discarded rags through the streets. The sea wind rattles against the plate
    armor of the Rankan army regulars, clustered in fours as they police what can't be policed. It flaps the dark cloaks of Jubal the ex-slaver's beggars, his private force of cold enforcers who sell protection now at stalls and bars where Stepsons used to trade. It keens toward uptown and beats on the barred windows of the Mageguild where necromancers fear the unleashing of their dead now that magic has lost its power, more even
    than they fear the wrath of whores whose youth-and-beauty spells have worn away.
    And the wind sneaks uptown, where what is left in Sanctuary that is noble tries to carry on, have its parties amidst the rubble left by warring
    factions of the various militias, by witches and warlocks, vampires and zombies, ghosts and demons, worshipers and gods.
    This wind is of the sort you may remember, coming out of a gray wet sky which makes an end to boundaries and hides horizons. Sounds seem to come from nowhere, go nowhere. There is no distance and no proximity, no future and no past. There is no warmth, even from the one beside you. When you reach out to take a hand for comfort, that hand is clammy as the grave. And the stirring of life these gusts portend is only
    legend, on such a day, as if the wind itself is here to reconnoiter the very
    earth and then decide if the world deserves another spring. Or not.
    Down by the docks, alone, Critias ponders that question. Do the beggar armies deserve the warm sun on their face? Do the vampire's undead, over in Shambles Cross, need the kiss of sunlight? Can there be a bright morning for the mages, barricaded inside their fortress where dusk always reigns? Will Zip and his nightcrawlers among the Peoples Front for the Liberation of Sanctuary tip the balance for or against the seasons'
    change? And does it matter if spring ever comes to this blighted thieves'
    world again?
    For Tempus has gone, turned his back on everything and everyone. No more eloquent an omen could be taken from a dozen slaughtered lambs with jaundiced livers or the birth of twins joined at the lips. Gone and left . . . what? Left Crit, is what—Crit, in putative charge of the ungovernable, so that Crit's partner, Straton, had turned and walked away without a word. Gone somewhere was Strat, and not to the departed armies, either. No, Strat hadn't gone upcountry with the Riddier, west to meet Niko and then embark on a secret sortie for Theron,

WAKE OF THE RIDDLER
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    emperor of Ranke. Strat, Crit was sure, had gone another way: down to embrace the darkness that was his lover, Ischade the vampire who held sway in Shambles Cross, down to the White Foal River where corpses floated till they waked. Down into hell and this time it wasn't Crit's fault,
    but Tempus's, who usually had more concern for the faring of his men. But there'd been no reasoning with Tempus, who'd pulled the Stepsons out en masse, and the 3rd Commando with them, leaving the town to its own devices.
    Leaving Crit to take responsibility for fair and all. For unfair and all.
    So there was a new pecking order in beleaguered Sanctuary, and one which was fair only to the extent that it insulted and imperiled everyone,
    while satisfying no one.
    Put it down,