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

the Vulgar Unicorn; and, uptown somewhere among the hellish ruins of last winter's incomprehensible war of magic, whatever
    was left of Haught, the Nisibisi mageling, and of Roxane, the Nisibisi witch.
    Strat had said—the only thing he had said about the matter—that Tempus had flat run out of nerve, turned tail and fled, leaving Crit holding the bag. The very bag that Strat wanted so badly in his grip, Crit had
    thought but hadn't said.

WAKE OF THE RIDDLER 53
    Waiting alone, with no backup (because with Strat gone to Ischade there wasn't a single man he'd trust at his back), down on the slippery dockside hoping his contact would show soon, Crit had had too much time to brood.
    He knew it; he knew himself. For the kind of subterranean work he was trained to do, self-knowledge was a prerequisite. If it weren't, his distress over Strat and the horrid triangle of the two of them and the vampire might well have killed him before this. Might kill him yet, if he
    became too distracted by it.
    He had a job to do. Lots of jobs. He'd made sure of that. He couldn't afford too much time for reflection. This task before him wasn't going to
    be simple, but he needed to occupy his mind with something besides the conundrum of his partner. Tonight, it was finding and restoring Tasfalen,
    whose entire noble family was missing and had been missing far too long. Torchholder wanted the popinjay found. Or wanted Crit killed in the finding, so that there'd be no rival of consequence for Kama's affections
    by the time Molin did whatever he was planning about his current wife. Crit wasn't mistaking Molin Torchholder: in the priest's mind, this was a suicide mission he'd forced on Crit, knowing Crit wouldn't delegate this sort of task to what men he had available. Zip's half-tame militia
    wasn't good for much but swaggering and street fights on their night shift; Walegrin's barracks of day-soldiers soldiered well enough, but knew
    nothing of covert means; and Crit wouldn't ask at the Mageguild—even with the Stepsons' mage, Randal, there, the price of magical aid in Sanctuary was always too high.
    So that left only Jubal's thugs, one of whom Crit awaited. Jubal's faceless horde of enforcers would spit out one with a face tonight, and that one would lead Crit to Tasfalen.
    Once Crit had verified the continued existence of the noble (or lack of ft—a corpse would do), he could get Torchholder off his back. And see Kama. For Crit was about ready to force an end to that particular problem: either bring Kama back with him from the palace, to take up her rightful place in what was left of the Stepsons' barracks, or use her affair
    with Molin to blackmail the priest.
    He wasn't sure which he liked better, but he liked both alternatives dough to bare his teeth in a humorless smile as he waited.
    , And waited. And waited. He stood. He sat. He paced. He leaned. He heard his horse nickering, then pawing the cobbles. He checked its tack, Stroked its nose. Strat's bay horse would have evoked the nicker he'd heard, but Crit didn't see the bay horse anywhere.
    Just as well; the bay made him nervous. Made everybody nervous who 54 AFTERMATH
    didn't like reincarnated horses with spots on their withers through which
    a man could glimpse hell itself if the light was right. Because of the nicker, Crit realized he didn't want to see Strat right now. Not until he'd solved the problem of Kama and Torchholder. Not now, when the gray sky and the gray buildings and the gray dockside melded with the gray horse Tempus had left him, to take the sting out of deserting him.
    The gray was a prize, one of the best from the Stepsons' stock farm up at Wizardwall. Worth more than a block of the Maze, contents included. Worth more than the whole town, to some men's way of thinking. But Crit would have given it to Strat gladly if Strat would only renounce the ghost-horse and the vampire woman who'd conjured it for him . - .
    "Psst," said a voice from behind him and Crit refused to