Free Shadows of Sanctuary978-0441806010 by Robert Asprin, Lynn Abbey Page B

army, maybe - I ask you, sir ... I have need to find someone ... with that skill. To guard me. I have to come and go hereabouts. I could pay, if you could find me someone like yourself, a friend maybe - who might serve...'
    'At your service,' Sjekso said, with a second grander flourish. 'I know my way around.'
    But the woman never turned to see. Her eyes were all for Mradhon, dark and glittering in the night. 'He's one, in fact, I might sometimes want protection/row. - Do you know someone who might be interested?'
    Mradhon straightened his back and took a superior stance. 'I've served as bodyguard now and again. And as it happens, I'm at liberty.'
    'Ah,' she said, a hand to her robed breast, which outlined female curves in the shadow. And she turned at once to the confused villain, who had taken advantage of the moment to slip towards the shadows and the corner. 'No, no, wait. I did promise you this evening. I had no right to put you off; and I want to talk with you. Be patient.' - A glance then back, her hand bringing a purse from beneath her robes. She loosed the strings and took out a gold coin that caught Mradhon's whole attention, the more so when she dropped the heavy purse into his hand. Only the one coin she held, it winking colourless bright in the moonlight, and she held that up like an icon for Sjekso's eyes - another look at Mradhon:
    'I lodge seventh down from this corner, the first steps you'll come to that have a newel on the rail: on your right as you go. Go there. Learn the place so you can find it tomorrow morning, and be waiting there for me at midmorning. I'll be there. And the purse is yours.'
    He considered the weight in his palm, heavy as with gold. 'I'll find it,' he said, and, less than confident of the situation at hand: 'Are you sure you don't want me to stay about?'
    Black brows drew together, a frown uncommonly grim. 'I have no doubts to my safety. - Ah, your name, sir. When I pay, I like to know that.'
    'Vis. Mradhon Vis.'
    'From-'
    'Northward. A lot of places.'
    'We'll talk. Tomorrow morning. Go on, now. Believe me, that the quarrel wasn't what it seemed.'
    'Lady,' he murmured - he had known polite company once. He clenched the purse in his fist and turned off in the direction she had named - not without a backward look. Sjekso still waited where he had fixed himself against the wall; but the lady seemed to know he would look back, and turned a shadowy look on him. Mradhon moved on quickly and further along the winding way, stopped and anxiously shook out the purse into his hand, a spill of five heavy pieces in gold and half a dozen of silver. Hot and cold went through him, like the shock of a blow, a tremor through things that were ... A second glance back, but buildings had come between him and the woman and her bought-boy Sjekso. Well, he had hired to stranger folk and no few worse to look on. He gave a twitch of his shoulders at that proceedings back there and shrugged it off. There was gold in his possession, a flood of gold. His gallantry had come from his own poverty, from one look at the woman's fine clothing and a sure knowledge that Sjekso Kinzan was all hollow when pushed. And for that gold in his hand he would have waited in the alley all night, or beaten Sjekso to fine rags, no questions asked.
    It occurred to him while he went that it might involve more than that, but he went, all the same.
    The woman looked back at Sjekso and smiled, a fervid smile which made wider and wider chaos of Sjekso's grasp of the situation. He stood away from his wall and
    - sobered as he had been in the encounter, deprived of the vaporous warmth of the wine in his blood - still he recovered something of anticipation, re estimated his own considerable animal charm in the light of the lady's sultry dark eyes, in the moonlike gleam of the gold coin she held up before him. He grinned, his confidence restored, stood. easier still as she came to him - it might have been the wine after all, this new blush of