Free Uneasy alliances - Thieves World 11 by Robert Asprin, Lynn Abbey

the alley—merchant, to look at him. And distraught.
    "Hell!" Crit threw down his smoke, gathered up his crossbow from the saddle-ties and turned the gray down the alley after him. He had wanted a head or two to crack. He was still in the market.
    The iron gate flared blue as Stilcho brought up against it and pushed, sweating and gasping and desperate. Witchfire stung his hands and ached in his bones, but the gate gave to his push, and he waited for no other invitation from the river house. He ran as far as the gray stone steps before slick stone and his exhaustion betrayed him: he sprawled painfully
    against the edge of the steps and lost his wind, fighting even so to pick
    himself up.
    "Stilcho," Her voice said, and he looked up, heart hammering, at the face that figured in so many of his bad dreams.
    "Stilcho?"
    He gathered himself up to his knees and to his feet, hanging onto the post which supported the roof. He was taller than She was, if he were not
    standing beside the porch and She, on it-But Her presence was overwhelming, so that all the warmth of running leached out of him, and all the months of hiding seemed useless. He was back. He had never been free. He had never owned his soul, from the night Ischade drew it back into him.
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    "The w-watch has M-Moria," he stammered, while the pain in his ribs bent him against the post that was the only thing keeping him on his feet.
    "They've arrested her—"
    "For what?" Ischade asked, a soft voice, precise, and cold.
    "Th-the—" 0 gods, there was no lying to Her. There could not be. He tried for breath and knew what bargain he had come to strike, a bargain for what She already owned. "The gold from P-Peres house. They say she stole it."
    "She did," Ischade said, that same quiet precision. "From me." He had no answer for that. It was truth. Claiming it was himself, claiming anything but what was—might end everything. "You can help her," he said. "P-Please h-help her."
    "She left my employ. She stole from me. Why should I intervene?"
    "I'll come b-back." His lips stumbled around the words. His sou! was cold to the roots, and he met that stare of hers with a vertiginous feeling
    that it was already sliding away from him. "1*11 come back to you." There was long silence. Then:
    "You and Moria," Ischade said. "Love does make fools of us, doesn't it?"
    "Please. Get her away from them."
    "I thought that Moria would come, long since, wanting her fine things and her soft bed. I least of all expected you, Stilcho. And for her sake.
    How touching."
    "My lady—"
    "I confess I have missed you, in more ways and for more reasons than you know." She extended her hand and touched his cheek with the backs of her fingers, a touch which—he could not help it—made him shuddei; and She could not but tell that. "A good man. And hers. Why, Stilcho?
    Debt of honor? Or do you love her?"
    "I 1-1-love her."
    "Poor man." She came close and folded her arms about his head, drew it against her breast. Her breath stirred his hair and he felt her gentle
    kiss, felt the unlikely warmth She gave despite the chill of her hands as
    She lifted his face. "I will help her. I will take you back. I will keep her
    with all the fine things she loves. You as well. And I shall be kinder. You
    know that there are times I cannot be."
    "I know that—"
    "She will be safe enough. I will send a message uptown. We'll do everything by town law. As the aggrieved party, I give her the gold. See?
    Solved. Come inside and I'll give you the paper with my seal on it. You take it to the Palace and tell them if they have any questions about it, come to me. Come. I shan't bite. You know better than that."

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    They had brought the gray horse in from the streets—no one had dared steal it, nor any of its gear; it had wreaked havoc on a storefront
    and kicked a man in the gut before the watch got a couple of riders to herd it up the street and one of them was horseman enough to talk it calm