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

got there—"
    "This ain't no problem, Gorthis, I swear to you it ain't." She bent and dived after the lump in the middle of the laundry, held it up in both her
    hands, because that was what it took. "This here's gold. Gorthis. You don't got to fence it, you don't got to tell anybody, you just use it and
    gimme an account here—look, look—" She set down the clay-covered lump and stripped off her headscarf, shaking out blonde curls the sort that Moria of the streets never had had. "It's still Moria," she said in purest Rankene accents, "But I've come up in the world, Gorthis, Ipass,

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    and I need the money. Do me this favor and I won't forget it when I'm back in society."
    "Magery," Gorthis breathed, wide-eyed. "You been witched."
    "Expensive magery. And it lasts." She picked up the lump and held it toward him. "Lift it. It's a lot of gold. A lot of gold, Gorthis. No plated
    rock, you can test it. You'll have it. Like I said, all you have to do is pay
    me out a little at a time, in silver I can spend without answering questions."
    "Shalpa and Shipri." Gorthis drew out a handkerchief and mopped his face. "They said it was you uptown. They said it was you, Mor-am come in here—trying to pawn this knife, fie said you'd gone uptown."
    "Where is my brother?" She did not want to know, she truly did not want to know. He was still Ischade's creature. He must always be, or suffer in terrible pain. But not to know whether he was living or dead—
    that uncertainty she could not bear.
    "Ain't seen him since. I got no idea. Lemme see that thing." She handed it to him. He hefted it.
    "Damn—" he said.
    "Told you, that's no rock inside."
    He took it over to a work counter, through a barred gateway to a table where a barred shutter gave a little light. She followed, anxious, biting
    her lip as he brought the lump down hard on the table and shattered the clay around it.
    Yellow gold shone in the light, veined with lines of soot.
    "This's melted stuff," he said.
    "It's not stolen." That was half a lie. She clenched her hands together.
    "It came from friends. They died in the riots. But I haven't got a place to
    melt it down. I know you're honest, Gorthis, you always were. You take your old cut, same as you always did, and you pay me out little at a time,
    isn't that fair?"
    "Wait here. I got to get something." Gorthis hurried back past her to the cage door and through it.
    He slammed it shut, and Moria stared at him open-mouthed in shock. But Gorthis was a little crazy about security. He always had been. She was willing to think it was that.
    Until he turned the key and took it.
    "It's my damned gold, Gorthis, I'm not going to steal it!"
    "You ain't going nowhere," Gorthis said, and went and pulled on the cord that rang a bell somewhere way up on the roof, a thief-bell, that called the watch.
    "What are you doing?" she yelled at him. She shook the bars of the

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    gate, hopeless, because Gorthis's locks were always sound. "Gorthis, have you lost your mind?"
    "I'm respectable," Gorthis said. "I been respectable ever since the Troubles started. I ain't getting into it any more, I got too many uptown
    clients." Another series of tugs at the bell rope. "Sorry, girl. Truly I am."
    "I'll tell them! I'll tell them who you are!"
    "Who are they going to believe, huh, girl, when I turn over you an'
    that great lump of gold to the watch? No, missy, this is going to be better
    fer me than fer you. I prove to 'em I changed my ways, that's what this'll
    do."
    "I have friends uptown."
    "No, you don't. I know what yow friends are, girl, the neighbors done talked, the neighbors what got burned out around Peres, uptown. They got a warrant out fer you, hiring mages and all, arson and murder—you know the law doesn't come down on mages, ain't no way the watch is going to arrest them. now, is they? But them as hires 'em, now, they're responsible, ain't they? You go burning the whole town down, come in here with a lump