Shafralain clicked in his cheek while jiggling his reins of shining red leather. His horse paced a few feet before being reined about so that its rider could face the man from Firaqa.
"Difference! A few coppers! I just heard astonishing honesty! Certainly you are not a banker! But... do you have ten silver coins, Strick?"
Strick nodded lazily.
"We will exchange ten for ten as soon as we reach my home, sir!"
"Your pardon. Noble, but-let's do it now. Just in case."
Shafralain cocked his head. "Just in case of what?"
Strick tapped the armband he had slipped on. Even below his elbow, it was snug. "Just in case your home is in another area of protection."
"Damn!"
"Agreed."
While Fulcris watched, more astonished than nervous now, the two men solemnly exchanged ten coins of silver, while sitting their mounts on a street in Sanctuary. At least they were as discreet as possible about what they were doing. In daylight, in the street. In the town called Thieves' World!
Shafralain turned to Fulcris. "Caravaner," he said, "thank you and good fortune."
Since that was an obvious dismissal, Fulcris touched a finger to his forehead, nodded, and started to rein away.
"Meet you at the Golden Oasis at noon tomorrow for a cup of something," the by now familiar voice said quietly, and Fulcris nodded and smiled as he rode on into a city suddenly sinister. Wearing a cloth brassard as "protection."
Strick was right about the city's "security" zones. By the time they reached the imposing mansion on its walled estate, they had collected another set of armbands and the noble owed more silver to the quiet man from Firaqa.
That was how it came about that on his first night in Sanctuary the foreigner dined with the Noble Shafralain and family in their fine big manse, waited upon by silent servants in beige and maroon. He did an amazingly superb job of telling little about himself and wandering around the outskirts of questions and answers, and he would not stay the night. Shafralain was glad of that, considering his marvelously dimpled daughter's fascination with this unusual and quite mysterious fellow.
Strick knew that. It was precisely why he declined the invitation and departed to walk alone through the darkness of that divided city.
Although Fulcris walked into the Golden Oasis before noon next day, he found Strick there before him. The reason was simple: Strick had spent the night here. He had risen relatively early to descend for breakfast. Since then he had done no talking, asked few questions, and done a lot of listening. Seated privily at a small, shining table in the well-kept main room, the two newcomers sipped watered wine and shared new-gained knowledge of a damned city.
The place was a mess. Too many people had grabbily tried to treat it as their own and, greedy for power and control, indiscriminately introduced too many random factors. Meanwhile supposed rulers, anointed and otherwise, took no firm stand and failed to exercise the control they were supposed to have and wield.
"Sanctuary," Fulcris said, "is ruled by King Chaos."
"Black magic," Strick said morosely, looking ill. "The bot-tomness of humanity's inhumanity."
Sanctuary had not even recovered from or grown accustomed to Rankan rule before the seaward invasion of the folk called Bey sins. Both men had by now seen examples of that strange womanish sea-race with the unblinking eyes equipped with nictitating membranes.
They merely turned up one day "in about a million boats," as a man had told Strick at breakfast, and after that it was essentially "Hello: Welcome to the Beysib Empire!" That turned the city on its ear-on its rear, as Fulcris put it. The Beysin gynecharch, the Beysa, moved herself right into the palace. No one in power did anything. About ten minutes later, out of the gutters crawled something called the Popular Front for the Liberation of Sanctuary: a rabble organization of the unorganizable led by a feisty-swaggery street-lord-and-dolt. His avowed dedication was to throwing out the invaders and their (god-related?) lady boss with her twining snakes and bare jigglies, along with her people's ghastly habits with small, preposterously lethal serpents.
What he and his PFLS accomplished was a great deal of mischief and murder and discomfort among his fellow Ilsigs. The fish-folk nourished.
"Ilsigi," Strick corrected Fulcris. "It's plural and possessive both. No s."
Next came still another group, this one with the unlikely name of the Rankan 3rd Commando, whatever that meant. By then the staggering town was divided some four ways and none of the rival groups could claim to be in charge.
All did.
Meanwhile gods wrangled and rassled, people murdered each other indiscriminately, and consumption of alcoholic spirits increased dramatically. An apparently brutish fellow named Tempus and his herd of nomadic womanless warriors-for-hire stayed just long enough to make things worse for the people they despised as "Wrigglies." Then they decamped, to leave behind a vacuum that led to more struggling and more murder of guilty, guiltless, and innocent alike. Decent, normal citizens cowered about their daily business. As a matter of fact so did indecent and abnormal citizens. Daily business had come to mean a striving to continue living.
To what purpose, none could be sure.
Speaking of the abnormal and indecent, the next advent was of a vampire witch and a necromant-or maybe it was a necromant and a vampire witch; everyone was confused because it was all too much-along with acres of walking dead. The two witches juggled people and Balls of Power and did everything but dice for poor pitiful Thieves' World. The rule of females in Sanctuary became absolute. The founder-god seemed to have abdicated. Tale-tellers tried using female names for their characters, even when they were transparently male. That did not work; the storytellers bogged down and received fewer coins because reality was beyond their imaginative abilities.
Dead men wandered about and acted and a dead horse clop-clopped the streets of a city surely forsaken by all gods. Meanwhile intelligent natives, smart people such as Shafra-lain, got the hell out.
Fifteen or so minutes ago Fulcris had learned why the ruler -the youthful Rankan governor-wasn't ruling; he was busy playing house with the fish-eyed snake-lady with the naked turrets. Even his fellow Rankans sneered at this Kadakithis, calling him by a contemptuous nickname.
All right, so she wore her turrets partially covered these days. Because of the invasion of her striding dykish females, decolletage was very much in vogue. Sanctuarite breasts were bared just short of the nipples-while skirts were long and flounced and saddlebagged.
"I've no-tisssed," Strick said, and Fulcris chuckled.
"Me too. The skirts are stupid and ugly but I do love all the jiggle above!"
A demonic monoceros had run rampant, goring people and wrecking real estate.
"They have a low inn or dive called the Obscene Monoceros," Strick said, shaking his head.
Fulcris stared for a moment, then fell back laughing. "Vulgar Unicorn!" he corrected.
Strick shrugged. "Blackest magic," he muttered, staring into his cup. "This city is damned and abhorred by all gods, surely."
"Yet why do gods or people allow it," Fulcris said, and drank. "You heard about the dead (?) warrior-god-female, of course-some fool revived to terrorize streets and citizenry?"