Squelching a sigh of relief the last of the rant was now over, he stepped before Selda and put his arms around her. "Hush, old woman. I know you're frightened. But I told you, three more jobs and we're done with Sanctuary. I boosted the Jade Cat from the royal caravan just as it left, to square my debt to Bezul the changer, and to get these!" He showed her a leather packet, the contents of which were known to her. "Then I lifted six full purses in one night on the first day of the tourney to give to the caravan master for pa.s.sage back into the Empire and to give to Pel Garwood, to concoct a mix for my chest, so I can do tonight's job without a coughing attack."

"We've already paid our pa.s.sage. Why another job?" she asked him for the uncounted time.

Patient as always he answered her as he always had, "Because we have pa.s.sage only to Ranke, and I want enough after getting there that we can live quietly in something better than this." His hand described the hovel.

"But Lord Shacobo, the magnate?"

"He's the obvious choice.""Then why has no one has ever boosted his place?"

"Hetwick the Nimble did!"

"An' they hung him for it! Or do you think that was a success, just having gotten in for a bit and wanderin'

about?"

"Woman, I've told you all this before. The night before Hetwick danced the gallows, his woman came to see him in his cell and he told her something, something she told me for a price, and it's the reason I'll succeed where Hetwick didn't."

"Oh, and you're a man of vision and genius and Hetwick was just another fool, is that it?"

"Woman, remember who was the greatest thief in the Empire!"

"You old fool, most nights you weren't even the greatest thief in the room!" She held up her hand before his nose and wiggled her fingers. "These beauties boosted a fine number of fat purses in their day, you can't deny it, can you?"

He hugged her fiercely and said, "You did that, old girl, you did that."

"You're not going to tell me what it was Hetwick's woman told you, are you?"

"No. You'll just worry over it." He kissed her cheek. "You remember wot I told you?"

"Yes," she said with frown. "I 'member wot you tol' me. I wait here until the final tournament starts. Then I take what I got"-she waved to a small bundle of personal goods-"and gets to that little inn out by the old ford across the White Foal. Wait there until you come by, just afore dawn."

"I talked to Landers-he runs the Hungry Plowman-and he'll let you bed down under a table in the commons for a padpol or two."

"Then we makes for the fields where they're unloading caravans 'til the tourney stands come down-which we won't be here to see, will we?-and head out to Ranke at first light."

"Remember, as my old mentor said, 'Timing is everything.' "

"Mentor? You never had no mentor. You 'prenticed with Shooky the Basher. Not much craft in bonkin'

a mark over the head wif a club and rifling his purse as he lies on the ground moanin'. Got himself hung, remember?"

"True, but he knew a thing or do, did old Shooky. And he was right about timing; if he'd been out that door after he murdered that bloke one minute earlier, they never would have hung him."

He grabbed up a shoulder bag from a peg by the door and slipped his head through the noose. Picking up the small leather package from the table, he slipped it into a pocket sewn into the inside of his shirt.

He adjusted his rope belt, as if concerned for his appearance, and said, "That's it, then. Remember, something odd's about to happen this afternoon, but it'll be all right. Don't worry about it. Just wait until it's time to go, then head for the Hungry Plowman. I got to go now."

Without another word he slipped through the door and into the alley.

As Jake antic.i.p.ated, the streets were deserted. The final day of the tournament was on high, and if he judged his timing rightly, the crowd was at its maximum capacity this moment, with Master Soldt, acknowledged the greatest swordsman in Sanctuary, if not most of the known world, facing themysterious woman called Tiger. Jake had chanced being spied by the local guardsmen, who might or might not have noticed him-but why take unnecessary chances?-just to see the previous day's matches. The woman was unlike any Jake had ever seen and Jake had seen a lot of women in a lot of different places, from a lot of different places. Under all that armor she looked lithe and slender, and she was a tiny thing. Wonder if she was pretty? he absently added.

Time was he had a practiced eye for beauty. Jake liked women in all forms, tall, short, ample, thin. Dark, fair, it didn't matter much; if they had some beauty in them somewhere, he'd find it. He'd been quite the lad with the girls until he'd met Selda.

Now she'd been something, he thought with a smile, as he scampered down a twisting street leading through the Maze. Not a thin girl, but not thick either. Just right. Brown hair, again not too fair or dark.

Clear blue eyes and an odd bit of a nose, just slightly too big for her face, but again not by too much. He liked it. He had liked her first time he put eyes on her. She must have liked him, as well, for they were in his bed that first night, and she'd been in it every night since for thirty years.

Not that he didn't look at other women. He was a bit past fifty years, but he wasn't dead. He still appreciated a slender leg, rounded rump, or a wicked smile. But no matter how tempting another woman looked, he'd still not found one to match his old Selda.

But as fascinating as the woman called the Tiger was, his reason for attending the semi-final bouts was to see where Lord Shacobo would be. As hoped for, while the otherwise penurious trader might stint in most things, he liked the reflected glory of being located near the great and near-great. His box was the first to the left of the true n.o.bility and must have cost him enough to have made him wince when he paid over the fee to the stadium managers. Jake was certain Shacobo would be back in that box today.

For an absent moment, Jake wondered at how much the Rankans were paying for that thing they had built in the old market and Caravan Square. It was no Imperial arena, but it took a lot of men and lumber to build the d.a.m.n thing. Seemed a shame to start tearing it down tomorrow.

He focused his attention on a particularly problematic corner, the one where five streets, or slightly larger alleys really, almost came together in a muddle, which had a couple of complete blind spots. He'd used it in the past to shake a follower, but it also was a good place to hide in waiting. He automatically moved to the left side of the street, moved diagonally across the first portion of the three-way intersection, then cut to his left again to enter the farthest turn, giving him the best advantage of seeing someone before being seen.

No one was there.

As he antic.i.p.ated, everyone who could was at the tourney this day. When first hatching his plan to rob Shacobo's, he had planned on being there already, lurking in some nearby shadow as the fat merchant, his wife, dimwit son, obnoxious daughter, and far-too-pretty serving girl all marched off to their precious little viewing box.

But a pa.s.sing remark by Heliz, the linguist of Lirt, made one night at the Vulgar Unicorn had eaten at the corner of his memory for a week. He had found an old text a while back while boosting a trader's stall at the Market, and had almost tossed it. But by chance he had not, and when he presented it to Heliz, in his office above Lumm the staver's, he thought the man would melt with pleasure. The odd doc.u.ment was something Heliz called a Beysib script, whatever that was, but he certainly seemed thrilled to have it.

In exchange for it, he had explained his pa.s.sing remark to Jake, who had instantly put his mind to how he could turn this to his advantage. Soon after the tourney ended, there would be an eclipse.Jake had managed to get a good ten minutes of solid information out of Heliz, which wasn't all that bad considering it had come embedded in about two hours of sarcasm, insult, and condescension. Jake wished Heliz had something worth stealing, because he loved victimizing people who a.s.sumed they were smarter than he, simply because he was a thief, or less well born, or older, or for any reason.

Jake the Rat was many things, but stupid wasn't one of them.

Jake had seen a couple of lunar eclipses and once, when he had been a very young boy, a solar one, but Heliz said none had been seen in Sanctuary since the oldest living man's grandfather had walked the streets, and had mentioned that "most of the locals will probably run around like demented chickens, in antic.i.p.ation of the G.o.ds' wrath." Heliz talked like that.

He was from the heart of the Empire, too, as far as Jake could tell. Not Ranke from his accent, but somewhere close by. Jake had him pegged for a Crimson Scholar, except word was, they'd all died in some sort of violent explosion. He was, Jake was certain, capable of magic, simply because being around those people made Jake's b.u.t.t itch, and Heliz made Jake's b.u.t.t itch.

Jake had heard Heliz's sister had been in town looking for him yesterday. He turned the corner and walked quickly past Lumm the staver's place. Noticing the still smoking fifty feet of destruction before the building, Jake judged that family reunion hadn't gone as well as it could have.

Jake pushed aside the thought. Time to turn his full attention to the job. He reviewed what he knew of the locks at Shacobo's and patted the picks he had purchased from Bezul, then remembered what Hetwick's widow had told him for a price: Beware of the dog. Patting the bag of meat gleaned from the slaughterhouse next door, Jake grinned. "No problem," he muttered.

"Nice puppy," Jake said for the fiftieth time to the slavering monster below. The thing sort of looked like a hound, big and loose jointed, covered in dark brown and black fur, but it had a square muzzle and ears that perked up.

The creature-Jake refused to think of this monster as merely a dog-had an incredible array of teeth, all currently set to remove large hunks of Jake from Jake's bones.

The caper had gone exactly as Jake had antic.i.p.ated. He had gone through the locks like a blade through parchment. He was standing in Shacobo's lock room within ten minutes of entering the building and had selected several items to remove; he concentrated on the small and portable, while less experienced thieves might have been lured by the pile of gold coins. He had taken a few of those, for certain, but the jewels and a couple of curios with precious stones would set him and Selda up for life. Not just a modest hut somewhere, but a lovely little home on the river south of Ranke, with a servant, perhaps even two.

He had taken one step out of the strong room when he had confronted the monster. The dog stood flatfooted and looked Jake in the eyes. It growled and Jake understood why Hetwick had preferred being captured. The creature had been trained to keep the invader in the strong room until guards could be summoned.

Feeling brilliant, Jake had produced the meat and tossed it through the door. As he had antic.i.p.ated, the dog's training was overcome by hunger, and Jake had a chance to cut through the door to make his getaway.

What he hadn't counted on was the dog being the size of a small pony and eating everything Jake had brought along in two bites. Jake had earned about a thirty second headstart.

So now Jake hung from a pole used to run out laundry from a second-floor window. The rear wall of theestate was temptingly close, a mere twenty feet away, and his only means of transverse a slender cord used to hang the wash. Jake kept his knees tucked up as the dog would occasionally leap and take a bite at Jake's exposed toes, which could feel hot breath.

Not having the wit to call up the appropriate G.o.d for this circ.u.mstance, Jake started praying to all of them. He vowed as soon as he got to Ranke he would make the rounds and put a votive offering on every alms plate in every temple of every G.o.d, no matter how minor, if he could just get to that wall.

Rea.s.suring himself with the observation that wet laundry was quite heavy and the thin cord was probably a great deal stouter than it looked, he began his move, first one hand then the next.

The dog started barking and Jake was suddenly afraid the noise might alert someone. Then the sky darkened and other dogs in the area also started to howl. Jake knew better than to glance at the sun, but the fading light told him the eclipse was now in progress. That should keep this situation under control a few minutes longer, Jake judged, as he moved slowing across the courtyard.

The dog stopped barking and looked up, his eyes fixed upon Jake. For no better reason than hedging his bet, Jake crooned, "Nice puppy! Sweet puppy! Puppy want to play?"

For an instant, Jake swore he saw the dog's tail twitch as if on the verge of a wag, then the creature's hackles rose and it growled.

"Oh, you don't mean that, puppy-wuppy," said Jake, sounding like a demented granny. "You're a nice puppy." Jake glanced over and saw he had reached the midpoint, which meant the cord was now hanging at its lowest point.

The dog leaped. Jake jerked his knees up around his chin and could feel the air move below his toes as jaws like iron traps slammed shut less than an inch away.

"Nice puppy!" Jake almost shouted. The dog turned in a circle, looking almost playful, before attempting another leap. Snap! went the jaws and again Jake could feel the creature's hot breath.

And in that instant the cord broke.

Jake fell, b.u.t.t first, his knees around his chin, as the dog hit the ground. The dog looked up just in time to see Jake's posterior blot out the sky, the instant before Jake landed upon its head.

The hound's jaw slammed into the stone courtyard surface with a lethal-sounding crack, and Jake felt the shock run up his spine, rattling his teeth.

For a second, Jake sat on the dog's head, unsure if he should move, then he scrambled off the creature as quickly as possible.

Could it be? Was the hound from h.e.l.l dead?

Not waiting around to find out, Jake stood up and did a quick inventory. All his body parts were still attached and in their proper locations, so he turned and made for the wall.

Just as he reached it, he heard a woof from behind. Spinning, he saw the still dazed dog advancing on him, a low inquisitive chuff sound coming from its throat. Grinning, Jake said, "Nice puppy!"

That's when the dog leaped.

"You could have told me we was walking," scolded Selda as she trudged along behind a rug merchant'swagon, an hour after sunrise and their departure from Sanctuary.

"I didn't have enough coins to buy better at the time," Jake answered. "I'll see what I can do about arranging a ride when we break for the midday meal."

"Harumph," she answered. After a minute, she said, "And I still don't know why you had to bring that along." Her thumb stabbed behind them.

Jake tugged on the laundry cord he had tied around the dog's neck after it had leaped toward him and started licking his face. "Look, old woman," said Jake. "You want to go back and tell that beast he can't come with us?"

She glanced back at the huge dog, its tongue lolling out of its mouth as its tail wagged.

"Nice puppy," Jake crooned and the dog's tail wagged even faster.

"What are we going to feed it? It's licking its chops and eyeing the horses!"

"We'll buy some meat," said Jake. "We have means."

"We do?"

"Better than I thought, old woman. We'll find a proper fence in Ranke, who'll give us more than young Bezul ever would, and we'll be set for life. Riverside house and a servant, m'gal."

"A servant?" she said in wonder.

"Like I told you, one to go and we're done." He grinned. "Well, we're done."

"Wot we going to call that thing? Ain't no proper puppy."

" 'Shacobo' seems fitting?"

"But what if someone who knows him in Sanctuary shows up in Ranke and puts it all together?"

"Slim chance, but then maybe you're right. What about calling him 'Hetwick'?"

"Never liked Hetwick, or his wife."

So they trudged along until the midday break, arguing over what to call the dog, who remained "Puppy"

until he died of old age seven years later. Selda and Jake actually wept when they buried the beast in the garden behind the riverside house.

And they lived happily ever after, until a thief name Grauer broke into Jake's strong room and stole most of his wealth, and Jake had to steal it back-but that's another story.

Afterword.

Lynn Abbey.

Who says you can't go home again? When home is the city named Sanctuary, anything is possible.

A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since that Boskon dinner in 1978 when Thieves' World was conceived. We had a great run-twelve anthologies, a couple of novels, some graphic adaptations, games, and some great music you never got to hear-and then times were changing, not just in publishing, but in private lives as well.We boarded up Sanctuary in the late 1980s-put it in "freeze-dry mode" with the hope that the great wheel of fortune would spin around again. Without going into great detail, Robert Asprin and I got married not long after Thieves' World began and we separated a few years after it ended. By the time the divorce was final, the great wheel had pretty well come off its axle and, when asked, I'd answer that pigs would fly before there'd be another book with Thieves' World on the cover.

Bob moved to Houston, then New Orleans. I moved to Oklahoma City, then central Florida (odd places both, for someone who hates heat and humidity). Years went by and my answer never changed. Then it was May 1999, and I came home to find my answering machine lit up like a Christmas tree: A line of tornadoes of unprecedented strength had ripped through the Oklahoma City area. My stepdaughter and friends were all calling in to tell me they were safe-for which I was most thankful-and to inform me that along with the roofs and the trees, the cattle and the cars, there were pigs in the air and I had never said they had to walk away from their landings.

Oops.

I guess I'd started thinking about it a year or so earlier, when I realized I was signing (and resigning) battered copies of Thieves' World and Tales from the Vulgar Unicorn that were older than the readers handing them to me. Maybe a reprint program, I'd thought, but no publisher was interested in reprints only. Frankly, they weren't interested in resurrecting anything that seemed as tightly a.s.sociated with the 1980s as, oh, Michael Jackson and Ronald Reagan.

Enter Brian Thomsen, editor extraordinaire and proverbial longtime friend of the family, and Tom Doherty, who'd been the man-in-charge at ACE Books when Thieves' World began its run and is now the man-in-charge at TOR. Brian was looking for a project he could sink his fangs into and Tom, in a moment of weakness, agreed that if anyone was going to bring back Thieves' World it should be TOR-but not as a reprint program.

They wanted new material-new anthologies that got back to Sanctuary's grungy roots and a novel (a "James Michener-esque epic novel"-it said so right at the top of the contract) that would recap all twelve previously published anthologies while leveling the playing field for the new stories. I, of course, would write the "Michener-esque epic novel" that we honestly thought Tor would be publishing in the first half of 2001.

Oops.

Thieves' World has always been a lot like an iceberg: What's visible on the surface is only a fraction of what's really there. Contracts had to be written and rewritten. The authors who wrote for the original incarnation had to sign off on the parameters of the new one. New authors had to be selected, invited...

persuaded that their professional lives would not be complete until they'd written a story set in the renovated Sanctuary. And there was that little matter of turning more than fifty often contradictory (often deliberately contradictory) stories into that "Michener-esque epic novel."