Blood ties-- Thieves World 09 Read Online Free PDF

first crisis over, Lalo had gone to his worktable and was fussing with his paints, laying them out instinctively as if work could help him control the chaos of his world.
    "Oh Gilla," said Illyra pitifully, "she looks so like my little girl!" Gilla met her eyes, and the S'danzo flushed painfully. At her words, Lalo looked up at her.
    "Where are the finished cards?" he asked then. "There were only a few to be done-if I complete the deck, perhaps you can read some hope for us now!" Illyra stared at him, and her face went stark white against the dark masses of her hair. Then her gaze slid unwillingly to the table in the comer, where the cards were still as she had laid them a week ago. Still unsuspecting, Lalo went to it and stood, looking down.
    Gilla's flesh had turned to stone. Lalo was no S'danzo, but he was a master of symbol, and he had painted those cards. She tried to read his reaction in the slump of his shoulders, the bent head with its thinning, ginger hair. Surely he must know!
    "I don't understand," Lalo said in a still voice. "Did you try to read from an incomplete deck? Is this your Seeing for what is happening now?" Suddenly his hand shot out and he swept the fatal pattern of cards to the floor. He turned and read in their faces the answer to a question he had not even thought to ask.
    "You did this?"
    "I don't know," said Illyra in a dead voice. "We wanted revenge for our children
    ..."
    "Blessed Goddess!" breathed Lalo in disbelief.
    "No-there are no gods, only Power-" Illyra's laugh scraped the edge of hysteria.
    "And you let her-you helped her?" His shocked gaze turned to Gilla. "You still have other children! Didn't you think-"
    "Did you think when you gave life to the Black Unicorn?" she spat back, but her voice broke. She gestured toward Latilla. "Oh, Lalo-Lalo-here is my punishment!"
    "No!" he said furiously. "Wasn't losing one child enough for you? She hasn't sinned! Why should she suffer for our sake?"
    "Strike me then!" Gilla said with a half-sob. Perhaps if he did it would take some of this dreadful pain away.
    Lalo stared, and something in his face seemed to crumple. "Woman, if I could hit you I would have done it years ago." As Gilla buried her face in her hands he turned back to Illyra.
    "You did this-you make it right again. I have the paints here, and the blanks for the rest of the cards. None of us will sleep tonight in any case. You will describe for me the missing cards, S'danzo, and I will paint them, and then you will read them anew!"
    Illyra pushed back her heavy hair with a thin hand. "Limner, I know what I have done," she said dully. "Take up your paints and I will give you the designs, for all the help that will be. I think the gift I abused has gone from me now." Lalo shuddered, but his face remained implacable as he went to his worktable and began to unstopper the little jars of pigment. Gilla stared at him, for it was a face she had never seen her husband wear before.
    "The Seven of Ores is called Red Clay, the card of the potter, the craftsman," Illyra began as Lalo picked up his brush. Then Latilla began to whimper, and Gilla forgot to listen to the S'danzo as she bent to comfort her child. In the night the mobs began to drag the dead and their possessions into the streets to burn them, but the sight of scorching brocades or melting gilt was too much for many of the more lawless, so the devout took to firing houses without checking too closely to see whether anyone were left alive inside. Both the Stepsons and the Third Commando had their hands full trying to keep the flames from spreading into the mercantile section of town, while Walegrin and the garrison guarded the palace from shouting mobs who bayed for the deaths of Prince Kadakithis and the Beysib whore. By the time the sun rose like a red eye upon the horizon, the sky bore a pall reminiscent of wizard weather, but this evil came wholly from mortals, or perhaps from mortality.
    When Lalo finally woke, it took a few disoriented