（外文电子版资料）Fritz Leiber - Ill Met in Lankhmar.pdfVIP

VERSION 1.0 dtd 032600 ILL MET IN LANKHMAR Fritz Leiber Silent as specters, the tall and the fat thief edged past the dead, noose-strangled watch-leopard, out the thick, lock- picked door of Jengao the Gem Merchant, and strolled east on Cash Street through the thin black night-smog of Lankhmar. East on Cash it had to be, for west at Cash and Silver was a police post with unbribed guardsmen restlessly grounding and rattling their pikes. But tall, tight-lipped Slevyas, master thief candidate, and fat, darting-eyed Fissif, thief second class, with a rating of talented in double-dealing, were not in the least worried. Everything was proceeding according to plan. Each carried thonged in his pouch a smaller pouch of jewels of the first water only, for Jengao, now breathing stertoriously inside and senseless from the slugging hed suffered, must be allowed, nay, nursed and encouraged to build his business again and so ripen it for another pluck- ing. Almost the first law of the Thieves Guild was never to kill the hen that laid eggs with a ruby in the yolk. The two thieves also had the relief of knowing that they were going straight home now, not to a wife. Arath forbid! --or to parents and children, all gods forfend! but to Thieves House, headquarters and barracks of the almighty Guild, which was father to them both and mother too, though no woman was allowed inside its ever- open portal on Cheap Street. In addition there was the comforting knowledge that although each was armed only with his regulation silver- hilted thiefs knife, they were nevertheless most strongly convoyed by three reliable and lethal bravoes hired for the evening from the Slayers Brotherhood, one moving well ahead of them as point, the other two well behind as rear guard and chief striking force. And if all that were not enough to make Slevyas and Fissif feel safe and serene, there danced along soundlessly beside them in the shadow of the north curb a small, mal-