The Dead of Winter- - Thieves World 07 (41 page)

Well, no bomb came. Instead, Janet ignored my wicked ploy. She was busy writing her Tempus novel. Beyond Sanctuary. They keep telling me that Vashanka has been reborn as an infant. Hmp. Silly dam' dodge, that; he isn't even dead!-just to keep alive a krrf-head whose body heals all wounds. (Donation Alphons Francois de Sade should have thought of that. Such a person is the Perfect Victim, while by the end of the Marquis's Justine, she must have been covered all over in scars!)

Ils Saves!

This was not at all what I intended to write as After-word; it was going to be a sort of history, with snippets from our back-and-forth letters. This is what poured out, though, the same way the Hanse stories have: at the last minute (or later, with Lynn & Bob pulling out their hair in great ghastly gobbets) in a rushing beery flow of hand-scribbled phrases during which I never think of style, that thing "teachers" talk about because they aren't writers and can't think of much else except maybe the mech-aniwockle dumbness of 7-2 or 5-3

paragraphs, whatever that are or them is. Somehow the style is always about the same, because that's the way the Hanse stories write themselves. I reckon we can live with this: call it an Afterword, which is "epilogue" or even "epilog" in a living language.

Yours relatively truly takes credit for all the gods of TW; for Kadakithis's name and his becoming a person or nearly; for the detailed map of the Inner Maze that you've never seen; for Molin Torchholder and Sly's Place; and of course for the Great Pyramid, the economic recovery, and safety pins.

"And who," the witch begged of the mirror on the wall, having nervously noticed a new line in her face, "is the fairest of them all?" The mirror sneered again. "Is Sophia still alive, dummy?" Yeah, you're right: the inspiration for "The Veiled Lady" is Sophia Loren, who is married to a short, homely, balding and dumpy man. Never mind the inspiration for Jodeera's name. Wonder what's going to inspire me next time?

Name of Father Ils, how I wish I'd had the idea for Thieves' World to begin with! Then I too could be rich and famous with a basement full of mailsacks and get to exert the editor's prerogative of writing the Afterword to Thieves' World

# 7.

-Andrew Offutt

KY, USA

20 November 1984

(Note to Bob and Lynn: Try to get that Big Word in the last sentence spelled right.)