Blood Ties

AFTERWORD by C.J. Cherryh

I have two sayings about Thieves' World: one of which is that we live there. It's amazing how the writers, sitting at one restaurant table, tend to sound like the council-in-the-warehouse.

ASPRIN/JUBALYHAKIEM: Well, I think we have to get a consensus here.

CHERRYH/ISCHADE/STTLCHO: Look, I haven't forgotten the ten bodies that got dumped on my doorstep. I can't stand still for that. It's a question of professional pride.

ABBEY/MOUN/ILLYRA/WALEORBM: We want the streets quiet.

MORRIS/TEMPUS/CRIT: Hell, it's just a couple of buildings we want to take out.

OFFUTT/SHADOWSPAWN: Can I take care of Haught?

ASPRIN/JUBAL/HAKIEM/ (as appalled silence falls at nearby table) Hey, those people are looking at us.

The other maxim (one Asprin is fond of quoting) is that you write your first Thieves' World story for pay. You write your second for revenge.

I got into this project as a result of a panel at a convention, in which the remarks from one end and the other of the table ran:

ASPRIN: I asked C. J. here to write for Thieves' World and she turned me down.

CHERRYH: You did not.

ASPRIN: (feigning puzzlement) I didn't?

CHERRYH: You never did.

ASPRIN: (more and more innocent) I thought I did.

CHERRYH: Never.

ASPRIN: (with predatory smile, playing to two hundred witnesses) Hey, C. J., how would you like to write for Thieves' World?

As neat an ambush as any in Sanctuary. Thieves' World was already a couple of volumes along, and dropping in on a town with this much going on in it is a ticklish business. So I played my opening gambit very carefully, determined to offend no one.

After alienating the gods of Ranke and Sanctuary, Shadow-spawn, and Enas Yorl, as well as the clientele of the Vulgar Unicorn, and discovering there was war brewing in town, all in my opening story, most of my characters decided to withdraw to somewhere less trafficked for the second round. Mradhon Vis went to Downwind, where absolutely nothing could go wrong, right?

Wrong. It turns out Tempus is moving into this side of town and Stepsons are riding back and forth through Downwind like mad, feuding with the hawkmasks, two of which, thanks to a gift from Asprin, are mine.

We don't plan these things. We just write our pieces and we try to mind our own business until someone drops a real mess in our laps, whereupon we sit in our living rooms like Ischade ticking off the town madmen on her fingers and deciding that she has quite well had it-

You get the picture. Live and let live is not quite the motto of the town; and any time you become tempted to let a round pass, you realize that no one else is going to pass, that your people are going to be sitting targets, and you are going to have to make some preemptive strikes or discover yourself in an insoluble mess.

Then there are the phone calls.

MORRIS/TEMPUS/ROXANE: Look, there's this little matter I couldn't get taken care of.... Could you get rid of the demon?

DUANE/HARRAN: Can Ischade go to hell?

CHERRYH/ISCHADE: Maybe we could silt in the harbor?

PAXSON/LALO: I don't know, the painting just sort of grew on me.

Writing is a profession practiced in locked rooms, in manic solitude. At least we try, between ringing telephones and solicitors at the door. Rarely do writers get the chance to practice their art in groups, or to write each others' characters, or interfere in each others' plots and plans; so part of the success of Thieves' World is that it's a challenge and a new kind of art form for the writers. Asprin and Abbey have invented an entirely new literary form, and an environment which has regularly surprised even the seasoned participants, who, you would imagine, ought to know what is going on and what turns the story will take.

Well, the honest truth is that we have very little idea what will happen. Unplanned war breaks out in the streets. It lurches and falters in settlements, just the way it does in real life, my friends, because certain people in it have to get certain things or believe there is a way out, or they go on fighting. Feuds break out between characters and resolve themselves the way they do in life-with some change in both characters. Characters mutate and grow and turn out to have apsects that surprise even their creator. Moria of the streets has become Moria the Rankene lady; Mor-am is in dire straits and may never recover -or may, who knows, end up well off?

What snags us into this madness? It's those phone calls which arrive and inform you that Ischade has gone to hell, but will be back in time to meet schedule in your section, or that tell you there's something nasty lying in your back garden, or that Strat has this terrible compulsion to come back to Ischade's house even knowing what she is.

We have our peculiar rhythms, too. Morris always moves first; she sends me what she's done, and then I know what I'm going to do. I am occasionally tempted to ask her where she gets her ideas, because try as I will to get started, nothing happens for me until I hear from Morris. Duane and I occasionally discuss things. And Abbey and Asprin and I. And Abbey and Asprin and everybody else, some of whom probably consult with each other and don't tell me or Morris or Duane. As in real-world politics, we don't know all the alliances that exist in this town.

Then the organization happens. Abbey and Asprin fling themselves under the wheels of the juggernaut, writing last, bringing the whole scheming mass of us to coherency and making it sound as if we had always known what we were doing and where it was going, all of which is illusion. Usually we know the season of the year, and the situation at the start. Period. The rest works by rumor and inspiration.

Revenge is part of what makes it work. And partnerships and pair-ups. Writers are a curious lot, with expertise in the eclectic and the esoteric: You want to know how Minoan plumbing worked? Ask me. You want to know something medical? Ask Duane. Hittites? Ask Morris. And so on and so on. Together we make quite an encyclopaedia. And remember -we have to write everyone else's characters, sometimes from the inside, with all their opinions and their expertise- soldiers and wizards and kings and blacksmiths and thieves, oh, yes, thieves. There are only a couple of professions I can think of where you need to know how to pick a lock or jimmy a window: one is writing. Likewise we have to know what a legislative session sounds like or what goes on behind the closed doors of a head of state's office, or inside the head of a painter or a doctor. All of which means that we have to leam something as we go, because we don't know who we may suddenly need to write from the inside, or when we will need the skills of a mountain climber or a sailor. Some of those phone calls we make are fast exchanges of technical information, whether or not, for instance, Sanctuary has a well-developed glass industry, and what technological advances it implies, how hot a fire has to get, how pure the glass can be, what a glassblower's tools are made of and whether this might imply some military development as well that we might wish not to let happen-also what oil they bum and where it comes from and what trade routes, and how they light their rooms and what provision there is in town for firefighting.

"Well," I say, looking at the White Foal River, "that looks like a fault line to me. Has this place ever had earthquakes?"

"Sure looks suspicious," says someone with geological expertise,

"Wait a minute," says Asprin, with the evident feeling that things are slipping out of control.

Being The Authority, he informs us that whatever it is, it is quiescent and will remain that way.

Across the table, several writers exchange thoughtful looks. Now, none of us would violate that rule. After all. The Authority could toss us out. On the other hand, recall that this particular assembly of individuals can pick locks, plumb Min-oan buildings, set bones, and negotiate a ceasefire. So can Asprin, who built this place, and who probably knows more about its underpinnings than we do; and Abbey, who has connections to the gods, is already thinking of ways to head this off which are capable of distracting all of us.

Not a good idea, we decide.

Later.