Robert Asprin - Wings of Omen

Ducking his head. Zip verified what his ears told him: there was a familiar tread on the stairs-the tap, tap, tap of Roxane's heels. And there was the rustling of One-Thumb's muscular thighs as he descended the staircase beside her, his heavy breathing, and her soft low laugh.

These things could be heard so clearly because, throughout the Vulgar Unicorn, everything else was motionless: the Beysibs stood with mouths agape and weapons at ready, but their eyes were glazed.

Customers in mid-cower were entranced between blinks; tears glittered unshed in serving wenches' eyes.

Only Sync and Zip, of the entire ground-floor crowd, were unaffected by Roxane's spell.

And Sync was already pushing away from the wall, his sword drawn and a half dozen Bandaran throwing-stars in his left hand. "Pork-all! What's going on here? Who the pork is she? What's happening?"

Zip straightened up. "Thanks, Roxane. That could have been dicey." Her beauty didn't affect him as it once had- her sanguine skin and drowning-pool eyes couldn't tempt him; but he couldn't let Sync see that fear had replaced the lust he'd once felt for Roxane. Summoning all his bravado, he continued: "This here's Sync; he wanted to meet you, and One-Thumb too. He wants to join the Revolution. Isn't that right. Sync?"

"Right, right as rain." Sync was just a little bit intimidated, Zip thought. But he'd seen Roxane spellbind a man before, and he knew that Sync wasn't immune: the ranger's eyes never left hers.

Well, Zip thought, he asked for it. Maybe we will be allies, after all.

Then Roxane came up, taking both their hands, saying: "Come, gentlemen. I don't want to hold this rabble entranced forever. One-Thumb and I will take you upstairs, and we'll let this slaughter recommence." She licked her lips: she lived on fear, death, and suffering; she was probably having a feast on some psychic plane, just observing the Beysib about their vicious work.

For Sync and Zip, it was a lucky break: she wouldn't feel like teaching them any of her more difficult lessons, Zip was willing-to bet-not tonight.

"Zip, my dear little monster, you've outdone yourself this evening." She caressed his face; above her shoulder One-Thumb's eyes met his with what might have been sympathy.

"This?" Zip gestured around, to the Bey and their hapless prey. "I didn't cause this. He did." Zip gestured to Sync. "He's got a mage on staff, and they worked up a little surprise for the Bey hierarchy, across town. This, I'll bet, is the Beysib reaction-or maybe just the beginning of it."

"It is, it is, indeed, just the beginning." Roxane was inebriated with whatever carnage her soul-sucking talents had been treated to this evening. "A half dozen, no less, of the high-ranking Bey bitches are dead, turned to waxen statues in a Tysian mage's museum." She smiled. "And these sheep," her hand encompassed the room, "soon will be dying the slow and horrible death of Beysib retribution."

She caressed Sync's hand, the one with the stars in it; he looked at her like a starving man at a laden feast-day table. "And," she continued, "since Zip assures me I've you and yours to thank, we'll have a long talk about our mutual future-I'm quite certain. Sync of the Rankan 3rd Commando, that we're going to have one. I may even give you Randal's life, a gesture of appreciation, an indication that we can and will work well together, an introductory gift from me to you."

As if from a dream. Sync roused: "Right. That's very good of you, my lady. I'm yours to command."

"I'm sure you are," Roxane agreed.

Zip knew Sync didn't realize how true what he'd said was likely to be. Not yet, he didn't.

"Would you mind," Sync asked Roxane as they moved among the frozen and the doomed, "if I slit these Beysibs' throats on our way out? It's as fair as the chance the Bey will give these innocents, if I don't." The big soldier's eyes sought Zip's.

Zip said, "It'll give the Revolution credibility."

Roxane paused, pouted, then brightened: "Be my guest. Fillet fish-folk to your heart's content."

Behind her, One-Thumb muttered something about "the right slime for the job."

It didn't take long to slay the unknowing Beysibs. Zip helped Sync while the witch and One-Thumb looked on.

When they were done, they wrote the initials of Zip's "Popular Front for the Liberation of Sanctuary" on the walls of the Vulgar Unicorn in Beysib blood.

By tomorrow, the PFLS's latest kill would be on everybody's lips.

Not bad. Zip thought to himself-not bad at all, for a start.

Then Roxane led the way up the Unicorn's stairs and through a door that had no right to open into the witching room of her Foalside hold, a lot farther than a few steps away from One-Thumb's bar in the Maze.

Three days had passed since the revolutionaries calling themselves the PFLS had slaughtered too many Beysibs in the Vulgar Unicorn.

Sanctuarites were just daring to go abroad again, pale and haggard from fear and disgust. First the cutthroats and the drunkards, then the vendors and the whores returned to the streets. Then, when it was clear that no Beysib squadrons were waiting to swoop down and scoop them up, others ventured forth, and the town returned to what had become normal: business as usual, with the occasional pitched battle on a streetcomer or sniper in some shanty's eaves.

Hakiem was down on Wideway, selling what tales he could on the dock. Pickings were slim because of his new apprentice, Kama, whose uncannily polished tale of the brave revolutionaries triumphing over the dreaded Harka Bey in the Unicorn drew endless crowds of thrill-seekers, while his own yams of giant crabs and purple spiders weren't dangerous enough, or newsworthy enough, to compete these days.

Hakiem told himself he didn't really have reason to be piqued: he'd been given money enough at the secret meeting beneath Marc's shop to cover twice what he might be losing.

And Kama, sensitive in her way, dutifully gave him half of all she made.

So Hakiem was watching, paring a bunion where he sat on a splintered keg, while Kama pleased her listeners, when a dark tall youth with a week-old beard and a black sweat-band tied around his head eased toward Kama through the crowd.

It was Zip, and Hakiem wasn't the only one who marked him: Gayle, a foul-mouthed mercenary who'd joined the Stepsons in the north, was lounging between two pilings, as some Stepson always did when Kama was on the streets.

Hakiem saw Kama pale as the scruffy, flat-faced Ilsig caught her eye. She lost her train of thought, polished phrases turned to incoherent clauses, and she skipped to her story's ending so abruptly her gathered clients muttered among themselves.

"That's all, townsfolk-all for today. I've got to leave you-nature calls. And since you haven't had your money's worth, this telling's on the house." Kama jumped down from the crates on which she'd sat, ignoring the rebel leader and heading straight for Hakiem, her hand nervously pulling hair back from her brow.

The youth followed. And so, at professional stalking distance, did the Stepson, Gayle.

"Hakiem," Kama whispered, "is he still there? Is he coming?"

"He? They're both coming, girl. And what of it? That's no way to build a reputation, cutting half your story out and giving refunds before anybody's asked...."

"You don't understand... Sync's gone missing. The last we saw of him, he was with that gutterslime, the one from the meeting-Zip." As she spoke, Kama was tearing open her gearbag, in which metal clanked: this woman never went far from her squadron without her cache of arms.

And up behind her, as she bent over her sack, came Zip, who grabbed her with a crooked elbow around her throat and pulled her back against some bales of cloth before Hakiem could shout a warning or the Stepson, lurking at an appropriate distance, could intercede in her behalf.