"What the frog?" Zip breathed to Sync as the women, who could kill you by spitting on you, if rumor could be believed, starting disarming everyone methodically, then binding their thumbs together behind their backs.
There were ten Bey with crossbows in the middle of the room; Zip kept watch on them under his arms, which were spread above his head like everyone else's.
When Sync didn't respond, Zip whispered, "Well, Ranger, what now? If this is a result of Randal's little 'introduction,' we're standing in an execution coffle: Bey-sibs don't go after guilty parties, they just round up a bunch of folks at random and slaughter them in the morning. And they don't make it pretty."
Sync shrugged as well as a man can with his hands propped on the wall above his head and his feet spread-eagled: "I'm armed and dangerous; how about you?"
"Close enough, friend. I sure don't want my people to see me led like a bull to the sacrificial slaughter. And if a woman kills you, your soul never finds its eternal rest."
"I didn't know that," Sync quipped.
"You know it now. Ready? Let's die with our privates intact-it ain't that much to ask."
"Ready," Sync breathed. "On the count of three, we break for the back door." He inclined his head to the right. "To make this work, we'll have to have a couple of those Beysib bitches, so I'm going to start counting when they come to you: as soon as they touch you, grab an arm, jerk it in and grab the bitch, get a choke hold on-"
"Silence!" pealed a deep but assuredly female voice, and the whole place froze.
Zip thought, at first, that it was a Beysib voice, but in its wake came no venomous bite, no snake's fangs, no crossbow bolt through his spine. And in the entire room, nothing so much as moved.
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 normaclass="underline" 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.