Wings of Omen - Thieves World 06 by Robert Asprin Read Free Book Online

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