Wings of Omen tw-6

by Robert Lynn Asprin

  "She's that much of a problem-you'll find out yourself, sooner or later. She's one very big reason why I can't hook up with you. Another is, I can't speak for everybody- hardly for anybody at all."

  "Just the Nisibisi-trained and funded death squads?"

  "That's right. Take a left turn here; we're going to start climbing stone steps; they're slippery; there's fifteen, then a landing, then ten more."

  They climbed in the dark. Sync continued his interrogation: "I've heard that you control most of the territory in Downwind-that you've held it against the Beysibs and that at this point they've given up trying to take it back."

  "Most of the territory? Three blocks? That's what I've got, all I can hold. We don't have drool in the way of arms, or fighters, or anything much but a little Nisibisi support. I'll show my territory to you some time. You won't be impressed."

  "I'll be the judge of that." Sync had lost count of the stairs; he tried to mount one and his foot thumped down hard through thin air: they'd made the first landing. Three strides, and they were climbing again. With a sinking feeling that had nothing to do with being underground and at the mercy of a boy guerrilla, Sync asked: "I'd like to meet her, sometime soon-this Roxane. Can you arrange it?"

  "Life too dull for you? Just can't wait to lose your soul? Heard that undeads have more fun?"

  "I'm serious."

  "I wish I wasn't. If you promise me you won't consider it an act of war on my part, I'll hook you up tonight."

  "Thanks, I'd appreciate it."

  "We'll see about that-maybe you won't be able to appreciate anything, afterward. Any next of kin you want me to notify? At least tell that baby-mage of yours to avenge you?"

  Sync chuckled, but he couldn't make it sound convincing. "Randal's going to be introducing himself to Sanctuary, this evening. If Roxane's really here, he won't need to be notified. They've met before."

  "Here we are. I'm just going to slide this bolt and then we'll climb up, one at a time-I'll go first. And she's really here. Ask One-Thumb."

  There was the sound of wood grating, then a square of blinding light, then a dark silhouette in its midst as Zip levered himself up.

  Following, Sync reflected that though this wasn't as harmless an alibi as he'd expected, at least he'd be in public, drinking in the Unicorn when as many of the hundred ruling Beysib women as had accepted an invitation to the opening of "Randal's Pleasure Palace" uptown became wax statues in the exhibit of "Beysib Culture" which was the prime attraction of the mage's Beysib trap.

  * * *

  This Sync didn't understand what he was getting himself into. Zip knew. The trick was to let the crazy bastard have his way without Zip taking the blame for what became of the 3rd's commanding officer.

  Zip hated officers, armies, authoritarian types. He also hated Roxane, when he dared. But not too often-she was more dangerous than three 3rd Commando cadres and she had him by the jewels.

  She'd appreciate Sync, all right, if Zip could deliver him. He didn't know why he felt reluctant to do it. Sync was just another murderer, and the worst kind: professional, efficient, charismatic in a Rankan sort of way. The less Rankans in Zip's world, the better. But still, if the Rankans got together and decimated the Beysibs, there'd be less Rankans for the Nisibisi sympathizers to deal with later. Right now, what was good for the Nisibisi-sponsored Revolution was good for Zip.

  So he took some chances, letting Sync see how Zip's sort got around in town without being noticed, even showing him where you left your sewer-reeking clothes in One-Thumb's wine cellar and where you got fresh ones before you slunk up the back way and into the Unicorn crowd through the outhouse entrance as if you'd always been there.

  One-Thumb wasn't behind the bar; he was probably upstairs with Roxane, or out at the estate-in which case, there'd be nothing Zip could do tonight: you didn't take people to One-Thumb's uninvited... not unless you wanted to end up dog meat.

  The waitress was one of Zip's people; two hand signals he could only hope Sync didn't see brought him his answer: One-Thumb was in his office upstairs.

  Since other things went on upstairs-a bit of whoring and drug-dealing-it was no problem for Zip to go on up, but the man beside him was attracting attention: Sync's sword was too service-scarred, his well-chosen and nondescript garb a little too well-chosen and nondescript for the Unicorn denizens not to mark him as somebody trying not to look like a soldier.

  So there were too many eyes on them and the place went too quiet when they settled down in a comer. That was another problem with the meres: they couldn't stand having their backs exposed; if Sync could have handled a table in the middle of the room, the break in pattern would have relaxed the crowd and Zip wouldn't have felt like he was on display.

  But it was like asking a horse to fly. So they sat in a comer, vacated warily by a couple of slitpurses who gave Zip dirty looks for consorting with the enemy, and pretended nonchalance until the girl came back with their ales and a message: One-Thumb would meet them around the back.

  Just as they were finishing their draughts and checking their purses, Vashanka's own hell seemed to break loose outside.

  The crowd surged toward the door, beyond which the sky was sheeting colored light, then back again as the dreaded Harka Bey-the Beysib mercenary women, assassins in full dress with their damn snakes on their arms-shouldered their way inside, men-at-arms behind them, and backed everyone up against the walls.

  "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?"r />
  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.

  "Don't move, lady," Zip said harshly through gritted teeth. "Just call your watchdog off."

  Kama gagged and struggled.

  Gayle took a half-dozen running strides, then halted, frowning, sword drawn but fists upon his hips.

  Zip did something to Kama that made her writhe, then stand up very straight. "Tell him," he said, "to back off. I just want to give your bedmates a message. Tell him!"

  "Gayle!" Kama's voice was thick, gutteral; her chin, in the crook of Zip's muscular arm, quivered. "You heard him. Stand down."

  The Stepson, uttering a stream of profanity built around a single word, hunkered down, his sword across his knees.

  "That's better," Zip whispered. "Now, listen close. You too, tale-spinner: Roxane's got Sync. He asked me to set up a meeting, and I did that. But what happened after- that's no fault of mine. It might not be too late to save his soul, if any of you care."

  "Where?" Kama croaked. "Where has she got him?"

  "Down by the White Foal-she's got a place there, south of Ischade's. The vets will know where it is. But you tell 'em I told you-that it's not my fault. And that if they don't get to him fast, it'll be too late. Hit the place in the daytime-there'
s no undeads around then, just some watchmen and a few snakes. Understand, lady?"

  Again, he tightened his arm and Kama's head snapped back. Then he pushed her from him and jumped high, grabbed the rope on the bales behind him, swung up and over, and was gone, as far as Hakiem could tell.

  Hakiem reached Kama first, coughing and trembling on the dockside. He was trying to get her up, while she shrugged off his aid and tried to catch her breath, when he realized that the Stepson, Gayle, wasn't helping him.

  Hakiem looked around just in time to see Gayle vault the bales after Zip, throwing-stars in hand, and let fly.

  Kama saw it too, and screamed brokenly: "No! Gayle, no! He's trying to help us...!"

  "Pork help!" Gayle called back, just before he disappeared. "I hit him. He won't get far-and if he does, the porker's done for, anyhow." Then Gayle too disappeared.

  "Done for?" Hakiem repeated dumbly. "What does he mean, Kama?"

  "The stars." Kama got to her knees, her lips puffy, her expression unreadable. When she saw that Hakiem didn't understand, she added: "Those stars are what the Bandarans call 'blossoms.' They're painted with poison." And, hands on her knees, bent over, she retched.

  Hakiem was still digesting all of that when Kama straightened up, took a handful of sharp-edged metal from her bag, and started climbing the bales.

  "Where are you going, woman? What about the message?"

  "Message?" Kama looked down at him from atop the bales. "Right. Message. You take it-tell Strat. He'll know what to do."

  "But-"

  "Don't 'but' me, old man. That boy's dead if I can't rein Gayle in and get to him in time. We don't kill those who help us."

  Like a doused flame, she was gone.

  Strat would rather have been anywhere else than in the brush surrounding Roxane's Foalside haunt. He'd had experience with the Nisibisi witch before.

  If he hadn't known that Hakiem was trustworthy, that Kama had disappeared, chasing after the street tough who'd brought the message, and that the success of the Stepson/3rd Commando mission into Sanctuary hinged on proving that Roxane couldn't send them running with their tails between their legs, he'd have passed on this particular frontal assault.