Wings of Omen - Thieves World 06 Read Free Page A

street toward him.
    Two to one against professionals, there was no chance that he could win. He raised his hands as if in surrender.
    The two soldiers-in-disguise growled low to one another in what might have been Court Rankene.
    Before they could decide the obvious-to take him alive and spend the evening asking him questions it would be painful, perhaps crippling, not to answer-Zip did what he had to do: let fly with a palmed dagger and then a specially pronged slingshot missile.
    Both casts sped murderously true-not into the probably armored chests of the two big men with swords (whose companion was now on his feet and falling in behind them, perfectly and by-the-drill covering every move they made) but into the exposed neck and chest of Zip's own two men: no revolutionary could be captured alive; everyone knew too much; they'd all signed suicide pacts in blood but, in this case. Zip knew he'd better help these two along. Rankan interrogation could be very nasty.
    Then as the rear man yelled, "Get the bastard," and the two in front lunged toward him. Zip wheeled and dove for the tunnel entrance, down among the garbage and the rats, pulled the cobble-faced cover in place behind him, and shot the stout interior bolt.
    Two days later, Hakiem was sitting on a bench in Promise Park-not one of his accustomed haunts.
    He considered himself, as a storyteller, a neutral party in this war between Ranke and the Harka Bey for control of Sanctuary. In his innermost heart he couldn't help but take sides, though, and since his side was the side of the Ilsigi, whose land this once was and whose sorrow he now shared, he'd gotten just a little bit involved with helping the Revolution. This was nothing new for Hakiem: he'd been a little involved with Jubal the ex slaver, a little involved with Prince/Governor Kadakithis's Hell-Hounds... with everything, if truth be known, that concerned his beloved, benighted town. He kept telling himself that there was a good story in whatever it was he shouldn't be getting involved in. The Revolution, which might be the greatest story Sanctuary would ever offer him, was also the most dangerous. Involved in it were Rankans and Ilsigs, fighting together-though some didn't know it and others wouldn't admit it-against the heinous matriarchy of the Beysibs. But, Hakiem reminded himself as he waited for his contact to appear, he was an old man: he wouldn't have lived to be old if he were too foolish. And Hakiem, who'd been safe on the sidelines, an observer and a certified neutral all his life, was beginning to feel the tug of revolutionary fervor himself-politics, he well knew, was an old man's game: old men sent young men out to lose their lives for principles. He'd have to be careful not to become as deluded as those the Ilsigi populace fought: the Beysibs, the Rankans, the Nisibisi and whoever else wanted to put their stamp on his poor little sandspit of a town. Whoever had sent him the note which had bade him come here (Hakiem, for the tale most worth telling this season, meet me at the bench under the parasol pine in Promise Park at midday, two days hence.) was willing to take outrageous chances: even in daylight, the Beysib discouraged public gatherings. Two, these days, was a public gathering.
    Still, this was the first time the rebels had tried to contact him, although it seemed to Hakiem that they should have realized they needed him sooner: without rumor, without the proper stirring stories of heroism and success, without a vision of the Revolution to come, no insurgency could succeed. Two blond, bare-breasted Bey women went by, their bulging eyes downcast, demurely veiled, Beysib males prancing behind them, and behind those, Ilsig boys carrying sunshades.
    When they'd gone, Hakiem took a deep breath. He didn't have any assurances that it was the revolutionaries who'd sent him the note: he'd made an assumption, one that might not be true. Either of the fish-women with their trained serpents who now