"06 - Wings of Omen (a)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Asprin Robert)

WHAT WOMEN DO BEST

by Chris & Janet Morris

From a hunting blind of artfully piled garbage guarded by a dozen fat, half
-tamed rats, an Ilsig head, then another, and another, caught the moonlight as
the death squad emerged from the tunnels to go stalking Beysibs in the Maze.

They called their leader "Zip," when they called him anything at all. He didn't
encourage familiarity; he'd always been a loner, a creature of the streets
without family or friends. Even before the Beysib had come and the waves of
executions had begun, the street urchins and the Maze-dwellers had stayed clear
of the knife-boy who was half Ilsig and half some race much paler, who hired out
for copper to any enforcer in the Maze or disgruntled dealer in Downwind. And
who, it was said, brought an eye or tongue or liver from every soul he murdered
to Vashanka's half-forgotten altar on the White Foal River's edge.

Even his death squad was afraid of him. Zip knew. And that was fine with him:
every now and again, a member was captured by the Rankan oppressors or the
Beysib oppressors: the less these idealists of revolution knew of him, the less
they could reveal under torture or blandishment. He'd had a friend once, or at
least a close acquaintance-an Ilsig thief called Hanse. But Hanse, with all his
shining blades and his high-toned airs, had gone the way of everything in
Sanctuary since the Beysibs' ships had docked: to oblivion, to hell in a basket.

Standing up straight for a moment in the moon-licked gloom to get his bearings.
Zip heard laughter rounding a comer, saw a flash of pantaloon, and ducked back
with a hiss and a signal to his group, who'd been trained by Nisibisi insurgents
and knew this game as well as he.

The moonlight wasn't bright enough to tell the color of the Beysib males'-Zip
didn't think of them as "men"- pantaloons, but he'd be willing to bet they were
of claret velvet or shiny purple silk. Killing Beysibs was about as exciting as
killing ants, and as fruitless: there were just too damned many of them.

The three coming toward his hunting party were drunk as Rankans and limp as any
man might be who'd just come out of the Street of Red Lanterns empty of seed and
purse.

He could almost see their fish-eyes bulging; he could hear their jewelry clank.
For pussy-whipped sons of snake-women, these were loud and brash, taller than
average, and with a better command of street-Rankene: from under their
glittering, veil-draped hats, profanity worthy of the Rankan Hell-Hounds cut the
night.

There remained nearly the whole Street of Red Lanterns between the two parties.
"Pre-position," Zip breathed, and his two young squad members slipped away to