The moonlight wasn't bright enough to tell the color of the Beysib males'-Zipdidn't think of them as "men"- pantaloons, but he'd be willing to bet they wereof claret velvet or shiny purple silk. Killing Beysibs was about as exciting askilling 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 anyman might be who'd just come out of the Street of Red Lanterns empty of seed andpurse.
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 thanaverage, and with a better command of street-Rankene: from under theirglittering, veil-draped hats, profanity worthy of the Rankan Hell-Hounds cut thenight.
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 tofind their places.
They'd done this every night since Harvest Moon; the only result of it Zip hadseen was a second, then a third wave of Beysib ritual executions. .But sincethose ceremonially slaughtered were hated Rankan overlords and IIsigs who servedthe Rankans and the Bey, it wasn't keeping any of the revolutionaries up atnight.
And you had to do something. Kadakithis had been a harsh ruler, but the Rankanbarbarians were spoken of wistfully and with something bordering on affectionnow that the Beysib had come: a matriarchy complete with female mercenaries,assassins, magicians more utterly ruthless than men could ever be. It was enoughto have brought Zip into the orb of the Revolution-his manhood was somethinghe'd fight to keep. It was going to take more than a few exposed fish-folk