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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