Zip didn’t understand why the Rankan powers wanted Zip’s help, or the PFLS on its side. The Rankans wouldn’t believe that there really wasn ‘t a PFLS when he tried to explain that a score of gang members with lamb’s blood and paintbrushes didn’t make a political movement.
But since his thieves and mendicants would receive the protection of what police Crit had in Sanctuary if they took the night shift, and Zip took responsibility, his entry into the power structure and polite . . . society . . . had just happened.
It wasn’t being co-opted by the enemy that bothered him the most. What bothered him the most was that his bad boys and girls were doing exactly what they’d done before-extort, blackmail, roust and rough- house, bum and plunder-and doing it now with the protection and for the benefit of the state.
It didn’t make any sense, until it made all the sense in the world. And when Zip realized what Tempus had done to him, it had been too late. Zip was already part of the establishment, a hated enforcer, a dog with a Rankan collar, and his militia no better than any of the cannon fodder in Walegrin’s demoralized army. They hadn’t triumphed over the opposi- tion, they had become it.
They weren’t the revolution, they were the sustaining force behind the injustice that had created them.
When he’d said that-shouted it, actually-to Crit in fury, the cynical Stepson had flashed white teeth and said, “The more things change, pud, the more they stay the same. What’s your problem? Not having fun now that you’re legal? It’s all your type knows how to do, and this way you won’t end up handiess or headless because of it. You’re talent, and we’re the talent scouts. Thank your slime gods you’ve been discovered and put to work before you ended up greasing some slaver’s wagon wheels.”