“Now,” she challenged, “you and your playmates can go on butchering helpless shopkeepers and limp-wristed nobles and getting nowhere with your so-called revolution…” She took the cup he’d been fidgeting with, raised it in a silent toast to him, and drained it, too, regarding him over the rim. An instant later it joined the first one in pieces on the floor. “… or the PFLS can at last strike a meaningful blow. What do you say?”
Zip looked thoughtful. “With Kadakithis dead we’d still need some kind of defense for when Theron returns.” He scratched his chin, frowning.
“Theron will probably thank you,” she pointed out. It was safe to gamble that
Zip had never met the usurper, knew nothing of the subtle workings of the old general’s mind. Theron wanted Sanctuary for a bastion on Ranke’s southern border. Nothing would convince him to release the city from the Empire’s iron grip. Not even the execution of the legitimate claimant to the very crown he had stolen.
But Zip wouldn’t understand that. He was a fighter, no politician.
“No need for all my men,” Zip argued. “A small force- two or three-just enough to sneak in and do the job.”
Chenaya stepped closer. She was almost as tall as Zip, almost as broad through the shoulders. Again, she inhaled the smell of him and bit her lip. “A small force for the prince and his fish-faced consort,” she agreed, nodded her head as a patient teacher might with a dim-witted but struggling pupil. “The rest will take care of every other Beysib in the palace- and anyone else who gets in the way.”