But Chenaya was some sort of Rankan noble, and didn’t realize he was being snide. She’s just assumed he habitually bowed and scraped like any other
Wrigglie, and let him hand her up into her fancy wagon, telling him she’d see him later.
He’d have felt better about all the changes ifJubal had said Word One to him about settling matters, man to man, or if the Rankan Walegrin hadn’t looked at him as if Zip were a goat staked out to lure a wolf, or if Straton wasn’t twice his weight and conspicuously absent when Zip was shown the ropes at the barracks.
Yeah, he could hold out in the one-time slaver’s estate-turned-fortress. Yeah, it beat the offal out of Ratfall. But somehow, he didn’t think he was going to live to move his rabble in here.
And he didn’t think the 3rd Commando was going to quit this town, where it was the most powerful single element save gods, wizardry, and Tempus, once the
Stepsons were packed off to the capital.
Sync was nobody’s fool. And Sync was looking at him funny as the 3rd’s commander whistled up a mount for Zip from the string herd and showed him how to put a warhorse through its paces.
It was a bright day, and the horse was sweating, and he was riding around the training ring with Sync like some Rankan kid with his daddy when the arrow whizzed by his head close enough to knick his ear.
He cursed, dove off the horse’s wrong side, and rolled toward the fence while
Sync bawled orders and men went running about in a fine display of concern.
Zip went after the arrow and found it.