"I think so ... and if I care to call you the Mink, no one can contradict me."
"All the while I was doing those things this morning," muttered Revel, "I had the feeling I'd done them before. I must have been remembering the old ballad, for by Orbs, the acts do fit!"
"That minor blasphemy begins to annoy me," said Jerran seriously. "It's like saying 'by the man I killed yesterday.' We've got to revise our swearing habits."
"Why not substitute Revel or Mink for Orb?" asked the girl harshly. "Our Revel who dwells in the buttoned sky," she added, with a malevolent sneer.
"Ah, go to sleep, both of you," said Jerran. "Tomorrow we start to plan—really plan—to overthrow the gentry."
"And the priests," said Revel fiercely, "and the gods!" He almost believed that somehow they could climb into the air and destroy the gods in their red and blue buttons. He lay down, one hand vised on the woman's wrist, and though he felt he should never sleep that night, being far too excited, in three minutes he was snoring mightily.
He woke some time later with the prickling feeling of danger on his skin. He opened his eyes and saw red, literally a red mist that obscured the world. Then his head began to open and shut, open and shut, and he knew he had been hit a hell of a blow on the forehead, and there was blood in his eyes.
Groping for his pick, that had lain next his left hand, he missed it; then he recalled the girl, reached out for her, found she was gone too. He drew the back of his arm over his eyes and cleared the gore a trifle. "Jerran?" he said quietly. No answer.
Blinking, he saw the vast meeting place empty, lit by the blue lanterns. He rolled his head and there, its point buried deep in the sward an inch from his right ear, was his pick. He sat up. Jerran lay a dozen feet off, looking very dead indeed, with his thin hair matted with blackening blood.