“But why?” I asked. “Hermalaya has been doing every-thing according to the rules, isn't she? You couldn't ask for a more dignified representative of your.. . association. We've done what we can to make sure the fakes get closed down. And the rest have agreed to start taking the training courses.”
I was hauled off the stool and smashed face-first into the wall. Nunzio stood up, but the huge Cake Master shoved him down again.
Ninja hissed in my ear. “We hate fakes, but we also do not care for the sacred practice of hospitality and enjoy-ment being prostituted for money!”
“How do you support yourselves, then?” I asked, in what I thought was a reasonable tone, as much as I could with a cake server pressed against the back of my neck while my face was buried in a silken Pin-the-tail-on-the-Dragon chart. '“If you don't receive any, uh, gifts, you're not earning anything on your historic culture and experi-ence.”
There was a long pause. “Well, I don't suppose we do,” Ninja admitted. She backed off and took off her veil. I saw that she was
another Reynardan. like Hermalaya. “We have patrons.” I spat out silk. “So, how's that different? You only sup-port yourselves, if you can. Can you?”
Ninja sounded embarrassed when she finally answered. “Well, we all have other jobs. I decorate cakes in a hotel on Lux.”
“I deliver pizzas,” said one of the other black-clad fig-ures. Behind her veil she was a Kobold.
“I'm a nanny,” grated a Gargoyle.
“I'm a stockbroker,” added a Gnome.
“Really?” I asked. It looked as if Cake Masters came from nearly every race in the dimensions and almost every profession. “You do all that to support your hobby?”
Ninja whipped out her server again and brandished it at me. “It is not a hobby. It is a sacred calling! Cake has shown us peace and beauty in the world. If she has prosti-tuted that calling, then she must be punished. She is a Cake Master. She ought to know better!”
“Look, the princess believes in all that!” I said. “I'm the one responsible for making it commercial. If you have to punish someone, punish me, not her. The only reason I got her to offer Cake ceremonies in exchange for favors is to rescue her kingdom. Maybe none of you know what hap-pened to her?”
“Oh, we do,” the Kobold said. “I bought a copy of her diary. We all read it. We cried like babies!”
“The princess has never had another job. In fact, she's trying to get her job back. Princessing is a tough gig, as hard as being a nanny.” I glanced around the circle of black-clad figures. “Maybe worse.”
“It couldn't be worse,” the Gargoyle replied. “Not with triplets.” “Hmmm,” Ninja mused. “I never thought of it that way. You say that she is a sincere student of the art'.'”
“She throws me out of the kitchen every time she bakes a Cake,” I said, making certain to pronounce the capital letter. “She spins every attendee around three times before they try to pin the tail on the Dragon. Nobody gets more than one scoop of ice cream on their piece of Cake.”
Ninja drummed her fingers on her lip. “That is strictly traditional. Possibly even orthodox.”
“See?” I said, persuasively. “How do you get more sin-cere than that? I promise that as soon as she's back on the throne, she will never accept money for doing the Cake ceremony ever again. In the meantime, I've got to ask you to be patient. We still have an uphill battle to get her back safely to her homeland and restored to the throne.”
Almost in unison, the society of Cake practitioners sighed.
“It's so romantic,” the Gargoyle said. “I can't wait to see how it ends. Is she going to publish a sequel to her di-ary?”
“I have no idea,” I said. “Will you let me and my friends go now? Can Hermalaya keep practicing the way she has? Maybe if you think of her guests as patrons, it wouldn't sound so bad?”
Ninja gathered her companions around her, and they had a quiet but very animated conference. It broke up. Ninja turned back to me.
“You have a deal, Skeeve.” She clapped her hands, and three of the women ran to untie Massha and help her rebling. The Gargoyle handed back Nunzio's crossbow and helped him brush down his suit. “Let's see how Princess Hermalaya does, and maybe we'll even throw some busi-ness her way. Please tell her we are at our sister's service. If there's ever anything we can do to help her, all you have to do is call. Uh, after four o'clock, if you don't mind. That's when I get off work.”
Myth 18 - MythChief
TWENTY -SEVEN
“It seems my reputation has preceded me.”
V. FRANKENSTEIN
Massha, Nunzio, and I bounced into the office. Bunny smiled up at us from the book she was reading and reached for the ledger.
“Not that,” I said, holding up a hand. “I don't have any income to report at the moment. In fact, I have a com-plaint.”
“A complaint?” Bunny asked.
“Gleep!” My dragon had heard my voice, and came running to express his joy that I was home again. He charged into the room, and before I could yell “No!” he had launched himself in the air and knocked me flat on my back. He held me down with both forepaws as he slathered my face with his long, stinking tongue.
“I hope this contest is over soon,' Bunny said, shaking her head disapprovingly. ”He never behaved like that in the inn. Bad! Bad dragon!"
My dragon stopped sliming me and sat back on his haunches. He favored Bunny with a reproachful look.
I sat up. I wiped my face with one hand and scratched the dragon behind his eye ridges with my other. Gleep crooned.
“I almost wish I was back there now,” I said. “Look, when everybody agreed that the contest was to amass the greatest wealth possible for our respective clients, right?”
“Right,” Bunny said. “What's the problem?”
“Aahz is sabotaging us,” I said. “He's interfering with practically everything we're doing to try and earn money for Hermalaya. Someone told a toymaker here in the Ba-zaar he could make dolls in her image. Somebody went around selling the idea of ripping off the Cake ceremony. All of that points to Aahz,”
“That's a pretty hefty accusation,” she said. “Do you have any tangible proof? Has anyone actually named Aahz?”
I grimaced. “Well, no, not used his name . .. but I know it's him! Who else would have all the details of Hermalaya's life at their fingertips so he could lie about them?”
“Well, anyone who has a copy of her diary, for one,” Bunny said. She held up the book on her desk. It was The Princess's Diary. “This is a third printing. We're probably talking about thousands of copies across the dimensions. And Hermalaya doesn't spare the ink when it comes to set-ting down her thoughts. I know everything about her except her lingerie sizes. As for the rest of the copycats, you have been getting a lot of publicity. People talk. And people who want to make money use new ideas. Didn't you?”
“Yes, but. ..” BAMF!
“There he is!” Aahz pointed a claw at my nose. “What do you think you're doing, making a mess of my assets like that?”
“What?” I goggled, “I never touched your assets. What assets?” Tananda, Matfany, and Guido all appeared behind Aahz, looking at me reproachfully.
Aahz turned to Bunny. “It's like I don't have enough problems trying to revive a has-been resort town in a hick kingdom in a backwater dimension. And it's not like I don't have enough problems dealing with people who can't take no for an answer, or poker-up-the-rear bureaucrats, or angry peasants throwing last year's produce section at me. that I have to deal with YOU short-circuiting my efforts to make things work for my client.” The finger came around and poked at my nose again.
“Me?” I knew my voice went up to a squeak.
“Yeah, you! Who else would want to ruin the displays when I finally got everything negotiated to run like a top'? Who has a stake in seeing my enterprise fail? You.”
I felt steam come out of my ears.
“I would never do anything like that.” I protested. “I never saw your displays. In fact. I have spent the last week trying to deal with the damage you did to me and MY cli-ent. Poor Hermalaya hasn't been so embarrassed in her life. People ate calling her a phony. She's the most genuine person in the world! She used to be a respected head of state, and now she's an action figure. I fee! responsible for setting her up-for putting her in a position where some-one i used to trust more than anybody could make her feel like a fool.”
“Used to trust?” The veins in Aahz's eyes burst into re-lief. "Listen, you Klahdish pip-squeak
A piercing whistle burst in my eardrums. Both of us stopped talking. Bunny removed two fingers from her mouth.
“Gentlemen! If I may use that term without bursting into cynical laughter. You.” she pointed at me. “I already heard from you. You!” she pointed at Aahz. “What is Skeeve supposed to have done to you?”
Aahz glanced sideways at Matfany, who was holding himself aloof from interacting with any of us. He looked pretty disgusted, not that I cared what he thought. I was glad that Hermalaya wasn't safely back in Possiltum.
“I . . . made deals with a number of prominent busi-nessmen who would take an interest in Foxe-Swampburg in exchange for financial consideration. It involves a cer-tain amount of visible advertising on local landmarks.”
“Glaring, vulgar displays,” Matfany added.
“Yeah, it all depends on how you look at it!” Aahz snapped. I could see the honeymoon was long over between the two of them. “I conceded to local interests to . . .”
“... Tone them down a little,” Tananda put in, when Aahz had hesitated too long. “Yeah! They were toned down!”
“To a dull roar,” Matfany put in. “Let me finish!” Aahz bellowed. Bunny held up a thumb and forefinger and brought them together Everybody else closed their mouths. “Go on,” she said to Aahz.
He frowned. “From that point, they should have been fine. Then, all of a sudden, the images started fading right off the rocks and buildings. Whole billboards disappeared overnight! Salamanders started going out, or they lost their grip and fell. The Firedrakes' Union steward complained to the Geek, and he came to me. Matfany's guards ques-tioned the protesters ...”
“Protesters?” I asked.
“Shut up,” Aahz said. “They didn't have anything to do with it. The whole mess smacked of magikal interference.” He glared at me. “And who has the greatest interest in see-ing me fail? Skeeve!”
“I didn't do anything!” I said. "Bunny, you have to be-lieve me. I haven't been in Foxe-Swampburg. I never got near any of his arrangements. What about Matfany? From what i hear, he's underhanded enough to cause trouble! Look what he did to Hermalaya''
The Swamp Fox was outraged. “Sir. you have no right to make such accusations.” “He's just trying to misdirect you,” Aahz said. Typical behavior of someone who is guilty,"
“How could you, Skeeve?” Tananda asked, woe in her dark green eyes. “Attacking someone you don't even know. It's just so unlike you.”
“It's unlike me because it wasn't me! I mean, I thought about it. Who wouldn't, after everything started to go wrong with our plans?”
“Your plans went wrong because you set them all up wrong,” Aahz said, with grim glee. “Everything I ever taught you about exploiting a situation to the fullest, you seem to have forgotten. Sitting in that inn seems to have rotted your brain. Such as it is Klahds just don't have a lot of basic intelligence.”
The whistle called time-out on our argument again.
“Enough with the personal remarks,” Bunny said. “Some of the rest of us are Klahds, too, you know”
“No offense,” Aahz said.
“I didn't sabotage anything,” I said. “How can I prove that? I can't prove a negative. Look, I have been with Massha, Nunzio, Chumley, or Hermalaya almost every minute I haven't been in here.”
Chumley raised a forefinger. “I say, he's right, but it doesn't take long to upset the apple cart, what? I have to be fair, Skeeve, old boy. I know you did dash in and out a few times. I'd be very disappointed if you were going off to interfere with the other side, what?”
I felt more alone than I had ever been before. “I don't know how I can convince you. I didn't do anything wrong. You have to believe me. I give you my word I wasn't in-volved in anything Aahz did failing.”
Aahz was gloating. “If that's your story, then I didn't do anything wrong, either.” “All right, all right,” Bunny said, holding up her hands. "Then, here's the new ground rules: both of you
stay away from the other. You don't interfere in what the other one is doing. You don't go near each other anywhere except here. Any conversations you have from now until the end of this contest will be held in front of witnesses, preferably in this office. Any more bad behavior means you automatically concede the contest to your opponent. Do I make myself clear?"
Very grudgingly, I choked out a yes. So did Aahz.
“Good. Both of you go away. You've been in here too long. Help your clients. Stay out of trouble. That's all. Beat it.” Bunny sat down at her secretary desk and opened her copy of The Princess's Diary.
We all looked at each other. Aahz gave me a smirk. BAMF! He, Matfany, Tananda, and Guido disappeared. I regretted the day I gave him that D-hopper.
Myth 18 - MythChief
TWENTY-EIGHT
“Mister Aahz, I have to say I believed your colleague, Skeeve,” Matfany said. We were following an indignant foreman, or really fore-Salamander, Pintubo, and his fire-proofed Reynardan escort back to the damaged displays in the hills to get a good look at them. “His countenance did not seem like one who dissembles, and as an administrator I must say I see my share of dishonest faces.”
I growled without looking at him. The uphill slog was complicated by thick, cementlike mud on the path that was building up under my feet like platform shoes.
“I believed him, too,” Tananda said, tripping along lightly. “I might have jumped to a conclusion back there. It's not the first time Skeeve has been innocent when we have believed the worst about him, Aahz. Look what hap-pened on Imper.”
“I don't want to hear it,” I said. “The kid knows I put a spoke in his wheels, and he got back at me. Big deal. It's over.”
“Unless he didn't,” Guido said. “You gotta look at the bigger picture. More people than Skeeve don't like what we're doin' here.”
He aimed a meaty thumb backward. We weren't the only people on the mountain path. Some of the mote deter-mined protesters were following us, at a distance enforced by a whole troop of the castle guards. By then, the towns-folk were using their signs as staffs to help them up the steep slope, but they were determined to let us know that they weren't happy with the status quoas they knew it. I realized we had let slide an important facet of improving Matfany's image.
“We have to give the people an update when we get to the top,” I said. “We're doing all kinds of publicity, but no public relations ”
“And what will that involve?” Matfany asked.
“A speech,” I said. “By you. Start thinking about bullet points: how you are doing your best for the country, how what's happening up here is beneficial to them, and how tourism is going to start coming back. It's already happen-ing.”
I spoke with confidence, because I had been keeping up with the hoteliers in the resort. All of them reported book-ings from a dozen dimensions, including some large tour groups I had made a mental note of which ones had the fewest rooms left to rent, with an idea toward sending au-ditors in to scan the
books. I figured I could count taxes the hotels and inns paid on profit to the kingdom as part of my total. I was sure I could talk Bunny into it. As mad as the Geek was about the vandalism, his new trade in knick-knacks was also paying off, with a percentage on all sales to be paid to meI mean, the treasury. That ought to boost my takings so far over Skeeve all he'd be able to see
was the bottoms of my feet.
The prime minister considered the request gravely. “I believe I can do that.”
I expanded on my topic. “Don't forget, you have to stress that things are only better because you took over. That Pixie-headed princess of yours threw the whole coun-try into a financial crisis on top of your environmental di-saster. But you're the one pulling it all out again. Get it?”
'Now, just a minute, sir'“ Matfany said, coming to a halt. ”I have asked you not to lay tongue to our monar-chy!"
“Only if they really need a licking,” I leered at him. He looked shocked. “Look. People might like the fact that money is coming in, but no one can get past the idea that you threw the royal house out and took over. If you don't get people on your side pronto, you're not going to be a popular ruler when the crisis is over. I don't want you to have to keep looking over your shoulder for the rest of your life. Hermalaya may have been featherbrained, but people liked her. It's gonna start affecting the bottom line if we don't do something.”
Matfany looked glum. “I know it, sir. I am just about ready to go back on bended knee and ask her to return.”
“No!” I roared. The force of my voice knocked him back about five paces. “Why, Mister Aahz, why ever not?” “She's the reason you had a problem, isn't it?”
“Well, sir, of course she's not,” Matfany said. His face softened from its usual stern expression. “It was the bugs that caused all the problems. She kinda made things light up. really. She cheered people up even when it was really bad. Even me.”
“Aw,” Tananda said, throwing her arms around him. “I get what's going on here. You had to send her away be-cause you're in love with her, aren't you?”
“Ma'am!” Matfany exclaimed, taken aback. “I do not appreciate having my feelings discussed in public.”
“We're not in public,” Tanda said, cuddling into his arm and looking up at him. I'd seen men made of stone melt at that look. “Is it true?”
“'What has that got to do with public relations'” I growled.
Myth 18 - MythChief Page 17