by John Moore
“That’s too bad. Because my father is King Eric of Rassendas. I can easily get you a position at Rassendas University.
Mercredi opened and closed his mouth twice. Then he said,“A research position. No teaching. And I want tenure.”
“Tenure track and six classroom hours a week.”
“Two classroom hours. And a scholarship for my daughter.”
“Tuition only. No meals or housing.”
“That’s fine. She can live at home.”
“We’ve got a deal then. Can you come up with an excuse for leaving the Artifact out of the strongbox?”
“All right, let me think. Yes, I’ll say I needed to leave it out of the case to let the field stabilize. But I can’t give you my key to this laboratory. That would definitely place me under Voltmeter’s suspicion. Anyway, the door is guarded night and day.”
Kevin looked toward the ceiling. “Leave that to me. Just leave the Artifact out. I’ll be gone by tomorrow morning. Don’t try to leave the Fortress. When Logan attacks, just hunker down in your office until it is over.”
Both men gave a start at the sudden sound of a key turning in the lock. Mercredi quickly slipped the Ancient Artifact back into the strongbox, and Kevin busied himself with a dust mop. Valerie entered.
Mercredi cringed a bit. It was a slight gesture, lasting only an instant, for he immediately straightened his shoulders again, but Kevin saw it. For the first time he felt a little sorry for the man. Mercredi did not have a whole lot in the morality department, but it was clear that working under Voltmeter had not been pleasant for him. Nonetheless, he managed to come up with a brief show of false bravado.
“Ah, Valerie,” he said. “I see you’re out of uniform.”
Valerie gave him a cold, hard look, and Mercredi fell silent. “Do you have a problem with the way I am clothed, Professor?”
“Uh, no.”
“Perhaps you would like to repeat your comment to His Lordship?”
“No!” said Mercredi, all traces of bravado evaporating. “Ah, no. I think you look fine, just fine. Very evil. It suits you.” He opened the strongbox and took the Ancient Artifact back out as if he were just getting started with it.
“Professor, have you succeeded in neutralizing the magical fields yet?”
“Oh yes. Wrapping that up right now. It just needs a little fine-tuning.”
“Then I expect you to pay more attention to your work and less to my clothing.”
“Yes, of course.” Mercredi blew on the Ancient Artifact and polished it with his sleeve.
Valerie turned to Kevin. “If you can break away from here for a moment, I’d like you to check the flue in my fireplace. It gets smoky when I try to build a fire.”
“All right.”
“It’s summer,” said Mercredi. “Why do you need to build a fire?”
“Ah, I want to be prepared for autumn.”
“We won’t be here. Lord Voltmeter is about to start his campaign of conquest.”
“My room gets chilly in the evening, and anyway, I don’t have to explain anything to you. Get back to work! And you,” she said to Kevin, “come with me.”
“Sure,” said Kevin, who could always find time to aid beautiful girls in hot clothes. He followed her out the door and past the guard, but as he left, he turned back toward Mercredi and saw the older man giving him a broad wink. And was it his imagination, or did the guard seem to be suppressing a smile?
It is the tendency of young men everywhere, when placed in close proximity to a sexy woman, to allow wishful thinking to substitute for reasoned judgment. They will interpret every glance as interested, every smile as encouraging, every movement as suggestive, despite the fact that no suggestion was meant. (Truthfully, this tendency is by no means confined to young men) Kevin was no exception. Mercredi’s wink had started a train of thought, and once started that train was difficult to derail. The sight ahead of him, of Valerie’s slim legs and gently swaying bottom, kept it firmly on track.
As usual in the Fortress of Doom, going from any one place to another involved wending through narrow passages and traveling up and down stairs. Every now and then Valerie would turn her head to give Kevin a flirtatious smile. Or at least it appeared so to Kevin. Several times she stopped, causing the Prince to bump up against her. Kevin was almost certain she was doing so on purpose. By the time they actually reached her room his expectations had risen to stratospheric levels.
The sight of her room did nothing to lower them. If anyone, upon meeting Valerie, doubted for a second that she was a Bad Girl, a few minutes in her room would have set them straight. The walls were covered in red flocked wallpaper. There were mirrors on the ceiling. The candles were colored and scented. There was a settee that was upholstered in black lambskin leather, and a bearskin rug lay in front of the fireplace. There was a very large four-poster bed, its satin sheets slightly tousled. The sheets were a deep burgundy color, and Kevin could understand why—such a bed would set off Valerie’s black hair and pale skin like a diamond in a jeweler’s case.
Now she leaned into the fireplace and poked at the chimney with a pair of tongs. Her key ring jingled as she bent over. “The smoke backs up in here. I think there’s something blocking the chimney. I know it’s summer, but we’re in the mountains. It gets cold at night.”
“Could be a bird’s nest,” said Kevin. Okay, he was thinking. She’s bending over from the waist. No one bends over from the waist like that, unless she’s deliberately trying to show off her figure. She’s definitely flirting.
This immediately raised the next question: What was he going to do about it? Taylor warned about this in his book, Kevin remembered. He had an important mission to perform. The practical hero would put off sleeping with the Evil Assistant until the Ancient Artifact was secure. Kevin dismissed this without a second thought. Every young man knew that the possibility of getting laid, however slim, took precedence over all other factors. The Ancient Artifact could wait. It wasn’t going anywhere that afternoon. The next issue was Becky.
Unofficially, Kevin and Becky were engaged. It was wrong, Kevin decided, for him to make it with another girl when he was engaged to Becky. Not quite as wrong as if they were actually married, but wrong nonetheless. A man who was engaged to be married should not even consider sleeping with other girls. There was no question in Kevin’s mind about this.
He thought about it some more. The key word, he decided, was “unofficial.” He and Becky were not really engaged. The truth was that Becky, at this point, was promised to Logan. Granted, she didn’t intend to marry Logan if she could help it, but she was still promised to him. You could make a pretty good case that Becky was more engaged to Logan than she was to Kevin, and Kevin was therefore free to do as he pleased.
Kevin went through this whole line of reasoning in something less than an eighth of a second. It wasn’t much time to spend on this sort of decision; but he knew it was a weak argument anyway and not really worth dwelling on. The important point, he felt, was that he didn’t act like one of those lowlife guys who hopped right into bed with a girl without considering the consequences. A man who wanted to be honest and decent would think about the consequences before going to bed with the girl anyway. Now his conscience was clear. He was certain he was doing nothing wrong to Becky.
And hopefully she’d never find out about it.
Unfortunately, this exercise in protective rationalization was a complete waste of time. Yes, Valerie was indeed flirting. But Valerie, like any good Evil Assistant, was a Bad Girl, the kind for whom flirting comes as naturally and unconsciously as breathing. While it might not be one hundred percent accurate to say she’d flirt with a statue if no one else was about, she had on several occasions flirted with oil paintings just to keep in practice. And like most flirts, she had no intention of following through. In her case especially, it was part of the job.
Kevin, nonetheless, continued to make his move. “Have you been working here long?” he asked, which
was by no means an original line but served well enough to keep the conversation going. Which is why it has been used by so many men for so many years. He took the tongs from her and peered up the chimney.
“About five years,” said Valerie. “I started back in Angostura. Stan likes to think he outranks me, but I have more seniority than he does. I was hired first.” She left Kevin by the fireplace and lounged back on the bed.
“This damper needs to be adjusted,” said Kevin. “The hinges are rusted out.” He turned around to see Valerie stretched languorously on the burgundy sheets, a sight that was every bit as enticing as it sounds. He couldn’t help noticing, however, that she seemed to be stroking a long black rod. “Um, is that a whip?”
“Hmmm?” said Valerie. She looked at the object in her hands, which she had idly picked up from the side of the bed and begun playing with. It was a thin, pliable length of polished dark wood. “Oh, this? No, it’s a switch. In my line of work, you do run into people who lack discipline. I think it’s important to maintain discipline, don’t you?”
Kevin’s ardor cooled like gravy on a glacier. “Sure,” he said.
“This one gives a nice wrist action.” Valerie brought it down on the mattress, where it made a resounding THWAP! “But it won’t break the skin. For that I like to use the cat.”
“Right,” said Kevin, backing in the general direction of the door. Any door, at that point, would have done as well.
“The cat-o’-nine-tails.” Valerie was warming to her subject. She jumped down from the bed and rummaged around in a nearby chest, emerging with a short ebony handle, from which dangled multiple leather thongs. “I adore the pattern of red marks it leaves, especially on white skin. The knots on the end of each thong make lovely little circles. On dark or tanned skin it doesn’t show up so well, though.” She pouted, then reached into the chest again. “That’s when I use this.” She held up a narrow whip of stiff rawhide.
“Great,” said Kevin, not taking his eyes off her. He was holding the fire tongs defensively across his body. His other hand, groping blindly behind him, found the doorknob. For the first time he noticed that the bed was equipped with broad leather straps, riveted to the frame. The straps had buckles that padlocked.
“It works better when it’s wet.” Valerie put the whip to her red lips and ran her tongue along its length. She let her breath out slowly. “Mmmm. This will raise a welt that will last for days.”
“Sounds wonderful.” Kevin was already halfway out the door.
Valerie leaned toward him, and he backed away another step. But her eyes were closed. “Lovely, lovely red welts,” she murmured, rubbing the whip against her cheek. “All across their little backsides.”
“I’ll need some tools from the village to fix that damper. I’ll bring them when I come back tomorrow. Well, back to work. Toodles.” With not unseemly haste, the Prince turned to leave. Something caught his eye.
It was a sword.
It was by the side of the bed, leaning up against the head-board. It was still in its scabbard, but Kevin recognized it immediately. It was the sword of Thunk the Barbarian, and, until recently, it had been carried by Princess Rebecca of Deserae.
And that meant that Voltmeter had Becky.
Kevin did not let his eyes rest on the sword for more than a second. He stepped back inside the bedroom and closed the door behind him. “Getting drafty in here,” he explained. “Makes it hard to judge how the flow is going through that chimney. I’ll just take another look at it.”
“Mmmm,” said Valerie. She kept her eyes closed while she stroked the whip, gently running her red-tipped fingers along its length.
“I might be able to knock some of the soot loose right now with the poker.”
“Mmmm,” said Valerie again. Her eyes were open now. Kevin was bending over the fireplace, shoving an iron rod up the chimney, while he pondered his next move. Valerie found her attention drawn to his thighs. She tapped the switch speculatively against her palm. Loose soot rattled down into the fireplace. Clanging noises accompanied it.
“I can do a better job later, but if you want a fire tonight, at least you can have one without smoking the place up.” Kevin straightened up to find that suddenly Valerie was standing right beside him.
“Forget the fireplace. Take care of it later. You’ve been working hard, and I think it’s time for a break.” She hooked her arm in his. She was standing very close to him, so close he could feel her breath on his cheek and the warmth coming from her slim body. The whip was gripped tightly in her other hand.
She tugged him over toward the bed. “Just sit down here. No, not way over there. Right next to me. I’ll get you a glass of wine, and we’ll talk a bit. I like to get to know the people from the village. Have you lived there all your life?”
“Yes,” said Kevin. “And yes, a glass of wine would be nice. How did you come to be Lord Voltmeter’s Evil Assistant?”
Valerie had her back to him. She was pouring wine into two silver goblets. “Oh,” she said absently. “Angostura is a lot more traditional than Deserae.” She twisted the top off one of her rings. “There’s not many career options for a woman. You’re either a nurse, governess, or Evil Assistant—that’s really about all there is. I just couldn’t see myself as a governess.” She was talking quickly to keep Kevin distracted. Her hand passed quickly over one goblet. There was a fleeting glimpse of white powder. The wine bubbled briefly, then she offered the goblet to Kevin.
He took it without drinking. “Yes, well I suppose if you sign on with the right organization, and you’re completely lacking in compassion or moral scruples, then Evil Assistant is a good choice.”
“Yes, exactly. And Lord Voltmeter offers an excellent benefits package. What do you think of this wine?”
Kevin brought the goblet to his lips, then took it away, again without tasting it. “Of course, the problem with being an Evil Assistant is that you have to be beautiful.”
Valerie gave a self-deprecating little laugh. “Is that a problem? I don’t think that is a problem for me.” She snuggled up to him. “Do you think that is a problem for me?”
The Prince let his arm slide around her waist. She pressed herself closer to him, resting her head on his shoulder. Her black hair tumbled across his neck. One of her hands strayed to a strap on the bed and began toying idly with the buckle. “Oh no,” Kevin said. “Certainly it’s not a problem now. You’ve got a few years left.”
“What?” Her hand stopped toying with the buckle.
“Well, I mean, you can’t be an Evil Overlord’s Evil Assistant when you’re old.”
Valerie sat up sharply. “But I am beautiful. I am far from being too old to be an Evil Assistant.”
“Yes yes, of course. I didn’t say that you are too old. I just meant that someday you will be too old. I mean, we all get old and gray eventually.”
Valerie grabbed a hand mirror from her dresser, knocking her whip to the floor. “I don’t see any gray hair.”
“No, you don’t have any gray hair,” said Kevin patiently. “That isn’t what I meant. You look fine.”
“Fine as in ‘she’s so fine,’ or fine as in ‘fine for her age’?”
“Your age is fine. I don’t know what you’re getting so excited about. You’ve got years before you need to worry about it. You’re only—what—twenty-nine?”
“Twenty-seven!”
“See, there you go. Say, are these goblets solid silver? They’re pretty nice.” Kevin raised his to his lips again.
Valerie grabbed it out of his hand. “Don’t you have work to do?”
“Um, I guess.”
“Then get to it. What are you loitering here for? We’re not paying you to sit around swilling wine.” She took him firmly by the arm and led him to door. As soon as she shoved him through, she closed the door and bolted it.
Then she lit extra candles beneath her looking glass and spent the next half hour examining the smooth skin under her eyes for tiny wrinkles and h
er thick dark mane for gray hairs. She found neither, but she was still so upset didn’t notice that Kevin had taken her key ring.
If there was one thing Deserae did not lack, it was good maps. Logan appreciated that. Because of Deserae’s strategic position among the Twenty Kingdoms, enough armies had passed through it, or planned to pass through it, that accurate military maps were in abundance. He said as much to his cavalry officer. They were both looking over one such map, in Logan’s tent, still a day’s march from Angst.
“There are two roads south from the Valley of Angst.”
Logan traced them on the maps. “We don’t know which one he plans to take.”
“We’ve gone up both of them,” said the cavalry officer. “There’s no sign of any troop movement. It seems he hasn’t moved yet.”
Logan nodded. “I didn’t expect him to. But I want to cover all possibilities. We’ll take the eastern road—it’s slightly shorter. But there’s a chance he might decide to come down the western road while we are on the east. I don’t want to divide my forces and go up both roads. That would leave either half too weak if it encountered Voltmeter’s army.”
“Yes, sir.”
“So we’ll go up the eastern road and you take your cavalry up the western road. If you run into Voltmeter, send word immediately and fight a delaying action. We’ll reverse course and intercept him back here.”
“Understood, sir.”
“The important thing is to force a battle while he’s still in the mountains. I realize this contradicts the advice I was giving to the Council of Lords just a few days ago. But we don’t want to let Voltmeter get his Diabolical Device near a heavily populated area.”
“His Diabolical Device, sir?”
Logan reached for his glass of brandywine. He gestured toward the bottle, indicating the officer should pour one for himself. The officer did so. “His Diabolical Device,” Logan continued. “All your up-to-date Evil Overlords have a Diabolical Device. I’ve led three military campaigns against Evil Overlords, and each one had some sort of weapon of mass destruction. Very nasty things, too. Or so they say. We never found out for sure what any of them was supposed to do, because we managed to destroy each one, in some heroic fashion, just at the last possible second.”