"Oh, Master Skeeve!" Wensley gushed. "You… you are the most average wizard I have ever met!"
I frowned.
"That's a compliment," Bunny reminded me gently.
"I know," I sighed. "It just doesn't sound like one."
Magik-proof the Scamaroni jail and courthouse might be; damage resistant they were less so. Tananda and I had planned to sneak back by ourselves and liberate Zol, possibly enlisting the help of the guard she had, er, bribed, but Bunny insisted on going along.
We hid underneath the drawbridge until the foot traffic in the street thinned out in the wee hours of the morning. The guards on duty marched just above us. I was waiting for them to sit down so they wouldn't fall when we hit them with the Assassin sleeping spell that Tananda knew.
But they never settled down anywhere. I wouldn't have, either, if I had had to listen to the banging and pounding that was coming from inside the station. Loud shrieks rang out, only lightly muffled by the twelve-foot thick stone walls.
"The Pervects aren't taking incarceration calmly, are they?" Bunny whispered to me.
Wham! The wall just overhead shook, as if a dragon had slammed into it. Male voices joined in the cacophony.
"Shut up or we'll chain you up!" a guard yelled.
"You and what army?" shrilled a female voice.
"Police brutality!" bellowed another.
"Let us out, or we'll let ourselves out!"
"Never! The Volute Jail has never had a successful escape!" a male announced proudly, but the sentence ended in a hesitation. After all, had I not departed unexpectedly only that day?
The footsteps overhead became more agitated by the moment.
"We're never going to get rid of them," Tananda murmured.
"Sure we will," I assured. "They're afraid of a jailbreak. We'll give them one."
From my long, slow promenade that afternoon I knew every inch of that drawbridge. It was no trouble at all to create the illusion of two heavily armed female Pervects dropping to the stone path from above the door, then running down the bridge toward the town.
The effect on the sentries was electric.
"They're getting away!" one yelled. "Raise the alarm! Two of the Perverts got out!" Sprinting footsteps pattered away into the distance, along with the faint yellow light of the glowing torches they'd grabbed off the wall sconces.
"What? What?" came from inside. But the two guards were-already in pursuit of my illusion. I listened carefully. The sentries' alarm had spread. Within moments, a troop of guards and police officers raced out and down into the street, following their fellow guards' lights. Tananda grinned at me as she swung a hook over the side of the bridge. I levitated, pulling Bunny with me by her wrists. I lowered her lightly until her toes touched down, then swung in as far as I could into the darkened doorway. We all alit without noise, and tiptoed in.
As soon as we crossed the threshold I felt the chill sensation of the dampening spell. It didn't render me physically cold, but it stripped away from me all connection with the natural energy lines, something I'd come to associate with heat. As Aahz had trained me to, I had filled up my inner reservoir with as much power as I could hold, though it would do me no good in here.
The false escape had thrown the building into chaos. Half-dressed guards with veins showing in their protuberant brown eyes and their hair still mussed from sleep yanked on uniform tunics as they ran up and down the halls. No one seemed to know what he or she was doing. Following Tananda's lead, we flitted from shadow to shadow, ducking out of the sight of the hurrying guards. We made our way back to the cells.
Where I heard banging and yelling I knew I would not find our Kobold. I tiptoed to the first quiet door I could find and leaned close to the crack at the bottom.
"Zol?" I whispered.
"Who is that?" a voice bellowed from across the hall. The banging ceased for a moment. "Who's out there?"
I should have realized how keen Pervects' hearing was. "Zol, are you in there?" I repeated.
No answer. I heard a hiss, and looked up. Tananda was clinging to the keystone arch above the cell door. Bunny was perched on a rafter over her head. Tananda offered me a hand and helped me swing up just in time to avoid a patrol of three Scammies striding in, carrying lit torches.
"Prisoner check!" announced the lead guard, though he looked as though he'd rather face wild spider-bears buck naked. They started to insert the key in the first lock. A thundering blow from the other side shook the door so much the key almost hopped out.
"You let me out of here at once!" It was the eldest female. "You boys are going to be sorry you mistreated an old lady! When I tell your mothers what you've been up to…!" She left the threat unfinished, but it had its desired effect. The guards trembled and moved back. The sergeant, sweating, pulled the key out.
"That one's secure," he told them. They moved nervously along to the next cell.
By this time the other Pervects had heard the footsteps in the hallway. They were all clamoring to get out, threatening the guards with dire physical harm. I paid attention to the cells that the guards didn't visit. Either those were empty, or they contained non-Pervect prisoners.
Boom! Crash! Screech! The noise was the ideal cover as we went from one quiet cell to another. Once the guards had gone we were able to split up. In a few moments we met in a doorway.
"I don't hear him," Tananda whispered. "I don't think he's here."
"Where would they be keeping him?" Bunny asked.
We were interrupted by a bright Prring! like a doorbell being rung. Sudden silence descended. We all looked at one another. Wide-eyed with alarm, Bunny clapped one hand over her mouth, and the other over Bytina, in the pouch at her waist. The PDA had made that noise.
I didn't have time to chide Bunny for not telling the little computer to be quiet. Suddenly, the entire building burst into life. The Pervects started pounding on their cell doors again. Shouting erupted all around us. We may not have had access to magik, but we flew out of the cell block and headed toward the exit.
Luckily the confusion prevented anyone from paying close attention to us. Scammies ran up and back with torches, stopping one another at sword's point, and diving in and out of doorways. Whenever a section of hallway emptied, we traversed it, hiding in pools of shadow. The entrance, whose threshold I never thought I would have to cross again in my life, loomed up ahead of us. Beyond it, the sky was lightening. Morning had broken. An apron of light was just beginning to spread down the hall. Would we reach it?
As we were scurrying along the last few yards, a huge shadow loomed up in front of us. I froze. There was nowhere to hide. We'd been discovered. Any moment now, the guard would shout out the alarm, and this time we would all be locked in a cell next to the Pervects.
"Scootie!" Tananda squealed, throwing herself into the guard's arms.
"Tananda," the guard replied, torn between pleasure and embarrassment.
"Where have you been?" she asked, gesturing behind her back for us to keep moving. "I've been looking for you."
"Uh, I can't now," Scootie said, nervously. "We had an escape. Uh… I'm not supposed to say anything about that."
"Oh, I wouldn't tell," Tananda promised him, cuddling close. "You're so brave, chasing prisoners. I bet they were armed and dangerous!"
"Uh, not exactly…" We tiptoed behind the Scammie, whose entire attention was being commanded by Tananda.
"Scootari!"
"Uh, I gotta go," Scootie pleaded, extricating himself with some difficulty.
"Oh, must you?" Tananda cooed. By this time we were outside, plastered against the wall just beyond the door. I threw an illusion on myself and Bunny to make us look like the missing sentries. Tananda came sauntering out.
"Let's go," she chirped, straightening her belt and tidying her hair. "He couldn't stay." I gave Tananda a Scammie face to wear, too, and added the flower-smell illusion that had initially kept us from discovery. The three of us found a quiet corner table in a local caf
e to get some breakfast. I sat with my back to the wall, keeping an eye on the interplay in the room. The whole town was frantic about the purported escape of prisoners from the jail.
"I heard a wizard vanished out of the building, right in front of the judge," a female said, pouring opaque, pale blue liquid into her morning cup. She spooned yellow crystals in, and stirred the resulting green soup with a narrow metal stick, the local equivalent of a spoon that would fit into the small round mouths.
"I heard it was three of them, all green and scaly!" a big male exclaimed.
'That makes four," calculated the table server, a slender male in his early years. "That's almost an army."
"An army escaped?" asked an old female, coming in the door. "Preserve us! An army of demons!" She backed out of the door and scurried away as fast as her feeble legs would carry her.
I shook my head over my plate. These people really would believe anything. I was partly to blame for the mass hysteria brewing. I meant to undo as much of the damage as I could, but first we had to find Zol.
Bunny arranged herself with her back to the rest of the room, and opened up Bytina. She tilted the little magik mirror so the two of us could see it, too: there was one handsome parchment envelope visible on the desktop. In a twinkling Bunny tapped both forefingers onto the hand-shaped button.
"I shall be delayed quite a bit, dear Bunny," the message read. "I don't know if you are cross-dimensionally en- abled, so you may not get this immediately. I hope you will not be too worried about me. As soon as I can get free I will rejoin you." The ornate signature was already familiar to me from the flyleaf of Zol's book.
"He's still got his notebook." Bunny breathed a sigh of relief.
"But where is he being held?" I asked.
"I don't know. How can we find him?"
Tananda aimed a fingernail at Bytina. "Does it… or, should I say, she… have any ideas?"
"Do you, sweetie?" Bunny asked, stroking the little device with her fingertip.
Apparently she did. A blank correspondence card appeared in the center of the mirror. A long, fluffy quill dropped into view, dipped itself into an inkwell, and wrote upon the creamy whiteness, "Where are you?" The pen and ink vanished, and the card slid into an envelope marked 'To Zol Icty." The sealed letter dropped out of sight, leaving the mirror blank. The PDA hummed as though it was proud of itself. Bunny petted it some more.
"Isn't she clever?" my assistant beamed. I rolled my eyes.
We were in the middle of a second round of doughnuts and hot drinks when the ringing sound came that we had learned to associate with engraved messages being delivered to Bytina. Bunny opened the little compact. We all crowded around the tiny mirror to see what it had received.
It wasn't a message. Instead, Zol's pale oval face looked at us out of the mirror. "Oh, how fortunate to see all three of you," he exclaimed. "I am here on Scamaroni."
"So are we," I replied, relieved that he looked well and unharmed, though there were deep circles around his huge dark eyes. "We're in a cafe just off the main street, about three blocks from the jail."
"I can't come to you right now," the little gray man responded, with a shake of his head. "I'm afraid I'm tied up."
'Tied up!" I echoed, ready to spring to my feet. "Well, we're here to rescue you. What kind of vile dungeon have they got you imprisoned in?"
There was a long pause, while Zol's whole face twisted strangely. I glanced at Bunny to see if Bytina was causing it to distort. It was a moment before he answered me.
"Good friend Skeeve, I think you misunderstand my circumstances, though I am proud that you have my best interests in mind. I must clarify: I cannot leave my present location because I have quite a number of people who need my services. Perhaps you can join me?"
I must have goggled. Bunny grabbed Bytina out of my hands. "Where?" she demanded.
"I'm in an open-air cafe down by the river, running a group encounter session to help wean the Scammies from those evil goggles. If you walk sunward from the corrections facility bridge, you will soon see me."
"Sure," I agreed, faintly puzzled. We paid our bill, then followed his directions.
EIGHTEEN
"Finding yourself takes a long time,
and costs a lot of money."
— s. freud
Cresting the top of a hill on the street that led away from the jail, I could not immediately spot Zol Icty. There was too much of a crowd. Down near the small bistro were a thousand or more Scammies. They were all sitting or lying down on the blue-green grass on the bank, facing the center, where our little gray man sat at a table furnished with a teapot, a cup and saucer, and lofty stacks of his latest book. Every one of the audience members seemed to be in a blissful trance, smiling vacantly. The thin voice of our companion rose and fell in a sing-song tone. The heads nodded in unison when he spoke.
"… Once you have really looked inside yourself and know who you really are, you can begin to understand the wonder that is you. You need no artificial stimulants or devices to enhance the very you-ness of you. You have but to face your reality, and be satisfied with it. It doesn't matter if your acquaintances have riches or opportunities that you lack—you have your identity, your uniqueness, and that is more precious than gold, more interesting than any false storyteller. Be true to yourselves."
Eyelids fluttering, Bunny let out a huge sigh. Groaning, I led my friends down toward Zol. If there was anything more painful than realizing his advice was off-kilter, it was listening to his mumbo-jumbo. In my opinion it was the verbal equivalent of illusions, disguising the reality underneath. But people seemed to respond to it. The rapt expressions were as fixed as anything I'd seen in hypnosis subjects.
Halfway down the slope I noticed that the site was surrounded by dozens of police officers. I skirted them nervously. They, too, were smiling contentedly. I spotted Officers Gelli and Koblinz. They saluted me pleasantly when I caught their eye. I knew they could not recognize me in my disguise, but it made me nervous all the same. They, too, had become true to themselves once again. I couldn't wait for Zol to finish autographing copies of his book so we could get out of Scamaroni for good, and leave our problems behind—or at least 80 percent of them.
"Madam," Senior Domari repeated wearily, "we cannot produce that witness. I know you want to confront him. You can't. Now, I ask you again to explain how it is that two of your number escaped from this facility last night, but there were still eight of you in the cells this morning?"
"Sonny," Vergetta countered, "All I want to do is go home. What'll it take?"
"I wish I could pitch all of you into a bottomless pit, but I am required to follow the rule of law."
"Pitch us! It'd be better than spending another night in your pokey! I've been more comfortable in college dormitories!"
"Perverts," the judge muttered. "Pervects," Vergetta corrected him. "We have a right to be addressed properly, your honor."
"I'm not sure the word doesn't apply," Domari retorted. "I've heard some ugly things about Perverts."
"It's an ugly universe," Vergetta replied philosophically. "You don't want us staying here, judge. Look at the condition of your jail. And if we can slip in and out of here without detection, well, you can't keep us here against our will."
That statement made the judge even more nervous. "Then why are you still here?"
"Because we want to reassure you that we're law-abiding beings. You've heard a lot of other things about Pervects, right? Don't tell me you haven't. I can tell by your face. Let's come to some kind of agreement. I know you'd really like to settle this. So would we."
Senior Domari picked up his stack of papers and began to straighten them again. Vergetta knew she shouldn't harass him any more. The poor boy was at the end of his patience, but so was she. She had too many questions, and no one knew the answers. Who were the two Pervects that had been spotted running away last night? Niki and Caitlin wouldn't have run away if you'd shoved a basilisk in their faces. She hoped
they hadn't tried a stupid rescue. Then-job was to stay on Wuh and keep the stupid sheep from bankrupting all of them in her absence. But who was responsible for landing them in jail in the first place? Who was out to destroy their reputation? Who had come in, unprovoked, and messed up their deal so their harmless little toy was considered to be the most dangerous thing since the do-it-yourself landmine kit?
The most puzzling thing was how a Klahd had gotten a hold of a pair of their goggles. It had turned up in the cell that had been vacated by the only real jailbreak. Moms-hone assured her that no units had ever gone to Deva or Klah. Paldine had been convinced at first that someone had created a knockoff and was planning to steal their market, but this pair was one of theirs.
"I must ask you again, er, ladies, which two of you led the patrol on a merry chase all over town early this morning, and then broke into the jail again. And why?"
None of them knew the answer to that question, but the Ten would be damned if they would let an outsider know they didn't know.
"Just a demonstration, your honor," Vergetta offered, a broad grin breaking out over her face.
"A demonstration?" Domari echoed.
"Of course! We're demons, right? So… never mind," she averted the subject hastily, when the judge showed no signs of getting the joke.
The others glanced at her, but she gave them a hasty wave as if to say, Leave the talking to me, girls. We can use this.
"Look, your little prison might hold Scammies, and it ought to hold scammers, if you understand what I'm saying, but I'd like to point out that you couldn't keep a Klahd wizard behind bars for even one night, and believe me when I tell you darlink, that after another night or so those walls aren't going to hold us any longer. And look at the evidence: we can come and go as we please. So why don't you just let us leave? I promise you from the bottom of my heart, that when we go you will never see any of us again. Ever."
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