Myth Alliances

SIXTEEN

Loud clattering on the other side of the door made me jump in my eternal circuit around the cell. This time I was going to knock the guards unconscious and run for it. Very quietly, I lifted the now empty washing pitcher out of the bowl and tiptoed over to flatten myself against the wall next to the door. Slowly it opened and pushed inward. I raised the pitcher.

"There you are, handsome!"

Tananda threw herself into the cell and mashed me against the wall, pressing her lips into mine. "Mmmph! You must really have missed me, Tiger. Is that for me?"

She plucked the pitcher now hanging unsteadily over our heads from my nerveless fingers.

"Forgive the delay," Zol smiled, entering in Tananda's whirlwind wake with Bunny.

Behind them trailed a huge Scammie guard, his eyes fixed dreamily on Tananda. His breastplate was slightly twisted to one side, and his tunic was rucked up inside it. I also noted that his hair under his helmet was mussed.

"Things have been a little unsettled in the city. We had a little trouble entering this building. I am very impressed by the magik-dampening field! It certainly did not originate in this dimension, but it serves them well. Such a thing ought to be put into use in the Bazaar at Deva. It would cut down on some of the misunderstandings that occur there every day."

I smiled at him, mentally noting that if anyone in the future should happen to want to import the same kind of magik-dispeller in use on Scamaroni, I would campaign against it with every ounce of my influence. I'd been taken plenty of times in my day, and though I didn't enjoy it, I'd never change the way the Deveels operated their most impressive establishment. If you weren't savvy enough to shop in the Bazaar, you shouldn't shop in the Bazaar. Taking the challenge out of it was approaching the problem from the wrong angle.

"I'm glad to see you! How did you get in to see me?"

"Oh," Tananda twinkled, with a grin at the guard, "I have my ways."

"I bet you do," I agreed, a trifle embarrassed, as she and Bunny exchanged sisterly winks.

Only one of Tananda's talents was being a successful Assassin. Another came from a Trollop's natural proclivities, and all I can say is that circumstances have always seemed to prevent me from finding out about them myself. I was grateful they'd managed to get in to see me, but troubled that she had had to do something like that to accomplish it.

"We are ostensibly your legal counsel," Zol told me, "but Mistress Tananda has managed to convince our escort to allow us privacy."

"I'm sorry if you had to… do anything to rescue me," I stammered, attempting to censor my thought in mid-speech. I think I blushed. Tananda laughed and put her hand on my arm.

"Don't be. It was fun. You won't believe what they can do with those noses."

"I don't want to know!" I yelped. I glanced past them into the empty hall. "Where's Gleep?"

"Back on Wuh with Wensley," Bunny replied. "He's taken quite a fancy to the Wuhses. They've gotten over being afraid of him, I think. They pet him whenever he asks, they feed him treats, and they never scold him, even when he damages their houses."

"I'll bet he likes that," I groaned, wondering if they were undoing years of obedience training with their indulgence. "I have to get out of here."

"You bet, Tiger," Tananda agreed. She turned to the guard. "Now, give me the key."

Slowly, the big hand rose and deposited a huge iron key in her hand. She patted him on the cheek.

"Good! Now, go away and count to a thousand, and don't look! I'll come back and find you again later. All right?"

"All right," the ravished-looking Scammie echoed.

He rotated slowly around and ambled toward the cell door. On the threshold he paused and looked longingly at Tananda. She shook her head and twiddled her fingers at him with a rueful smile. He let out a disappointed sigh, and shuffled off into the hallway.

"How can I get out of here?" I asked. I explained my problem with the judge. "You can't convince every guard to go count to a thousand."

"Can't I?" Tananda challenged me.

"No need," the little gray man interjected. "Scammies believe anything they are told, so all we have to do is convince them that the person leaving the building is not you."

"It'd be better if you didn't look like you," Bunny added, looking me thoughtfully up and down.

"The whole place is magik-proofed," I informed them. "They use a lot of magik in this dimension, and it's the only way they can avoid having jailbreaks. No disguise spell will work."

"No problem," she stated. She excused herself. In a few minutes she was back with an armload of rags. "Put these on," she said, holding out a shapeless skirt and blouse.

"Those are the cleaning lady's clothes," I observed.

"Good idea," Tananda grinned at Bunny. "No one ever notices the staff."

I was concerned. "She'll tell someone about the exchange."

"She's retiring," Bunny reassured me. "I gave her enough gold to buy a cottage. She's already on her way out of town. She threw in the bucket and mop for free."

As my distinguished counsel, Zol was permitted to depart from the building without trouble. The little gray man led Bunny and Tananda out of the prison and down to the street, where they waited at the far end of the bridge for me. All I had to do was potter my way along until I was past the magik barrier, go invisible, and leave this dimension forever—or until the memory of the riot faded away.

I fancied myself a pretty good actor. Once swathed in the cleaner's sorry rags, I bent my spine so all anyone could see was the top of my head scarf, and shoved the pail on its creaking wheels along the hallway with hands wrapped in strips of cloth so the color of my skin wasn't visible. My progress was slow, but I couldn't hurry. I had only been along this hallway once since my incarceration, but it wasn't hard to guess which way was out.

A Scammie with a court badge on his tunic passed me, whistling through his nose as he tossed a big key in the air and caught it. He was heading for my cell door! I continued my amble, picking up the pace as much as I dared. He passed me on the way back, shouting for the guards. My disappearance had been discovered. I ducked my face farther down into my blouse. I had to be careful. Moments later, a small troop hustled past, swords drawn, to investigate my empty cell. They started searching the immediate area, coming up with Tananda's "friend," whom they pulled out of the corner where he was hiding.

"Eight hundred ninety-six, eight hundred ninety-seven…"

"Where is he?" the others shouted.

The Scammie looked abashed.

"I dunno," he muttered.

"Find him!"

I was only yards from the exit now. A few more steps and I would be free.

"Hey, you!" a voice growled.

I froze. Had they seen through my disguise at last? My shoes were concealed under the hem of the skirt. Loud footsteps rang on the stone floor. I found myself looking down at a pair of guard-issue boots. A hand gestured to my left.

"Mandrilla, come over here! We've got a spill for you to wipe up."

I groaned to myself. Of all the rotten luck! I had no choice but to play along. They thought I was the cleaning lady. If I protested they might look closer at me. At the moment my disguise was fooling them. Walking at a tottery pace I trailed behind my guide, who stopped in front of a wide, carved door and drew his sword. I blanched, but he stepped up and opened the portal for me.

"Wine's on the ground over there," he pointed. I muttered something, and minced inside.

I almost turned and fled out of the room.

There was no disguising the smell. I had woken up near it or in the same building with it for years: the aroma of agitated Pervect. The Ten were here! Or, I counted, peering up through the frayed edge of the headscarf, eight of them. Big and green and scaly and… looking for me? 'This is almost funny," the eldest one in the flowered dress said, peering up at the judge. "You've got a witness, but he's not here. I suppose you have other evidence? If not, we've got other appointments, honey."

"The fact that he is not here is immaterial," Senior Do-mani blustered.

The Pervects weren't convinced. I wouldn't have been, either.

Something prodded me in the back. I nearly jumped through the ceiling.

"Go on, clean it up," the guard reminded me, shoving me toward a broken carafe and a pool of spilled wine on the table near the Pervects. "I'll protect you from them."

It was brave of him, because he didn't sound at all certain that he could. In fact, I was pretty certain he couldn't, magikless though they were at the moment.

"He did say he was a wizard, Senior," Officer Gelli reminded the judge. "If he's more powerful than our containment spells, he could have killed all of us. Instead he chose to warn us. And he did pay for the goggles he broke."

"And there's Bofus's statement, too," Officer Koblinz added, removing his ever present notebook from his pocket. "He claims to be an innocent dupe of these demons. He's given us every detail of how they approached him and convinced him to spread their instruments of evil."

"Yes, Bofus," Domari's eyebrows rose. The tone of his voice boded no good for Bofus, whoever he was. Growling from the Pervects informed me that if this Bofus escaped official punishment he had some coming from them. "This is a serious case, one that involves the well-being, and indeed the security of Scamaroni…"

Cautiously I approached the pool of wine, the creaking of my bucket's wheels covering the chattering of my knees. I couldn't let the Pervects see my face. I hauled the mop out, slapped it onto the floor and began swabbing up the mess. The tallest Pervect, the one in the form-fitting camouflage coverall, drew her knees in as I bumped past. I caught a glimpse of her out of the comer of my eye. She still looked familiar to me. I must have met her on Perv, or seen her coming out of a restaurant at the Bazaar (if you think I'd ever have been in a Pervish restaurant, you've never smelled one). I sopped up most of the wine, then took a brush and pan off the back of the pail to sweep up the broken glass.

"You missed a lot of the liquid, dear," the Pervect informed me, pointing a manicured fingernail. "Look. It ran away toward the wall. It's going to stain the fringe of that tapestry." I nodded, and kept brushing. "Hey!"

"Silence!" Domari roared. "As a result, I order all of you to stand trial on multiple charges of malfeasance and misfeasance, mental assault on hundreds, if not thousands, of citizens of our fair nation…" The judge paused in the middle of his pronouncement to lean over his desk. "Mandrilla, what have you been rolling in?"

The guard with the drawn sword cleared his throat. "She's been cleaning up after that Klahd wizard, sir."

"Ugh. Well, when you're done here, Mandrilla, go home and take a bath."

I muttered and nodded as I wrung out the mop and slapped it down on the floor.

"You didn't get all the glass, either," the young Pervect told me. 'Take a wet cloth and pick up the particles. Then you can mop it down. You're just spreading the shards all over the place."

"This is ruining everything," said the shortest Pervect. "What are we supposed to do now?"

"There are plenty of other dimensions," the female in khakis told her. "Be patient."

"A Klahdish wizard?" the elder Pervect said, in a low voice meant to be heard only by her companions. "A powerful wizard who's a Klahd? They barely have an adequate magician once in a thousand years. Have you heard of such a thing?" "I think I have," the angry one on the end replied thoughtfully. "Stiff, Stiv, Smee… something like that."

"We'll have to have Caitlin research it when we get back," suggested the elegant female in a skirt suit.

Hearing them talk about me made me nervous. They didn't know who I was, but the police could identify me if my disguise slipped. My hand trembled, sending drops of wine all over. The female sprang to her feet as I narrowly missed her ankle.

"Oh, for Crom's sake, female! I've never seen such an inept job in my life! Give me that mop! I could do a better job than you in my sleep!"

"Sit down, madam!" the judge roared. "Let our employee finish her work."

"I could have cleaned your entire courtroom in the time it's taken her to make matters worse," the elegant Pervect snarled back.

"You may end up doing menial labor," Domari warned her. "Each of these charges carries a penalty of a period not less than thirty days in jail, to be served consecutively."

"What?"

The combined outrage of eight Pervects was enough to knock me off my feet. Hastily I finished wiping up the last of the spill, scrambled up, and creaked out of the courtroom. Behind me, all of them were on their feet shouting at the judge. My guard escorted me to the door, then closed it behind me. I could still hear their voices echoing as I walked in increasingly long strides out of the building. A guard at the entrance gave me a strange look.

"My vacation starts tonight!" I piped, in a high-pitched voice. I didn't have to simulate the aged tremble; I was still shaking from being that close to my nemeses. The guard nodded and went back to staring off into space.

Unless I was very wrong, the Pervect Ten, or eight of them, anyhow, were going to be in a magik-proofed jail for years! Wuh's problem was almost solved. We should be able to handle the remaining two. I had trouble restrain- ing myself from dancing a little victory hop as I left the courthouse and tottered over the bridge to Bunny and the others.

Bunny and Tananda embraced me as I reached them. I hid behind a pillar to shed the cleaning lady's garments and straighten my own.

"You had better restore our appearance," Zol reminded me. The disguises had been knocked out by the anti-magik field inside the building, but were restored the moment we stepped outside its sphere of influence. That was a sophisticated spell.

It took less than a moment for me to reach down to the line of power I'd been staring at for over a day, erase the faces of long-nosed Scammies and restore their features. It felt so good to be doing magik again!

"Nice work, handsome," Tananda remarked approvingly, looking at herself in the mirror of Bunny's PDA. "You ought to get locked up more often."

"No, thanks," I replied. "I did learn something about concentration, but it does me no good unless I can actually practice my techniques."

"Down with the outworlders! Death to demons!"

I glanced up the street. A vast crowd of Scammies had collected in front of the courthouse. "What's going on?"

'They're protesting the loss of the goggles," Zol replied. "They should not be. Such time-wasting nonsense keeps one from the pursuit of truth and beauty. It is good that they have been taken away."

"It's not good! What will I do?" a female asked, clutching at us as she made her way forlornly toward the protest group. "I have to have my story! I loved it! I lived it."

"You must learn to do without it, my dear," Zol told her soothingly, patting her hand. "It isn't safe to fill your mind with falsehood."

"But I liked it! Can't I just have it for a while?"

"Oh, you must wean yourselves away from it. You should be as you were before, true to yourself!" "How?" a male demanded hoarsely. "How can we do that? How can we do without them?"

"Help us!" a female pleaded, clutching my arm. "I don't want to give it up!"

"You need to be strong!" the little gray man shouted, his thin voice almost swallowed by the woe of those around him. "Believe in yourselves! That is all you need to do! Rely upon one another!"

"He knows what he's talking about," I told the Scammies who lifted tear-stained faces to me. "That's Zol Icty, the self-help expert."

"Zol Icty!"

Desperate for any kind of comfort now that the Pervects' false vision had been taken away from them the crowd swelled in upon us. People shoved in close to me, shouting questions. They were so distraught they were crushing me. I used magik to open up a little space, but there were so many people I was hurting the ones nearest me. Bunny let out a yelp of distress. Hastily I grabbed her around the waist and swung her up onto the span of the bridge, then jumped up beside her.

"Advise us, wise strangers!" a Scammie pleaded, reaching for us.

The protest had attracted the attention of the people in the courthouse. Police officers came boiling out of the entrance. Officer Gelli spotted me and pointed.

"The wizard! After him!"

In my haste to get out of the crowd, I had accidentally placed myself in plain view. I pulled the D-hopper out of my boot and set it for Wuh.

"Tananda! Zol!" I cried. They glanced up. I pointed at the dozens of policemen racing towards us.

Down in the midst of the crowd I saw Tananda starting her bump-and-grind transportation charm. Zol, in the thick of everything, seemed perfectly calm. He tipped me a wink. Reassured, I pressed the stud.

The coolness of Wuh's pale-gray skies rushed in on me like a welcome splash of water. I gasped for air and let go of Bunny's hand. We were safe and sound in Montgomery's tavern. Tananda appeared next to us and brushed back her magnificent hair with both hands.

"That was just a little too cozy," Tananda articulated, shaking her shoulders, a movement that hypnotized me on the spot. "I prefer to be introduced before I get that close."

"You are back!" Wensley cheered, rising from the table in the corner. "You are saved from Durance Vile! I rejoice!"

Gleep, too, noticed our return. He sprang up and came hurtling toward me like a cannonball. After the delicious smells on Scamaroni, his stench hit me before he did. I went down on my back with him slurping my face. I gagged, but I was pleased, too. The Wuhses might have been spoiling him, but he missed me.

"That was a close call," I stated, climbing back on my feet. I wiped the slime off my face with my sleeve.

Gleep looked sad that I was disposing of his token of affection. I grabbed his head and scratched energetically around his ears. He slitted his eyes and let his body fall sideways to the floor in bliss.

"But where is Master Zol?" Wensley inquired.