Myth-Chief

THIRTEEN

"Swamp Foxes pride ourselves on existing with just any kind of resources we can turn up, sir," Matfany said. He was a decent-looking specimen. He had the long nose of every Swamp Fox I'd ever run into, which, counting him, was two. His black coat was wavy, except for the pelt on his chest and the tuft between his tall, triangular ears, which were tightly curled, and he had a pair of wire-rimmed glasses perched on his long nose. He had the sardonic look of a standup comedian, but the eyes were sincere and very serious. That kind of expression always made me nervous. It usually meant a fanatic of some kind.

"We do with what we've got, or we do without. That is the way of the Swamp Fox, from time immemorial. But we haven't got, sir. That's our problem. I am having to recreate a government out of a sea of neglect, is what I am doing. To put a sadly blunt comment upon it, out of my usually polite way of putting things, you understand? But we are broke as a shattered vase, sir."

I stood up from my chair. "Too bad. We don't take

charity cases very often, pal, and we're full up on our quota for the month." Matfany stood up, a bemused look on his face.

"Sir, I don't understand."

"I have to explain 'no' to you?"

"Aahz!" Tananda fired off a warning shot. "What did we just finish discussing?"

I knew. I sat back and signaled for him to do the same. I had agreed to take the next case to come through the door and make more money than Skeeve could, no matter what it was. I sighed and poured myself a half bucket of single malt, drained it, and refilled it.

"All right, tell me all about it."

The sincere eyes fixed on mine, and he hooked a thumb beneath the suspender holding up his trousers, took a deep breath, and began.

"Well, sir, you may have visited Foxe-Swampburg in the past. The thing is that it looks like a pretty nice place, and it is, only I have to tell you that underneath what is a very handsome and appealing exterior are problems that would just curl your hair, sir, if you had hair, that was. No offense intended to people with scales. It's just an expression. Now, I have had the enormous responsibility ..."

"Of course I could do better than the kid!" I had reasoned, once Tanda and I were alone in my private office. "I just didn't want him to feel bad."

"Not bad after you just tore strips out of him for walking out on us?" Tananda had countered.

"And how did you feel when he walked out?" I asked.

"Pretty awful. But I made up with him. You haven't."

I had to admit she was right. The one time he came to find me, I'd been pretty glad to see him, but he had a ridiculous job on tap for which he wanted my help. I turned him down flat because he should have turned it down. And the fact was he came out of it without a bent copper coin. Oh, maybe they gave him the D-hopper, which was currently in my right-hand pants pocket, but so what? A Klahd was only asking for trouble getting involved with ten Pervect females.6 But Skeeve never listened to what I said. And he never came back to find me again. Hell with it.

I had plenty of other friends, Tananda included. But to have Skeeve waltzing back into the Bazaar after an absence of months and expecting to take over M.Y.T.H., Inc. again like he had never left didn't take into account anyone's past feelings or present positions. We'd all moved on.

Including me.

Except we hadn't. Not really. That's what hurt. We trusted him, and he walked off without looking back. The whole M.Y.T.H., Inc. enterprise was possible mostly because of his ... I don't want to say leadership; call it glue. He was the glue. Once he was gone we hung together in a kind of loose fashion, mostly because of inertia. We liked each other, but, well, maybe I understated it when I said we liked him. I never knew a Klahd who could engender such loyalty, and all without seeming to know what he was doing.

He said he had his reasons. Maybe we had too high expectations where he was concerned. Not me. I knew what Klahds were capable of. Skeeve just exceeded those capabilities most of the time. He should have been born a Pervect. Together we could have taken over dimensions.

Nah. The upkeep'd kill you.

"... And what do you think, after all that? She says the treasury's not up to her expectations, and what am I gonna do about that? What am I gonna do? I'm supposed to keep filling it up so she can just empty it again? With what? Our people's got what they've got, sir. And, as I said, what they've got at the moment is nothing. We've got creditors breathing down our necks, and we don't like it. We like to keep ourselves to ourselves, sir. I collect taxes to pay the bills, but when there's no income, there are no taxes, and when there are no taxes, there's no revenue for nothing else."

I made a face. Back to business. I snapped on my asset-counting hat.

"Can you increase exports of anything?" I asked, mentally going down the checklist.

"We don't really export anything, sir," said Matfany, ruefully. I raised an eyebrow.

"So how do you make money?"

"I thought you said you'd heard of Foxe-Swampburg? Hospitality, sir. Ours is an economy based upon visitors, especially repeat visitors. We used to get plenty of guests from off-dimension looking for a little getaway, if you understand me?"

I leered at him. "Sure do."

Matfany looked sternly at me. "Sir, we're not Vaygus. I mean, you want to go and empty your pockets while having your eardrums and your eyeballs pounded, that's where you go. If you want a quiet week drowning bait or stumping up hills, lying on a beach and maybe sucking down some local brew, we're the stop for you. Food's pretty good. People are nice. You can just relax yourself to pieces."

"I've been there," Tananda put in, with a mind-blowing smile at Matfany. "It's pretty."

"Don Bruce went fishin' there one time," Guido put in. "We rubbed out about fifty-eight trout. The Don offered Foxe-Swampburg his official seal of approval. We also got some business accomplished during the trip." He gave us a significant look with one brow raised. I could make an educated guess what kind of business had drawn the Mob

Boss to an out-of-the-way locale like Foxe-Swampburg. Matfany looked baffled. I cleared my throat.

"Not my usual kind of vacation, but it has its place. So, what happened to derail Foxe-Swampburg's success story?"

"Pinchbugs," he said. "Some empty-headed fool imported a few breeding pairs because their wings make pretty jewelry. Thought they could get an accessories trade going. Could've told you that'd come to no good. If anyone had asked the government, and by that I mean me, for an import license, I would have said no way. Man didn't think things through, you can just tell."

"And what happened?" I asked.

"Well, sir. no one can relax when flies the size of your linger are biting you every other second, now can they? Some species don't care, but most of 'em canceled their reservations in a hurry. We lost about seven years' bookings all in one week. Those darned flies also ate about every leaf and needle on every plant and burrowed holes in nearly everything except metal. I've got clothes that're so well ventilated I don't need a fan in the summertime, sir."

"Don't draw me a picture," I growled. "And what about the pinchbugs? Is that what you need us to do?"

"Oh, we got rid of them pinchbugs, sir," Matfany said. "Soon's we figured out that was the big problem, we found a wizard from Shelf who came in and took care of them, no problem. Big fee, though. Took about everything that was left in the treasury. And when that was gone, that girl was still honking on about what was she going to use for clothes money? The treasury's about empty. That was when I realized that girl was only going to cause more problems than she was gonna solve. I mean, she was the princess and all, but she just isn't the administrator that her daddy was. I tried to get her interested in the day-to-day workings. I'm not sure if she wasn't interested or she didn't have, well, you'll excuse me, the mental furniture to understand what needed to be done. I kinda had to take over the government completely then, because unless i did. we. weren't gonna have one anymore. Now, I like that girl plenty, but she's a nuisance. I didn't think she was that empty-headed, but you tell me! Clothes money! We've just got to put things back together, or Foxe-Swampburg's pretty well doomed. I've got creditors barking at me day and night. They want satisfaction, and for the sake of the kingdom, I've got to find it for them."

I exchanged glances with Tananda. This case sounded like a financial dead end, but I had taken the bet.

"You must have some kind of asset we can raise money on," I said. "Something that you might not even see. Let's go and take a look."