Myth-Chief

FOURTEEN

"Candles?" I said, comparing my list with the contents of the enormous pile of cloth sacks on the floor.

"Check," said Nunzio.

"Doilies?"

"Check."

"Noisemakers?"

"Check."

I put the list down with a sigh and looked at my client. "That's everything, your highness."

"Well, good," Hermalaya said, pleased. "Now, all of you scoot on out of here while I get ready. I'll let you know when you can come back in. Shoo, shoo!"

That had been our third foray out into the Bazaar to shop for the Cake ceremony. Hermalaya wouldn't settle for second best in anything. The elaborate service took a lot of time to prepare. She took over our kitchen, which she immediately declared ill-equipped, and sent me running to correct. Fortunately, we were not far from Polkey's in the Bazaar, the biggest purveyor of cooking items and implements for six dimensions in any direction. I came back with a load of tiny boxes of sugar novelties, enough pans to feed a small standing army, and a pile of oddities that looked like miniature torture devices. The princess took them with a shake of her head and disappeared into the kitchen. Nunzio, Chumley, and I shrugged.

"Let's get some lunch, what?" Chumley asked. "We can discuss possibilities over a comestible or two."

"I could murder a strawberry shake," Nunzio said, and grinned at my shocked expression. "Not literally. Boss. More like threaten it with a straw. What about you, Miss Bunny? Would you like to join us for noonday sustenance?"

Bunny straightened up with surprise. She had been leaning over listening to the other room, where Aahz was meeting with his mystery prospect. I strained to hear, but I couldn't distinguish anything beyond a couple of baritone murmurs. I'd take an educated guess and say his client was a man, but since leaving Klah for the first time I had run into several genders and a range of voices as wide as the spectrum of sound. Eavesdropping left me absolutely none the wiser.

"What's going on in there, guys?" she asked, aiming a thumb at the kitchen.

"The client's going to do a Reynardan Cake ceremony," I said.

"Really?" Bunny said, perking up. "Do you mind if I sit in, too?"

"Not at all," I said. "I hope to learn something from it. Maybe give me some ideas."

Bunny nodded. "As long as you don't expect any input from me, all right? We all agreed we'd help both of you, but one of us has to remain neutral, and I got nominated."

"No problem," I said. "Lunch?"

"I'd better stay here in case Aahz has any problems," she said. "Can you bring me back a box of grilled lizard parts with honey-mustard sauce?"

When we returned, my office had been transformed. Ceremonial balloons had been blown up and arranged in bunches upon the walls. An artful scattering of glitter lay across the floor. My office was rearranged so the desk was shoved against the wall underneath a huge, woven tapestry depicting a very happy dragon that didn't have a tail. All the chairs were set in a circle with their backs to one another.

And on a low table covered with a brilliantly colored cloth sat the most gorgeous cake I had ever seen. It had to be at least three layers, but it was such a perfect cylinder that I couldn't guess where one left off and the next one began. The violet icing smelled delicious, its perfume combining vanilla, honey, citrus, and a dozen other delightful fragrances I couldn't guess even though I'd bought the extracts to make it. Hermalaya had covered it with scrolls and ridges of frosting that while elaborate was not in the least overpowering or tacky. She had taken the colored-sugar decorations that we had brought her and changed them so they looked handmade instead of cranked out of a cylinder. The Cake was just... perfect.

Beside this marvel of pastry sat a pile of plates that I had picked up at Polkey's, and an elaborate silver cake server that must have belonged to Hermalaya.

"Yum!" I went to pick up the server, ready to cut a piece of cake for myself. Hermalaya appeared from our kitchen and met me with a sharp paw to the chest. She had on a full apron and a cloth tied over her ears. Both were handsomely embroidered. She fended me away from the table with a sweet, indulgent expression that nevertheless brooked no nonsense. I backed off.

"Do not touch it. Now, the ceremony begins." She smiled at us, showing all her sharp teeth, and put a hand on our shoulders. "Welcome," she said.

"Thank you," I said.

"Thank you for inviting us," Bunny said, with a correcting eye on me.

Hermalaya looked surprised. "You know something of the Way of Cake?"

"I read about it in a magazine. There's a similar custom on Klah."

Hermalaya nodded. "Then lead this one in the responses, will you? I will continue."

I was mystified, but I followed Bunny's lead. The vixen princess led us to the small table. She knelt beside it. The billowing apron settled around her slender knees like a ball gown. She gestured to us to join her on the floor. Bunny assumed the correct stance with grace. I found it less easy to fold myself up. The hard floor made me want to squirm, but Hermalaya didn't move a hair in spite of the discomfort, so I could hardly complain.

"Now, as you are the guest of honor, Mister Skeeve, I will ask you how old you are?"

I told her, and she counted out small, colored candles from a small box. The number she placed on top of the Cake did not correspond in any way with the number I had said. She flicked her thumb and forepad together, and a tiny flame appeared between them. She touched the fire to each of the pristine white wicks. She closed her eyes with her hands shielding the flames and sang a keening song that traveled up and down the scales. Bunny nodded in time with the music. When the princess finished, she opened her eyes and looked at me.

"Blow them out," Bunny whispered.

I obeyed, then had to scuttle backward, as Hermalaya seized the beautiful Cake server from the side of the table. She wielded it like an expert swordswoman might a longer blade.

Flick, flick! Four slender, perfect pieces of Cake had been dealt onto a pair of the small plates as slickly as cards. Inside the purple icing the layers were chocolate. My favorite. Hermalaya took another implement, this one with a rounded blade. She picked up a round earthenware pot that had been sitting just out of sight under the edge of the table. It looked humble and ordinary, like a jam jar, but from it she scooped the most luscious-looking ice cream I had ever seen. Somehow with a knife she managed to make perfect hemispheres, one of which she deposited upon the first sloping wedge of Cake. Bunny held her breath, but it didn't slide at all. That seemed to be important. A dollop of whipped cream followed. Then the princess rubbed her fingers lightly together over the Cake, and a glorious rain of sprinkles descended, seeming to make the otherwise ordinary confection glow. Even I gasped. Bowing her head, Hermalaya handed me the plate with both hands. I accepted it, and sat wondering how I ate it, while Bunny was given her Cake. Hermalaya then handed us beautifully wrought silver forks, and offered us crystal goblets brimming with white. I followed Bunny's lead, mashing the ice cream and whipped cream into the cake and cutting bites with the side of the fork. Once we had all been served, Hermalaya wiped the server on an embroidered cloth, returned it to the table, and sat patiently with her paws folded on her knees.

"How's this different from a Klahdish birthday party?" I asked Bunny in a whisper.

"Shh!" my assistant said. "A Cake Master studies for years to get everything exactly right."

I shrugged and ate my cake ... er, Cake. I had to admit it was the best I had ever eaten, in any dimension. It tasted at least three times as good as it had smelled, and the ice cream reminded me of my own childhood. The glass was full of pure white, sweet, ice-cold milk that made the Cake taste even better.

After we ate, Hermalaya rose gracefully to her feet and held out a hand to me. I rose, feeling awkward and out of place. She led me to a line on the floor drawn in glitter and handed me a long piece of green cloth cut into a long, thin triangle with a long pin attached to the top. She took the cloth from around her ears and made to tie it over my eyes.

"Oh, no," I said. "No, thanks."

"Skeeve!" Bunny admonished me. "It's part of the ceremony!"

"All right," I said. I turned to my hostess. "Sorry."

"It's all right," she assured me in her soft voice. "You're just not an initiate?"

I allowed myself to be spun in a circle live or six times, then I staggered forward, feeling my way toward the embroidered wall hanging. My hand touched cloth, and I plunged the pin into it. I heard snickers come from behind me. I snatched off the blindfold and looked at the wall. The dragon now had a tail on its head. Gleep, crouched underneath my desk out of the way, gave me a sorrowful look.

Each of my friends took their turn, in solemn silence. Bunny, with a little more foreknowledge of the culture than the rest of us, did better at all the rituals. I admired her skill so much that I didn't feel bad when Bunny got to the only empty chair ahead of me to win that game. Hermalaya oversaw everything with an austere eye, guiding us with a little magik here and there.

When it was all through, Hermalaya gave me a small box she had wrapped in colored paper. It contained a pinch of the sprinkles that had been on the cake. I felt as if I had been given a treasure chest.

"Thank you," I said.

"Thank you for coming," Hermalaya said, formally, urging us out into Bunny's foyer.

Came back in again, Hermalaya sat exhausted on the lone chair. Bunny and I started to clear up. There was little in the way of leftovers, but Chumley crammed the remaining half of the Cake in his mouth with every evidence of

Trollish enjoyment, and I only wished I had thought of getting to it first. Nunzio carefully took down the dragon tapestry, now well pinned, and I gathered up all the glitter and spilled sprinkles with a handful of magik. The swamp vixen didn't protest at all until I reached for the silver server. She swooped down on that and her ice-cream knife.

"No one touches the tools of a Cake Master," she said apologetically. She cleaned them off and placed them in a small fitted case covered with mother-of-pearl. "I'm sorry to seem discourteous."

"Not at all," I said. "I'm the one ignorant of your customs."

"That was beautiful," Bunny said. "I'm so moved. I never saw the real thing."

"Few have," Hermalaya said, with a shrug of her narrow shoulders. "There are pale approximations all through the dimensions—you alluded to one yourself. It's a shame, because I think it's so uplifting?"

The mental candle that had been trying to light itself over my head finally burst out in a flare of brilliant flame.

"Would you consider introducing more people to the joys of Cake?" I asked.

"Why, what do you mean?" Hermalaya asked. Bunny raised her eyebrows warily, but let me explain.

"I was really impressed by how skilled you are at the ceremony," I said. "Like Nunzio said, you need to get important people on your side. I think that if you offered to host a high-end experience for honored guests, guests with a lot of influence and money, we might be able to get you home again and refill the treasury. You should be unique with this kind of approach."

"That's true," Nunzio said. "Big gestures are lost on important people. I like this because it's a subtle approach."

"But I couldn't ask people for money," Hermalaya said, looking distressed. "That would be vulgar."

I frowned. "You're right. We don't want to lower the tone of the ceremony by making it about money instead."

"Ask offering?" Chumley asked. It was difficult for him to express complex concepts in his persona as Big Crunch, but he was good at conveying what he wanted in a mono-syllabic fashion.

"That might do," I said. "It'll be my job to look for the best prospects. I will approach them and tell them your story. If they're sympathetic, at best I will line up their support on your behalf for a move against Matfany. At worst, I'll go for a loan or a grant of some kind. In exchange, they get to experience the Cake ceremony. I'll... have them wrap up the gold like a present. If they enjoy themselves, they can give it to you."

"Well, that's better," Hermalaya agreed.

"I am sure once they've been through the rituals with you, it will change their lives," Bunny said. "They'd have to be dead not to be wowed."

"I'll have to write down some of the details of your experiences to tell them," I added.

"Oh, you don't have to do that," the princess said. "I've got it all written down already? I've kept a diary all of my life—ever since I could write, that is. The last volume is right here in my bag?"

She opened up the dainty clutch and drew out of it a huge tome bound in pure white leather tooled in gold, with gems set along the binding. "It's all here," she said. "Every single one of my thoughts and experiences over that terrible time."

"Read me some of it," I said, reaching out for a line of force and a sheet of parchment. The Bazaar was filled with those streams of magikal power. They varied in color, intensity, and even configuration, but they were the source of raw magik in all of the dimensions that used it. I gathered a good handful from the curly green line that ran beneath the tent and formed it into an earlike shell. I aimed the opening toward Hermalaya.

"What's that, Boss?" Nunzio asked, curiously.

"It's a new spell I worked out recently when I was thinking how I could help my new clients. It takes down everything they say on this paper, so later on I can invoke it and see what they said exactly how they said it. I don't want to forget details I might need to solve their problems. You can watch it again and again, as long as the parchment stays intact."

"Clever," growled Chumley.

"Go ahead and read," I told the princess. She turned to a page in the middle and began.

Hermalaya had been born in the wrong place. She should have been a dramatist. Her observations of her people were keen, filled with interesting little details. She spared nothing on her tale of the invasion of the insects and how her subjects' lives were changed. I felt my heart go out to her when she told how she listened to them pleading for help, and I wanted to dash out and bring down Matfany when she narrated the events leading up to her expulsion from Foxe-Swampburg.

"Perfect," I said, letting the roll of parchment snap shut.

"But what'll you do with it?" Hermalaya asked.

"Take it with me and show it to prospective donors," I said. "The Princess's Diary is so evocative it's got to convert people to your cause. It'd be too undignified for you to go out and ask for support, so I will make all the connections and conduct the interviews. I'll offer the ones who offer sympathy—and money—a chance to experience your Cake ceremony. If they bite, they get to meet the princess and have Cake made and served by her own dainty royal hands. I hope that our twofold approach will even get some of them to go lean on Matfany to give you back your throne. It can't miss."

"Good," Chumley said, grinning. "Work wonders."

"Yeah, Boss," Nunzio said. "Nobody could fail to be moved by the poignance of her situation."

"Gleep!" exclaimed my dragon.

"That's really pretty clever," Bunny said, tilting her head.

"If I do have to say so myself," I agreed. "Do you think Aahz will do anything like this?"

Bunny gave me a flat look. "I'm not going to tell you. You know better than that."

I shrugged. "It was worth a try."