Myth-Chief

TWENTY-SIX

I frowned at Gimblesby Ockwade. The Imp tycoon crossed his arms over the breast of his blue houndstooth suit. "So that's your final word on it? You won't even listen to the transcript of The Princess's Diary? Your letter to us was downright enthusiastic."

"That was before I heard more about it," Ockwade said. "I don't really go in for prurient literature."

"Prurient?" I repeated, not sure I had heard him right. "But it's just the observations of a young woman ..."

"Enough!" he said, throwing up a hand. "I don't want to hear any more. I have a weak heart, and I can't take too many shocks. Just go away, please."

"May I just ask who told you what was in her diary?"

The Imp turned pink. "I have my sources. I consider them reliable."

"You know my reputation, don't you?" I asked, though I knew it was a lost cause to make any further appeal to him. "I'm considered very reliable, and I think you should reconsider using that source. He's lying for his own purposes."

Ockwade turned pinker. "I don't remember giving you a name."

I allowed myself an imperious smile. "I am a magician, you know. I have ways of knowing."

"Reading minds without permission is rude! Goodbye, Mister Skeeve. Good to meet you, Mistress Massha."

"Just Massha," the court magician of Possiltum said, with a wicked wink. "Gave up being a mistress a long time ago when I got married."

The Imp's bright pink cheeks turned even pinker. He glanced at Nunzio, but thought better of addressing him.

"Thank you for dropping by," he said, all but pushing us through the ornate doors of his office "Miss Selquiff, send in my three o'clock appointment."

"What a disaster," I said, as we got outside the gaudily painted office building. I ducked around the corner and leaned against the wall.

"You said it, Big Shot," Massha said, fanning herself with a length of the filmy violet cloth she wore around her ample form. "That's four in a row."

The Imp tycoon had been nice enough to listen to my explanation of the difference between the princess's Cake ceremony and the knockoffs that Aahz had spawned across the dimensions, but he had flat out refused to reschedule Hermalaya's appearance. Most of those who had canceled wouldn't even take my calls. The people I did speak with were apologetic. Some of them renewed their invitations, but most of them didn't want anything to do with me. The controversy and the sudden onslaught of imitators were poisoning our appeal.

"This is all Aahz's fault," I said, shaking my head. "How could he do this to me?"

"Now, Boss," Nunzio said, with a bitter kind of satisfaction. "Now he sees you as a threat."

I slammed my fist into my palm.

"We've just got to keep going," I said. "Hermalaya said she trusts us. She'll keep doing the ceremony as long as we can get anyone to host us. I'm just afraid of falling behind in income. I'll have to think of something else. I don't want Aahz to get ahead of us."

"No problem there," Massha said. "Why, the royalties on The Princess's Diary alone should cover ..."

Massha's words were cut off at the same time as my eyesight. I never saw it coming. Hoods dragged over our heads and light bonds dropped around our arms made it impossible for me to do anything but try and kick loose, which I did. To no avail. Whoever had grabbed us outnumbered us about ten to one at least.

I heard the explosion of air that informed me we were being moved, to another location, if not another dimension.

The arms holding me shoved me roughly forward, then pushed on my shoulders to force me to sit down. My bottom hit a flat surface that creaked under my weight. The hood was swept off my head. My eyes narrowed in the light of a fiercely burning candle that made me wince and draw back.

Shadows stood behind the candle. One of them leaned in toward me, but not enough so I could really see its silhouette.

"So, you're Skeeve the Magnificent," it said. I thought it sounded female, but I couldn't be certain.

"Who wants to know?" I asked.

"Just answer me." Out of the darkness, an object flashed and came down on my head. Honk!

"Ow!" I yelled. The object fell at my feet. It was a bright blue and yellow rubber hammer, the kind used to play Whack-a-Gnome. Suddenly, I saw something silver leveled at my nose. It was a cake server, a very fancy, heavily ornamented solid silver handle with a well-sharpened blade, even more venerable-looking than Hermalaya's. I looked up into a pair of glittering black eyes. A black cloth concealed the rest of the face.

"Are you Skeeve the Magnificent? Answer! I don't have time to play games with you!"

"I'm Skeeve. Where are my friends?"

"In the corner with a couple of my friends. They're fine for now, as long as you answer my questions."

Another candle flared into light. I saw Massha near the wall. Her filmy veil had been tied over her mouth, and colored streamers were bound around her wrists. Two black-clad figures stood by her with servers at her throat. One of them held up a filmy bag that contained all of Massha's magikal jewelry. I winced. Without her toys, as site called them, Massha was almost as helpless as an ordinary person. Nunzio was dwarfed by an enormous figure who held his miniature crossbow up by two fingers. He was tied up with green cloth streamers that I recognized as Dragon-pinning tails.

We can escape from this situation, no matter how badly outnumbered we are, I thought. I reached out for a force line to gather some power to untie them. I ran into a magikal wall. I tried again. Nothing.

Although I could picture at least two nearby lines in my mind, I couldn't touch either one. There was a dampening spell on the room. Both of us were powerless, at least for the moment. I tried to keep calm.

"I don't want any trouble," I said, amiably. "May I ask who I'm speaking with?"

The mysterious female loomed over me.

"My name is Ninja. I am a sixteenth-generation, nineteenth-layer Cake Master."

"Nineteenth layer!" I asked. "I've never heard of that."

Ninja recoiled as if insulted. "You doubt me? Bety! Kroka! Prepare ... the layer!"

Two black-aproned and masked females came forward, bearing between them a solid silver platter with a single, unfrosted chocolate cake on it.

"Hiayah!" Ninja swung the server at the cake.

Whisk, whisk! Whisk, whisk! Crumbs flew in all directions. I pulled back out of the way. A claw caught me by the nape of the neck and pushed me forward.

Ninja halted with an impressive economy of movement and drew the server back. She wiped it very carefully upon her apron tie and slid it into a sheath at her belt. She gestured to the others, who brought the cake close enough for me to examine.

"Count them," she said proudly. "Nineteen."

Gingerly, I ran a thumb up the edge of the cake, and the edges flipped back like very soft playing cards. I could see that it had been sliced thinly but so evenly that it looked like the side of a children's board book. There were exactly nineteen.

"Gosh," I said. "That's amazing."

"Gosh? The Great Skeeve says gosh?" Ninja sounded scornful.

"Sure," I said. "When I'm impressed. But why kidnap us? We're trying to help one of your, uh. society. Princess Hermalaya of Foxe-Swampburg."

"We have heard of your so-called help," Ninja spat. "We Cake Masters are disgusted by it."

"But why?" I asked. "Hermalaya has been doing everything according to the rules, isn't she? You couldn't ask for a more dignified representative of your... association. We've done what we can to make sure the fakes get closed down. And the rest have agreed to start taking the training courses."

I was hauled off the stool and smashed face-first into the wall. Nunzio stood up, but the huge Cake Master shoved him down again.

Ninja hissed in my ear. "We hate fakes, but we also do not care for the sacred practice of hospitality and enjoyment being prostituted for money!"

"How do you support yourselves, then?" I asked, in what I thought was a reasonable tone, as much as I could with a cake server pressed against the back of my neck while my face was buried in a silken Pin-the-tail-on-the-Dragon chart. '"If you don't receive any, uh, gifts, you're not earning anything on your historic culture and experience."

There was a long pause.

"Well, I don't suppose we do," Ninja admitted. She backed off and took off her veil. I saw that she was another Reynardan. like Hermalaya. "We have patrons."

I spat out silk. "So, how's that different? You only support yourselves, if you can. Can you?"

Ninja sounded embarrassed when she finally answered. "Well, we all have other jobs. I decorate cakes in a hotel on Lux."

"I deliver pizzas," said one of the other black-clad figures. Behind her veil she was a Kobold.

"I'm a nanny," grated a Gargoyle.

"I'm a stockbroker," added a Gnome.

"Really?" I asked. It looked as if Cake Masters came from nearly every race in the dimensions and almost every profession. "You do all that to support your hobby?"

Ninja whipped out her server again and brandished it at me. "It is not a hobby. It is a sacred calling! Cake has shown us peace and beauty in the world. If she has prostituted that calling, then she must be punished. She is a Cake Master. She ought to know better!"

"Look, the princess believes in all that!" I said. "I'm the one responsible for making it commercial. If you have to punish someone, punish me, not her. The only reason I got her to offer Cake ceremonies in exchange for favors is to rescue her kingdom. Maybe none of you know what happened to her?"

"Oh, we do," the Kobold said. "I bought a copy of her diary. We all read it. We cried like babies!"

"The princess has never had another job. In fact, she's trying to get her job back. Princessing is a tough gig, as hard as being a nanny." I glanced around the circle of black-clad figures. "Maybe worse."

"It couldn't be worse," the Gargoyle replied. "Not with triplets."

"Hmmm," Ninja mused. "I never thought of it that way. You say that she is a sincere student of the art'.'"

"She throws me out of the kitchen every time she bakes a Cake," I said, making certain to pronounce the capital letter. "She spins every attendee around three times before they try to pin the tail on the Dragon. Nobody gets more than one scoop of ice cream on their piece of Cake."

Ninja drummed her fingers on her lip. "That is strictly traditional. Possibly even orthodox."

"See?" I said, persuasively. "How do you get more sincere than that? I promise that as soon as she's back on the throne, she will never accept money for doing the Cake ceremony ever again. In the meantime, I've got to ask you to be patient. We still have an uphill battle to get her back safely to her homeland and restored to the throne."

Almost in unison, the society of Cake practitioners sighed.

"It's so romantic," the Gargoyle said. "I can't wait to see how it ends. Is she going to publish a sequel to her diary?"

"I have no idea," I said. "Will you let me and my friends go now? Can Hermalaya keep practicing the way she has? Maybe if you think of her guests as patrons, it wouldn't sound so bad?"

Ninja gathered her companions around her, and they had a quiet but very animated conference. It broke up. Ninja turned back to me.

"You have a deal, Skeeve." She clapped her hands, and three of the women ran to untie Massha and help her rebling. The Gargoyle handed back Nunzio's crossbow and helped him brush down his suit. "Let's see how Princess Hermalaya does, and maybe we'll even throw some business her way. Please tell her we are at our sister's service. If there's ever anything we can do to help her, all you have to do is call. Uh, after four o'clock, if you don't mind. That's when I get off work."