Myth-Taken Identity

THIRTEEN

I pried open one eye, and some sick joker stuck a twelve-foot, flaming spear in it. I fell back, groaning. The spike in my eye eventually died down to a faint glow. I realized it was a mote of sunlight peeking through a gap in the curtains of my hotel room. I also knew that I had absolutely no memory of how I had gotten back there last night. I hoped it had been last night, but I had no way of knowing that, either. That had been one hell of a party. In celebrating our success, Moa had gone all out. The details started coming back to me: the best food, plenty of good liquor, entertainment, and a game of dragon poker that kept going until the wee hours.

I heard wounded dragons roaring in pain in the next room. I thought I'd better get out there and defend Massha and Chumley.

Thanks to the headache it took one or two tries before I extricated myself from the silk bedcover. I was still fully dressed, which suggested self-locomotion last night, but I would have taken either side of that bet.

Once I reached the sitting room in our luxury suite, I identified the roaring dragons: Chumley and Massha. They , were holding a snoring competition to see who could break the most windows by dint of pure decibels. I judged the contest a tie and went to wake them up.

Eskina, asleep in the walk-in closet, was curled into a little ball. If the noise didn't wake her, I didn't see why I should. After all, she didn't have to check out and go home. Moa might have her moved to a smaller room when we were gone, but she was entitled to decent treatment, having given us the tip that eventually led us to capture Skeeve's impersonator. With luck, the kid would never hear about the situation or its aftermath. He sure wasn't ever going to hear it from me.

The Djinn who delivered room service blinked in and out of the sitting room, pausing briefly only to hold out his hand for a tip. Massha was the first to emerge from her room.

"Do I smell coffee?" she asked.

I was already wrapped around a cup that was almost big enough. I shoved an equal-sized beaker toward her. The serving spell filled it to the brim. Massha grabbed it and gulped down half of the steaming liquid.

"That was some party," she stated. "My head feels like the conga line's still dancing through it."

"I have a hangover the likes of which I have not felt for sixty years," I admitted. "Maybe not since some friends and I closed down the bar next to the distillery on Tulla." I paused to remember past glory and compared it favorably with the present. "These Flibberites sure know how to party."

"Amen to that," Massha agreed.

Chumley staggered out. "Coffee," he grunted, sounding like Big Crunch, his nom de guerre. A cup or two later the veins in his odd-sized moon-shaped eyes receded, and he was able to resume his normal intellectual discourse.

"We ought to thank Moa before we head out," I suggested, finally able to face the pink omelettes and green ham in the covered serving dishes. "Good idea." Massha nodded. "I want to pick up a little present for Hugh. I saw some beautiful swords in the weapons shop. There was a gorgeously balanced silver-hilted hand-and-a-half that he could use for sword practice."

"I'm going to take half a day and browse the bookstores," Chumley added.

Another rap came at the door. This one sounded a hundred times quieter than the first one. Moa stuck his head in.

"Hey," I called, feeling expansive as my hangover began to recede. "C'mon in."

The Mall administrator looked a little tentative, nothing like the plucky little guy who had braved thousands of angry shoppers the first morning we saw him, or the same guy who had danced on the table with a Gorgon's head pinata about five hours ago.

"You had a good time last night?" he inquired.

"That was one hell of a blowout," I assured him. "You sure know how to party, Moa."

"It's been a pleasure, I'm sure," Moa replied, shaking my hand warmly. "We were grateful to have you ... Are you certain you won't stay here, just a little while longer?

"I'm sure," I told him. "Maybe do a little shopping, then hit the road." I eyed his uneasy demeanor suspiciously. "Why?"

"Well, we gotta little problem."

I had heard equivocation like that hundreds of times in my life, and the follow-up explanation was never good news. "What kind of little problem?"

"Oh, nothing big," Moa began. "Just that one of my guards just reported someone who looks like your friend doing card tricks in the atrium near Doorway A."

It took a moment for the words to penetrate all the way through the leftovers from a keg of Old Banshee, but my outrage meter pinned on overload.

"What?" I bellowed.

The sound of my voice brought Eskina running.

"But we got the impersonator," Massha interjected. "He's still in custody, right?" "He sure is," Moa promised us. "He's locked in a box in Will Call. No way he's getting out of there."

My headache came back full force. "So, who's out there?"

Moa let out a heavy sigh. "It looks like there's another copy of Skeeve's card."

The Ratislavan investigator looked horrified.

'This is a total perversion of the process," she gasped. "Rattila is even a greater villain than we knew."

A rumbling sound disturbed our conference.

"Excuse me," Moa apologized, and reached into his pocket for a globe.

Inside the glass sphere we saw Parvattani's agitated face contorting. Moa set it down, looking shocked.

"We got more sightings," he informed us.

"More sightings where?" I demanded.

"Everywhere," Moa sighed. "Captain Parvattani says he's dancing with customers at Doorway R, he's pulling rabbits out of people's hats in Atrium N, he's taking candy from babies in Corridor B. In other words, either your Rattila's shapechangers can either teleport, in spite of The Mall's magik that is supposed to protect against it, and believe me, we paid a lot of money for that spell system, five hundred gold pieces a month just to maintain it—"

"Or?" I interrupted him forcefully.

Moa looked smaller and more forlorn than before. "Or all of them can turn into Skeeve."

Chumley's and Massha's mouths dropped open. I felt outrage bubble up in me.

"No!" I bellowed. "I don't believe it. I will not stand for a dozen impersonators dragging my pa—my friend's name through the dirt. We are going to take down this out-of-town rat!"

We stormed out toward the nearest Skeeve sighting. Corridor B, a few blocks' walk from the hotel. An outraged crowd had gathered. Mothers comforted crying infants and toddlers, all of whom were pointing over their shoulders toward the jungle-gym climbing frame in the middle of the atrium there.

A squadron of Par's guards had the structure surrounded, firing stun-pikes through the bars. I'd given them a short course of basic training with the weapons, but evidently, I had forgotten to explain the futility of the circular firing squad. Several guards were out for the count, knocked unconscious by their own fellows' bolts.

Inside the playground I could see a shadowy figure bounding from one side to the other. I wasn't in the mood to wait for him to come out on his own.

"Come on," I gestured to my companions. We spread out and marched on the monkey bars.

The impostor had to know we were coming. The crowd noticed us right away, as you would notice a tank bearing down on you, and parted like the Red Sea.

"Nyah nyah nyah NYAH nyah," chanted Skeeve's voice.

My dander, already up, hit new heights. I lunged into the underhang of ropes and climbing poles.

WHAM! And promptly got a swing in the mouth.

I felt my teeth with my tongue. None were broken. The people who weren't comforting crying babies laughed at me. I snarled back at them.

Charging in was a miscalculation on my part. I stood back, my head ringing. I shouldn't have done it. That was dumb. I had not adequately scoped out the scene. That was my own fault. I was a better strategist than that.

My judgment was clouded. I was furious because when Moa had dropped the bad news on us I had been ready to go. I was done. I was out of there. I could imagine that Moa himself had suffered a setback, finding out that the ring of thieves plaguing his Mall was still as much of a nuisance as before. But I had come with only one task in mind: take out the Skeeve impersonator and go home. Success had been whisked out from under my feet like a rug, and the anger about that was making me careless. I stopped where I was and took a couple of deep breaths. Start over. Watch what the enemy's doing, not what you think he ought to do.

What he was doing was jumping out of the jungle gym whenever he saw a kid carrying a lollipop or licorice string go by. Light on his feet as the original Skeeve, he whisked out, snatched the good, and dashed back into his hiding place again. Chumley's assessment was that Rattila gathered power based on value of the stir that the impostors caused, one way or another. He must have been getting a big charge, so to speak, out of this performance. I beckoned over the nearest guard with braid on his sleeves.

"Hey, bellhop," I called.

"Yessir!" the kid barked, nearly knocking himself unconscious with a salute.

"Clear the area," I ordered. "Mr. Moa will back me on this. Get everyone away from here. Use force if necessary, but in two minutes I don't want anyone looking this way. Got it?"

The officer looked puzzled, but he obeyed. He pulled his crystal ball out of his pocket and gave the order. The guards, those of them still on their feet, reversed course and started shouting at the crowd to clear the area.

A collective moan of disappointment went up, but the people cleared off. Good. No more paying attention to the fraud.

At the back of my mind was the annoyance that several more impostors were carrying on like this all over The Mall, but I liked my chances of dealing with this one. He had limited his territory, always a mistake, and though his points of escape from this structure were numerous, they were finite.

Chumley, a security expert who had worked a lot of tricky engagements like popular band concerts and financial transactions, tipped me a signal that he'd counted seven exits. I just started bending the bars around one nearest me. "Aahz, what are you doing?" Moa demanded, rushing over to me.

"Put your finger there," I instructed, keeping half an eye on the moving shadow.

Moa obliged. I tied the bars in a handsome bow knot and moved on to the next egress.

"Taking apart the infrastructure wasn't really part of the deal," Moa bleated, hopping up to try and get my attention as I walked.

I examined the next archway. It was too wide to stretch the soft metal alloy bars across, but The Mall administrator was just about the right width. The curving uprights groaned as I pulled them down and wound them into a ring. With one hand I lifted the slight Flibberite and tightened the metal bars around his waist.

"Stay here a minute." I instructed him. "Don't let him leave this way."

"Aahz, wait! Get me down from here!"

Moa's partner Woofle had been drafted, as had a few minor magicians who worked as clerks in The Mall. Woofle didn't like the idea of working with me any more than I liked working with him, but I needed the firepower to supplement Massha. What with the magikal arms and other gizmos being carried by the guards, we stood a chance.

"How are you on illusion?" I asked him.

Woofle eyed me with distaste. "Why?"

"Because he's staying out of our way, but he's a sucker for a sucker. Can you create the image of a helpless-looking kid with a big, fat, red lollipop?"

"Certainly I can!"

"And plant it over me."

Woofle's eyebrows went up, but he nodded. "That could work."

I waited while he closed his eyes. Illusion's one of those useful spells. You call down a hunk of power while at the same time picturing in your mind the face of the person in front of you being replaced by another image. I had taught the technique to Skeeve, who had passed it along to Massha, but she wasn't as good as he had been with non-gizmo magik. I was hoping Woofle was more advanced.

"You're done," Woofle announced. "The lollipop's in your right hand."

"Good," I replied.

Chumley glanced over, having sealed all the entryways but one, and did a classic double take. I gave him a hearty thumbs-up, and skipped off toward the open door. My companions hustled to take their places behind me.

I mimed licking the sucker as I skipped. I couldn't do anything about the sound effects of my footfalls booming on The Mall floor. I hoped the faker would miss them in the ambient noise, which would have covered the sound of a jet taking off. I didn't dare open my mouth, because there was no way he could mistake my deep, masculine voice for the pipings of a preadolescent. I felt like a moron. I had to remind myself this was for a good cause. I might be saving Skeeve's life.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw the shadow stalking me. I covered a grin and slowed my hippity-hop to a shuffle just as I crossed the opening to the jungle gym.

The figure darted out and made a grab for my lollipop. His hand closed on empty air, at about the same moment my hand closed like a vise on his wrist. He gawked at me for half a second, then plunged his teeth into my wrist. The texture of my skin surprised him into staring up at me out of his big, round, blue eyes. My heart sank. What if this one was the real Skeeve under a spell? I hauled my heart up out of my boots and wrapped my other arm around his neck. We could figure that out later. The Mall guards marched in to take their prisoner.

The impostor turned into a tornado. He made as if to gouge out my eyes, then kicked for my crotch. It wasn't the oldest trick in the book, but it was on the same page. I let go of his wrist, grabbed his ankle, and picked him up over my head. I forgot how good Skeeve's reactions were. He stretched out his free hand and snatched away a stun-pike from the advancing guard. He blasted the nearest two, knocking them unconscious, then turned it on me.

I ducked my head, but not fast enough to miss the entire blast. My head rang, and I suddenly discovered I was grasping nothing.

He leapfrogged over the short Flibberites and tore into the crowd. Massha flew right behind him, zigging when he zigged and zagging when he zagged.

"Outta my way!" I bellowed.

I had to enjoy the expressions on the faces of the onlookers when they heard my voice coming out of a child's body. For the ones who didn't get the message, I elbowed them aside. The guards poured into the breach behind me.

Chumley had been a little closer to the crowd, but he moved slower than we did. I kept my eye on Massha overhead. She must have been getting closer, because her hands stretched out in front of her as if to grab something. Closer. Closer. Then she stopped, looked right and left, and arrowed back to me.

"Got a problem, big guy," she informed me.