We’ll Always Have Parrots

Chapter 8

“Found any panels you want to attend?” I asked.

“Hell, no,” he growled. “I don’t watch the damned show; I’m just selling swords.”

But a smile undermined the gruff tone, and seeing it, I found myself wishing we were selling jewelry, or clothes—something that would let us use Steele’s ability to attract women to the booth.

“I wouldn’t watch it myself if Michael weren’t on it,” I said aloud.

“Your old man? Which one is he?” Steele asked, holding out the cover photo. “This one?”

“No,” I said, glancing at his finger. “That’s Walker Morris. He plays the Duke of Urushiol, Queen Porfiria’s archrival. That’s Michael, to his right, in the black robe.”

“Hmmm,” Steele said. “What’s he play?”

“The wizard Mephisto.”

“Mephisto?” he said. “I don’t remember anyone by that name. ’Course it’s been a year or two since I’ve seen it.”

“I thought you didn’t watch,” I said, laughing.

“I don’t,” he said. “Not regularly. But yeah, I’ve seen a few episodes. When it first came out. Weird, seeing something you vaguely remember reading as a kid turned into a TV show. But after a week or two, I could see what garbage it was. No offense meant,” he added, apparently remembering too late my tenuous connection with the show.

“No offense taken,” I said. “It’s not as if Michael has anything to do with the scripts.”

“Yeah, the scriptwriter’s the one who should be drawn and quartered.”

“Don’t blame Nate,” I said. “He’s on a pretty tight rein. Some of his original scripts aren’t bad. Unfortunately, by the time they shoot, the QB mangles the script into the usual swill.”

“The QB?”

“Tamerlaine Wynncliffe-Jones,” I said. “The actress who plays Queen Porfiria. Also known as, um, the Queen Bee.”

“Yeah, right,” he said. “Tamerlaine Wynncliffe-Jones? Bet that’s not her real name.”

“You never know,” I said. “Parents have done stranger things.”

“And I bet that’s not her original face,” he said, shaking his head. “Thirty years ago, maybe even twenty, she was a looker; you can still see that much. But now—it’s a bad joke. So what is this Mephisto character your guy plays?”

“He’s a mercenary wizard introduced in the second season,” I said. “Originally a one-episode guest shot, but he got such a good reaction from the fans that they brought him back for two more episodes that season, and he’s in about half of them this past season.”

That seemed to satisfy Steele’s curiosity.

I spent a reasonable amount of time at the booth before running out again for the combat demonstration. Steele was good at security. Even while talking to one customer, he kept the whole counter covered with his peripheral vision, and I could see he suspected the same shifty-looking people who raised my hackles.

Definitely a talented swordsmith. Perhaps more than any other form of iron work, weapons and armor call for a perfect balance of form and function. Steele’s swords had the spare and deadly elegance I was working so hard to perfect myself.

Not much of a salesman, though. Not that I was such a whiz, but even I was better at it than Steele.

I hoped to catch Michael before going on stage—I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to brag or warn him—but they kept him in the autograph line until the very last minute. I didn’t even know if he was in the ballroom when Chris, Harry, and I went on stage.

Chris acknowledged the audience’s applause with a low bow, sweeping the floor with the white plume in his hat. Then he launched into an explanation of the difference between fencing, stage combat, and real combat—an explanation that might have sounded dry, if not for the practical demonstrations. Harry and I took turns sneaking up and attacking him, while Chris, waving his sword around to make a point or demonstrate a technique, parried each of our attacks, as if by accident.

“In stage combat, you always want your blade exactly where your partner expects it to be,” he said, while parrying in a deceptively nonchalant manner. “Of course, in real combat, your goal is just the opposite—you never want your blade where your opponent expects it.”

He continued with several practical demonstrations, having Harry and me execute a sequence of thrusts and parries at full speed, and then in slow motion, so the audience could see the techniques. For a grand finale, Harry and I ran through our side of a three-way battle, looking rather silly as we lunged and leaped about, slicing the air. But when we repeated the sequence with Chris defending against our combined forces, it brought down the house, and we took several bows. I felt like an imposter. Only their skill kept me from being skewered several times during the performance. And we’d managed to make my nearly pinning my own foot to the floor look like just another part of the act. From the way Chris beamed at me, I deduced that I’d made fewer mistakes than he’d expected. I’d decide later whether to feel relieved or insulted.

“I’ll answer questions from the audience for the rest of the hour,” Chris announced, sitting down on the edge of the stage with the microphone in his hand.

I was tempted to hang around. I loved listening to Chris talk about swords and combat. For that matter, I’d have liked to hang around and hear what the mysterious Ichabod Dilley had to say. But I’d already abandoned poor Steele for most of the morning. So I snapped some pictures of Chris and headed back to the dealers’ room.

In the hallway, I saw small posses of Amazon guards and hotel staff, armed with ladders, nets, and heaps of fresh fruit, beginning the parrot and monkey roundup, accompanied by the scarlet jesters’ soulful rendition of “Git Along, Little Monkeys.” Probably my imagination, but the atmosphere already smelled fresher.

“Sorry,” I said, as I joined Steele in the booth. “Were things too crazy?”

He shook his head.

“Biggest problem has been keeping the vermin from filching the merchandise.”

“Vermin?” I said, looking around to see if anyone had heard. Not very tactful, referring to the convention goers that way. Or did he mean real vermin, I thought, peering down at my feet.

“Up there,” Steele said, pointing to the ceiling. Though the roundup had begun outside, the dealers’ room still had its contingent of escaped monkeys. Clusters of them hovered eagerly over our booth and those of two nearby jewelry makers. At least I assumed they were eager. Perhaps I’d feel differently if I were another monkey, but I couldn’t see that their expressions ever changed. I found it slightly unnerving to look up and see half a dozen solemn, impassive faces staring down as if in silent judgment of our strange human antics. The parrots, by contrast, always looked cheerful, eager, and friendly, even while biting you. Over time, no doubt, we could all learn parrot and monkey body language, but fortunately, thanks to the health department, they probably wouldn’t be around that long—although several other booths had already rigged makeshift canopies to protect their wares, an idea we might want to copy.

“Sorry I wasn’t here to help,” I said, turning back to Steele.

“They scatter if you wave a blade at them,” Steele said, with a shrug. “And apart from that, it’s been dead. Things get slow whenever there’s an interesting panel on.”

“Glad our panel counted as interesting.”

“I wouldn’t have minded seeing it,” he said, smiling as he ran his eyes up and down my costume. He wasn’t bothering to hide his appreciation, but he wasn’t being obnoxious about it, so I smiled back and turned to help the customer who’d just stepped in front of the booth.

We got enough traffic to keep from being bored. Not many people buying yet, but then people often took a while to work themselves up to the kind of major outlay required for a handmade sword or a piece of armor.

At one point, I saw the small man in the business suit wandering around as if shell-shocked. He stopped in front of our booth.

“Now you’re wearing a costume, too,” he said, in an accusing tone.

“Sorry,” I said. “It helps with sales.”

He looked at our merchandise.

“Swords,” he said. “Of course.”

“You don’t seem to be having a good time,” I said.

“Am I supposed to?” he asked.

Light dawned.

“You’re Ichabod Dilley, aren’t you?”