"Gleep!" Gleep announced.
"Yes," I agreed, patting my pet on the head. "Me, too."
If I had thought the dinner at which I made them switch main courses was awkward, this one deserved a medal for going above and beyond the call of gut-twisting, in more ways than one. Almost as if they wanted to taunt the others, the Pervects, who sat together at one end of the big table, made a point of serving their food in small bites, making sure to give everyone a good look at each slimy, purple pseudopod dripping off the spoon. As promised, the food they brought back for the rest of us was fine, even delicious, though it was harder to enjoy with the nauseating whiff of Pervish cooking overwhelming us.
Melvine sat sniveling to himself during the entire meal. "Nobody likes me. I wring myself dry for them, and they make fun of me! I'm going to run away and go home."
I thought he was expressing the unspoken sentiments of the whole group fairly well.
"You're all selling yourselves and each other short," I said. "You just proved what I've been trying to tell you all along: the best thing you can do is learn to work together. You find one another's strengths and supplement them. That's true whether you're trying to survive in a wilderness situation or in a high-powered company. My associates and I couldn't be beaten because no one could drive a wedge between us. When you're busy cutting each other's throats, then it's easier for someone to sneak up on YOU."
"That's too simple," Tolk said. He remained civil to Bunny and me, though he growled whenever the others glanced his way.
"It's more complicated than it sounds," I said. "There are a lot of factors beyond a person's talents you have to take into consideration. Climate. Uh, personal phobias." That got a wince out of Melvine. I regretted hurting his feelings, but it was a valid statement. "Experience. Inclination. Willingness. You can be the greatest magician in the world, but if you won't get out there and try, you might as well have no magik at all."
"Hmmph," Pologne snorted.
"Look," I said. "We've all been through a lot in the last few days. I don't know about you, but I need a break. Everyone just enjoy themselves this evening. We'll start on some more exercises in the morning. All right?"
"Yes, sir," Bee muttered, not raising his eyes from his plate.
The others murmured their assent. I threw an exasperated glance at Bunny, who shook her head.
After the dishes were washed, I retreated to my study and hoped they'd take advantage of my absence to argue it all out and make peace. I set up an experiment with a couple of strange metallic elements I'd come across in a Bazaar trick shop, but I couldn't concentrate on it. I found I was straining to listen to what was going on in the rest of the inn. Except for the music
and voices from Bunny's PDA in the next room, I heard nothing but furtive footsteps on the upper floor.
One tentative set tiptoed down the stairs, coming toward my study.
"Hey, Freezia, do you want to watch Sink or Swim with me?" Bunny called out.
"Uh, no, thanks, Bunny," the dainty Pervect said, almost in a gasp. I heard her feet patter back up the stairs to her room. I heard the murmur of hasty conversation above, then silence. No cheerful conversation, no joshing, no mutual admiration society. The rooms on the upper floor might as well have been vacant, except for the almost-visible waves of distrust that radiated out of them.
I pushed aside my experiment and sank my head into my hands.
What had I done wrong? I pored over the memory of the day over and over again, but I could recall nothing that seemed even remotely like criticism or an insult. I'd lived with a Pervect for years, so I thought I knew their thresholds of intolerance, which in Aahz's case mainly had to do with me being stupid. If I did something wrong out of innocence, he was pretty good about it; if I did something inane, he would flatten me for knowing better and not thinking. I had thought about the gesture of sharing the reward, all the way back from Humulus. Was I too late? Should I have divided up the spoils sooner? Had I been too cheap? Were they looking for a larger percentage of the take? They certainly had earned it. Now they were adamantly against taking any money at all.
I had run into a situation like this on Perv, when I had inadvertantly offended a friend named Edvik by offering him cash as a tip in thanks for services rendered instead of as a gift between equals. It took some fancy talking to straighten things out, the results of which got me into so much trouble that I had been ejected from the dimension permanently as persona non grata.
That was it, I told myself. I might be their teacher, but courtesy needed to extend in both directions. I promised that I would be more careful about my students' pride in the future.
Chapter Fourteen
"Is anybody happy?" G. BUSH
"It's like this," Bee explained for the eighth time as he pointed out the obstacle course he had designed in the inn's courtyard out of chairs, fire irons, a few pots, heaps of books and stones. "You concentrate on walking a perfectly smooth road, and when you've got it in your head, you think 'Can't trip.' Get it? 'Cantrip.'" He grinned at her. "You can't trip. But you say 'spoo.'"
"I get it," Jinetta said, studying her nails. She picked a fragment of scale off her cuticle then polished her fingertips against her blouse. "In fact, I got it the first time you said it, over a week ago, and every time since then. This is beginner stuff."
Bee reddened. "It came in awful handy in Humulus, Tolk said."
"I'm sure to a Canidian it looks very impressive."
"Look, how about you try it yourself?" Bee asked, very politely. I gave him points for keeping his temper. Jinetta was doing her best to provoke him into an outburst. "I'll help you all I can."
"Well, that's a fly-leg's worth of meat at a banquet," Jinetta observed.
"I didn't know Pervects ate flies," Bee said, but he kept his voice low. Jinetta snarled. One point to Bee.
Tolk wasn't faring much better with Pologne. She hadn't wanted to work with him, but she declared she wasn't going to work with Melvine. Tolk wasn't thrilled with the pairing, either. I ordered them to cooperate or go home.
"How do I know she's any good at teaching?" he asked.
"How do I know you could possibly understand anything I taught?" she countered.
After sitting and staring at one another for half an hour, Tolk started demonstrating a healing technique. Out of sheer boredom Pologne began to listen to him, but she nitpicked at everything he said.
"Don't you mean close the wound?" she asked. "'Seal' the wound sounds like you're just covering it over."
"I went through an eight-year apprenticeship to learn this," Tolk growled. "Words aren't as important as deeds."
"Professor Maguffin would wash your mouth out with soup for saying something like that," Pologne spat.
"Soup? I love soup!"
"Weirdo!"
"Pervert!"
I left them alone, hoping that they would eventually gain some kind of understanding, but I doubted it. They had frozen up, and nothing I did seemed to make an impression.
Melvine and Freezia had gotten into mutual snits over his whirlwind spell, and were shrieking at each other from opposite ends of the courtyard. That had started over technique. It seemed that one of Melvine's gestures was an obscenity on Perv. I didn't know that there was a symbol for sex with multiple small animals.
I was fed up with all of them. I had sat up all night trying to figure out a way to break the ice again, and now I was too tired to do anything but supervise. Once in a while I made the rounds, offering encouragement and breaking up petty arguments, but I spent most of the time in the shade on the sidelines, sipping a glass of wine. On purpose, I had not brought the bottle outside with me. It was too tempting to get soused out of sheer frustration. I'd hinted that I'd like to know what had changed the group from teammates into bitter rivals in the matter of seconds, but they all pretended they had no idea what I was talking about.