The king, though… the king didn’t catch on until someone told him. “That new draft…” he said to the sergeant. “Shaping well.”
“Begging the king’s pardon, that ain’t no new draft,” said the sergeant.
“But—”
“Them’s the ladies, Sire,” the sergeant said. “Haven’t got no thingies anymore.” He knew and had already used all the usual terms, but felt that when addressing the king in person, he ought to avoid vulgarisms. “They’s fightin’ better than ever, your highness, and that’s better’n most.”
“Women!” The king stared. Mirabel, in the first row, grinned at him. “And no tits!”
“Uh… yes, Sire. No… er… tits.” Not for the first time, the sergeant felt that royalty had failed to adhere to standards.
“No tax,” Mirabel said cheerfully, as the king’s eyes flicked from her face to her chest and back again.
“Oh… dear,” said the king, and fled the courtyard. Minutes later, the queen’s face appeared at a high window. Mirabel, who had been watching for it, waved gaily. The queen turned her back.
The prince glared at himself in the mirror. The spell was definitely wearing off. The wizard insisted he’d simply grown out of it, but the prince felt that having a handsome throat did not make up for having a… face. He left a blank there, while staring at the mirror. Face it was, in that it had two eyes and a nose and mouth arranged in more or less the right places. Aside from that, he saw a homely boy with close-set eyes under a sloping brow, a great prow of a nose, buck teeth, and a receding chin, all decorated with splotches of midadolescent acne. And even if he had outgrown the spell, it was still wearing thin—last week his throat had been handsome, but this week his Adam’s apple looked like a top on a string. This spell should have been renewed a month ago. If only his father weren’t such a cheapskate… he had his own spells renewed every three months, and what did he need them for, at his age. Everyone knew the important time of life was now, when you were a young prince desperately trying to find a princess.
She was coming next week. Her parents had visited at Harvest Home; her aunts and uncles had come for Yule. Now, at the Vernal Equinox, she was coming. The beautiful Marilisa—he had seen pictures. She had seen pictures of him, they said: the miniature on ivory done by their own artist. But then the spell had been strong, and so had his chin.
He had to get the spell renewed. His father had said no hurry, but suppose her ship came in early?
“I think we should return to normal for the Equinox,” said Bertha. “Think of the dances. The parties. The prince’s betrothal… the wedding, if we’re lucky.”
“But that’s when the tax is due,” Mirabel said.
“Only if we’re wearing breast-armor,” Sophora pointed out. “We can manage not to fight a war for a week or so, I hope. Just wear civilian clothes. Some of you are pulling castle duty then—I suppose you’ll have to stay flat, at least for your duty hours but the rest of us can enjoy ourselves again—”
“Yes,” said Krystal. “I like that idea…” She wriggled delicately, and Mirabel gave her a disgusted look.
“You would. But… after all… why not?”
They presented themselves at the wizard’s hall. “All of you reversed at once?” he asked. “That will take some time—the reverse operation is a bit slower, especially as I now have so many in… er… storage. And I do have other appointments….”
“No,” Sophora said. “You have us. Look at your contract.” And sure enough, there it was, the paragraph she had buried in the midst of formal boilerplate. She read it aloud, just in case he skipped a phrase. “Because that the Welfare of the Warrior is Necessary to the Welfare of the Land and Sovereign, therefore shalt thou at all times and places be Ready and Willing to proceed with this Operation at the Request of the Warrior and such Request shall supersede all Others, be they common or Royal. And to this Essential shalt thou bind thyself at the peril of thy Life at the hands of the Ladies’ Aid & Armor Society.”
The wizard gulped. “But you see, ladies, my other clients—the ladies of the court, the chancellor’s wife—”
Sophora pointed to be they common or Royal. “It is your sworn word, wizard, which any court will uphold, especially this court….”
The wizard was halfway through the restorations when the royal summons came. “I can’t right now,” he told the messenger curtly. He had just discovered that the newly installed random access multidimensional storage device had a bug in it, and for the fifth time in a row, he’d gotten an error message when he tried to retrieve Bertha Broadbelt’s breasts. He was swearing and starting to panic every time he glanced at her dark-browed face.
“But it’s the king’s command,” the messenger said.
“I don’t care if it’s the king’s personal spell against body odor,” the wizard said. “I can’t do it now, and that’s final.” He pushed the messenger out the door, slammed it, and tried to calm himself. “Sorry about the interruption,” he said to Bertha, who seemed to be calmer than he was. Of course, she had the sword.
“That’s all right,” she said. “Take your time. Nothing’s wrong, is it?”
“Nothing at all,” said the wizard. He tried again. No error message in the first part of the spell, at least. He felt the little click in his head that meant the transfer had been made, and glanced at Bertha just as she looked down.
And up. He knew his mouth was hanging open, but he couldn’t say a word. She could. “These aren’t my boobs,” she said without any expression at all. “These are Gillian’s.” He wondered how she could recognize someone else’s breasts on her chest just as he realized he was having trouble breathing because she had a vast meaty hand around his throat.
The prince hated being in the throne room with his outgrown spell leaving the most visible parts of himself at their worst. But he’d been summoned to wait for the escort that would take him to the wizard for the spell’s renewal, so he’d slouched into the room in a long-sleeved hooded jerkin, the hood pulled well forward and the sleeves down over his awkward hands.
“Stand up, boy,” his father said.
“Don’t wear your hood in the house,” his mother said.
“The wizard won’t do it,” the messenger said, bowing his way up the room.
“Won’t do it!” King and queen spoke together, glanced at the prince in unison, and then glared at the messenger. The king waved the queen silent and went on alone. “What do you mean, he won’t do it. He’s our subject.”
“He’s busy,” the messenger said. “That’s what he told me. He said even if your majesty’s personal body-odor spell—”
“Silence!” bellowed the king. His face had turned very red and he did not glance at the queen. “Guards!” he called. The prince’s escort looked up, with interest. “Go arrest us this pesky wizard and bring him here.”
The wizard’s shop, when the guards arrived, was open and empty but for the usual magical impedimenta and the mysterious black box with a red light that was humming to itself in the key of E-flat minor. A soldier touched it, and it emitted a shrill squeal and changed to humming in the Lydian mode. “Fatal error,” said a voice from the emptiness. The soldiers tumbled out of the shop without touching anything else.
“If you’re looking for that there plastic wizard,” said a toothless old woman on the street, “one of them there lady warriors took him away.”