"Wine's on the ground over there," he pointed. I muttered something, and minced inside.
I almost turned and fled out of the room.
There was no disguising the smell. I had woken up near it or in the same building with it for years: the aroma of agitated Pervect. The Ten were here! Or, I counted, peering up through the frayed edge of the headscarf, eight of them. Big and green and scaly and ... looking for me? 'This is almost funny," the eldest one in the flowered dress said, peering up at the judge. "You've got a witness, but he's not here. I suppose you have other evidence? If not, we've got other appointments, honey."
"The fact that he is not here is immaterial," Senior Do-mani blustered.
The Pervects weren't convinced. I wouldn't have been, either.
Something prodded me in the back. I nearly jumped through the ceiling.
"Go on, clean it up," the guard reminded me, shoving me toward a broken carafe and a pool of spilled wine on the table near the Pervects. "I'll protect you from them."
It was brave of him, because he didn't sound at all certain that he could. In fact, I was pretty certain he couldn't, magikless though they were at the moment.
"He did say he was a wizard, Senior," Officer Gelli reminded the judge. "If he's more powerful than our containment spells, he could have killed all of us. Instead he chose to warn us. And he did pay for the goggles he broke."
"And there's Bofus's statement, too," Officer Koblinz added, removing his ever present notebook from his pocket. "He claims to be an innocent dupe of these demons. He's given us every detail of how they approached him and convinced him to spread their instruments of evil."
"Yes, Bofus," Domari's eyebrows rose. The tone of his voice boded no good for Bofus, whoever he was. Growling from the Pervects informed me that if this Bofus escaped official punishment he had some coming from them. "This is a serious case, one that involves the well-being, and indeed the security of Scamaroni..."
Cautiously I approached the pool of wine, the creaking of my bucket's wheels covering the chattering of my knees. I couldn't let the Pervects see my face. I hauled the mop out, slapped it onto the floor and began swabbing up the mess. The tallest Pervect, the one in the form-fitting camouflage coverall, drew her knees in as I bumped past. I caught a glimpse of her out of the comer of my eye. She still looked familiar to me. I must have met her on Perv, or seen her coming out of a restaurant at the Bazaar (if you think I'd ever have been in a Pervish restaurant, you've never smelled one). I sopped up most of the wine, then took a brush and pan off the back of the pail to sweep up the broken glass.
"You missed a lot of the liquid, dear," the Pervect informed me, pointing a manicured fingernail. "Look. It ran away toward the wall. It's going to stain the fringe of that tapestry." I nodded, and kept brushing. "Hey!"
"Silence!" Domari roared. "As a result, I order all of you to stand trial on multiple charges of malfeasance and misfeasance, mental assault on hundreds, if not thousands, of citizens of our fair nation ..." The judge paused in the middle of his pronouncement to lean over his desk. "Mandrilla, what have you been rolling in?"
The guard with the drawn sword cleared his throat. "She's been cleaning up after that Klahd wizard, sir."
"Ugh. Well, when you're done here, Mandrilla, go home and take a bath."
I muttered and nodded as I wrung out the mop and slapped it down on the floor.
"You didn't get all the glass, either," the young Pervect told me. 'Take a wet cloth and pick up the particles. Then you can mop it down. You're just spreading the shards all over the place."
"This is ruining everything," said the shortest Pervect. "What are we supposed to do now?"
"There are plenty of other dimensions," the female in khakis told her. "Be patient."
"A Klahdish wizard?" the elder Pervect said, in a low voice meant to be heard only by her companions. "A powerful wizard who's a Klahd? They barely have an adequate magician once in a thousand years. Have you heard of such a thing?" "I think I have," the angry one on the end replied thoughtfully. "Stiff, Stiv, Smee ... something like that."
"We'll have to have Caitlin research it when we get back," suggested the elegant female in a skirt suit.
Hearing them talk about me made me nervous. They didn't know who I was, but the police could identify me if my disguise slipped. My hand trembled, sending drops of wine all over. The female sprang to her feet as I narrowly missed her ankle.
"Oh, for Crom's sake, female! I've never seen such an inept job in my life! Give me that mop! I could do a better job than you in my sleep!"
"Sit down, madam!" the judge roared. "Let our employee finish her work."
"I could have cleaned your entire courtroom in the time it's taken her to make matters worse," the elegant Pervect snarled back.
"You may end up doing menial labor," Domari warned her. "Each of these charges carries a penalty of a period not less than thirty days in jail, to be served consecutively."
"What?"
The combined outrage of eight Pervects was enough to knock me off my feet. Hastily I finished wiping up the last of the spill, scrambled up, and creaked out of the courtroom. Behind me, all of them were on their feet shouting at the judge. My guard escorted me to the door, then closed it behind me. I could still hear their voices echoing as I walked in increasingly long strides out of the building. A guard at the entrance gave me a strange look.
"My vacation starts tonight!" I piped, in a high-pitched voice. I didn't have to simulate the aged tremble; I was still shaking from being that close to my nemeses. The guard nodded and went back to staring off into space.
Unless I was very wrong, the Pervect Ten, or eight of them, anyhow, were going to be in a magik-proofed jail for years! Wuh's problem was almost solved. We should be able to handle the remaining two. I had trouble restrain- ing myself from dancing a little victory hop as I left the courthouse and tottered over the bridge to Bunny and the others.
Bunny and Tananda embraced me as I reached them. I hid behind a pillar to shed the cleaning lady's garments and straighten my own.
"You had better restore our appearance," Zol reminded me. The disguises had been knocked out by the anti-magik field inside the building, but were restored the moment we stepped outside its sphere of influence. That was a sophisticated spell.
It took less than a moment for me to reach down to the line of power I'd been staring at for over a day, erase the faces of long-nosed Scammies and restore their features. It felt so good to be doing magik again!
"Nice work, handsome," Tananda remarked approvingly, looking at herself in the mirror of Bunny's PDA. "You ought to get locked up more often."
"No, thanks," I replied. "I did learn something about concentration, but it does me no good unless I can actually practice my techniques."
"Down with the outworlders! Death to demons!"
I glanced up the street. A vast crowd of Scammies had collected in front of the courthouse. "What's going on?"
'They're protesting the loss of the goggles," Zol replied. "They should not be. Such time-wasting nonsense keeps one from the pursuit of truth and beauty. It is good that they have been taken away."
"It's not good! What will I do?" a female asked, clutching at us as she made her way forlornly toward the protest group. "I have to have my story! I loved it! I lived it."
"You must learn to do without it, my dear," Zol told her soothingly, patting her hand. "It isn't safe to fill your mind with falsehood."