"Dear madam, I believed it! I was absolutely convinced you were right," Bofus protested, his back against the wall. He felt along the edge for the curtain that led to the back room, and probably a handy alley on the other side. Pal-dine wasn't going to let him escape that easily. She spread her hands out and spat out a chant that caused the cloth to stiffen harder than wood. Bofus prodded it with the tips of his fingers, then gave her a sickly smile.
"If you don't want to get the same treatment," Paldine snarled, showing all her teeth, "you will take these boxes and give me the money we agreed on. Then I will leave, and come back next week with your next order."
"Please, madam, don't!" Bofus begged. "You don't understand! There won't be another order. I haven't sold out the ones you gave me. In fact, people have been bringing theirs back!" He plunged his hand under his counter and came up with a dozen pairs of Storyteller Goggles. Paldine glared at them, then realized some of them had been mangled.
"What in hell's kitchen has been happening here?" Paldine said. "Didn't you sell them the way I told you? You had all the sales literature."
"I did! I told them everything you told me. I let them try a pair—once anyone put them on I couldn't pry them off— I sold every single one you brought! But yesterday there was a riot. A prophet spoke, some said," Bofus explained.
"A prophet? Not unless it's my profit," Paldine said, raising the shopkeeper by his tunic front. "And what did this prophet have to say?"
"He s-s-says these aren't toys at all," Bofus stammered. "They're b-b-brainwashing tools."
"What? You people haven't got enough brains to wash! What kind of stupid twit would come up with a notion like that? Who is he?"
"I d-d-don't know! He's n-n-not from Scamaroni. He's f-f-from one of the sm-melly dimensions."
Paldine raised an eyebrow. "That narrows it down to almost all of them. Any distinguishing features that I could use to identify this prophet?"
"N-n-no. He walked like one of us f-f-for a while, until a policeman unmasked him. I… you demons all look alike to me. N-n-no offense."
The Pervect tapped her teeth with a manicured fingernail. A magician from some other dimension, one capable of shapeshifting or illusion. Who would want to queer their deal on Scamaroni? Everybody took advantage of the Scammies, at least twice a year, so moral dudgeon had to be lacking on further outrages. The irony was that this time, the Pervect Ten were giving them actual value for their money, so the outrage was all hers. She bent to look at the damaged glasses. All that work, pissed away by ignorant peasants. Out of the corner of her eye she spotted Bofus wiggling his fingers in a spell to try and deossify the curtain.
"Not so fast," she cautioned him. He sagged. "You weren't so afraid of me a few days ago. You and I both know that what they're saying about these toys isn't true. What else have they been saying?"
"That you use s-s-slave labor to make the G-g-goggles, and you are planning to make us slaves so we can build goggles for other dimensions that will b-b-become p-p-part of your empire." Bofus swallowed hard.
Paldine's eyes narrowed. "That's the first I've heard about an empire, honey." For a moment she wondered if Oshleen or any of the others had been around to talk to him, then decided that was wrong. They might fight each other to the death over trivia, but they would do it openly. This would have been cutting one of their own off at the knees, and, worse yet, slashing their own income, something no Pervect would ever do. Bofus looked ready to faint, his long nose sagging like a discarded sock. Paldine decided to change tack. She turned on the charm, moving toward him with a sinuous wiggle.
"How can I find this prophet?" she purred, fluttering her green eyelids at him.
Two uniformed guards arrived in my cell with swords drawn. I sprang up in alarm. Very solemnly, they marched me into a corner and stood facing me. I peered up at their solemn faces.
"Are we going into court now?" I asked hopefully. "I'd like to get this all cleared up so I can go home."
But they didn't say a word. Their reticence made me nervous. In my experience, no news was not necessarily good news. I heard footsteps in the hallway, accompanied by the sound of metal clanging and creaking sounds. I frowned. Was this my release? Or more trouble? Did they torture their prisoners?
To my wondering eyes, the newcomer was an elderly female Scammie, dressed in drab brown and gray. Her hair was gathered up underneath a triangular scarf of the same gray fabric. A big clip held her single nostril closed. Not looking up at me, she pushed a bucket on wheels into the room. My shoulders sagged. A cleaner!
While the guards held the terrifying wizard (me) at bay in the comer, the cleaning woman swabbed the floor with a big mop. They moved me around the room from time to time so she could get into every corner without having to walk past the big dangerous criminal (me). I wondered about the chances of overpowering one or both of my captors, then fighting my way out of the jail using the cleaner as a living shield. I calculated my own body mass, even adding in a factor of 150 percent for all the dirty infighting tricks that Aahz had taught me over the years, and came up at least 400 percent short.
"Nice day," I observed, instead. The Scammie guards didn't reply. They both looked as though they would have liked to be wearing clips on their noses like the old woman.
The cleaning lady continued to potter around. She removed my chamber pot and replaced it with a new one, emptied, rinsed out and refilled my washing pitcher, picked up the used dinner trays and laid a wrapped candy on my stone bunk. The guards waited until she had clanged and squeaked her way but again, then withdrew, bolting the door.
Depressed, I stumped back to my bed and sat down heavily upon it. I picked up the candy, unwrapped it, and immediately spat it out again. Licorice. No news was indeed no good news.
FIFTEEN
"Darling, your slip is showing."
"This has to be your fault," Oshleen accused, striding alongside Paldine up the main street of Volute. "How could you blow something as perfect as the deal we had on those glasses?" Vergetta trotted to keep up behind her two young associates. Five of the others trotted in their wake.
Caitlin had refused to come.
"Straightening out other people's messes is not my bag," she had snorted, and gone back to working on her program to translate the specs of every Wuhs they knew into computer game characters for a game she called "Pretend Pushovers".
Niki, who distrusted anything in which Monishone and/or high sorcery was involved, offered to stay behind and keep an eye on the Wuhses. Vergetta had to agree. They started doing things when the Ten were not in residence. And she had begun hearing rumors of unrest.
That was all right; eight of them was more than enough to straighten out a misunderstanding. One should have been. She didn't know what had gotten into Paldine, carrying on like that. Brainwashing, indeed! They were businesswomen, not voodoo economists.
"I didn't do it, I tell you," Paldine protested. "Everything, everything I did was according to our plan. We ought to have been raking in the gold pieces by now. This item ought to have netted us ten thousand this week alone."
"Well, that's five percent of what we need," Oshleen snorted.
"You think I don't know that? Bofus, that imbecile, claimed a group of strangers bounced in here, and started talking nonsense about how we were planning to rule the world, starting with everyone who bought our toy. Non-Scammies. Everyone believed it. They are so gullible."