"Who wants to know?" I asked.
"Just answer me." Out of the darkness, an object flashed and came down on my head. Honk!
"Ow!" I yelled. The object fell at my feet. It was a bright blue and yellow rubber hammer, the kind used to play Whack-a-Gnome. Suddenly, I saw something silver leveled at my nose. It was a cake server, a very fancy, heavily ornamented solid silver handle with a well-sharpened blade, even more venerable-looking than Hermalaya's. I looked up into a pair of glittering black eyes. A black cloth concealed the rest of the face.
"Are you Skeeve the Magnificent? Answer! I don't have time to play games with you!"
"I'm Skeeve. Where are my friends?"
"In the corner with a couple of my friends. They're fine for now, as long as you answer my questions."
Another candle flared into light. I saw Massha near the wall. Her filmy veil had been tied over her mouth, and colored streamers were bound around her wrists. Two black-clad figures stood by her with servers at her throat. One of them held up a filmy bag that contained all of Massha's magikal jewelry. I winced. Without her toys, as site called them, Massha was almost as helpless as an ordinary person. Nunzio was dwarfed by an enormous figure who held his miniature crossbow up by two fingers. He was tied up with green cloth streamers that I recognized as Dragon-pinning tails.
We can escape from this situation, no matter how badly outnumbered we are, I thought. I reached out for a force line to gather some power to untie them. I ran into a magikal wall. I tried again. Nothing.
Although I could picture at least two nearby lines in my mind, I couldn't touch either one. There was a dampening spell on the room. Both of us were powerless, at least for the moment. I tried to keep calm.
"I don't want any trouble," I said, amiably. "May I ask who I'm speaking with?"
The mysterious female loomed over me.
"My name is Ninja. I am a sixteenth-generation, nineteenth-layer Cake Master."
"Nineteenth layer!" I asked. "I've never heard of that."
Ninja recoiled as if insulted. "You doubt me? Bety! Kroka! Prepare ... the layer!"
Two black-aproned and masked females came forward, bearing between them a solid silver platter with a single, unfrosted chocolate cake on it.
"Hiayah!" Ninja swung the server at the cake.
Whisk, whisk! Whisk, whisk! Crumbs flew in all directions. I pulled back out of the way. A claw caught me by the nape of the neck and pushed me forward.
Ninja halted with an impressive economy of movement and drew the server back. She wiped it very carefully upon her apron tie and slid it into a sheath at her belt. She gestured to the others, who brought the cake close enough for me to examine.
"Count them," she said proudly. "Nineteen."
Gingerly, I ran a thumb up the edge of the cake, and the edges flipped back like very soft playing cards. I could see that it had been sliced thinly but so evenly that it looked like the side of a children's board book. There were exactly nineteen.
"Gosh," I said. "That's amazing."
"Gosh? The Great Skeeve says gosh?" Ninja sounded scornful.
"Sure," I said. "When I'm impressed. But why kidnap us? We're trying to help one of your, uh. society. Princess Hermalaya of Foxe-Swampburg."
"We have heard of your so-called help," Ninja spat. "We Cake Masters are disgusted by it."
"But why?" I asked. "Hermalaya has been doing everything according to the rules, isn't she? You couldn't ask for a more dignified representative of your... association. We've done what we can to make sure the fakes get closed down. And the rest have agreed to start taking the training courses."
I was hauled off the stool and smashed face-first into the wall. Nunzio stood up, but the huge Cake Master shoved him down again.
Ninja hissed in my ear. "We hate fakes, but we also do not care for the sacred practice of hospitality and enjoyment being prostituted for money!"
"How do you support yourselves, then?" I asked, in what I thought was a reasonable tone, as much as I could with a cake server pressed against the back of my neck while my face was buried in a silken Pin-the-tail-on-the-Dragon chart. '"If you don't receive any, uh, gifts, you're not earning anything on your historic culture and experience."
There was a long pause.
"Well, I don't suppose we do," Ninja admitted. She backed off and took off her veil. I saw that she was another Reynardan. like Hermalaya. "We have patrons."
I spat out silk. "So, how's that different? You only support yourselves, if you can. Can you?"
Ninja sounded embarrassed when she finally answered. "Well, we all have other jobs. I decorate cakes in a hotel on Lux."
"I deliver pizzas," said one of the other black-clad figures. Behind her veil she was a Kobold.
"I'm a nanny," grated a Gargoyle.
"I'm a stockbroker," added a Gnome.
"Really?" I asked. It looked as if Cake Masters came from nearly every race in the dimensions and almost every profession. "You do all that to support your hobby?"
Ninja whipped out her server again and brandished it at me. "It is not a hobby. It is a sacred calling! Cake has shown us peace and beauty in the world. If she has prostituted that calling, then she must be punished. She is a Cake Master. She ought to know better!"
"Look, the princess believes in all that!" I said. "I'm the one responsible for making it commercial. If you have to punish someone, punish me, not her. The only reason I got her to offer Cake ceremonies in exchange for favors is to rescue her kingdom. Maybe none of you know what happened to her?"
"Oh, we do," the Kobold said. "I bought a copy of her diary. We all read it. We cried like babies!"
"The princess has never had another job. In fact, she's trying to get her job back. Princessing is a tough gig, as hard as being a nanny." I glanced around the circle of black-clad figures. "Maybe worse."
"It couldn't be worse," the Gargoyle replied. "Not with triplets."
"Hmmm," Ninja mused. "I never thought of it that way. You say that she is a sincere student of the art'.'"
"She throws me out of the kitchen every time she bakes a Cake," I said, making certain to pronounce the capital letter. "She spins every attendee around three times before they try to pin the tail on the Dragon. Nobody gets more than one scoop of ice cream on their piece of Cake."
Ninja drummed her fingers on her lip. "That is strictly traditional. Possibly even orthodox."
"See?" I said, persuasively. "How do you get more sincere than that? I promise that as soon as she's back on the throne, she will never accept money for doing the Cake ceremony ever again. In the meantime, I've got to ask you to be patient. We still have an uphill battle to get her back safely to her homeland and restored to the throne."
Almost in unison, the society of Cake practitioners sighed.
"It's so romantic," the Gargoyle said. "I can't wait to see how it ends. Is she going to publish a sequel to her diary?"
"I have no idea," I said. "Will you let me and my friends go now? Can Hermalaya keep practicing the way she has? Maybe if you think of her guests as patrons, it wouldn't sound so bad?"
Ninja gathered her companions around her, and they had a quiet but very animated conference. It broke up. Ninja turned back to me.
"You have a deal, Skeeve." She clapped her hands, and three of the women ran to untie Massha and help her rebling. The Gargoyle handed back Nunzio's crossbow and helped him brush down his suit. "Let's see how Princess Hermalaya does, and maybe we'll even throw some business her way. Please tell her we are at our sister's service. If there's ever anything we can do to help her, all you have to do is call. Uh, after four o'clock, if you don't mind. That's when I get off work."
TWENTY-SEVEN
"It seems my reputation has preceded me."