stay away from the other. You don't interfere in what the other one is doing. You don't go near each other anywhere except here. Any conversations you have from now until the end of this contest will be held in front of witnesses, preferably in this office. Any more bad behavior means you automatically concede the contest to your opponent. Do I make myself clear?"
Very grudgingly, I choked out a yes. So did Aahz.
"Good. Both of you go away. You've been in here too long. Help your clients. Stay out of trouble. That's all. Beat it." Bunny sat down at her secretary desk and opened her copy of The Princess's Diary.
We all looked at each other. Aahz gave me a smirk.
BAMF! He, Matfany, Tananda, and Guido disappeared.
I regretted the day I gave him that D-hopper.
TWENTY-EIGHT
"Mister Aahz, I have to say I believed your colleague, Skeeve," Matfany said. We were following an indignant foreman, or really fore-Salamander, Pintubo, and his fire-proofed Reynardan escort back to the damaged displays in the hills to get a good look at them. "His countenance did not seem like one who dissembles, and as an administrator I must say I see my share of dishonest faces."
I growled without looking at him. The uphill slog was complicated by thick, cementlike mud on the path that was building up under my feet like platform shoes.
"I believed him, too," Tananda said, tripping along lightly. "I might have jumped to a conclusion back there. It's not the first time Skeeve has been innocent when we have believed the worst about him, Aahz. Look what happened on Imper."
"I don't want to hear it," I said. "The kid knows I put a spoke in his wheels, and he got back at me. Big deal. It's over."
"Unless he didn't," Guido said. "You gotta look at the bigger picture. More people than Skeeve don't like what we're doin' here."
He aimed a meaty thumb backward. We weren't the only people on the mountain path. Some of the mote determined protesters were following us, at a distance enforced by a whole troop of the castle guards. By then, the towns-folk were using their signs as staffs to help them up the steep slope, but they were determined to let us know that they weren't happy with the status quo—as they knew it. I realized we had let slide an important facet of improving Matfany's image.
"We have to give the people an update when we get to the top," I said. "We're doing all kinds of publicity, but no public relations "
"And what will that involve?" Matfany asked.
"A speech," I said. "By you. Start thinking about bullet points: how you are doing your best for the country, how what's happening up here is beneficial to them, and how tourism is going to start coming back. It's already happening."
I spoke with confidence, because I had been keeping up with the hoteliers in the resort. All of them reported bookings from a dozen dimensions, including some large tour groups I had made a mental note of which ones had the fewest rooms left to rent, with an idea toward sending auditors in to scan the books. I figured I could count taxes the hotels and inns paid on profit to the kingdom as part of my total. I was sure I could talk Bunny into it. As mad as the Geek was about the vandalism, his new trade in knick-knacks was also paying off, with a percentage on all sales to be paid to me—I mean, the treasury. That ought to boost my takings so far over Skeeve all he'd be able to see was the bottoms of my feet.
The prime minister considered the request gravely.
"I believe I can do that."
I expanded on my topic. "Don't forget, you have to stress that things are only better because you took over. That Pixie-headed princess of yours threw the whole country into a financial crisis on top of your environmental disaster. But you're the one pulling it all out again. Get it?"
'Now, just a minute, sir'" Matfany said, coming to a halt. "I have asked you not to lay tongue to our monarchy!"
"Only if they really need a licking," I leered at him. He looked shocked. "Look. People might like the fact that money is coming in, but no one can get past the idea that you threw the royal house out and took over. If you don't get people on your side pronto, you're not going to be a popular ruler when the crisis is over. I don't want you to have to keep looking over your shoulder for the rest of your life. Hermalaya may have been featherbrained, but people liked her. It's gonna start affecting the bottom line if we don't do something."
Matfany looked glum. "I know it, sir. I am just about ready to go back on bended knee and ask her to return."
"No!" I roared. The force of my voice knocked him back about five paces.
"Why, Mister Aahz, why ever not?"
"She's the reason you had a problem, isn't it?"
"Well, sir, of course she's not," Matfany said. His face softened from its usual stern expression. "It was the bugs that caused all the problems. She kinda made things light up. really. She cheered people up even when it was really bad. Even me."
"Aw," Tananda said, throwing her arms around him. "I get what's going on here. You had to send her away because you're in love with her, aren't you?"
"Ma'am!" Matfany exclaimed, taken aback. "I do not appreciate having my feelings discussed in public."
"We're not in public," Tanda said, cuddling into his arm and looking up at him. I'd seen men made of stone melt at that look. "Is it true?"
"'What has that got to do with public relations'" I growled.
"Nothing," Tananda said, with a grin. "It has a lot more to do with private relations. Matfany, what would you do if you didn't have the kingdom to consider?"
The prime minister pulled away from her. "Ma'am, my whole life is service to the throne!"
By now, even I could see he was evading the question. If I hadn't been fixed on the job at hand, I might even have had some sympathy for him.
"Forget it," I said. "We're there. Hi, guys! Great to see you."
We had been met by not only the Geek and some of his business partners, but the entire Salamander workforce, all of them bright orange-red hot, and boiling mad.
Salamanders are small but dangerous beings from a dimension called Salamagundi. They like to visit other places because they're social by nature. Trouble is. they can set almost anything on fire just by touching it, which makes having one for a houseguest a real pain in the posterior, Gus, our Gargoyle buddy who worked in the Golden Crescent Inn and did side jobs for us. had a Salamander pal named Berfert, who had also worked for M.Y.T.H., Inc. once in a while. Gargoyles don't have the problem with flammability the rest of us do, being made of solid stone. That was also why I hadn't panicked when the Geek told me he had hired a Salamander advertising firm to run his billboard on Geek's Peak. There should have been no problems with the little lizards on a bare rock face.
"Toned down" in Matfany's terms, or even my terms, came nowhere even in the same ballpark with the Geek's, but the whorls, flourishes and fancy typography had been reduced by over three-quarters of the mountainside. Within the newly defined borders, I could see wild streaks and black burns, evidence of Salamanders being surprised by something.
"Look at that!" Pintubo shrieked in his shrill little voice, waving his tiny forefoot upward. "Hazardous conditions! My lizards don't have to work like this."
"Right!" the miniature crowd of Salamanders cried.
"What do we want?"
"Safety harnesses!"
"When do we want them?"
"NOW!"
"But you guys can melt yourselves into solid stone," I said, interrupting the chanting. "There's no reason you should be falling off. That's not even a vertical slope."
"It's some kind of magic!" the forelizard said. "Either you fix it or we're going on strike. We'll take down the other displays around town, too."
"If they do, we'll sue," Gribaldi said. He was a large, meaty Deveel with a sloping forehead on which black eye-brows grew thick enough to lose an antelope in. "You agreed that we get to advertise our sponsorship."