Matfany bowed. "Very well, sir. I am a man of my word. I will depart at once. I will go back to my quarters for my possessions, if you will allow that."
"I don't see why not," I said. I could be magnanimous. Inwardly I was jubilant. Just like that. I had gotten Hermalaya her throne back and gotten rid of her archenemy!
"Now, wait a minute!" Aahz protested, pushing in between us. "You can't do that!"
I turned to him calmly. "I just did."
"I want a ruling from the judge."
"What ruling? Matfany agreed. I saved his life, so he's leaving the country." The prime minister nodded gravely. Aahz goggled.
"If you exile my client, I can't win."
"You can't win anyhow," I said, trying not to gloat and failing. "We beat you six ways from feastday. I just won. My client's got her job back, and yours has just lost his. Besides, we have the moral victory."
"Moral? This is purely a numbers game, pal." Aahz stuck his face in mine.
I didn't back down. I thrust my chin forward.
"Then we'll take it back to Bunny, and ask her," I said. "All right?"
"All right!"
THIRTY-SIX
"Okay, so maybe winning IS everything."
Aahz and Tananda burst into the office not more than three seconds after I did. They had both had a chance to clean up and put on fresh clothes, as I had.
"Aahz, are you all right?" Bunny asked. "We were so worried!"
"I'm fine," he said. "It was sticky, but not insurmountable. You know Pervects. We always come out on top."
"Huh," I said. So he wasn't going to tell her how I rescued him and the others. I was disgusted. I flopped down in a chair and put my head on my hand. Gleep came galloping over to greet me. I scratched his chin. Bunny looked from one of us to the other.
"Where are the clients?"
"I took Hermalaya someplace safe," I said. I didn't want to say any more than that. She had protested when I took her back to Massha's cottage in Possiltum, but I didn't want to take a chance with her well-being, not when we were about to return her triumphantly to Foxe-Swampburg.
Aahz growled. "Matfany is in an undisclosed location until I get a ruling from you on inappropriate behavior from my opponent over there."
Bunny's eyebrows rose sky-high. "Inappropriate behavior from Skeeve? What happened? Didn't he just pull all of you out of a swamp?"
"That's not the point," Aahz said. He leaned over the desk and aimed a finger at me. "He just exiled MY client from his homeland. He can't do that!"
"Why not?" Bunny asked, not at all cowed. "It's fair. Yours did it to his."
Aahz threw up his hands. "But that's a matter of internal politics. Skeeve's an outsider. What about the Prime Directive?"
"What's that?" I asked.
"I'm not here to complete your education anymore." Aahz said sourly. "What about it? Can he do that?"
Bunny turned to me. "How did you exile him?"
"Matfany asked me how he could repay me for saving his life. I told him he could get out of town. It's not my problem what it does to Aahz's mission, is it?"
"Would you have done it if Aahz hadn't been working for him?" Chumley asked. *
"Yes! He deposed a sitting ruler! It's not like she can pull up stakes and go get a job somewhere. She's royalty. She belongs back home."
Aahz snorted. "Big deal. The descendant of someone else who moved in and decided that he was in charge. But does it stand?"
"I don't see why not," Bunny said. "Sounds like he made a fair deal."
"Then the contest's over," I said. "He can't earn any more for his client."
"You're right about that," Bunny agreed. "The contest as we agreed to it is over."
"Then let's see who won?" I pulled the ledger around to look at my total. "Fifteen thousand, six hundred gold coins!
Wow!" With a total like that I had to have won. I was going to be president of M.Y.T.H., Inc. again!
"Lemme see that." Aahz yanked the book away from me. "Fifteen thousand, six hundred ... ? From serving a few lousy little pieces of cake?"
"That's Cake," I corrected him.
"No problem. I have you beaten on numbers."
"You couldn't"
"I could and I do." Aahz turned to the page with his name on it. His face fell. "Fifteen thousand, six hundred." "What?" I asked. "You're tied," Nunzio said.
Aahz gawked at the ledger. "Wait a minute! How could you do that? I put names on almost everything in the country!"
I held up the little clay pot. "We had a Leprechaun." "So neither of you won," Tananda said. "You tied." "We need a tiebreaker," I said.
"Sudden death," Aahz said. I looked blank. He looked disgusted at my ignorance. "One contest, winner take all." "Oh! Okay. I agree."
We turned to Bunny. "What can we do?" I asked.
Bunny looked from me to Aahz and back again with a look of absolute exasperation. I was surprised to see that all the others had the same expression.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
"What is the matter with you?" she demanded, her voice rising to glass-breaking tones. "Both of you are missing the point!"
"What point?" Aahz asked. "You set the conditions of the contest. The prize is the presidency of our organization. We tied. We won't both be president, so we need to break the tie."
"Aagh!" Bunny said, scraping the desk with her fingernails. "You men are so dense! The point is that
putting Hermalaya back on the throne means she has to punish
Matfany as a usurper, and she doesn't want to, does she?"
"Not really,' I said, uneasily. The look on her face when I left her in Possiltum reminded me of that shy confession Massha had wormed out of her.
"... And having Matfany in charge isn't tenable because the people like their ruling family, right, Aahz? They take pride in it. Besides, he just had a fit of temper when he tossed her off the throne and condemned her to death if she returned. Skeeve got him to agree to leave out of a sense of honor, so the princess can be in charge again, but she doesn't know that much more about business than she did when all this got started. Both of you are thinking that only one of them is important to the kingdom. It needs both of them. You aren't paying attention to what the clients really need anymore. You forgot what it is that we do."
I rubbed my temples, where a headache was starting to grow inward. Aahz and I looked at each other.
"So what if he's unpopular now?" Aahz asked. "Matfany's a good administrator. The people will get used to the idea eventually. If Skeeve rescinds the exile order."
"Not the Old Folks," I said. "They will never allow him in the throne room, and everyone knows it. They just tried to drown him, unless you're forgetting. Besides"—I glanced back at Massha, who gave me an encouraging look—"the princess is kind of in love with him. She wants to go back, but she wants him, too."
Guido cleared his throat. "I kind of see that sort of interaction from Mr. Matfany also. He is stuck on the doll, as who of his species wouldn't be?"
"Thought so!" Bunny crowed. "When those two passed each other in the waiting room, you could have lit a cigar off the sparks. Well?"
"Well, what?" Aahz and I asked at the same time.
"It's no longer about the money."
"It's always about the money," Aahz said.
"How are you going to bring the kingdom back together?" Bunny asked, patiently.
"I don't know," Aahz said. "Matfany's pretty much soiled the nest. Everybody's going to think it's fishy if he suddenly brings Hermalaya back and reinstalls her. It'll look desperate. Could throw the whole kingdom into a tailspin."
"She'll lose all credibility if she brings him in as her prime minister after he threw her out," I mused.