"Do you know who took it?" I asked.
"Who could it be but Rattila?" Eskina countered, spreading her tiny pawlike hands out before us. "One of your potential wizards?" Massha inquired, cocking a professional eye.
Eskina spat.
"Cats, no! He worked as a cleaner in the building. A menial. He is not very intelligent, I am afraid, but very ambitious. When he and the device disappeared at the same time, we investigated. No trace of him could be found, so it was assumed he employed the latent power in the device to flee the dimension. His mother was surprised. She said he was always such a quiet loner."
"Uh-huh," I acknowledged. "Those are the ones you have to watch."
"Yes." Eskina sighed. "Now we wish that we had. But how many eyes can we keep on the janitorial staff? Must we never hire quiet loners? Eh? For a job where one pushes a broom or uses a cleansing spell to clear the air of ecto-plasmic matter late at night when no one is there, must we employ a jocular and outgoing individual? I would think that would create much more trouble than taking chances upon employees who do well alone."
"Don't look at me," I said. "I only deal with rampant individualist self-starters. The others get complacent and lazy and never solve a problem on their own."
Eskina nodded. "I see we understand one another."
"This has nothing to do with our thieves," Parvattani grumbled.
"Far from it," Eskina corrected, but speaking directly to me. "My assignment is to get the device and return it to the alchemists' lab. Misused, it will transform the one who invokes it in such a way that he is no longer a natural being but a creature of energy."
"So? It sounds like the problem will solve itself."
"Eventually! It is a very long process. In the meantime, the problem is that it gleans its energy from a chosen source. It is designed to tap into force lines. That is no trouble; those are nonsentient and eternally replenished."
I held up a hand. "I see where this is going. You think this Rattila is drawing his power from living beings." "I feel certain of this," Eskina insisted. She poked a sharp finger into Parvattani's fancy tunic. "You have seen the husks yourself, the sad ones who shuffle around. They have no minds, no will of their own. They go forward with no memory of who they are or what they are doing there. They are the remains of normal shoppers who have been drained by the talent device."
"That's bad," Massha declared, horrified.
"How? How does the object gather power from those people?" I demanded.
I remembered the people she was talking about. I winced, picturing Skeeve meandering around like a mechanical windup toy.
"Through the Law of Contagion, direct contact, or contact with something that once touched the target. It is more difficult with force lines, which is why this is still a prototype. Making a physical connection with a force line is still in the theoretical stages. But living beings, though their potential is much less, are very easy to reach out and touch. It takes draining many to accomplish what would be quite swift and harmless if the device could be used in the manner it was intended."
"What's this got to do with the shapechangers who impersonate honest shoppers?" Par asked, pugnaciously.
"Everything! That must be an intermediate stage, manifested by the device. Taking action in the form of a targeted being strengthens a connection. Hence the purchases—affirmation of his tastes, his wealth. The longer that another person pretends to an identity, the more readily it is stripped away from the person to whom it belonged in the first place. Because this device is only an experimental one, we do not know precisely how Rattila manages to transfer the energy from one person to another. This is where your friend is in the most danger: Rattila seeks especially those who have magikal talent."
Parvattani seemed to be wrestling with a thought. It finally made its way out of his mouth.
"Tell her," he spat out. "What?"
"I can't reveal information that came to me in an official capacity. You must. Tell her what you saw at The Volcano."
I did. Eskina's round brown eyes grew rounder as I gave her all the details I could remember about the shapechang-er with the deck of cards by the clothes rack.
"But this must be related! The device, too, is in the shape of a card. The eventual and irreversible mindlessness will happen to Skeeve unless Aahz can stop it. Rattila wants to collect enough power to transform himself into the greatest magician in the universe, using a device obtained from a wizard he ripped off many years ago."
"I refuse to let Skeeve get shopped to death," I said, darkly.
My companions agreed heartily.
"What do we do first?" Massha asked.
"Cut him off," I said. "If the key to draining someone is by impersonating him, then the impersonator can't be allowed to make any more purchases in Skeeve's name."
"I'll put out an all-points bulletin at once," Par said, reaching into his pocket. His hand came up empty, and his cheeks turned a bright shade of green. "My globe's in my uniform. I'll have to go back to my quarters for it."
"Make it snappy," Massha urged him.
"But what about you? I am supposed to show you around."
"I can guide them," Eskina suggested.
When Parvattani made a face, she made one back.
"What do you think? I have been here for a long time looking for Rattila. I know this place as well as you do— better, maybe! Come on," she urged us. "He can find us later."
SEVEN
"I'm overwhelmed," Massha admitted, as we left the Mystikal Bar. "This place is too huge! I mean, normally I would be overjoyed to have more stores at my fingertips than I could ever shop in a lifetime, but I'm at a loss. How do we cover them all?"
I had no idea, but as the leader of this expedition, I had to show leadership, and the first key of good leadership is delegation of responsibilities.
"You're the friendly almost-native guide around here," I said to Eskina, who was trotting along a pace ahead of me like a tiny Sherpa. "Where would you start looking for someone?"
"We are going there," the Ratislavan investigator informed me, with an airy wave. "The center of The Mall is the center of the community."
"Community?" Chumley asked.
"But of course! When you work day by day next to someone else, you get to know them, no? It is a neighborhood. Even if you do not sleep there, it is as though you live there. People you see every day, customers who come in all the time, the complainers, the bargain hunters—"
I slapped my forehead. "It's the Bazaar except indoors," I exclaimed, feeling like a dope. "Who's in charge here? A Merchants' Association?"
"The administration," Eskina replied. "The shopkeepers do not have an association, but that is a good idea. I will begin to talk it up with my friends. They have some concerns that the administration does not always address."
I grimaced. If I'd just provided the seeds of subversion, I wasn't going to let it get traced back to me if I could help it. "No, I mean who's really in charge. The administration's in charge of the physical plant, assigning spaces, collecting rent. Who's the mayor of this burb? Who's the goto guy, or the one you really don't want to piss off?"