“It's right there,” a Klahdish male said, grinning right in their faces. “Says so, right on the back of your heads. Yeah, both of you!”
“Why, you …!” Charilor started for him, manicured nails out and ready to tear his face.
“That's right,” a mournful voice broke over the sound of the crowd. It was the herbalist Vineezer, standing in the door of his dusty shop, his eyes glowing with unrequited revenge. “Those horrible women have been taking money away from poor old honest merchants like me for weeks, now.”
Vergetta shouted at him. “You! Did you do this to us?”
He only grinned, as the crowd continued to chant. “Extortionist, extortionist, extortionist!”
“They've robbed me, too!” yelled Melicronda, as her three strapping sons flanked their mother at the door of the wine shop. “Taking bread out of our mouths!”
Gradually, ominously, the faces of the shoppers in the crowd turned from idle interest to open anger. Instead of being frightened as Charilor and Vergetta lunged at their erstwhile victims, they moved toward them, seizing whatever they could find to use as weapons.
“We'd better get out of here,” Vergetta said, turning and fleeing up the street with the mob in pursuit.
“What about the plan?” Charilor wailed, as a thrown stone zinged past her ear. “We still need more money!”
Vergetta ducked a few stones as she felt in her purse for their D-hopper. “To the pits with the plan! The plan won't go anywhere if we're not alive to help! It's those damned beauticians! They marked us! Labeled us! Now everyone knows who we are!”
“Grr!” Charilor growled. “I knew that ‘free makeover’ was too good to be true!”
Vergetta spun the wheels on the little device and grabbed for Charilor's hand. She pushed the button as they dashed around a corner in between two shops. Her voice echoed on the air as they vanished. “As soon as the coast's clear again, I'm going to go back into that tent and tear all three of them into pieces they can stuff in their own little cosmetic bottles!”
But no one was left to confront. Within an hour, five or six heavy, multi-legged creatures, supervised by a Deveel with a clipboard, arrived and cleared out everything, including a broken cosmetic palette on the floor. Shortly, there was nothing remaining of A Tough, A Troll and A Trollop but the sign hanging by one hook over the door.
An Imp matron passing by peered forlornly into the empty tent.
“Mr. Guido?” she called.
MYTH-TER RIGHT
By Robert Asprin and Jody Lynn Nye
I sauntered into the Palace of Possiltum like I owned the place, pretty much my normal way of entering a building. Massha's summons had sounded urgent, but I wasn't going to look as though I was in a hurry, in case the problem she was having was with someone here. I had been taking some time alone for myself, but I didn't like it when my friends were in trouble.
“Hey, Kaufuman,” I called to one of the uniformed guards at the portcullis. “How's it hanging?”
For a moment the pink-faced guy goggled. There was only one short, green-scaled guy with handsomely pointed ears, mysterious yellow eyes, and dagger-pointed four-inch fangs in the kingdom, to my knowledge. Kaufuman recognized me immediately.
“Lord Aahz, sir!” Immediately he straightened up and held his halberd higher. I threw him a salute as I went by, sighing over the inadequacy of sharp pointy sticks as deterrents to invasion. I had never been able to convince Hugh Badaxe to go more high-tech in the castle armament. He claimed that they could get it if they wanted it, but in the meantime it just meant more accidents. Couldn't argue there. For what Queen Hemlock paid her soldiers, she was lucky to get men who could hold the weapons the right way up, let alone ones who were as dedicated to her defense as the guys who served her and Rodrick.
I ran into the current Minister of Agriculture on the stairs leading to Skeeve's — I mean, the quarters of the Court Magician. Even after a few months I was still not used to the status quo. “Hey, Beadle, Massha upstairs?”
“Oh, hello, Lord Aahz,” the square-built Klahd said, peering up from his scrolls of paperwork. The guy really needed a good secretary. “No, I believe the Lady Magician is in the Residence. The cottage. Out in the gardens.” He waved a vague hand.
“I know the way.”
Since she'd married General Hugh Badaxe and taken over Skeeve's job as Court Magician, Massha had really blossomed. She'd gained confidence, starting to rely upon her own magikal skills as much as the wealth of gizmos that hung jingling about her more than generous figure.
When I got to the cottage, a wedding present from Don Bruce, Massha was hanging in the air like an orange balloon in the cathedral-ceilinged living room, supervising a couple of guys on a ladder who were replacing the chandelier.
“Careful, you cuties! There are sixty crystal drops on this one, and I want sixty to get the floor all at the same time. Get it?”
“Yes, Lady Massha,” they chorused as if they'd heard it before. But one of them accidentally knocked a hanging prism loose, and it fell.
“There, what did I tell you?” she exclaimed, tilting into a nosedive to save the crystal, but I got to it before she did.
“Did you lose something?” I asked, holding it up to her.
“Aahz, sweetie!” she cried, throwing her arms around me. Between her strength and her levitation bracelet, she lifted me right off the ground. “You came! Thank you.”
“So,” I said, when I got my breath back, “what's the problem?”
“Come this way,” Massha said, leading me through the archway into the kitchen-dining area. “We can get some privacy in here. I love this house to pieces, but it's cozy — read ‘small’ in real estate terms.” She gestured to a large carved wooden chair with a cushion on the seat and a few small pillows to stuff in between sore lumbar muscles and the tall curved back. “That's Hugh's favorite chair. It's low slung so he can stick his legs out in front of him. He hates footstools.”
“Too easy to knock out from under you in a confrontation,” I agreed. Badaxe and I had been on opposite sides at one time, but never on the subject of strategy. “Glad to hear he's not going soft even though he went in for wedded bliss.”
“It's great,” Massha said, firmly. “When you find the right person, it's heaven. You should try it, Aahz.”
“Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt,” I said, settling into the chair with pleasure. It really was comfortable.
She drew me a mug of beer from a cask in a cradle on the counter. All the comforts of home. “So, what's so urgent? You've evaded the question twice. I know there's a favor involved, but we're old friends. The answer's yes on almost anything, exceptions being on things like getting married again.”
Massha let her antigravs bring her down to earth, and she perched on the front of a handsome upholstered chair made to her measure. I could have curled up in it side-ways.
“I just feel awkward knowing I have to call in a favor,” Massha said with a sigh. “Do you do much formal hunting?”
“No. If I'm hungry I know a thousand restaurants a D-hop away. If I'm really stuck out in the boonies I'll kill and eat whatever looks edible, no ceremony involved. The formal stuffs like the guy said, ‘the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable.’” I glanced at her. She was plucking at the edge of her orange harem pants with uneasy fingers. “Why don't you take riding lessons from Hugh?”
Massha dropped the filmy cloth and gave me an exasperated expression. “Aahz, honey, look at me. You've known me for years. Can you see me on a horse?”
“Well, no,” I admitted. Massha had no illusions about her figure, and I cared enough about her as a friend not to pretend I didn't understand. “But you don't expect me to do the riding, do you? I scare the hell out of horses.”