Joe nodded. “I just wish I could stop this damned hair from itching so much!”
“Oh, when it comes in full, that stops,” Ruddygore assured him. “Then it’s simply a matter of a trim. You’re just out of practice.”
Irving was even more amazed by Joe, not even recognizing him until the big man spoke.
“Oh, wow! You look like Conan of Hawaii!” he exclaimed. Then his face fell. “I guess this means you’re goin’ soon.”
“We leave tomorrow morning,” Joe told him. “I wish more than anything you could come with us, Irv, but it’s just not time yet.”
“I know. I just… well, I just have this crazy…Oh, damn, I’m afraid you won’t come back!”
“If I’m alive, I’ll come back. That I swear,” Joe assured him. “But there’s always that possibility. There was that possibility every time I climbed into a truck for a run or crossed a street.”
“If they get you, I’ll get them,” Irving said firmly. “I promise you that.”
“Then you think you can stick it out with Gorodo?”
The boy grinned evilly. ‘Oh, him and me are gonna get along real fine. He don’t know ’bout karate!”
Joe laughed and hugged him and held him close.
It was dark; they had all eaten, and Marge had gone into Terdiera for her own needs with a promise to be back by ten. Kauri were by nature nocturnal; they could function in daylight, but always in a slight stupor, almost a jet-lag feeling of being up at the wrong time. But nighttime was when they needed a flying sentinel most in any event.
Joe was spending the last hours with Irving and would also not be up until the meeting. Mia was going around, seeing to the last minute details, and was now heading out to the courtyard to practice a dance with her new castanets.
In truth, she still worried Ruddygore the most. He had gotten the report from Poquah of her reaction to Joe’s anger, and he knew she was hurt, that she’d conveyed that hurt wordlessly to Joe, and he’d softened because of it. The half measures he’d taken clearly weren’t adequate. Only a clean break, at the risk of her ego, would do the trick after all. There was no other way open to him.
He stepped out quickly from behind a pillar just in front of her and she jumped a bit, startled. “I—I am sorry, my lord. I did not see you mere.”
“My fault entirely,” he responded, then lifted his hand. She immediately stiffened, in an immediate trance.
“Mia,” he said softly, “I am going to tell you some things about yourself and you will believe them and know that they are true.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“You are not, nor have you ever been, the highborn and demigoddess Tiana,” he told her. “The memories you have of the parents and siblings of Mia are true. You were, however, Tiana’s maid and slave in the palace. All of your memories and impressions of that life, of Joe and Tiana, come from that. The Dark Baron had you kidnapped and brought to Earth in order to learn intimate details of his enemies, Joe and Tiana, and, as you were under his power, you did so. When he captured Tiana, he first interrogated her, and from that you learned the other details, and then he killed her. Then he cast a spell so that you believed that you were Tiana. He was going to use you to get at us, but he was defeated and so could not use you and his hold on you was broken. You returned as Tiana, and basically fooled yourself that you were really Tiana, the details you knew and your own worshipful devotion to Tiana making you refuse to admit that she was dead and, thanks to the new body and the Rules that gripped you, convincing even Joe that you were really Tiana.
“But when you returned to Husaquahr, you became the slave Mia once more, since that is who you were and the only person you can be. You love Joe, have since your days in the palace, but you know you can never be more than his slave. You now truly realize that you can never keep up the pretense of being Tiana and you are going to abandon it. But you won’t stop loving Joe, no matter how cross he is, no matter if he even beats you, no matter if he has a hundred other women. To be Joe’s slave is your highest aspiration. You are proud to be his slave and proud that for so long you were taken as Tiana’s equal. That is the true source of your own pride. You now know that, were you not a slave, you might have been her equal. You have proven as smart, as tough, and as resourceful as she was. But even as you know your duty, you will ever after know and accept your status and your place.”
He paused, sorry it had come to this. If she survived this—if he survived this, if they couldn’t pull it off!—and if he ever figured that body-switching trick, he promised himself that he would make it up to her, get her out of this body and into one commensurate in status with her intelligence and skills. Until then, this would have to do.
“You remember that you once told Tiana that you did not mind being a slave, that it was better than many alternatives you could think of, and that it was honorable and necessary work,” he continued. “As the truth that you are truly Mia comes to you, you will remember that and believe it all the more. You are proud of being the slave of the greatest of Husaquahr. To serve such a noble one in such a noble cause fills your heart with joy. To be a slave on such a great quest and perhaps aid in its outcome gives you pride, meaning. In a crisis, when you are needed, you will do as Tiana would have done, had you truly been her.
“These things will not come upon you all at once when I let you go, but you will suspect them, feel their truth deep down, and, over the next few days, you will know and understand all of them and it will actually make you happy to know that you are truly Mia, the best and luckiest slave girl in all Husaquahr.”
Once she made that leap, and truly believed that she was Mia and had never been Tiana or anyone else, her mind would sort itself out. All pretenses of Tiana, including particularly the pride and her sense of shame, would go as well. She would accept herself entirely as Mia; her whole ego would be redirected.
He raised his hand and she suddenly came awake.
“I am sorry, my lord! I did not see you there!” she said.
“That’s all right, Mia. My fault entirely. Go wherever you were going. You’ve got a big day coming tomorrow.”
“Thank you, my lord,” she said, doing the partial bow and slight knee bend and then continuing on her way. She was glad that he didn’t need her for anything and that she had no more duties for now. She was all mixed up in her mind and she needed to sort things out, and dancing really helped do that.
Ruddygore watched her go, then reached into his robe and took out a huge old gold-encased pocket watch with Great Western Railway, Ltd. written upon its face. He flipped it open and saw that it was just after nine. So much meddling to do, so little time…
He caught Joe just as he was coming up the stairs from the armory area and had him in the same sort of trance in seconds.
“Joe, what I’m going to tell you is true and you will believe it is true.” Quickly he sketched much the same scenario as he had for Tiana. “You will not know this immediately, but will come to suspect it, and she will finally tell you, if you ask her,” he concluded, spelling out a few of the implications.
Joe, too, would not remember the encounter nor the conversation, but by the time he had his beard he would believe it, and he’d interact with her accordingly. Not as his former wife and love, but as this little slave he’ll now vaguely remember. She would then go from being someone he still considered his equal and for whom he retained, no matter what, some real love, to a near total stranger, and a masquerader, however unconsciously, at that. He would still never consider selling her; the sorcerer had seen to that. But the master-slave status would be absolute, convincing, and believed and accepted by both.