Myth Alliances

FOURTEEN

I paced from one side of my small cell to the other. It looked just like your average cell, but it smelled good for a change, like roses and new mown grass. Except for the fact that there were bars on the hand-sized window, iron bands wider than my torso on the door, and, oh, yes, walls of big rough stone in between them, I could have been walking in a delightful garden.

Officers One and Three, whom I now knew were called Gelli and Barnold, had left me the D-hopper and all of my other magikal paraphernalia, including the sample pair of glasses we had picked up in the Pervects' headquarters.

"The whole place is magik-proofed," Officer Gelli informed me, at my puzzled expression when he handed me back the D-hopper. "You can use that as a backscratcher, or whatever you like, but you're staying here until your arraignment."

"Do I get a lawyer?" I said.

"Sure. Who can we call to get one for you?" But there was no answer to that. My companions had escaped. I was thankful for that: there was no point in all five of us being locked up. Thanks to the disguise there was no way they could be identified as fellow perpetrators if they returned. When they returned. I knew my friends. They would not leave me here to rot.

The cell door had a huge, primitive key lock, the kind I had practiced opening hundreds of times back when I thought I wanted to be a thief. My fingers were small enough to reach the tumblers, but not strong enough to turn them through the keyhole. If I could only have summoned up a thread of power I could have shrunk the shaft of the D-hopper to use as a lock pick, but nothing doing.

It wasn't as though magik was scarce. Strong lines of power abounded on Scamaroni. I could see a huge blue arrow running directly underneath the police station, but it was as untouchable as the shutterbugs behind the glass of Zol's little magik mirror. I tried a thousand times to reach that power, or the bright golden one I could see arching like a monochrome rainbow over the main street of the city, or the paler green one that crossed the blue one at some distance from the jail. Some big, tough wizards had created the containment spell around this building, wizards hundreds of years older and far more accomplished than I was. There would have had to be sixteen of me to make any dent in it. I certainly tried.

I pictured a magikal crowbar prying out the grille over the window. Sweat poured down my face as I constructed the spell over and over again. The bars didn't even grow warm. I pictured a magikal rope tied around the door dragging it off its hinges. Not a creak, not a quiver. I sat down, exhausted. I was just going to have to wait until someone came and let me out.

It didn't take a genius to tell me that I had made a mess of my opportunity to free the Scammies. Zol Icty may have had the utter adoration of every self-help book reader in every dimension, and know everything that there was to know about everyone who lived in them, but his advice was awful. I blamed myself. I had gotten caught up in his plausibility, and believed whatever he said without judging for myself whether what he told me to do made sense. I promised myself from then on I'd listen to whatever he had to say, then do the opposite of what he advised. If I'd done that, I could have been home by now.

I paced back and forth until my feet hurt, then I spent some time looking out the window. My cell faced the street. It seemed to me that at least half the people out there had Storyteller Goggles on, wandering blindly as their keen sense of smell kept them from running into obstructions, and most of the other half looked envious. But I thought that I had done some good: a few of the passersby looked disapprovingly at their fellow Scammies who were wearing the Pervect Ten's device. Maybe I'd gotten through to a few after all.

A clattering at the door announced the arrival of my dinner tray, pushed through a panel at the bottom of the door, which was firmly closed and locked as soon as the following edge of the tray was inside. A covered dish, a jug of wine and a jug of water lay on the wooden trencher, along with a candlestick, two candles, and flint and steel. By my calculations the candles would burn from sunset to midnight. I supposed I could try to set the room on fire, but there was nothing to burn except my clothes. The necessary was a covered metal bucket shoved underneath a wash stand consisting of a china bowl and pitcher on a stone shelf in the corner. The bed was a stone shelf, too. Not very comfortable, but then, nothing to attract insects, either. I didn't really need a blanket; the room was warm. I looked under the plate cover. The Scammies may have thought I was crazy, but they treated their prisoners well. The food looked and smelled as good as anything at the best restaurants in the Bazaar. I ate my supper, then spent the rest of the remaining daylight clutching the bars of my small window and watching the people go by. A few of them spotted me; with my Klahdish looks I had to be about as inconspicuous as a porcupine on a silk rug. They made faces or obscene gestures. With those flexible noses, obscene gestures took on new impact.

The sun woke me just before another tray was shoved under my door. I sprang up and pounded on the heavy wood.

"Hey!" I cried. "Let me out of here!"

I heard no other sounds for a long time, until there was the scrape of a heavy bolt moving on the other side of the door. It creaked open, and Officer Koblinz came in. He pointed at my pendant.

"That won't work in here," he spoke, haltingly, as he took his notebook out of his pocket, this time with a pencil, "but I speak Klahd. Let's hear your side of the story. Start at the beginning."

"Well," I began, settling down on my blanketless bunk, "I was working on my magik studies when this Wuhs popped in…"

In between meals I had nothing to do but peer out of the window. Shortly after lunch I saw Officer Koblinz and Gelli talking on the drawbridge that led from the prison. Gelli threw him a half-salute and marched down to street level. A female, probably Mrs. Gelli by the way their snouts reached out lovingly to touch one another, met him at the bottom. They started talking and walking along the river front. When they met another female, this one wearing a pair of the Pervect Ten's enchanted spectacles, they halted to speak with her. She listened with growing alarm, then took off her goggles and threw them away from her. They landed in the river, and sank in a circle of growing ripples. The Gellises passed on, and the now worried woman rushed over to talk to a cluster of young people with spectacles on. A few of them ignored her, but a couple must have listened, because they took the glasses off and looked at them closely. I cheered.

"What do you mean, you don't want the shipment?" Pal-dine demanded in disbelief. Bofus, the shop owner, cringed behind his counter, his long nose pressed against his face for protection. "We have an exclusive contract! You were going to sell a thousand a week!"

"Dear madam, I believed it! I was absolutely convinced you were right," Bofus protested, his back against the wall. He felt along the edge for the curtain that led to the back room, and probably a handy alley on the other side. Pal-dine wasn't going to let him escape that easily. She spread her hands out and spat out a chant that caused the cloth to stiffen harder than wood. Bofus prodded it with the tips of his fingers, then gave her a sickly smile.

"If you don't want to get the same treatment," Paldine snarled, showing all her teeth, "you will take these boxes and give me the money we agreed on. Then I will leave, and come back next week with your next order."

"Please, madam, don't!" Bofus begged. "You don't understand! There won't be another order. I haven't sold out the ones you gave me. In fact, people have been bringing theirs back!" He plunged his hand under his counter and came up with a dozen pairs of Storyteller Goggles. Paldine glared at them, then realized some of them had been mangled.

"What in hell's kitchen has been happening here?" Paldine said. "Didn't you sell them the way I told you? You had all the sales literature."

"I did! I told them everything you told me. I let them try a pair—once anyone put them on I couldn't pry them off— I sold every single one you brought! But yesterday there was a riot. A prophet spoke, some said," Bofus explained.

"A prophet? Not unless it's my profit," Paldine said, raising the shopkeeper by his tunic front. "And what did this prophet have to say?"

"He s-s-says these aren't toys at all," Bofus stammered. "They're b-b-brainwashing tools."

"What? You people haven't got enough brains to wash! What kind of stupid twit would come up with a notion like that? Who is he?"

"I d-d-don't know! He's n-n-not from Scamaroni. He's f-f-from one of the sm-melly dimensions."

Paldine raised an eyebrow. "That narrows it down to almost all of them. Any distinguishing features that I could use to identify this prophet?"

"N-n-no. He walked like one of us f-f-for a while, until a policeman unmasked him. I… you demons all look alike to me. N-n-no offense."

The Pervect tapped her teeth with a manicured fingernail. A magician from some other dimension, one capable of shapeshifting or illusion. Who would want to queer their deal on Scamaroni? Everybody took advantage of the Scammies, at least twice a year, so moral dudgeon had to be lacking on further outrages. The irony was that this time, the Pervect Ten were giving them actual value for their money, so the outrage was all hers. She bent to look at the damaged glasses. All that work, pissed away by ignorant peasants. Out of the corner of her eye she spotted Bofus wiggling his fingers in a spell to try and deossify the curtain.

"Not so fast," she cautioned him. He sagged. "You weren't so afraid of me a few days ago. You and I both know that what they're saying about these toys isn't true. What else have they been saying?"

"That you use s-s-slave labor to make the G-g-goggles, and you are planning to make us slaves so we can build goggles for other dimensions that will b-b-become p-p-part of your empire." Bofus swallowed hard.

Paldine's eyes narrowed. "That's the first I've heard about an empire, honey." For a moment she wondered if Oshleen or any of the others had been around to talk to him, then decided that was wrong. They might fight each other to the death over trivia, but they would do it openly. This would have been cutting one of their own off at the knees, and, worse yet, slashing their own income, something no Pervect would ever do. Bofus looked ready to faint, his long nose sagging like a discarded sock. Paldine decided to change tack. She turned on the charm, moving toward him with a sinuous wiggle.

"How can I find this prophet?" she purred, fluttering her green eyelids at him.

Two uniformed guards arrived in my cell with swords drawn. I sprang up in alarm. Very solemnly, they marched me into a corner and stood facing me. I peered up at their solemn faces.

"Are we going into court now?" I asked hopefully. "I'd like to get this all cleared up so I can go home."

But they didn't say a word. Their reticence made me nervous. In my experience, no news was not necessarily good news. I heard footsteps in the hallway, accompanied by the sound of metal clanging and creaking sounds. I frowned. Was this my release? Or more trouble? Did they torture their prisoners?

To my wondering eyes, the newcomer was an elderly female Scammie, dressed in drab brown and gray. Her hair was gathered up underneath a triangular scarf of the same gray fabric. A big clip held her single nostril closed. Not looking up at me, she pushed a bucket on wheels into the room. My shoulders sagged. A cleaner!

While the guards held the terrifying wizard (me) at bay in the comer, the cleaning woman swabbed the floor with a big mop. They moved me around the room from time to time so she could get into every corner without having to walk past the big dangerous criminal (me). I wondered about the chances of overpowering one or both of my captors, then fighting my way out of the jail using the cleaner as a living shield. I calculated my own body mass, even adding in a factor of 150 percent for all the dirty infighting tricks that Aahz had taught me over the years, and came up at least 400 percent short.

"Nice day," I observed, instead. The Scammie guards didn't reply. They both looked as though they would have liked to be wearing clips on their noses like the old woman.

The cleaning lady continued to potter around. She removed my chamber pot and replaced it with a new one, emptied, rinsed out and refilled my washing pitcher, picked up the used dinner trays and laid a wrapped candy on my stone bunk. The guards waited until she had clanged and squeaked her way but again, then withdrew, bolting the door.

Depressed, I stumped back to my bed and sat down heavily upon it. I picked up the candy, unwrapped it, and immediately spat it out again. Licorice. No news was indeed no good news.