Myth-Told Tales

by Robert Asprin

  After four days more of primping, polishing, and grooming I was beginning to get the hang of the higher beauty culture. As far as I could see it was as easy as Tananda had said: all one had to do was look confident and improvise, and the customers would be pleased. Ladies who had always retreated to the other side of the thoroughfare when I stomped toward them in the Bazaar were stopping me to coo and offer praise.

  “I’ll never go back to Mr. Fernando after you!” one Deveel maiden said, clinging to my arm, her face still a symphony of fluorescent colors from Guido’s brush. “I told him, ‘you give a good scalp rub, but nothing as wonderful as I get at A Tough, A Troll and A Trollop!’ And your Mr. Guido’s sense with cosmetics! Inspired! I feel so beautiful when I leave.’ ”

  I grunted some sort of acknowledgment as I stumped toward the beauty shop. Mr. Fernando was probably not best pleased to have his clientele deserting him.

  “We had better solve this problem soon,” I told my two partners, as I reached our rented tent, “or every other personal care specialist is going to be out for our blood.”

  Guido reached into his coat and patted the miniature crossbow that I knew reposed there. “That kinda fight I’d welcome,” he said. “Not this fancy-dancy stuff with a dozen perfumes and green drapes.”

  “And who cuts your hair?” Tananda asked, teasingly.

  “Mr. Chapparal,” Guido said, with an indignant look. “He’s a cousin of Don Bruce. Does a real good job. His shop’s all violet with stained-glass mirrors.”

  “I understand the problem we’re creating,” Tananda said with a sigh. “But we can’t force our quarry out of the woodwork. They have to emerge by themselves.”

  “I wish they’d hurry,” I admitted. “Percy grows more nervous with every nighttime encounter we have. He may flee the next one.”

  We had not much longer to wait. As I assisted one ravished Gnome lady from a chair late one afternoon, I became aware that two figures were standing in the doorway. The two Pervect women, one an elderly female in a flowered frock and straw hat leaning on a cane, the other much younger and more fashionable in a split, knee-length leather skirt and a very tight bustier, looked as though they might be potential customers, but their all-over mien did not speak of devotees in search of a superior pedicure.

  The Pervects’ aspect also attracted the attention of the other customers in the tent. One by one they found excuses to slip out of the door or melt unobtrusively through gaps between the canvas panels of the walls. Before too long we three were alone with the Pervects and one hapless Imp matron who lay in a chair with her feet up, unable to leave because she was being ministered to with a foot massage by Guido. As soon as the chair tilted down, she sprang from it, pressed a large silver coin on Guido, and waddled hastily out of the tent.

  “You’ve forgotten your hat,” Tananda shouted after her, waving a straw round-crowned chapeau pierced twice in the crown to allow the Imp’s horns to protrude through. The Imp did not turn back, but undulated faster up the way, becoming lost in the crowd. Tananda, annoyed, spun and bent an annoyed eye upon the two remaining visitors. “Thanks. You’ve just lost us our profit for the afternoon. A few days like this and you’ll put us out of business.”

  “Oh, we would never do a thing like that on purpose,” the elderly Pervect said, grinning so that her yellow teeth looked like a chestful of knives. “They must all have misunderstood. We want you to stay in business. Don’t we, Charilor?”

  The other Pervect, shorter and stockier, resembling a female Aahz, smiled, her own dentition gleaming like sheet lightning. “But of course, Vergetta. That way everyone makes a profit.”

  “That’s what I like to hear,” Tananda said.

  “Including us,” Vergetta added, with emphasis.

  “I beg your pardon?” my little sister asked, putting steel into her voice.

  “Not at all, darling,” the elder Pervect said, taking her hand in a grip that caused Tananda to wince. I moved forward, but the shorter Charilor moved in between me and them. “You’re setting out on a difficult enterprise, you little dears, and that involves risks. Now, you may not be aware of how many risks, but an old lady like me, I’ve seen a lot in my life. I want you to stop worrying about outside pressures and succeed. To do that, you have to minimize disruptions.”

  “Like this visit of yours,” Tananda said, pointedly.

  “Exactly. Now,” said Vergetta as she settled heavily into one of our chairs and put her feet up on the foot rest, “you wouldn’t believe how far I’ve walked today, darlings. Would you have a glass of tea somewhere? No? You will next time.”

  “What makes you think there’s gonna be a next time?” Guido asked. He didn’t pat his breast pocket for emphasis; one only did that to underline a threat, and we were meant to look harmless. Besides, to indicate to a stronger enemy such as Charilor where his weapon was located was only to provide an extra one for her.

  “Oh, of course there’s going to be a next time, you muzhik. Here’s the proposition.” Vergetta slapped her scaly knees. “We keep disruptions out of your way. You do business. You’re grateful, so you give us a present . . .”

  “Like . . . a cut of our profits?” Tananda finished. “No way, grandma. We just barely made enough in the last few days to pay rent on our equipment.”

  “This trash? You may also need our friends in the moving . . . I mean, furniture trade. Not a cut of the profits; a flat fee is what we have in mind. A fixed expense, like rent. Five gold coins. So you always know how much you have to clear every week, because that’s when we’ll be back.”

  “Week? Five coins a lot! Bad week, no money,” I interposed. “What if no money?”

  “What if you have a bad week?” Vergetta asked, looking up at me. “Oh, my darling, you don’t want to find out what happens.”

  “We’re only getting started,” Tananda said, looking alarmed. “If you take our profits this week, there won’t be a next week.”

  “All right,” Vergetta said, getting to her feet. She patted Tananda’s cheek. “So maybe we give you a freebie this time. But we will be back. We are watching you.”

  “And don’t get cute,” Charilor grunted. “The Bazaar is big, but if you fold up tent here and start up somewhere else, we will find you.”

  “They are new in town,” Tananda said, once we’d sealed the tent and put a spy-eye on it to make sure no one was listening in magickally. “Birkli!”

  “Ye-es!” The Shutterbug flitted down from his concealed perch. “Scary green ladies! But I managed to get all the others before they ran away. I’m good! I’m the best!” He landed on Tananda’s shoulder and handed her a coil of underwing cells.

  “Of course you are,” Tananda said indulgently as she unreeled the Shutterbug’s images and held them up to the magik lantern. “Subtlety is dead, gentlemen. I thought we’d have to uncover their identities from a crowd of subjects, but they just marched in here and made their proposition on the first visit.”

  “Dat means,” Guido said, raising his eyebrows, “dat dey’re in a hurry.”

  “Yes,” I added thoughtfully. “I wonder why.”

  “We’ll have to learn more about them,” my little sister said.

  “Should I take the images to Percy?” I asked.

  “No. No sense in frightening him. We’re sure who they are. We’ll just have to play along for a week or two, and hope they don’t hop before we figure out their angle and close it up for good. I’d hate to have them think they can just march in and use the Bazaar for an ATM.” She looked around. “I miss Skeeve. He’d have asked what that is.”

  I’d have been hard pressed to put my finger on the difference between the days before the two Pervects made their visit and the time after, but I sensed an uneasiness in our clientele that had not been there before. Not that I ever anticipated that Deveels, Imps, and the like would ever have become comfortable, nay, eager, to have a Troll anywhere near them with an eyelash curler, but palpable fear began to percolate through the
tent. I didn’t like it. During the subsequent days I found myself growling quietly while mixing cosmetics, provoked by I know not what unknown pressures. Guido kept casting his eyes around suspiciously, his hand never far away from the weapon concealed underneath his green smock. Tananda also was more highly strung than usual, pushing back cuticles with heartless precision, only snapping out of her trance when a customer yelped in pain.

  “I don’t like this,” she whispered, when she stopped near my chair to toss a basin of water out the tent flap. “I sense depressing magik surrounding us like a cone. I’ve felt all over the place, but I can’t find the source—no live magician within range, not even a handy line of force.”

  “It may be purely technological,” I remarked. “A remote installation that makes use of a stored source of power. Perv is known to be comfortable with both technology and magik.”

  “Well, so are we,” Tananda said. “We had better do something, or by the end of the week we won’t have a single client.”

  That night we took the place apart, quite literally. I wrenched up the chairs one at a time so that Guido and Tanda could look underneath them. We unstitched the tent panels, tested every jar, vase, bottle, and container that might conceal a device. We checked the lamps and rugs for disgruntled Djinni or Efreets, both known to inhabit such items. Little Sister even employed Assassin techniques to find footprints or airprints of every being that had been anywhere near us since the Pervects’ visit.

  “Anyone who’s been here has come in on foot except Birkli,” Tananda said, after our searches proved fruitless. “See the wing prints?” Guido and I looked at the feathery traces on the air that her magik had brought out.

  “Wait a minute,” Guido said, pointing at two different lines of flutter marks. “Dese ain’t the same as dose. I’ve tracked a lotta fly-by-nights, and I know my wing prints.”

  “By heavens, you’re right,” I declared, after a quick inspection. “What can that mean?”

  “I don’t know, but I know who can tell us,” Tananda said, tapping her foot impatiently. “Birkli!”

  “Coming right this minute, lovely lady! Ready when you are!” The gaudy Shutterbug dropped out of the ceiling. “Here are today’s ladies, one and all! Are they perfect? Are they beautiful?”

  Tananda held out a hand and he lit upon it. She drew him close to her face, her voice purring. “But you’re leaving one out, aren’t you, Birkli?”

  “Not one, not one, fair green girl!” Birkli protested, his antenna drawing down over his multiple-lensed eyes. But he seemed a bit put out.

  “Who is she?” Tananda asked.

  “Who?” I interrupted.

  “The flitter who made those other wing prints,” she said, without breaking eye contact with the Bug. “You were supposed to take an exposure of every being who came into this tent except us. Why didn’t you take one of her?”

  “How’d’you know it’s a she?” Guido asked.

  “How do I know?” Tananda repeated. “Look at him!”

  The Shutterbug did seem to be in the deepest throes of embarrassment. “Forgive one who loves too well but not wisely,” he wailed. “Such a beauty was this Lady Bug, to fall in beside me as I flew out among the fabulous sights of the Bazaar. Her spots, so black; her shell so red! She praised my wings, my legs, my scales! I thought it would do no harm to bring her here, where it was private. I showed her my images, and she was impressed, most impressed!”

  “If that isn’t the oldest line there is, bringing a girl back to look at his etchings,” Tananda fumed. “And I suppose she left you a keepsake of some kind?”

  Birkli flew back into the folded cloth that served as his temporary quarters and returned with a small glowing sphere the size of his head. “Only this, fair lady. Forgive an ardent male too easily blinded by the beauties of female-hood!”

  Tananda held it up between her thumb and forefinger. “As we surmised, Big Brother. A bug, as only a Bug Lady can make it. Compact, powerful and easily concealed.” She tossed it to me, and I crushed it in my fist. Birkli backed away uneasily as I let the powdered remains fall from my hand to the floor.

  “We’re not gonna dust you,” Guido said, going eye to eye with the Shutterbug. “Not if you cooperate. Now, let’s see the pic of the moll.”

  Hastily Birkli produced a strip of wing-cells and handed them over. The denizens of Trollia were ardent lovers themselves, but even I felt abashed as Tananda held them in front of the magik lantern. “Hot stuff, what?” I said, awkwardly.

  “We’re not trying to pry into your private life,” Tananda assured Birkli, “but we’ve got to be careful. I thought we told you that.”

  We accepted Birkli’s apologies. Tananda paid him off and sent him back to Nikkonia. “We don’t really need him any longer,” she explained. “We know who our enemies are now, and we know they’re quick-thinking and willing to exploit any weakness they perceive.”

  “I agree,” Guido said. “We were buggin’ ourselves, under the circumstances. How do we know he didn’t sell ’em images of us?”

  “Didn’t need ’em,” Tananda said shortly. “They knew we were here. Two days’ observation would tell them that if we weren’t the beauticians we claimed to be, we were putting in enough work to prove we wanted to be taken for beauticians. To a blackmailer, that’s enough to exploit.”

  “So, what is our next attack?” I asked.

  “We pay them,” Tananda said simply.

  “What?” Don Bruce’s enforcer burst out. “Not a bent nickel.”

  “Yes, a bent nickel,” Tananda corrected him, with a wide grin on her face. “And whatever else they ask for. This week. I have a plan.”

  With a wave around our heads to create a silence spell to shut out any potential eavesdroppers, my little sister drew us close. In a moment, we were smiling as widely as she.

  Tananda allowed us to look as sour as possible when Charilor came by the next afternoon to collect their fee. “There, I told you,” the Pervect said, watching Little Sister count coins grudgingly into a sack. “Five gold coins wasn’t so hard to raise!”

  “It would have been a lot easier if you hadn’t put a gloom spell on the place for two days,” Guido said resentfully.

  “That was Vergetta’s idea,” the chunky Pervect said, with a twist of her lips, as she glanced back toward the elder female waiting by the entrance to the tent. Did I sense disapproval of her senior’s methods? “But you still managed to raise the dough. We should’ve asked for more.”

  “We couldn’t have raised more,” Tananda said, eyes wide, managing to sound a little desperate. “This is all we made this week. I mean, everything! We’ve even had to put off some of our expenses, and our creditors are not happy. You’re not going to raise your . . . fee . . . are you?”

  Charilor swept the leather purse into her belt pouch and stood up. “No. You have our word: our demands will never go up.”

  Vergetta shook a finger at us from the doorway. “You’d still better have the same waiting for us next week.”

  “We will have your payment here waiting for you,” Tananda promised. The Pervects stalked out. Warily, shyly, our regular customers started slinking in.

  Guido chafed visibly over the course of the next week. He objected to the delay during which Don Bruce would lose yet another round of “insurance” payments. I also knew he was worried lest anyone from the Mob would come in and see him performing beauty rituals instead of his usual, somewhat more insalubrious tasks. Yet, when he wasn’t thinking about public humiliation, he handled his duties with aplomb. Now comfortable with the balms and unguents, he massaged, polished, and clipped with a flourish. He’d completely lost his fear of the body paints, and where he’d created cranial graffiti before, he was now performing abstract art, each piece unique for the lady who bore it, smiling, out of our salon. The customers adored him. He was gathering quite a little coterie. Some of his regulars had begun to bring him small gifts, treats, and gratuities. Those attentions embarrassed him
as much as would the appearance at the door of one of his Mob fellows.

  I myself found it difficult to keep from humming a little tune as I awaited the arrival of our extortionists. Action, that was what was called for. Tananda’s plan had risks, to be sure, but in her estimation it had at least a forty percent chance of success. Those were not odds I would normally have celebrated, but since no one else had succeeded in resisting or exposing these blackmailing females, it was worth a try.

  At the lunch hour on the appointed day, we supped alone in the tent. We had deliberately made few bookings to coincide with the time we expected Vergetta and Charilor to appear. Our midday repast was simple, consisting of food that we had prepared ourselves from ingredients we had not allowed out of our sight since we had brought them from another dimension early that morning. The chances that the Pervects had observed and followed us to our sources of supply were nil: while on a provisioning run we never returned to a dimension twice, and we took all precautions upon our return. That suggestion had been made by Guido, who had, during his military career, accrued lengthy experience in existing in hostile territory. For all the years that we had lived in the Bazaar, I had never before had cause to feel it hostile, but for survival’s sake, and the sake of our mission, I must think so now.

  Darkness interrupted the blaze of sunshine from the doorway. I glanced up from my now empty trencher. It was the Pervects. Guido, beside me, clenched his fists on his knees underneath our humble tabletop.

  “Good afternoon, darlings,” Vergetta said, sailing into the salon as though she owned it. But she did not. Yet.

  “Hello,” Tananda said cautiously.

  “So, are you ready for us?” The elderly Pervect sat down on the bench and nudged Tananda until she moved over to make room.

  “I suppose so,” Tananda said. She produced the box that contained our receipts for the week. Vergetta rubbed her hands together vigorously, then dumped the load of coins out onto the table. Her fingers began to sort through the coins as though they were indeed greatly practiced at the skill. With a stern expression Charilor loomed over my shoulder, if such a term could be used to describe the actions of a being considerably shorter than the one being loomed over.