Myth-Told Tales

"I've told you I can't do it," Percy howled. I pushed against his throat with my forearm. With a resigned sigh that sounded to the uninitiated like a moan of pain, scanned it while I bore him to the ground, still with the flaming brand over his head to light up the beetle-wing cells. "No! No one!"

He put a foot into my belly and flipped me over him. I landed on a party of Imps coming in the door. I scrambled to my feet, hoisted them up and dusted them off. With a final look of seeming disgust toward Percy, I uttered a loud "Huh!" and stumbled out into the street.

Tananda and Guido fell into step alongside me as I left the tavern. "Even I saw his reaction," she said. "Relief, more than anything. None of these is our pigeon."

"Well, he certainly ain't no pigeon himself," Guido admitted. "Back to the hairspray, huh?"

"Every day until we get it right," Tananda said. "Cheer up! Maybe you'll start to like it"

"I was hired by Don Bruce to rub out trouble," the enforcer said grimly. "Not massage it"

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 thorough-fare when I stomped toward them in the Bazaar were stopping me to coo and offer praise.

"Ill 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.