Wizards At War

She reached over her back into the little bag she was wearing, and felt around. The Tawalf watched her with some curiosity.

Then one of them, the one who had spoken first, made a strange sniffing noise—and so did its second-in-command. The two of them stared at Carmela with a sudden total concentration that made Nita raise the accelerator and get ready to fire.

Carmela withdrew something from her bag. It was thin and black, a long slim rectangle with a glint of gold at the ends. She held it up where all the Tawalf could see it.

“I have here,” she said in very clear and New York–accented Speech, “a new bar of Valrhona Caraïbe Single-Estate Grand Cru.”

Nita looked in astonishment from Carmela to the Tawalf. Their eyes, already prominent enough, actually started to bug out of their heads.

“Very aromatic,” Carmela said, waving the chocolate bar under her nose. “Long in the mouth… nice overflavors of candied orange and smoky vanilla. Maybe just a hint of cappuccino.” She waved it at them. “Sorry, guys, help me out here. I don’t know where your nose or whatever you smell with is. Are.”

The two foremost Tawalf each reached out a tentative, spindly magenta foreleg. Carmela waved the chocolate bar cautiously under each one.

The first Tawalf made a grab for it, but not quickly enough. Carmela had already snatched the bar back, and Nita had the accelerator trained on his head.

“Ah, ah, ah,” Carmela said. “Hasty hasty. This is yours, all yours… for a price.” She glanced sideways at Nita.

“Information,” Nita said. “You heard what we asked you.”

“Oh, they’re going to have to tell you a lot more than just what you asked them,” Carmela said, waving the chocolate gently under her nose and gazing thoughtfully at the Tawalf. “You’re going to answer all this nice Rirhait’s questions, aren’t you, boys? Or girls. Or whatever. And when you’ve done that, you can form yourselves a little syndicate, and I’ll give that syndicate free title to… this.”

She held up the chocolate bar.

Every single Tawalf stared at it. Nita and Sker’ret spared each other one sidewise glance.

“We can’t!” squeaked one of the Tawalf in the back.

“Our contracts!” moaned another.

“Oh, come on,” Carmela said. “Your ‘contracts’! Like you expect me to believe that somebody actually paid you this much to come in here and take this place over? I really doubt it.” She snickered. “If someone had given the whole bunch of you the value of even half of this, you’d be the highest-paid mercenaries the universe ever saw!” Carmela waved the chocolate bar in the Tawalf’s direction again.

They swayed toward it as if it had the gravitation of a micro–black hole. Nita raised the accelerator again. The Tawalf saw the look in her eye and swayed back. “But no one’s paid you anything like that much,” Carmela said. “So just think. You cooperate with my friends here, and I’m sure they’ll do what they can to see to it that the authorities here treat you fairly. And afterward, when you’ve paid your debt to society, or whatever your species pays its debts to, on the day they let you all go, they give you … this.”

There was a long, long silence.

Then the Tawalf leader said, “No.”

Nita and Sker’ret gave each other another glance at the sound of the scratchy muttering that started to go up from behind the leader.

“Oh, my,” Carmela said. “That’s too bad. Just think what you all could have had!” She glanced past the Tawalf leader to the others behind him. “But just because he got stubborn— Well. Now I’m just going to have to do… this.”

She moved the chocolate bar to her left hand, and very, very slowly, moved her right hand toward it. Carmela took hold of the outer black paper wrapper between finger and thumb. Ever so gently she started to pull on the paper, as if to unwrap it.

“No!” at least half the Tawalf screeched. And the second-in-command shouted, “You’ll ruin it!”

“Right here in front of you,” Carmela said. “While you watch. And with the greatest possible pleasure.” She smiled ever so sweetly. “I’m going to pull the wrapping off, and shred it. I’m going to rip off the foil and crumple it up into a little ball. And then I’m going to take the unspeakably valuable stuff inside … and I am going to break it up into those nice little squares… and I am going to eat… it… all.”

The leader of the Tawalf began to whimper. His second-in-command exchanged meaningful glances with the others.

“The information,” Carmela said.

The noise level among the Tawalf began to increase.

“You can have a moment to think,” Carmela said, and turned away. Nita and Sker’ret stayed as they were, facing the increasingly shaken Tawalf, though Sker’ret turned a few of his eyes toward Carmela.

“And without even laying a finger on them,” Nita said under her breath. “I’m impressed.”