as though stunned. I jumped on him, grabbed him by shoulder and crotch, heaved him into the air, and threw him into the crowd.
'Thanks, old man,' he said, just before I let go. Deveels, Imps, Ssslissi, Klahds, and others went down as a full-grown Troll landed on them.
Brushing myself off, I stumped up the street. Tananda was standing in between two tents cleaning her nails with a dagger, where she had a perfect view of the whole brawl. She grinned up at me. Guido hulked in the shadows behind her.
'Messy but effective, Big Brother.' 'What'd he tell you?' Guido asked. I glanced around. Night had fallen sufficiently to conceal our return to our tent. 'Let's go inside.'
'The old one?' Tananda asked, sitting at our conference table after I brought them up to date on my tete-a- tete with Percy. 'Old what? A dragon? What's big enough to intimidate a Troll?'
'Well, we aint' gonna get no data out of the victims, or outta their collectors.' Guido reasoned. 'What's next?'
'Next,' 1 said, tenting my fingers together on the table rather like logs at the corner of a rustic cabin, 'we must lure our perpetrators out of hiding.'
'How do we do that?' Guido asked, skeptically.
'They target small enterprises, do they not?' I asked. The other two nodded. 'Then we establish our own.'
'And wait to be approached,' Little Sister said, approvingly. 'Good idea, Big Brother. Now, all we need to do is figure out what would attract their interest.'
'Somethin' that earns a lot of money,' Guido said. 'Alia the businesses have a much higher income than overhead.'
'It's too much trouble to do market research on growing trends and get in merchandise from another dimension,' Tananda said thoughtfully, 'so, a service business of some kind. I think I know just what will do the job.'
I didn't like the mischievious gleam in my sister's green eyes. 'What do you have in mind?'
'Hairdressers?' Guido said, disbelievingly, surveying the contents of our hastily rented tent.
'Beauticians,' Tananda corrected him, spreading out her hands in satisfaction. 'It's perfect. We don't need any merchandise, apart from a few bottles of commercial tonic and cologne. And believe me, every being alive has a streak of vanity that could use a little buffing up. We will simply cater to that streak.'
'But we know nothing about beauty culture,' I protested. 'We might disfigure someone, or hurt them.'
'That's the beauty of it, if you will excuse the joke,' Tananda said. 'You don't have to know anything. You make it up as you go along. You can do whatever you want to the customers, and they will love it. They'll come back for more and they will bring their friends! Trust me.'
And so it proved. The very next day dawned upon the opening of A Tough, A Troll and A Trollop, Beauty Specialists. The flaps of our tent were flipped coyly open to reveal the furnishings that we had obtained overnight from a few merchants who knew us well enough to open at midnight and ask no questions as to why we suddenly required three reclining pedestal chairs, diverse mirrors, basins, curlers, irons, combs and brushes, lacquers for hair, and nail files, unguents, lotions, shampoos, dyes, and spangles. Tananda appeared trim and professional in a green smock that matched her hair. Guido and I felt awkward in identical green coats. They fit, but that was all that a charitable mind might admit.
'We look like morons,' Guido said, echoing my very thoughts.
'You look fine,' Tananda assured us. 'Smile! Here comes our first customer.'
I seized the comb and scissors that I had chosen to be my tools. Guido picked a hot towel out of the salamander-powered steam box. Into the tent peered an Imp matron. We braced ourselves.
'Are you ... open?' she asked.
'Yes, we are!' Tananda beamed, putting her arm about the Imp's shoulders. 'Come in!' She winked at me over the pink female's horned head. 'What can we do for you?'
I held the scissors in my fist like a weapon, the points just sticking out beyond the percussion edge of my palm. Was she the 'old one' Percy feared? To me she appeared to be only of middle age. Her reply, delivered shyly, easily assuaged my concern.
'Well, I need ... I'd like to look better.'
'You look wonderful,' Tananda assured her, maneuvering her deftly into the center chair. 'All we do here is to enchance your natural beauty. Don't we, boys?'
'Yeah,' Guido said, all but throttling the towel in his hands.
'Yeh,' I grunted. As advertised, a Troll and a Tough. The Trollop already had the matter in hand.
'You see? We just want you to feel confident in your own charm.'
'Oh!' The matron pinked up, looking pleased. 'Then ... I'd like the works!' Tananda clapped her hands.
We did not emulate a well-oiled machine, but swing into action we did. The Imp found herself the vortex of a whirlwind of tasteful scarves and draperies that covered her dress's loud print (Imps have notoriously tacky clothes sense), leaving her head and face thrown into stark relief. For an Imp she was not unpleasant to behold once her garments ceased clashing with her cerise complexion.
'Scalp massage,' Tananda ordered. Nervously, I moved in, oiled fingertips at the ready. A Troll's fingers are strong enough to punch holes in the skulls of most of my fellow dimensional beings. I hesitated to touch her until Tananda delivered a sharp slap to my upper back. I plunged ahead, grasping the Imp's scalp between my hands, and began to rub.
'Oooh!' the Imp cried. 'Oh! Aaaggh!' I halted at once, concerned that I'd hurt her. 'Oooh aaah!' the Imp moaned, tilting her face to look up into my eyes. 'That feels so good! Don't stop, please!'
So I didn't. I massaged away, accompanied by an aria of moans and cries of pleasure. Guido, seeming as awkward as I'd felt, applied a hot towel to her face, eliciting a shrill scream, also of pleasure. Tananda moved in and attacked the Imp's long nails with file and a pointed stick.
Guido tossed aside the towel and moved in with the box of paints. My hands were too large, and Tananda was occupied with a more delicate job, so it had fallen to Guido to become the cosmetician. He was not happy about it, but Little Sister had explained that no beauty salon was complete without a purveyor of color and texture, so he was elected by default. His first essay with a brushful of black paint was not salubrious; the Imp jerked her head back just as he applied it to her brow, causing the horizontal line to extend vertically up her forehead. Seeing that it was impossible to salvage his original design, he made the other side the same. Then, bright orange cream in hand, he daubed at one eyelid. By the time his brush arrived at her face, however, the Imp had moved again, and the dot hit her somewhere over the ear.
'Hell with it,' Guido breathed. Attacking his palette like a virtuoso attacks his instrument, Guido drew and dotted, limned and lined, until the Imp's horned head was a work of art, if one cared for the oeuvre of a modern abstractionist. At that, it was not unpleasant to behold.
The female continued to shriek and cry out, but by the time we released her from the chair and placed a hand mirror before her she was smiling broadly. We'd also attracted an audience. As the Imp opened her belt pouch and poured a handful of coins into Tananda's palm, there was a rush toward the chairs. A bevy of females, Deveel and others, got into a scratching, kicking fistfight over who would occupy the third seat. Tananda shot me a quick but meaningful look. I stomped over to the crowd, every step making the floor shake, selected one female at random, lifted her by the scruff and plumped her decisively into the disputed chair. With my brows drawn down nearly to my eyes, I aimed a look at the others that quelled their grumbling. They crowded outward against the tent's inner perimeter to watch.
The Imp staggered out, and we turned our attention to our new customers.
Many hours later, Guido folded down the tent flaps and tied them in a double knot.
'I don't want no one else comin' in here today,' he said firmly. 'I am so tired I could fall asleep over the salamander box. Broads! You were right, Tanda! You can do any fool thing to 'em, and they love it!
I spilled face cream down one woman's cleavage, then they was all clamorin' for the same thing. And then when that Deveel showed up with a cart full of scarves, I thought they'd tear him to pieces. They all wanted to try his stuff on at once.'
'I told you,' Tananda said, smugly, counting through the day's receipts. She piled the coins in stacks. There were several, one of them of gold. 'Very, very nice. And our cut of the Deveel's profits make a nice addition to our
