income. We've already nearly paid for our furnishings. This business is very profitable! Once our job is over we might keep the salon going.'
'Speak for yourself, Little Sister,' I said, pouring the last basin of iced water over my head and sinking to the carpet that was covered with clippings of hair, shed scales, and feathers, and dozens of dirty towels. 'I would rather go back to my nice, peaceful life as an unfashionable intimidator.'
'There's just one thing more left to do,' Tananda said. 'Birkli! Did you get all of them?'
A small creature popped out from behind a tent panel. His body was about the length of my hand, with a hard, blue-black carapace that glittered in the twinkling light of our oil lamps. He was a Shutterbug, from Mount Olimpis in the dimension of Nikkonia. In their natural habitat the males used their ability to reproduce beautiful sights they'd seen on the iridescent scales of their compound wings to impress prospective mates, so they were both artistic and well-traveled. Tanda had had no trouble persuading one to come to Deva to assist us, promising him unique views that he could use to wow the ladies back home.
'All right on the roll,' Birkli chirped, extending a thin black leg. Wrapped around it was a narrow coil of a translucent substance. Tananda unrolled it and looked at it with the aid of a magic lantern behind. The lantern expanded the images so they were visible to larger creatures than the diminutive Shutterbug. 'I put them together so you could see them easier. What do you think? What do you think? Do you like them?'
As was the case with all males of his species, he was eager for Tananda's approval. Guido gave me a grin. He and I might as well have been absent. Tananda patted the Shutterbug on the shell and he glowed.
'They're perfect,' she said. From the collection on the table under the mirror she handed him a small but brightly polished silver coin. 'There, a Gnomish groat. And the same every day, as we agreed?'
'Perfect, perfect, perfect!' the little creature carolled happily, stowing the coin away under his hard shell. I believe he was happier to receive praise than money. We have had less amenable allies.
'Good,' Guido grunted, as the Shutterbug climbed up into the canvas roof to sleep. 'Let's go see if your buddy can recognize any of these dames.'
'Gentlemen, gentlemen, take it outside, please!' pleaded the bartender at the Shoppers' Repose, an inn at some miles remove from our establishment. Percy agreed to meet me there for a prescheduled brawl. Roaring, I threw a table at the innkeeper. Percy snagged it neatly out of the air before it came anywhere near the Deveel, and broke it over his knee. 'I'm begging you, go aw—watch out!'
Percy threw a lamp at me. I crushed the glass chimney, but kept the lit torch in my hand as he charged me, thrusting me out into the street.
'I want you to study these images and tell me if you recognize any of them,' I whispered, as we grappled for the torch. We were festooned with strands of horse brasses, banners that had lately decorated the ceiling of the bar, and hanks of one another's fur. No one who was not looking for it would see a strip of microscopic portraits. It draped across his eyes.
'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.
'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
