Trapped

'So what I found in the crucible,' continued the Caryatid, 'was what I call Goat Stew. Someone always convinces the Class Goat you can make an infallible love potion from eye of newt and toe of frog, wool of bat and tongue of dog… the whole Scottish formula. Let me tell you, that does not make a love potion.'

'What does it make?' asked Pelinor.

'Blind newts, lame frogs, cold bats, and a cocker spaniel who makes god-awful sucking sounds when he's trying to drink from his dish. So I'm staring at this mess when suddenly the newt's eye turns my way. Then the dog's tongue says, You're going on a quest?'

'Do dogs have deep voices?' Pelinor asked. 'I've always wondered. It stands to reason a Chihuahua would have a higher voice than a bloodhound, but if you got, say, a male Doberman and a female, would the male be a bass and the female an alto? Or would they both be baritones?'

'This particular dog was a tenor,' said the Caryatid. 'I don't know its breed or gender. So it told me—'

'Did it have an accent?' Pelinor asked.

'No,' the Caryatid snapped. 'And it had flawless diction, even though it didn't have lips or a larynx, all right? It told me, You're going on a quest. I said, What kind of quest? and it answered, A dangerous one. I asked, Why on Earth would I go on a dangerous quest? It said, Hey, lady, I may be a talking dog tongue, but I'm no mindreader.'

'Don't you just hate it,' Myoko murmured, 'when animal parts get uppity?'

'So,' the Caryatid went on, 'I say, What's this quest about? The tongue tells me, Love, courage, meaning… the usual. A lot of good that does me. Details, I say, give me details! The tongue wiggles around like a long strip of bacon, then finally gasps out, Future cloudy: ask again later.'

'That was the end?' Myoko asked.

'I thought so,' the Caryatid said. 'But as I set down the crucible, a piece of chalk flew into the air and scrawled on the blackboard, Your friends have to go too.'

Myoko and I groaned. Pelinor and Impervia exercised more restraint, but both showed noticeable bulges around their jaws as their teeth clenched. 'Well,' said Pelinor after a few moments' silence, 'a quest, eh? What jolly fun.'

We all glared at him. None of us truly believed his 'knight of the realm' persona — rumor had it he was a retired corporal from the Feliss border patrol, and he'd faked both his resume and his accent to get the cushy post of academy armsmaster. Still, he did his job well… and one had to admire the way he gamely kept up the facade of being a sword-sworn crusader. 'Never fret,' he told us, 'a little adventure is just the thing to chase away our winter blues: battling monsters, righting wrongs…'

'Finding lost treasure…' Myoko added.

'Doing God's work…' Impervia put in.

'And perhaps impressing Gretchen Kinnderboom,' I finished. 'Won't that be ducky.'

The Caryatid sighed. 'If nothing else, maybe we'll be too busy slaying dragons to proctor final exams.'

'I'll drink to that!' Myoko said, her face cheering up. 'To our quest — may it get us out of promotion meetings.'

All five of us clanked cups and tankards with exaggerated enthusiasm… trying to pretend we weren't terrified.

'Why are you so goddamned happy?' growled a voice from the door.

We turned. Three burly gentlemen had just entered, accompanied by the pungent odor of rancid fish — probably boat workers who'd docked at Dover-on-Sea and headed straight to Simka because of our higher quality night life (i.e., ladies of the evening who still looked female after they'd removed their clothes). These particular fishermen had already sampled copious liquid refreshment at other drinking holes, judging by the volume of their voices and the way they slurred their words.

'I'm afraid,' said Myoko, 'it's hard to explain the reason for our toast.'

' 'It's hard to explain,' ' the most voluble fisherman repeated, mimicking her voice and accent. 'You come from that goddamned school, don't you?'

'We're teachers there, yes.'

The talkative fisherman sneered. 'So you sit around all day, kissing the arses of rich goddamned thumbsuckers who think they're too good for a normal school.'

Sister Impervia pushed back her chair. 'That is three times you've said 'goddamned.' The clergy occasionally debate whether such talk is truly blasphemous or simply vulgar, but they're universally agreed it's ignorant and rude.'

'Are you calling me ignorant and rude?'

'Also drunk and smelly,' Impervia said.

The tapman behind the bar removed a flintlock from his bandoleer and thumbed back the hammer. 'Closing time,' he announced.

'What the hell?' said the fisherman.

'The bar owner says to close this time every night.'

'What time?'

'Thirty seconds before the fight.' The tapman pointed his pistol at the newcomers. 'We reopen thirty seconds after. Come back if you're still on your feet.'

'If!' The head fisherman looked at the five of us, then emitted what would be called a Hearty Guffaw by anyone who didn't disdain words like Hearty. And Guffaw. 'These pantywaists,' the man said, 'will fall down if I breathe on them.'

'Quite possibly,' Impervia replied. 'On the other hand, we have little to fear from your fists.'

'Out,' said the tapman. 'Now.'

We complied, taking a roundabout route to the door so we didn't pass within arm's reach of the fishermen. In the doorway, Impervia turned back to the tapman. 'Could you please make more tea while we're gone? We'll be back before it's cold.'

The lead fisherman made a belligerent sound and blustered angrily after us.

The odds were five against three in our favor, so I strode out to Post-Hoc Lane without too much trepidation. Alas, the spring in my step turned to icy black winter as soon as I reached the cold cobblestones. By the light of the block's single streetlamp, I saw seven more fishermen weaving toward us: six of them human, one not.

The nonhuman was a half-height yellow alien, mostly hominid-shaped but with tangerinelike spheres on the top of his head in lieu of Homo sapiens ears. He belonged to one of the Divian subspecies, but I couldn't tell which — I've never been an expert on extraterrestrials. Suffice it to say, this fellow was yet another descendant of spacefarers who FTLed in to exploit our planet after OldTech civilization collapsed, and who got trapped here when the Spark Lords put Earth into lockdown. Since then, all aliens had come to be called 'demons'… or more accurately, 'slaves.' The ET coming toward us was probably owned by one of the other fishermen, or perhaps by the captain of their boat; there were plenty of slave-aliens in the Dover fishing fleet, and many of them fit in so well they were allowed to go drinking with the rest of the crew.

So the Divian and his six buddies tottered drunkenly down the street Add in the three from the tavern, and that made the odds ten-to-five against us. 'I think we just got outnumbered,' I said.

'Maybe,' Myoko whispered, 'that bunch are from a rival fishing boat and they'll side with us against these other lollies.'

'Hey, are you calling us lollies?' shouted a keen-eared someone at our backs.

'What's that?' yelled the Divian, clearly one of the boys even if he was a slave. 'Something wrong there, Nathan?'

'Nothing wrong,' replied the most outspoken man behind us. 'We just got some eggheads to crack.'

The new group roared their approval. 'Goddamned time we found a fight in this town! They insult you, Nathan?'

'They sure did,' answered the one called Nathan. 'They didn't like the smell of fish.'

'To be accurate,' said Impervia, 'I have nothing against the smell of fish. It was your odor I found objectionable.'

Myoko sighed. 'That line Blessed are the peacemakers went right over your head, didn't it, Impervia.'

Before the good sister could answer, Nathan loosed a mighty bellow and charged straight at her.

Given that I haven't described Impervia, you might be picturing her as some elderly antique: the sort of wizened gray-haired woman who gravitates to the teaching profession for the love of smacking young knuckles with a ruler. Nothing could be further from the truth… except the part about smacking knuckles. Impervia was twenty-six and as lean as a bullwhip, with black skin and blacker hair shaved within a millimeter of her scalp. Between classes, she had a fondness for dropping behind her desk and doing one-armed push-ups until the next bell rang.

Impervia's Holy Order claimed to be spiritual descendants of the Shaolin monks, those soft-speaking folks who gave the world kung fu. I suspected this claim was false; for one thing, the Shaolins were Buddhist while Impervia was a Handmaid of the Magdalene. (Basically Christian, but with some exotic notions about Mary Magdalene being 'purified' by Jesus and thereafter divine herself: the Trinity's Spirtia Sancta.) More likely, the early Magdalenes thought the Shaolin name would give them added credibility, so they invented a fictitious lineage tracing their sect back to China. I judged this more probable than any genuine historical connection… but I never told Impervia I doubted her kung fu heritage. Whether she was true Shaolin or not, she could still kick a bull's testicles straight through its body and out the ring on its nose.

This explains why none of us tried to help the good sister as bull-like Nathan charged forward. In fact, we retreated to give Impervia more room. I planted my back against the door of a chandler's shop across the street and prepared to contribute to the fight by playing referee.

Impervia met the fisherman's charge in a businesslike kickboxing pose, fists up, chin down: no showy Crane-stance/Dragon-stance nonsense when she had real opponents to scuttle. She wore loose black clothing and black leather gloves — the gloves protected her against winter's cold, but also against getting her hands carved up in forceful collisions with an opponent's teeth. Nathan, in contrast, had no special fighting outfit, and attacked like a man who was

(a) drunk; and

(b) experienced only in fighting other drunks.

As a result, he took a single clumsy swipe at our friend: an ill-defined move that might have been a punch, a slap, or an attempt to grab her throat Impervia sidestepped and smartly tossed a jab to the man's nose, a palm-heel to his floating ribs, and a full-force stomp on his foot. Not surprisingly, Nathan fell to the