were present—this time. A scurry of thin black lines caught my eye. I turned back the page in haste. A clause in very fine print was trying to avoid my eye. I slapped my hand down on it and read through my fingers, shifting them so I could finish without it getting away. Catchmeier had inserted a transitive clause, one that would make me liable for damages for any accidents within a live-hundred-yard radius of the building. Not a chance. I growled a little as I reached for my quill pen to scratch it out.
'Skeeve!'
'Huh?' I asked, brought suddenly back to the present, as the curvaceous redhead waved a sheaf of small, colorful pasteboards in my face.
'Lookie, lookie!' Bunny squealed.
Skeeve, it said in gold across the middle of the shiny, wine-colored card, without title or other qualification. The Right Answer. By Appointment Only. And at the bottom, in small but unmistakable print: Fee schedule available upon request. That last had been Bunny's idea. As she had always had a much better grasp of business than I had, I acceded. The result was a pretty professional-looking card.
'I like it,' I said. Bunny's shoulders relaxed. 'Why are you so surprised? I trust you.'
'I know, Skeeve,' she said, giving me a brilliant smile. 'But it still surprises me when someone takes my word for something without hesitating. What do you think? I'm so excited!'
I had to admit I was, too. A new beginning, I hoped. One in which I would give myself the chance I had not before.
If we had decided upon the tent in haste, we more than made up for it in the time we took to work out what my new business was going to be. Every time I thought about the look on my friends' faces when I had said that I was back ... I had gone away for my own good—for everyone's good, or so I convinced myself. My return had been a spectacular failure, through my own thoughtlessness. No, my lack of insight. I would not make that kind of misstep again.
'Do you know what, Bunny?' I asked, looking up from the cards. 'I've changed my mind. I don't think I want to do this. Let's just go back to the inn. I think I left something on the stove.'
Bunny looked down at me. 'After all that discussion— after all our planning ...' She paused and looked at me. 'You're kidding, aren't you? Thanks for giving me a heart attack. You can't possibly be thinking of backing out now. It's the best possible outlet for you. You know that, don't you?'
I did. The two of us had spent long nights talking it over. I was bored and lonely, and I knew she was, too. We needed to get back into the heart of things. I was never going to be a great wizard, but that was never really how I'd made my name. I was a problem-solver. If I confined myself to finding solutions to knotty questions for my clients, it wouldn't cut into my friends' business. I gave Bunny a sheepish grin.
'Well. I have to say that I admit to being a little nervous. What if I make a mistake out of this, too?'
Bunny put an arm over my shoulders and squeezed. 'You're not making a mistake. You're going to be
using your talents for the betterment of everyone, and that's what you are good at. How could that be a mistake?'
'Maybe all of you overestimate my talents,' I grumbled.
'We do not. We know what you are capable of and what you're not capable of,' she added.
Taking one of the cards, I looked at the lines again. 'I hope I'm not setting myself up for a fall,' I said. 'Offering to find exactly the right answer to a client's problem sounds pretty arrogant.'
'I wouldn't worry.' Bunny said brightly. 'If the challenge seems too tough, you'll figure out how to solve it eventually. I trust you'
I sighed. It was a heck of a way to come out of my self-imposed retirement.
The impetus had come from a conversation I had had a couple of months before with Big Julie1, who had once been my opponent on the battlefield though never my enemy. He had come to be a trusted advisor and good friend.
He had asked me why I left M.Y.T.H., Inc., the highly successful and profitable business I had founded with my former mentor and partner, Aahz. I admitted I felt as though I wasn't living up to the hype surrounding me. I thought it would be better if I went away for a while. I felt that I had had to get out from my all-enveloping support structure and educate myself so I could live up to the hype that I had enjoyed as Skeeve the Magnificent, Magician to Kings and King of Magicians, Businessman and Problem-Solver Extraordinaire. The truth was not so glorious: at the time I had departed, I could do very little magik. Most of what I had accomplished, Big Julie pointed out to me, was by thinking—no, more by feeling—out the correct solution to the problem I had been set. He encouraged me to take that talent and run with it.
From the time I had returned to the inn, I had been on fire for the idea of establishing a new business, one in which I helped people, not necessarily with applications of big-time magik, for, as Big Julie pointed out to me, big-time magicians were a dozen to the silver coin, but with the application of the kind of attention that I had always given problems without really realizing it. It was a natural extension of my instincts. I felt relieved, since I was never going to be a master magician. I had been getting my magikal butt kicked regularly by the equivalent of six-year-old girls. But when it came to finding a solution that just felt right, and did the most good for the most people, that was what I did best.
Oh, I am no altruist: I intended to get paid for my expertise. That was one of the reasons that I let Bunny put the line at the bottom of my card. I had found out a long time ago that people don't prize what they don't pay for. If I offered my services for free, I'd be looking for lost firecats and missing spectacles from now until the end of time. I wanted meaty problems, the kind I could really sink my mental teeth into. I loved a challenge. Now was the time to see if I could handle one. And if I didn't, well, I was young. I had time to make a lot more blunders in my lifetime.
I have to admit that it really bothered me that Aahz hadn't been in the Bazaar when I arrived. After all, he had been the one who really taught me about the important things. Not just magik and business, but what's important—in spite of what he would say if I told him. I worried for a moment about his mother, the Duchess. I had met her a while back2; she was a real eccentric, but if Aahz needed any help handling a situation, he knew where to get in touch with all of us.
One of the reasons I had agreed so readily to come out of retirement was Aahz. I missed him. Oh, sure, having a Pervect for a friend wasn't easy. He could be crude, harsh, selfish, greedy, insulting, overbearing, and rude, but he was my best friend. If it hadn't been for him, well, I would still be back in the woods on Klah, trying to eke out a living as—I admit it—one of the most inept thieves ever to cut purse strings. Thanks to him I'd rediscovered some basic honesty and decency. Though he was tight with a coin and a sharp bargainer who saw no problem with shafting the other guy, I observed that it was easier to leave a little money on the table because it was a small universe, and you never knew when you were going to be allied with the very person whose shirt you were trying to take the previous day. Without him M.Y.T.H., Inc. would never have been as successful as it was. I should have assumed that once I stepped out of the picture he would take over as president. He was a natural leader. Most of the others had known him long before I came along. I hit myself in the forehead. Why didn't that dawn on me before I blundered into the office and made an idiot of myself?
I wished that he had been around. I would have appreciated his input. Maybe he would have been able to smooth out the awkwardness I had caused.
Maybe not. Aahz had never been good at letting anyone else's mistakes go unnoticed. I probably would have been in for a lecture. I deserved one, but I had already given myself a stern talking-to.
So, I was on my own.
That was okay, I assured myself. I had to take my own baby steps, right? I vowed not to undercut my friends. I was going to stick to what I planned to do, nothing else.
A roaring noise interrupted my thoughts.
'Look out!' Bunny called. 'Get it, Skeeve!'
I ducked just in time. A huge, striped insect the size of my two fists zoomed overhead. In spite of its bulk, it banked like a swallow off a wisp of air and veered around in a sharp U-turn. I threw a ball of fire at it, but the insect took the full blast of the flame and kept going. Its armored shell would have been the envy of any army in any dimension. No matter what I threw at it, it kept going. It vanished into a hairline crack in the wall. I ran after it, trying to capture it with a rope of magik. Before I could blink, it was out of reach.
'Gone,' I said grimly. Bunny shook her head. I dashed out the rear door of our tent, stepping into the dimension into which our office extended, and examined the walls. No sign of the Humbee, or a single crack
