I spat out silk. 'So, how's that different? You only support yourselves, if you can. Can you?'
Ninja sounded embarrassed when she finally answered. 'Well, we all have other jobs. I decorate cakes in a hotel on Lux.'
'I deliver pizzas,' said one of the other black-clad figures. Behind her veil she was a Kobold.
'I'm a nanny,' grated a Gargoyle.
'I'm a stockbroker,' added a Gnome.
'Really?' I asked. It looked as if Cake Masters came from nearly every race in the dimensions and almost every profession. 'You do all that to support your hobby?'
Ninja whipped out her server again and brandished it at me. 'It is not a hobby. It is a sacred calling! Cake has shown us peace and beauty in the world. If she has prostituted that calling, then she must be punished. She is a Cake Master. She ought to know better!'
'Look, the princess believes in all that!' I said. 'I'm the one responsible for making it commercial. If you have to punish someone, punish me, not her. The only reason I got her to offer Cake ceremonies in exchange for favors is to rescue her kingdom. Maybe none of you know what happened to her?'
'Oh, we do,' the Kobold said. 'I bought a copy of her diary. We all read it. We cried like babies!'
'The princess has never had another job. In fact, she's trying to get her job back. Princessing is a tough gig, as hard as being a nanny.' I glanced around the circle of black-clad figures. 'Maybe worse.'
'It couldn't be worse,' the Gargoyle replied. 'Not with triplets.'
'Hmmm,' Ninja mused. 'I never thought of it that way. You say that she is a sincere student of the art'.''
'She throws me out of the kitchen every time she bakes a Cake,' I said, making certain to pronounce the capital letter. 'She spins every attendee around three times before they try to pin the tail on the Dragon. Nobody gets more than one scoop of ice cream on their piece of Cake.'
Ninja drummed her fingers on her lip. 'That is strictly traditional. Possibly even orthodox.'
'See?' I said, persuasively. 'How do you get more sincere than that? I promise that as soon as she's back on the throne, she will never accept money for doing the Cake ceremony ever again. In the meantime, I've got to ask you to be patient. We still have an uphill battle to get her back safely to her homeland and restored to the throne.'
Almost in unison, the society of Cake practitioners sighed.
'It's so romantic,' the Gargoyle said. 'I can't wait to see how it ends. Is she going to publish a sequel to her diary?'
'I have no idea,' I said. 'Will you let me and my friends go now? Can Hermalaya keep practicing the way she has? Maybe if you think of her guests as patrons, it wouldn't sound so bad?'
Ninja gathered her companions around her, and they had a quiet but very animated conference. It broke up. Ninja turned back to me.
'You have a deal, Skeeve.' She clapped her hands, and three of the women ran to untie Massha and help her rebling. The Gargoyle handed back Nunzio's crossbow and helped him brush down his suit. 'Let's see how Princess Hermalaya does, and maybe we'll even throw some business her way. Please tell her we are at our sister's service. If there's ever anything we can do to help her, all you have to do is call. Uh, after four o'clock, if you don't mind. That's when I get off work.'
'It seems my reputation has preceded me.'
Massha, Nunzio, and I bounced into the office. Bunny smiled up at us from the book she was reading and reached for the ledger.
'Not that,' I said, holding up a hand. 'I don't have any income to report at the moment. In fact, I have a complaint.'
'A complaint?' Bunny asked.
'Gleep!' My dragon had heard my voice, and came running to express his joy that I was home again. He charged into the room, and before I could yell 'No!' he had launched himself in the air and knocked me flat on my back. He held me down with both forepaws as he slathered my face with his long, stinking tongue.
'I hope this contest is over soon,' Bunny said, shaking her head disapprovingly. 'He never behaved like that in the inn. Bad! Bad dragon!'
My dragon stopped sliming me and sat back on his haunches. He favored Bunny with a reproachful look.
I sat up. I wiped my face with one hand and scratched the dragon behind his eye ridges with my other. Gleep crooned.
'I almost wish I was back there now,' I said. 'Look, when everybody agreed that the contest was to amass the greatest wealth possible for our respective clients, right?'
'Right,' Bunny said. 'What's the problem?'
'Aahz is sabotaging us,' I said. 'He's interfering with practically everything we're doing to try and earn money for Hermalaya. Someone told a toymaker here in the Bazaar he could make dolls in her image. Somebody went around selling the idea of ripping off the Cake ceremony. All of that points to Aahz,'
'That's a pretty hefty accusation,' she said. 'Do you have any tangible proof? Has anyone actually named Aahz?'
I grimaced. 'Well, no, not used his name ... but I know it's him! Who else would have all the details of Hermalaya's life at their fingertips so he could lie about them?'
'Well, anyone who has a copy of her diary, for one,' Bunny said. She held up the book on her desk. It was The Princess's Diary. 'This is a third printing. We're probably talking about thousands of copies across the dimensions. And Hermalaya doesn't spare the ink when it comes to setting down her thoughts. I know everything about her except her lingerie sizes. As for the rest of the copycats, you have been getting a lot of publicity. People talk. And people who want to make money use new ideas. Didn't you?'
'Yes, but...'
BAMF!
'There he is!' Aahz pointed a claw at my nose. 'What do you think you're doing, making a mess of my assets like that?'
'What?' I goggled, 'I never touched your assets. What assets?'
Tananda, Matfany, and Guido all appeared behind Aahz, looking at me reproachfully.
Aahz turned to Bunny. 'It's like I don't have enough problems trying to revive a has-been resort town in a hick kingdom in a backwater dimension. And it's not like I don't have enough problems dealing with people who can't take no for an answer, or poker-up-the-rear bureaucrats, or angry peasants throwing last year's produce section at me. that I have to deal with YOU short-circuiting my efforts to make things work for my client.' The finger came around and poked at my nose again.
'Me?' I knew my voice went up to a squeak.
'Yeah, you! Who else would want to ruin the displays when I finally got everything negotiated to run like a top'? Who has a stake in seeing my enterprise fail? You.'
I felt steam come out of my ears.
'I would never do anything like that.' I protested. 'I never saw your displays. In fact. I have spent the last week trying to deal with the damage you did to me and MY client. Poor Hermalaya hasn't been so embarrassed in her life. People ate calling her a phony. She's the most genuine person in the world! She used to be a respected head of state, and now she's an action figure. I fee! responsible for setting her up—for putting her in a position where someone i used to trust more than anybody could make her feel like a fool.'
'Used to trust?' The veins in Aahz's eyes burst into relief. 'Listen, you Klahdish pip-squeak
