A piercing whistle burst in my eardrums. Both of us stopped talking. Bunny removed two fingers from her mouth.
'Gentlemen! If I may use that term without bursting into cynical laughter. You.' she pointed at me. 'I already heard from you. You!' she pointed at Aahz. 'What is Skeeve supposed to have done to you?'
Aahz glanced sideways at Matfany, who was holding himself aloof from interacting with any of us. He looked pretty disgusted, not that I cared what he thought. I was glad that Hermalaya wasn't safely back in Possiltum.
'I ... made deals with a number of prominent businessmen who would take an interest in Foxe-Swampburg in exchange for financial consideration. It involves a certain amount of visible advertising on local landmarks.'
'Glaring, vulgar displays,' Matfany added.
'Yeah, it all depends on how you look at it!' Aahz snapped. I could see the honeymoon was long over between the two of them. 'I conceded to local interests to ...'
'... Tone them down a little,' Tananda put in, when Aahz had hesitated too long.
'Yeah! They were toned down!'
'To a dull roar,' Matfany put in.
'Let me finish!' Aahz bellowed.
Bunny held up a thumb and forefinger and brought them together Everybody else closed their mouths.
'Go on,' she said to Aahz.
He frowned. 'From that point, they should have been fine. Then, all of a sudden, the images started fading right off the rocks and buildings. Whole billboards disappeared overnight! Salamanders started going out, or they lost their grip and fell. The Firedrakes' Union steward complained to the Geek, and he came to me. Matfany's guards questioned the protesters ...'
'Protesters?' I asked.
'Shut up,' Aahz said. 'They didn't have anything to do with it. The whole mess smacked of magikal interference.' He glared at me. 'And who has the greatest interest in seeing me fail? Skeeve!'
'I didn't do anything!' I said. 'Bunny, you have to believe me. I haven't been in Foxe-Swampburg. I never got near any of his arrangements. What about Matfany? From what i hear, he's underhanded enough to cause trouble! Look what he did to Hermalaya''
The Swamp Fox was outraged. 'Sir. you have no right to make such accusations.'
'He's just trying to misdirect you,' Aahz said. Typical behavior of someone who is guilty,'
'How could you, Skeeve?' Tananda asked, woe in her dark green eyes. 'Attacking someone you don't even know. It's just so unlike you.'
'It's unlike me because it wasn't me! I mean, I thought about it. Who wouldn't, after everything started to go wrong with our plans?'
'Your plans went wrong because you set them all up wrong,' Aahz said, with grim glee. 'Everything I ever taught you about exploiting a situation to the fullest, you seem to have forgotten. Sitting in that inn seems to have rotted your brain. Such as it is Klahds just don't have a lot of basic intelligence.'
The whistle called timeout on our argument again.
'Enough with the personal remarks,' Bunny said. 'Some of the rest of us are Klahds, too, you know'
'No offense,' Aahz said.
'I didn't sabotage anything,' I said. 'How can I prove that? I can't prove a negative. Look, I have been with Massha, Nunzio, Chumley, or Hermalaya almost every minute I haven't been in here.'
Chumley raised a forefinger. 'I say, he's right, but it doesn't take long to upset the apple cart, what? I have to be fair, Skeeve, old boy. I know you did dash in and out a few times. I'd be very disappointed if you were going off to interfere with the other side, what?'
I felt more alone than I had ever been before. 'I don't know how I can convince you. I didn't do anything wrong. You have to believe me. I give you my word I wasn't involved in anything Aahz did failing.'
Aahz was gloating. 'If that's your story, then I didn't do anything wrong, either.'
'All right, all right,' Bunny said, holding up her hands. 'Then, here's the new ground rules: both of you
stay away from the other. You don't interfere in what the other one is doing. You don't go near each other anywhere except here. Any conversations you have from now until the end of this contest will be held in front of witnesses, preferably in this office. Any more bad behavior means you automatically concede the contest to your opponent. Do I make myself clear?'
Very grudgingly, I choked out a yes. So did Aahz.
'Good. Both of you go away. You've been in here too long. Help your clients. Stay out of trouble. That's all. Beat it.' Bunny sat down at her secretary desk and opened her copy of The Princess's Diary.
We all looked at each other. Aahz gave me a smirk.
BAMF! He, Matfany, Tananda, and Guido disappeared.
I regretted the day I gave him that D-hopper.
'Mister Aahz, I have to say I believed your colleague, Skeeve,' Matfany said. We were following an indignant foreman, or really fore-Salamander, Pintubo, and his fire-proofed Reynardan escort back to the damaged displays in the hills to get a good look at them. 'His countenance did not seem like one who dissembles, and as an administrator I must say I see my share of dishonest faces.'
I growled without looking at him. The uphill slog was complicated by thick, cementlike mud on the path that was building up under my feet like platform shoes.
'I believed him, too,' Tananda said, tripping along lightly. 'I might have jumped to a conclusion back there. It's not the first time Skeeve has been innocent when we have believed the worst about him, Aahz. Look what happened on Imper.'
'I don't want to hear it,' I said. 'The kid knows I put a spoke in his wheels, and he got back at me. Big deal. It's over.'
'Unless he didn't,' Guido said. 'You gotta look at the bigger picture. More people than Skeeve don't like what we're doin' here.'
He aimed a meaty thumb backward. We weren't the only people on the mountain path. Some of the mote determined protesters were following us, at a distance enforced by a whole troop of the castle guards. By then, the towns-folk were using their signs as staffs to help them up the steep slope, but they were determined to let us know that they weren't happy with the status quo—as they knew it. I realized we had let slide an important facet of improving Matfany's image.
'We have to give the people an update when we get to the top,' I said. 'We're doing all kinds of publicity, but no public relations '
'And what will that involve?' Matfany asked.
'A speech,' I said. 'By you. Start thinking about bullet points: how you are doing your best for the country, how what's happening up here is beneficial to them, and how tourism is going to start coming back. It's already happening.'
I spoke with confidence, because I had been keeping up with the hoteliers in the resort. All of them reported bookings from a dozen dimensions, including some large tour groups I had made a mental note of which ones had the fewest rooms left to rent, with an idea toward sending auditors in to scan the books. I figured I could count taxes the hotels and inns paid on profit to the kingdom as part of my total. I was sure I could talk Bunny into it. As mad as the Geek was about the vandalism, his new trade in knick-knacks was also paying off, with a percentage on all sales to be paid to me—I mean, the treasury. That ought to boost my takings so far over Skeeve all he'd be able to see was the bottoms of my feet.
The prime minister considered the request gravely.
'I believe I can do that.'
I expanded on my topic. 'Don't forget, you have to stress that things are only better because you took over. That Pixie-headed princess of yours threw the whole country into a financial crisis on top of your environmental disaster. But you're the one pulling it all out again. Get it?'
