yet another brother.
'He don't mean nothin' by it,' Guido said. 'How about you gentlemen just takin' it down a couple of notches? There's other people tryin' to enjoy themselves. Youse could have a quiet evenin', too. We'll let you alone if you let us alone.'
The second-biggest brother came to stick a forefinger in Guido's face. 'Are you threatening us, Klahd?'
Guido took his hand and twisted it downward until the thumb was facing up at an unnatural angle.
'Threats are for people who can't back it up, Deveel. I am just offerin' you some friendly advice. If youse wants a table with just your family, then take one. There's one openin' up right there near the front.'
'You can't tell us what to do!'
'I want to sit with him,' Felina said, tilting her head toward Aahz. 'He's funny.'
'He's funny?' the mean one echoed. 'What have you done to our innocent little sister?'
'Nothing but look,' Aahz said. 'Any guy with normal vision would want to do that.'
'You looked at our sister?'
'And he put his arm around me, too,' Felina said, smugly.
'He what?' One of them grabbed for a bench and upended it, sending the Deveels who were on it tumbling to the ground. He swung it at Aahz, who ducked. The bench hit the back of another patron's head. He jumped up and took a punch at Aahz. Nunzio intercepted the blow as Guido pushed the oncoming brother backwards. The other brothers waded in to defend their sibling. The offended patron picked the pitcher up off his table and emptied it on Nunzio's head. Gus picked up the patron and hooked him on the chandelier. The Deveel threw fire spells at Gus, which just bounced off his stone exterior.
All of us piled in behind Guido, including Tananda. Bunny removed herself from the fray, taking Felina with her by the ear. While I used magik to keep the youngest brother from taking a dirty swing at Aahz from behind, I noticed Bunny giving the girl a piece of her mind. Felina's face, already a natural red, grew redder.
The biggest Deveel brother grabbed up a beer mug and crashed it down on Guido's head.
'Dat does it,' the Mob enforcer snarled. He snatched the drink out of the nearest drinker's hand and smashed it directly between the Deveel brother's horns. The Deveel searched out blindly for another stein, and broke it over Guido's skull. Refusing to give ground, Guido held out his hand. Nunzio slapped another mug into it. Guido brought it crashing onto his opponent.
I was dealing with a couple of the smaller brothers. Using magik to yank curios off the wall, they pelted me with weird junk and street signs. I fended them off as best I could, while trying to keep the debris from hitting other customers. Most of them joined in the fray, some from outrage, others for the fun of a good brawl.
Suddenly, I found myself flung against the bar wall, a commemorative trophy in my arms. All of the would- be combatants were similarly pinioned. The bartender walked up and down between us, wielding a bat-shaped staff—the source, I guessed, of the spell.
'Hold it, hold it, hold it!' he bellowed. 'When will you people learn? The free-for-all is tomorrow! No unscheduled fights in here tonight! Now, everyone behave or I am tossing you all out into the street!'
The goggle-eyed Deveel brother pointed a finger, which was the only body part he could move. 'That Pervert started it!'
Aahz sneered at him. 'That's Per-vect, and all I did was buy your sister a drink. She didn't turn me down!'
'Oh, yeah? You had to put a spell on her, because why would she talk to you for one second, let alone
long enough to get your hands on her?'
The bartender kept us hanging there until we settled the argument. As the first lights of dawn began to lighten the sky, we arrived at a truce, negotiated chiefly by Guido and the largest brother, who began to recognize that, appearances aside, his baby sister might not have been totally innocent of provocation.
Once the bartender let us down, the big brother shook hands with Guido. The Deveel family removed their much-chastened sister from Bunny's custody and thence from the bar. I sat down, my ears ringing, and called for a fruit juice.
'What did you tell her?' I asked Bunny. She and Tananda had spent the last three hours of the fray sitting at a side table with the hefty woman and her slim husband.
'That men had responsibilities, but so do women,' Bunny said with a sly smile. 'If she wants to drive her brothers crazy, she doesn't have to involve a bunch of strangers.'
'Sandbagged,' Aahz groaned, accepting an ice pack for his head. The veins in his yellow eyes were ochre. 'Just my luck I had to get involved with a girl who had family in the neighborhood.'
I grinned. 'Maybe you shouldn't have asked who her daddy was, but whether she had any brothers.'
'You're learning, kid.'
'Find me someone I can blame for this!'
When we got back to the site in the morning, both of us were somewhat shopworn. Aahz was battered from getting tossed around between seven or eight large Deveel brothers. I nursed a bruise on the side of my head, but I had to admit he looked worse.
'Oh, Mr. Aahz!' Miss Tauret exclaimed as we entered the And Company office. 'What happened? You look as though a building fell on you!' Her hand flew to her mouth as though trying to take back her words. In Aegis, such a thing could happen.
'I'm okay,' Aahz said, rolling his yellow eyes her way. 'It was pretty tough, but I got through with just a few scrapes.'
She rose from her desk. 'Let me get you some fresh coffee! Please, go sit down. I'll have it in your office in just a moment. What can I do to make you feel better?'
Aahz opened his mouth, then paused, looking at her warily. 'You don't have a bunch of big, older brothers, do you?
'Why, no,' Miss Tauret said, her little gray ears turning this way and that. 'Just one sister. She is younger than I am.' She looked at me and flirted her eyelashes. 'I glyphed her all about you yesterday. She was so impressed that you saved the pyramid.'
'Uh, that's nice,' I said.
'I taught the kid everything he knows,' Aahz purred, leaning over the desk and staring deeply into her eyes.
'You did?' she rested her elbow on the counter and her chin on her hand.
'Yeah,' Aahz said.
'Uh, excuse me,' I said. I hurried into our office to look at the previous day's paperwork. Miss Tauret had been interested in Aahz since the first day, and after last night he was vulnerable to a little sympathetic female attention with no possibility of reprisals from angry relatives. While I was glad for him, I didn't have to watch.
Miss Tauret's attentiveness certainly cheered Aahz up. She came in and out of our room all day whenever we were in there, hoisting the empty beer barrel onto her meaty shoulder as if it was weightless and, even more impressively, bringing the fresh one in and tapping it for Aahz's convenience. After I took the morning rounds of the site, I found her rubbing his shoulders. He peered out from under the cold compress on his eyes and gave me a wink.
The receptionist was not the only Ghord who paid us closer attention since the day I had picked up the pyramid. Many of the workers who had held us at arm's length got into the habit of talking with us or glyphing when they noticed us walking around. A lot of the girls giggled when I went past, though they were openly friendly if I actually stopped to talk with them. All of them were pretty impressed by the feat I had performed. Miss Tauret let it be known to everyone what Aahz had said about teaching me, so we were both made much of around the site.
