Ahmahotel. He retired a couple of years ago. Here we are. Have a seat.'
We perched on stools around a high, white tabletop. Samwise unrolled a huge yellow parchment. He did his best to smooth it, but its wrinkles wouldn't let it lay flat. The plans looked like they had been deliberately crumpled up, then flattened out.
'This looks exactly like the building next door,' Aahz said, frowning. 'If this is a scam, it's a pretty inept one.'
'No scam, Aahz, I swear to you!' Samwise turned the paper around so we could both see it. 'It's really different.'
'It looks the same to me,' I said.
'Well ... it was designed by Diksen, too,' Samwise admitted. 'But he discarded it! He had a lot of good ideas. He's a very creative guy. I knew he wouldn't mind.'
'Uh-huh,' Aahz said. 'Does he know you're using a plan that you plucked out of his waste-papyrus basket?'
'Oh, yeah, no problem,' Samwise said. I thought he was talking just a little bit too fast, 'He drew it up. It didn't work for him. He threw it away. I rescued it and adapted it. He didn't say I couldn't. What's the
problem with that?'
'I don't know yet,' Aahz said. 'Tell us and save us all a lot of time.'
'You said you worked for him,' I pressed. 'Why aren't you with him any longer?'
'I had big ideas of my own,' the Imp said, describing arcs in the air. 'Plenty of big ideas.'
'Such as?' Aahz asked.
'Financing,' the Imp said, with his arms spread triumphantly. 'Diksen had to stump up for that whole thing out there by himself. I came up with a much better idea to build my dream pyramid. It's a cooperative venture. Every buyer helps find more buyers. The more they bring in, the lower their buy-in becomes. It's a win-win proposition.'
Aahz groaned. 'That's just what I was afraid of. Why didn't you tell us that in our office in the Bazaar and let me say 'no' then? C'mon, kid, we're leaving.' He stood up.
'Aahz, just listen!' Samwise begged.
BOOM! The floor lurched out from under me. I pushed away from it with a handful of magik and retrieved Aahz before he hit the ground. Samwise was tossed sideways. He grabbed onto a hank of air and steadied himself.
'What was that?' Aahz demanded as soon as his feet were back on the ground. 'An explosion?'
'No, nothing like that, I'm sure,' the Imp said. He hurried out into the hallway. A Ghord with the face of a bull rushed toward him. He whispered in Samwise's ear.
'Oh, no,' Samwise said. He strode toward the doorway, but it was too late. A fist-sized knob of black buzzed in the door and hit him smack in the chest. It backed up a handspan and zipped up to the Imp's eye level. It shook a tiny finger in his face.
'Have I not told you a thousand times? It has happened again!'
Samwise took a pace back and rubbed the point of impact. 'Beltasar,' he said weakly.
I regarded the newcomer curiously. Since my first visit to the Bazaar at Deva, I had made friends and acquaintances that ranged from the size of a building down to the size of my thumb. I had thought at long distance that Scarabs were all black, but Beltasar was an iridescent blue with complicated designs incised on her shell in bright coral, turquoise, and gold. Her large, round eyes were also turquoise, and they were fixed with disapproval on the Imp.
'Another stone came right off our backs!' she exclaimed. 'Unauthorized use of an unregistered magician on a union site will get you fined ten gold pieces per incident.'
'There aren't any magicians working today,' Samwise squawked. 'It has to be your fault. You dropped a stone? Whose was it? What will my clients say?'
'They'll say you run a dangerous operation,' Beltasar said, firmly. 'It landed on your building.'
'What?' Samwise yelped. He hurried outside, the Scarab flitting next to him. We followed.
'All that matters in real estate is location, location, location.'
Outside, the air was full of flitting Scarabs, all humming with alarm. The Ghord laborers, too, had all stopped working. They had gathered around the building to look at the accident. I turned to gawk. One of the carved blocks lay at an angle on top of the And Company office building, flattening a corner of the structure to rubble. I couldn't believe how large it was up close. Klah was full of family cottages smaller than this single piece of rock. It must have weighed tons. Nothing short of a major cataclysm or magik could have tossed it from the top of the partly-built pyramid. It would take heavy lifting equipment to move.
I peered inside the office. It was unaffected, since it didn't exist in this dimension. The secretaries and clerks continued about their business with only an occasional glance out the door at us. Miss Tauret gave me a broad wink and went back to her papyri.
'Could've thrown it over here themselves,' Aahz said suspiciously, looking the accident up and down with an expert's eye. 'Pretty nifty action. No way to tell what direction it came from. Take a look at the power lines.'
I shook my head. 'No fluctuations that I can see, but those lines are strong. Any magik that was dipped out of one wouldn't leave a trace. Or it could be an overload. That black line just under our feet is bucking like a bull goat.'
'We could have been killed!' exclaimed a Ghord with a long bird beak. 'It is one of the ancient curses! Someone must have left gum on the paving stones!'
The rest of the crew joined in with their panicked suggestions of the cause of the disaster.
'What are you doing?' Samwise screamed at his staff, waving his arms. 'Go back to work! Beltasar, get this rock off my office!'
'Sign a work order,' Beltasar said, crossing her upper two sets of arms. 'My people get regular hourly pay plus hazard pay plus off-site supplement.'
Samwise groaned and smacked his forehead with his palm. 'All right, all right! Get the paperwork ready. I'll sign it. What choice do I have?'
I didn't notice any satisfaction, smug or otherwise, on the Scarab's little face as she whipped a document from under one wing, flicked it open, and handed it to him. 'Sign here. We'll have it off your building in two wags of a Sphinx's tail.'
The Imp resignedly took the pen she proffered.
'Not so fast.' Aahz pushed in between them. 'You brought me here to check for holes in your operation.' He turned to the Scarab. 'He signs nothing from this day forward unless it goes past me first.'
'Fine,' Beltasar said.
Aahz scanned the page. He grunted and shoved it toward Samwise. The Imp signed it.
Tucking the document back under her wing, Beltasar flitted away.
'You see what I'm dealing with?' Samwise appealed to us. 'Thanks for agreeing to help.'
'I'm not committing,' Aahz said. 'But if we do take you as a client, I can't watch you make bad decisions in front of me.'
Aahz and I stood back as a swarm of USHEBTI workers poured down from the worksite and ascended the side of the small stone building. If I hadn't seen them do it before, I wouldn't have believed it possible. As Beltasar shrieked out orders, the wave of black dots spread out around the fallen slab. Slowly, as if under its own volition, it moved away from the broken side of the building. I looked closely, both with my open eyes and my mind's eye, and I didn't see a trace of magik. The Scarabs were just that strong.
'I could help them,' I offered.
