the people hunting me-'
The door swung open. There was Vanity, wearing a sheer peach evening dress with the tags at the neckline. 'I thought I heard voices. Who the heck are you? Leader, is someone molesting you again? I swear you give off a scent that attracts perverts.'
Archer, startled, let go of me and straightened up slightly. Then he swung his gaze back toward me, but the moment he took his eyes from me, the wall behind me gave way, and I had fallen through a trapdoor that snapped silently shut behind me. I was in a little crawl space that ran behind the dressing rooms.
Smoothly done. I had no idea Vanity was so smooth. I was in a crawl space: so I crawled.
Archer said, 'Where'd she go?'
Vanity was saying, 'You're Cupid, aren't you? The one who lost the throne?'
'I know exactly where is it, Lady Nausicaa.' Through the wall, I could see him smile an ingratiating smile and place his hand on his heart. 'It is merely that armed warriors stand between me and it.'
Vanity did not smile back, which was rare for her. Instead she said in a businesslike tone, 'Boggin says you can overrule Mavors. Is that true?'
'The matter is complex. Each god has certain terrain that is his own, a realm where his will rules fate. But if events occur where two influences overlap, there is considerable controversy, restrained, to a degree, by precedents long ago established, and to a degree the conflict is restrained by a gentlemen's agreement among ourselves to avoid an open fate-war.'
'Mavors ordered Amelia to lead the five of us back to an island where we would be attacked by Lamia, a blood-drinking vampiress, who wants to kill us as the quickest way to break the truce between Cosmos and Chaos. Can you stop this decree?'
This was the Vanity from Vanity Island: the leader-woman, sharp and concise. I admit I used to think of her as silly. But silly was not the same as happy.
And anyone can afford to be silly when she is a prisoner, or a child, not in control of her own life, making no decisions that matter to anyone. That is what she used to be. Helpless and therefore silly. Me, too, I guess.
Through the walls, I saw Archer, with a rustle of his wide wings, step from the closet and advance toward Vanity. 'Indeed I can halt the decree of the war-god, sending young girls in love to war, for you are in my realm, not his. But will I? Love is a fickle thing. Why should I grant this petition? Have any of you vowed fealty to me?' He looked left and right again. I could sense some sort of pressure wave coming from his fourth-dimensional armor, and sweeping back and forth to the 'red' and 'blue' of me. Again, his extensions into the fourth dimension were artificial, not part of his nervous system. I don't think his senses could interpret what he saw very clearly. He could not just look through walls. If I stayed flat in three dimensions, his radar (or whatever it was) did not see me.
'Where is your leader? Helion's daughter, the shepherdess? Boreas told me she was the one who was in charge of your merry band. The smart one, he called her.'
Well, the so-called smart one at that moment did not want him to know how Vanity had gotten me out of the room; nor was I eager to continue the conversation in my underthings. Nude and blushing is not the way to talk to a love-god. I noticed that Vanity was not being distracted by asides as I had been.
Following the shortcut Vanity made for me, I found myself back in my little dressing room.
Even though Vanity was holding up her end of the conversation just fine, if Boggin told Archer I was the leader, he would not negotiate with her. Since I did not want him to deduce how I'd gotten out of his grip, and since I wanted to get dressed, I decided it was time to let him see me again.
I found an easy way to get dressed on the quick was merely to pluck my shed clothes up into the fourth dimension, scrunch my three-dimensional cross-section into a point inside my outfit, and rotate it so that the point expanded outward suddenly. I had my left arm in my right sleeve and vice versa, but it was quicker to twist dimensions in a half circle than it was to take the clothes off and put them back on again. I left the evening gown on the hanger: I was dressed in my flying leathers, with track shoes on my feet and my lucky cap on my head.
So I pushed open the door and stepped out. 'Here I am, Mr. Archer! I need to know something about you before we close the deal.'
He nodded briefly. 'You need only know whether I have the power to do as you ask. I do.'
Vanity spoke up. 'If you are so powerful, why'd you lose the throne?'
He gave her a cryptic, sidelong glance. 'That is sort of a personal question, Princess. Ask a historian.'
I said, 'We need to know the situation. You say you are powerful enough to overrule Mavors, but if he is the war-god, can't he win any battle with you? With anyone? Come to think of it, why didn't he take the throne by force when Terminus died? I'm asking the wrong question. Not how you got pushed off the throne, but how you ever got on it? How did you inherit Heaven?'
Archer smiled that type of smile I've seen on Boggin's face when he hears a clever question from Colin. Smiling at the unexpected. 'I was deposed because of my power, not despite it.'
'What does that mean?' Vanity asked, her hand on her hips, her green eyes glinting.
