“Why not?” I asked. Hermalaya acquired an indignant pout. “Well, because that darned prime minister just up and usurped me last week!” I frowned. “He threw you off the throne? Why?”
The Swamp Fox princess shook her head in bemusement. “Well, I'm sure I don't know. We had us some hard times in Foxe-Swampburg, that's for sure. We had these nasty bugs? They were just everywhere, and we couldn't get rid of them. They bored holes through everything? I mean, my subjects were just going broke trying to fix things. The cisterns all sprang leaks, and people were run-ning out of clean water? So I told the chancellor of the ex-chequer to open up the treasury? I mean, we all woulda been bored full of holes, too, if it wasn't for the Old Folks protecting us.”
“I know what you mean” I said, as a Humbee buzzed over our heads like a vulture swooping down. Gleep made a leap for it and settled down to chew noisily. Hermalaya stared in amazement at the invasion and capture. I cleared my throat. “Uh, please go on.”
“Well, not much to tell, except I tried to help my people, because that's what I'm supposed to do? Mama and Daddy always instilled in us the deepest sense of responsibility toward those who depend upon us.”
“Most admirable,” Chumley said, then lowered his heavy brow as Hermalaya turned to stare at him. “Big Crunch mean, 'good foxy'!”
I frowned. “So what do you need from us? We're not an army.”
“Well, what do you think?” Hermalaya asked. "My people need me. They can't just have an old prime minister as their leader? You can see what kind of chaos that would lead to. I mean, how can he make unpopular decisions if there's no one for them to love when he's being mean? He's got no one to explain
to the people in a friendly way that that's the way it's got to be. Of course,“ she added reflec-tively, ”I mean unpopular decisions that don't involve bouncin' his lawful monarch out the door? Mister Skeeve, I'd be just as grateful as possible if you would help me get my throne back!"
“Well, ma'am,” I said. “You know our reputation, or you wouldn't have come to M.Y.T.H., Inc. We'd love to help you, but our assistance doesn't come cheap. Uh, it's awk-ward, but can you handle our fees?”
Hermalaya looked crestfallen. “Well, that's the trouble, you know. I just don't have any money. I have heard of you all, and one of the things that people told me? Sometimes you come in and help for the sake of helping?”
I winced. Just when I needed to find a way to score a lot of coins from a client, our reputation for occasional altru-ism came out. But, waitBunny promised that she would not send me a client with whom it would be impossible to win the contest I had going with Aahz. If I trusted anyone in the world, it had to be her. For the life of me, at that mo-ment I couldn't see how I could turn this one around.
I sighed and put my chin on my palm. “Tell me some more. Maybe we can figure something out. Why did it hap-pen?”
“Well,” Hermalaya said, “that of prime ministerhis name's Matfany, by the wayhe's been pretty good at ex-plaining things to me most of the time. But when he found out I had the chancellor of the exchequer hand out a lot of our money to those poor people who lost everything to the bugs, he just lost his mind!”
“Literally?” Nunzio asked, with interest.
“Not exactly right out of his head,” Hermalaya admit-ted. “But it was a pretty darned mean thing to do. He marched into my rooms one day, and he didn't even look at me. Normally he looks at me. A lot. But that day, he just couldn't. He said that he had just talked to the chancellor. The treasury was empty, and it was all my fault. He said I didn't have a right to hand out the money. That by just giv-ing it out to anybody I was endangering the kingdom? Be-ing broke leaves Foxe-Swampburg vulnerable to anybody who wants to invade it? Or have our creditors come in and claim just every little thing we have. That'd make uswhat did he call it?a client state instead of a free principality? I had gone against everything that my daddy and his an-cestors had ever done to keep us from being taken over by enemies or revenuers. Matfany said he wasn't going to let Foxe-Swampburg fall like that? He said that he didn't have a choice? He was gonna have to toss me out of the kingdom for the good of everyone. Now I thought that I was acting for the good of everyone. I've been their princess all my life, and I have never done a single thing that was against them, I swear.”
“I'm sure you didn't,” I said, sympathetically.
“It was just so hurtful, all the things he said.
