Pookie emptied her glass and signaled for a refill. “I'm not on his side or anyone else's side. If you want us to do research, you know our rates. Personally or professionally, we're not interested in this one. Final answer.”
“Did the others tell you to stand down, or was this your idea?”
“Whether or not I subscribe to it, your friends there hold to a code. No double-crossing. No dirty tricks.”
I shrugged. “I've always thought of it as more of a sug-gestion, myself.”
“Whatever. Now, get lost, cousin. We're waiting for a client.”
Perturbed, I drummed my fingers on the bar top. The innkeeper gave me one look and stayed back out of reach. I could start tearing the place up, but what good would it do?
“You ought to be more careful about the people you let in here,” I informed him. I slid off the bar stool and headed out into the town.
Pookie had been my last chance to pry information out of any of my partners or temporary associates. I decided to stretch my legs and see if I could come up with some ideas.
I stalked through the busy streets, dodging other pedes-trians and magik-driven traffic. The locals were at least a foot taller than I was, but thin as fence rails. Skamital wasn't the end of the universe, but nothing was, these days.
With the growing availability of travel gadgets and spells, it seemed like there was no place I could go where I didn't encounter a familiar face.
As I passed by a shop window, I thought I recognized someone.
I backed up a couple of paces and peered through the glass. Yeah, there she was! Matfany's pretty little nemesis, Hermalaya. Not the girl in person, but a portrait of her, on a card standing on top of a pile of thin books on a display table. “The Princess's Diary,” the poster said. This was definitely Skeeve's doing.
I went inside. The table was surrounded by shoppers, both male and female, in animated discussion. More to the point, they were buying the book. I sidled over to take a look for myself.
Somewhere in size between War and Peace and the lat-est graphic novel, The Princess's Diary had been bound in shell pink leather tooled with leaves and thorns intertwined around a tilted crown. I nudged open a copy and started reading.
In spite of my requisite partiality toward my client, I fell into the story. The first few entries were the usual girly stuff: comments about official function and what dress she wore. When the first pinchbug problems surfaced, far from being unaware, she had her finger on all the facts. The Swamp Fox who had imported them was in deep trouble, but the problem had to be taken care of. Trouble was, the bugs were breeding like crazy. Since they weren't native, they had no natural predators in Reynardo. The cabinet, acting on advice, made the decision to try to keep the prob-lem confined to Foxe-Swampburg. Heroic, I thought. Her-malaya didn't say so directly, but I got the impression she might have been behind the suggestion. She came across in print a lot smarter than she did in person, though I still didn't see that she had what it took to rule.
I could see that the girl could get a lot of popular sym-pathy. She had a future as a storyteller, but as a future monarch? Matfany had done the right thing in putting her out the door. You can go only so far on charisma. At some point, you have to have real savvy and business sense to prosper.
I wasn't too obtuse to see a parallel between my client's situation and mine. I could tell by the looks on the faces of the others in the office the other day that some of them thought I was overstepping the bounds in stating that I wanted to be the president of the company. If they had wanted to work for me,
they would have said so after Skeeve left. Well, I never asked them to. At that time, the last thing I wanted to do was lead. I missed the opportunity then, but not a second time. Pervects aren't used to coming in sec-ond place. If the company was going to rebuild with all of us as partners, this time I wanted to be first among equals. Enough was enough.
I had always kept my association with the others loose because it wasn't my intention to start an organization in the first place. Like them, I only came in because of Skeeve.
Maybe that was the problem. They knew I wasn't com-mitted to a group. They were more inclined to be cohesive. Maybe it was a herd thing. Pervects don't have a lot of herd instinct, or trust, for that matter. Where we see a crowd of people running away screaming fire, we always go back to see if there really is one. And if maybe anything interest-ing got left behind when everybody else fled. I never in-tended to be an employee of anyone, not then and not ever again. Standing aloof kept me from being vulnerable. Now that the status quo had been shaken up, I was ready to take the lead. I had the most business experience of the group and the most leadership potential, so why not? This was my shot to prove it.
“And did you hear?” one woman beside me told an-other, as they
