Another candle flared into light. I saw Massha near the wall. Her filmy veil had been tied over her mouth, and col-ored streamers were bound around her wrists. Two black-clad figures stood by her with servers at her throat. One of them held up a filmy bag that contained all of Massha's magikal jewelry. I winced. Without her toys, as site called them, Massha was almost as helpless as an ordi-nary person. Nunzio was dwarfed by an enormous figure who held his miniature crossbow up by two fingers. He was tied up with green cloth streamers that I recognized as Dragon-pinning tails.
We can escape from this situation, no matter how badly outnumbered we are, I thought. I reached out for a force line to gather some power to untie them. I ran into a magikal wall. I tried again. Nothing.
Although I could picture at least two nearby lines in my mind, I couldn't touch either one. There was a dampening spell on the room. Both of us were powerless, at least for the moment. I tried to keep calm.
“I don't want any trouble,” I said, amiably. “May I ask who I'm speaking with?” The mysterious female loomed over me. “My name is Ninja. I am a sixteenth-generation, nineteenth-layer Cake Master.” “Nineteenth layer!” I asked. “I've never heard of that.”
Ninja recoiled as if insulted. “You doubt me? Bety! Kroka! Prepare ... the layer!”
Two black-aproned and masked females came forward, bearing between them a solid silver platter with a single, unfrosted chocolate cake on it.
“Hiayah!” Ninja swung the server at the cake.
Whisk, whisk! Whisk, whisk! Crumbs flew in all direc-tions. I pulled back out of the way. A claw caught me by the nape of the neck and pushed me forward.
Ninja halted with an impressive economy of movement and drew the server back. She wiped it very carefully upon her apron tie and slid it into a sheath at her belt. She ges-tured to the others, who brought the cake close enough for me to examine.
“Count them,” she said proudly. “Nineteen.”
Gingerly, I ran a thumb up the edge of the cake, and the edges flipped back like very soft playing cards. I could see that it had been sliced thinly but so evenly that it looked like the side of a children's board book. There were exactly nineteen.
“Gosh,” I said. “That's amazing.” “Gosh? The Great Skeeve says gosh?” Ninja sounded scornful.
“Sure,” I said. “When I'm impressed. But why kidnap us? We're trying to help one of your, uh. society. Princess Hermalaya of Foxe-Swampburg.”
“We have heard of your so-called help,” Ninja spat. “We Cake Masters are disgusted by it.”
“But why?” I asked. “Hermalaya has been doing every-thing according to the rules, isn't she? You couldn't ask for a more dignified representative of your.. . association. We've done what we can to make sure the fakes get closed down. And the rest have agreed to start taking the training courses.”
I was hauled off the stool and smashed face-first into the wall. Nunzio stood up, but the huge Cake Master shoved him down again.
Ninja hissed in my ear. “We hate fakes, but we also do not care for the sacred practice of hospitality and enjoy-ment being prostituted for money!”
“How do you support yourselves, then?” I asked, in what I thought was a reasonable tone, as much as I could with a cake server pressed against the back of my neck while my face was buried in a silken Pin-the-tail-on-the-Dragon chart. '“If you don't receive any, uh, gifts, you're not earning anything on your historic culture and experi-ence.”
There was a long pause. “Well, I don't suppose we do,” Ninja admitted. She backed off and took off her veil. I saw that she was
another Reynardan. like Hermalaya. “We have patrons.” I spat out silk. “So, how's that different? You only sup-port yourselves, if you can. Can you?”
Ninja sounded embarrassed when she finally answered. “Well, we all have other jobs. I decorate cakes in a hotel on Lux.”
“I deliver pizzas,” said one of the other black-clad fig-ures. Behind her veil she was a Kobold.
“I'm a nanny,” grated a Gargoyle.
“I'm a stockbroker,” added a Gnome.
“Really?” I asked. It looked as if Cake Masters came from nearly every race in the dimensions and almost every profession. “You do all that to support your hobby?”
Ninja whipped out her server again and brandished it at me. “It is not a hobby. It is a sacred calling! Cake has shown us peace and beauty in the world. If she has prosti-tuted that calling, then she must be punished. She is a Cake Master. She ought to know better!”
“Look, the princess believes in all that!” I said. “I'm the one responsible for making it commercial. If you have to punish someone, punish me, not her. The only reason I got her to offer Cake ceremonies in exchange for favors is to rescue her kingdom. Maybe none of you know what hap-pened to her?”
“Oh, we do,” the Kobold said. “I bought a copy of her diary. We all read it. We cried like babies!”
“The princess has never had another job. In fact, she's trying to get her job back. Princessing is a tough gig, as hard as being a nanny.” I glanced around the circle of black-clad figures. “Maybe worse.”
“It couldn't be worse,” the Gargoyle replied. “Not
