The Chick Is In The Mail

popped out from cover behind the computer table as soon as she heard my voice.

'Okay, what are they, and how can I talk to them?' I demanded. I hoped I would get some points with her for not rushing across the room and hugging her like a little kid. I wanted to. I wanted to drag her out of there and to hell with the rest of the school. But she'd stirred up some adult-sized trouble here; she had better help me clean it up like an adult. Later I'd hold on to her for, oh, seven or eight hours, or days, or whatever it took to get my heart rate down to normal.

'I-I think they're Nubian mercenaries,' Salla stammered. 'Or maybe Libyan. Later than Sixth Dynasty, because the costumes and weapons indicate-'

She was starting to get into Lecture Mom mode already; I cut her off with a chopping motion of Sasulau. 'Never mind the ancient history; what do they speak? I need to make a deal with these guys.'

Fortunately, it turned out that the Sacred Carvings magic worked just like modern mathemagical transfer equantations, implanting an ability to use and understand the dominant language of the culture you were landed in. Less fortunately, it seemed that the magic had picked up the dominant language as being that of Colton Middle School: teen-speak. I had to get Salla and the kid with dreadlocks to translate for me. Fortunately the deal I had to offer wasn't complicated: passage to a nice, big, rich planet with a climate very much like their home, with plenty of work for good mercenaries.

'Not,' I added, 'that you people seem all that skilled to me, but I expect you'll shape up pretty fast.' Those that lived. These guys had probably been tough once upon a time, but it appeared-luckily for me-that Salla had called up some kind of elite palace guard detail that hadn't had to do any real fighting for some years. We don't waste a lot of time on ceremonial processions or palace guard detail on Dazau. They'd probably enjoy the chance to get some real work for a change, once they adjusted.

All I had to do then was activate Call Trans-Forwarding on my cell phone and alert Furo Fykrou to pick up his new employees.

'But what am I going to do with a mercenary army?' he whined. 'I'm a wizard of peace, not a duke.'

'Rent them out to Zolkir,' I suggested. 'Take a percentage of the rental and give them the rest as salary.'

'Umm.' He sounded happier already. 'Four parts for me, one for them. Or do you think that's too generous? Maybe five for me…'

While he was happy, I persuaded him to activate the transfer, and just in time too; there were sirens wailing in the distance.

I heaved a sigh of relief as the dark, scarred men quivered, became columns of darkness, disappeared. I didn't have a clue how to reverse Sacred Carvings magic so as to send them home again, and neither did anybody on Dazau-Sacred Carvings had been a lost art for so long – but I was pretty sure they'd be happy serving Duke Zolkir. And Furo Fykrou probably wouldn't cheat them any worse than their previous employers had.

There was just a little cleanup work to be done, quickly, before the cops arrived. I tore up the sheets, tossed one strip to Jason and Salla and had them mop up the blood on the floor, while I collected the wannabe eighth-grade gangstas and used the rest of the sheets, the aluminum foil, and the boot polish on them. Since their leader was still pale and shaky from his faint, and I hadn't had time to clean the blood off Sasulau yet, they were cooperative. Quite.

The hardest part was persuading Gene Kruzak to come out from under his desk at the front of the classroom. But when he finally emerged, he blinked at the line of eighth-grade boys in torn-sheet loincloths and aluminum-foil armor, with their hair matted into shape with shoe polish, and agreed that yes, Salla had come up with a striking demonstration of Seventh Dynasty mercenary soldiers, and yes, it was a pity that some people who didn't understand how he liked to dramatize history for the kids had misunderstood and panicked, and no, of course he hadn't been worried for a moment.

I gather that this story did not amuse the cops when they finally got there, expecting full-scale gang warfare in the halls. I wouldn't know firsthand; Salla had insisted that I hide in the bathroom before anybody else saw me, pointing out that a six-foot warrior woman in bronze chain mail would probably make the police seriously nervous. 'I could say I dressed up to help out with your project?' I suggested.

'Please, Mom,' Salla said. Her lower lip was quivering. 'I can deal with it from here. And if anybody else sees you, I'll just die!'

That should have warned me, but it didn't. I paced up and down in the eighth-grade girls' bathroom and listened while Salla and Gene Kruzak convinced everybody that the whole kerfuffle had been a false alarm. The police were relatively easy to convince; they were happy not to have to deal with a gang war, and even happier not to have any bodies to take away, so they didn't give the principal too much of a hard time about stupid hysterical phone calls to 911.

Everybody, in fact, was happy… Except Salla, as I discovered when she came in to release me. 'Honestly, mo-ther!' she started on me before the swinging door had closed. 'How could you embarrass me like that?'

'Huh?'

'Look at you!' She was close to tears. 'Coming to school in that ridiculous outfit. It's indecent. Your boobs are showing through the chain mail. And all my friends saw you!'

'You'd rather all your friends got chopped up by Nubian mercenaries?' I asked in what I thought was a neutral tone.

'Oh, don't patronize me,' Salla wailed, 'you just don't understand! Haven't you got any decent clothes with you? In the car?'

Car.

I hadn't thought about how we were going to get home.

'Uh, actually, I guess I'll have to ride the bus with you,' I told her.

'In that outfit? You can't! I'll walk home! I'm never going to be able to show my face in this school again, and it's ALL YOUR FAULT…'

Let's skip the rest of the scene, okay? Anybody who's raised a teenage daughter knows how it went, and the rest of you, believe me, will be happier not knowing the gory details. Suffice it to say that I waited in the bathroom, semi-decently concealed in a stall, until Dennis dismissed his own classes and was free to drive us both home.

Where I discovered, on checking my email, that Salla wasn't the only one who was less than thrilled with my recent actions.

Oh, Furo Fykrou was happy enough. He'd already been able to rent my little gift out to Count Bukklivannizi for a border war, in return for so many zolkys that he'd actually, in a moment of unwizardly generosity, credited my account with ten percent of the rental as a sort of finder's fee.

But Stephanie was another matter. Her email reiterated, several times over, that she was disappointed in me. Very, very disappointed. After all her efforts to help me reenter the career track, how could I blow it all by acting so unprofessionally as to take off from work just for some little problem my kid was having at school? Needless to say, Xycorp was not going to hire me now. They had concluded I wouldn't be a good fit with the corporate culture.

I wrote back that I thought Xycorp was quite right, and in any case I wouldn't be looking for work in the near future, because I'd had an idea for another story.

Troll By Jury by Esther M. Friesner

'I don't know why she's going through with this if she doesn't want to,' Garth Justi's-son said as he and his two companions picked their way along the bank of the Iron River that misty morning. 'If you don't want to do something, don't do it, that's what I always say. Life is simple.'

'For the simple-minded, maybe.' Garth's wife, Zoli of the Brazen Shield, was all grouches and grizzles. The erstwhile member of the Swordsisters' Union was in one of her none-too-affable moods.

'You sound even less enthusiastic to be attending this event than Ethelberthina,' Garth observed. 'She's got to be there because it's her Maiden Morn-a girl turns thirteen just once, if she's lucky-but you didn't have to come.'

'Ethelberthina asked us to be there,' Zoli shot back. 'D'you think I'd do this for anyone else? Poor kid, she needs us. Otherwise she'll be surrounded by relatives. Her relatives.' Even the hardened ex-swordswoman shuddered at the thought.

'You know, I wonder why she is doing this.' Garth rubbed his chin thoughtfully. 'It's plain she'd rather die. When I was a lad, a girl had to celebrate her Maiden Morn or there'd be talk, but times have changed; folk here in Overford think it's old-fashioned. Skip it nowadays and no one blinks an eye, let alone gossips about it, and you know how we Overfordians love to gossip. Do you think someone's forcing her?'

'Who's got that sort of power?'

'If she were an ordinary girl, I'd say everyone and the miller's donkey,' Garth replied. 'But seeing as it's her-'

'Indeed.' Dean Porfirio, head of the Overford Academy and the third member of the wandering party, gave a fond smile. 'I've always said that Ethelberthina Eyebright is a most exceptional child.'

'A twelve-year-old who counts a couple of retired sellswords and a wizard as her best friends? Yes, I'd call that exceptional, all right.' Zoli adjusted the set of her armored bodice and spat into the reeds.

'The richest twelve-year-old in Overford and half the dukedom 'round,' the wizard added.

'Maybe she's doing it because someone promised her a nice Maiden Morn present,' Garth conjectured.

Zoli stopped, spun around, and hollered in his face: 'Would you listen to yourself? She can buy her own presents! There's no reason she has to endure this stupid Midden Morn nonsense if-'

'Maiden Morn,' Dean Porfirio corrected her, steepling his fingertips and nodding in that sage manner that so many wizards affected. Even while matching Garth and Zoli stride for stride, he still managed to convey the impression that he was back in his office, sunk deep in a comfortable armchair, delivering an instructive speech to wayward students. 'A singular, local custom whose origins are lost in the mists of antiquity.'

'Like us,' Zoli grumbled. It was that legendarily darkest of all hours, the one that came just before the dawn, and nature had decided to add to the travellers' problems by casting a thick blanket of fog across their path. 'We never should've agreed to call for you this morning. A wizard ought to be able to get himself out of bed and off to his appointments. I know the path from our house to the Iron River blindfolded, but from Overford Academy it's another story.' She scowled at Dean Porfirio. 'The only way we're going to find the river now is if we fall into it.'

'We can't be late,' Garth said. He sounded worried. 'We've got to find the toll bridge, or at least the ford. The ritual's going to be held on the town side, and if we're not there soon, we won't be able to see a thing!'

'What's there to see?' Zoli wanted to know.