"Where is Nunzio, anyway?" Massha said, peering around.
"He'll be along in a bit," I smiled. "I had a little errand for him after the game."
"Well, here's to you, Skeeve!" Chumley called, lifting his goblet aloft. "After all our worrying about whether your reputation could survive a match with the Kid, I dare say you came out of it well ahead of where you were before."
"That's right," his sister giggled. "I wonder what the Ax thinks about what happened."
That was the cue I had been waiting for. I took a deep breath and a deeper drink of wine, then assumed my most casual manner.
"Why bother speculating, Tananda? Why not ask direct?"
"What's that, Skeeve?"
"I said, why not ask the Ax directly? After all, she's in the room right now."
The gaiety of the mood vanished in an eyeblink as everybody stared at me.
"Partner," Aahz murmured, "I thought we settled this when we talked to Don Bruce."
I cut him off with the wave of a hand.
"As a matter of fact, I'm a little curious about what the Ax is thinking myself. Why don't you tell us ... Markie?"
My young ward squirmed under the room's combined gaze.
"But, Daddy ... I don't... you ... oh, heck! You figured it out, huh?"
"Uh-huh." I nodded, not feeling at all triumphant.
She heaved a great sigh. "Oh, well. I was about to throw in the towel anyway. I had just hoped I could beat a retreat before my cover was blown. If you don't mind, I'd like to join you in some of that wine now."
"Help yourself."
"MARKIE?!?"
Aahz had finally recovered enough to make noise. Of course, it comes reflexively to him. The others were still working on it.
"Don't let the little-girl looks fool you, Aahz," she winked. "Folks are small and soft on my dimension. In the right clothes, it's easy to pass yourself off as being younger than you really are... lots younger."
"But...but..."
"Think about it for a minute, Aahz," I said. "You had all the pieces the first day. Kids, particularly little girls, are embarrassing at best, trouble at worst. The trick is that you expect them to be trouble, so you don't even consider the possibility that what they're doing could be premeditated and planned."
I paused to take a sip of wine, and for once no one interrupted me with questions.
"If you look back on it, most of the problems we've been having have originated directly or indirectly from Markie. She mouthed off about Bunny being in my bed to get Tananda upset, and when that didn't work she made a few digs about her living here free that got her thinking about leaving... just like she deliberately made Massha look bad in the middle of her magic lesson for the same reason, to get her to leave."
"Almost worked, too," my apprentice observed thoughtfully.
"The business in the Bazaar was no accident, either," I continued. "All she had to do was wait for the right opportunity to pretend to get mad so we wouldn't suspect she was blasting things deliberately. If you recall, she even tried to convince me that I didn't need to take dragon poker lessons."
"Of course," Markie put in, "that's not easy to do when people think you're a kid."
"The biggest clue was Gleep. I thought he was trying to protect me from Bunny, but it was Markie he was really after. I keep telling you that he's smarter than you think."
"Remind me to apologize to your dragon," Aahz said, still staring at Markie.
"It was a good plan," she sighed. "Ninety-nine percent of the time it would have worked. The problem was that everyone underestimated you, Skeeve... you and your friends. I didn't think you'd have enough money to pay off the irate merchants after I did a number on their displays, and your friends ..." She shook her head slowly. "Usually if word gets out that I'm on assignment, it makes my work easier. The target's associates bail out to keep from getting hit in the crossfire, and trying to get them to stay or come back only makes things worse. Part of sinking someone's career is cutting them off from their support network." She raised her wine in a mock toast to me.
"Your friends wouldn't run ... or if they did, they wouldn't stay gone once they heard you were in trouble. That's when I started to have second thoughts about this assignment. I mean, there are some careers that shouldn't be scuttled, and I think yours is one of them. You can take that as a compliment... it's meant as one. That's why I was about to call it quits anyway. I realized my heart just wasn't in my work this time around."
She set down her wine and stood up.
"Well, I guess that's that. I'll go upstairs and pack now. Make you a deal. If you all promise not to tell anyone who the famous Ax is, I'll spread the word that you're so invincible that even the Ax couldn't trip you up. Okay?"
Watching her leave the room, I realized with some surprise that I would miss her. Despite what Aahz had said, it had been kind of nice having a kid around the place.
"That's it?" my partner frowned. "You're just going to let her walk?"
"I was the target. I figure it was my call. Besides, she didn't do any real damage. As Chumley pointed out a second ago, we're further ahead than we were when she arrived."
"Of course, there's the matter of the damages we had to pay for her little magic display at the Bazaar."
For once, I was ahead of my partner when it came to money.
"I haven't forgotten that, Aahz. I just figure to recoup the loss from another source. You see, what finally tipped me off was ... wait. Here they are now."
Nunzio was just coming into the room, dragging the Geek with him.
"Hello, Skeeve," the Deveel said, squirming in my bodyguard's grasp. "Your ... ah, associate here says you wanted to see me?"
"He tried to sneak out after I told him. Boss," Nunzio squeaked. "That's what took me so long."
"Hello, Geek," I purred. "Have a seat. I want to have a little chat with you about a card game."
"C'mon, Skeeve. I already told you ..."
"Sit!"
The Geek dropped into the indicated chair like gravity had suddenly trebled. I had borrowed the tone of voice from Nunzio's dragon-training demonstration. It worked.
"What the Geek was starting to say," I explained, turning to Aahz, "is that before the game tonight he warned me that I was overmatched and asked me not to have any hard feelings... that the game with the Kid wasn't his idea."
"That's right," the Deveel interjected. "Word just got out and..."
"What I'm curious about, however, is how he knew I was out-classed."
I smiled at the Geek, trying to show my teeth the way Aahz does. "You see, I don't want to talk about tonight's game. I was hoping you could give us a little more information about the other game... you know, the one where I won Markie?"
The Deveel glanced nervously around the group of assembled scowls.
"I... I don't know what you mean."
"Let me make it easy for you. At this point I figure the game had to be rigged. That's the only way you would know in advance what a weak dragon poker player I am. Somehow you were throwing hands my way to be sure I won big, big enough to include Markie. I'm just curious how you did it without triggering the magic or telepathy monitors."
The Geek seemed to shrink a little in his chair. When he spoke, his voice was so low we could barely hear him.
"Marked cards," he said.
The room exploded.
"MARKED CARDS??"
"But how..."
"Wouldn't that..."
I waved them back to silence.
"It makes sense. Think about it," I instructed. "Specifically, think back to our trip to Limbo. Remember how hard it was to disguise ourselves without using magic? Everybody at the Bazaar gets so used to things being done magically, they forget there are non-magical ways to do the same things... like false beards, or marked cards."