That brought me to the question that had been nagging at my mind since I started this wild chase.
"If you don't mind me asking, why didn't you just change into mist and drift away? We could never have caught you then."
Vic gave a short, bitter laugh.
"Do you know how rough it is to turn into mist? Well, you're a magician. Maybe you do know. Anyway, you might as well know the truth. I'm not much in the magic department… in fact, I'm pretty much a bust as a vampire. I can't even change all the way into a bat! These wings are the best I've been able to do. That's why I was looking for a new life in the Bazaar. I'd rather be a first-class anything than a third-rate vampire. I mean, I don't even like blood!"
"You should meet my bodyguard." I grinned despite myself. "He's a gangster who's allergic to garlic."
"Garlic? I love garlic."
I opened my mouth to offer him Guido's job, then shut it rapidly. If this character was half as desperate as he sounded, he'd probably take the offer seriously and accept, and then where would I be? All we needed to complete our menagerie was a magic-poor vampire.
"Well," I said instead, "I guess that answers all my questions except one. Now that you know we aren't trying to kill you, are you ready to quit running and face the music?"
The vampire gnawed his lower lip as he thought.
"You're sure it will be all right?"
"I can't say for sure until I talk to my partner," I admitted, "but I'm pretty sure things will be amenable. The main problem is to get the murder charges against him dropped… which I think we've already accomplished. As for you, I think the only thing they could have against you is false arrest, and there's no way Aahz will press charges on that one."
"Why not?"
I gave him my best grin.
"Because if he did, we couldn't take you back to Deva to deal with the swindling charge. Believe me, if given a chance between revenge and saving money, you can trust Aahz to be forgiving every time."
Vic thought about it for a few more moments, then shrugged.
"Embarrassment I'm used to dealing with, and I think I can beat the swindling rap. C'mon, Skeeve. Let's get this thing over with."
Having finally reached a truce, however temporary, we descended together to face the waiting crowd.
Chapter Twenty
"There's no accounting for taste!"
"BUT Skeeve…"
BANG!
"…I told you before…"
BANG! BANG!
"… I could never abandon Matt…"
BANG!
"… he's my partner!"
BANG.'BANG!
"But Lu…"
BANG!
"… excuse me. HEY, PARTNER! COULD YOU KNOCK OFF THE HAMMERING FOR A MINUTE? I'M TRYING TO HAVE A CONVERSATION HERE!"
"Not a chance," Aahz growled around his mouthful of nails. "I'm shutting this door permanently before anything else happens. But tell you what, I'll try to hammer quietly."
If you deduce from all this that we were back at our place on Deva, you're right. After some long, terse conversations with the citizens of Blut and fond farewells to Vilhelm and Pepe, our whole crew, including our three captives, had trooped back to the castle and through the door without incident.
I had hoped to have a few moments alone with Luanna, but, after several attempts, the best I had been able to manage was this conversation in the reception room under the watchful eyes of Aahz and Matt.
Matt, incidentally, turned out to be a thoroughly unpleasant individual with a twisted needle-nose, acne, a receding hairline, and the beginnings of a beer-belly. For the life of me, I couldn't figure out what Luanna saw in him.
"But that was when you thought he was in a jam," I said, resuming the argument. "Aahz and I have already promised to help defend him and Vic when they go before the Merchants Association. There's no need to stand by him yourself."
"I don't understand you, Skeeve," Luanna declared, shaking her head. "If I wouldn't leave Matt when he was in trouble, why should I leave him when things look like they're going to turn out okay? I know you don't like him, but he's done all right by me so far… and I still owe him for getting me away from the farm."
"But we're making you a good offer," I tried again desperately. "You can stay here and work for Aahz and me, and if you're interested we could even teach you some real magic so you don't have to…"
She stopped me by simply laying a hand on my arm.
"I know it's a good offer, Skeeve, and it's nice of you to make it. But for the time being I'm content to stay with Matt. Maybe sometime in the future, when I have a little more to offer you in return, I'll take you up on it… if the deal's still open." "Well," I sighed, "if that's really what you want…"
"Hey! Don't take it so hard, buddy," Matt laughed, clapping his hand on my shoulder. "You win some, you lose some. This time you lost. No hard feelings. Maybe you'll have better luck with the next one. We're both men of the world, and we know one broad's just like any other."
"Matt, buddy" I said through clenched teeth, "get that hand off my shoulder before it loses a body."
As I said, even on our short trip back from Limbo I had been so under whelmed by Matt that I no longer even bothered trying to be polite or mask my dislike for him. He could grate on my nerves faster than anyone I had ever met. If he was a successful con artist, able to inspire trust from total strangers, then I was the Queen of May.
"Matt's just kidding," Luanna soothed, stepping between us.
"Well I'm not," I snarled. "Just remember you're welcome here any time you get fed up with this slug."
"Oh, I imagine we'll be together for quite some time," Matt leered, patting Luanna lightly on her rump. "With you big shots vouching for us we should be able to beat this swindling rap… and even if we lose, so what? All it means is I'll have to give them back their crummy twenty gold pieces."
Aahz's hammering stopped abruptly… or maybe it was my heart.
I tried vainly to convince myself that I hadn't heard him right.
"Twenty gold pieces?" I said slowly.
"Yeah. They caught on to us a lot quicker here at the Bazaar than I thought they would. It wasn't much of a haul even by my standards. I can't get over the fact that you big shots went through so much trouble to drag us back here over a measly twenty gold pieces. There must be more to this principle thing than I realized."
"Ummm… could I have a word with you, partner?" Aahz said, putting down his hammer.
"I was about to ask the same thing," I admitted, stepping to the far side of the room.
Once we were alone, we stared at each other, neither wanting to be the first to speak.
"You never did get around to asking Hay-ner how much was at stake, did you?" Aahz sighed absently.
"That's the money side of negotiations and I thought you covered it," I murmured. "Funny, we both stood right there the whole time and heard every word that was said, and neither of us caught that omission."
"Funny. Right. I'm dying." My partner grimaced.
"Not as much as you will if word of this gets out," I warned. "I vote that we give them the money to pay it off. I don't want to, but it's the only way I can think of to keep this thing from becoming public knowledge."
"Done." Aahz nodded. "But let me handle it. If Matt the Rat there gets wind of the fact that the whole thing was a mistake on our part, he'd probably blackmail us for our eyeteeth."
"Right, "I agreed.
With that, we, the two most sought-after, most highly-paid magicians at the Bazaar, turned to deal with our charges, reminded once more why humility lies at the core of greatness.