The Tawalf who had spoken first had been watching Nita. Now it laughed, a nasty ratchety sound. “You won’t do it,” it said. “Wizards! Everybody knows you were always weaklings, afraid to lose your power by using it the wrong way. And now, after all these centuries of being so nicey-nice, you’re losing it anyway! So you’re finished running things in this universe! And your people are through running this place,” it said to Sker’ret, “and controlling all the wealth and power that flows through here. It’s up to the smart ones and the strong ones now to take what they want.”
“What we want,” said another of the Tawalf.
The rest of the crowd behind them started to join in that nasty snickering noise. Nita’s fingers clenched on the accelerator in anger.
“I dislike this necessity,” Sker’ret said. “But if psychotropic spelling is required to restore the Crossings to its normal function—”
“Sker’, let me,” Nita said. “I don’t like it, either, but maybe I have a way to—”
“Guys,” Carmela said. “Wait a sec.”
Nita and Sker’ret looked at her.
“You get more honey with flies,” Carmela said, and then paused. “Wait a minute, that’s not how it goes. Never mind. Here—”
She reached over her back into the little bag she was wearing, and felt around. The Tawalf watched her with some curiosity.
Then one of them, the one who had spoken first, made a strange sniffing noise—and so did its second-in-command. The two of them stared at Carmela with a sudden total concentration that made Nita raise the accelerator and get ready to fire.
Carmela withdrew something from her bag. It was thin and black, a long slim rectangle with a glint of gold at the ends. She held it up where all the Tawalf could see it.
“I have here,” she said in very clear and New York–accented Speech, “a new bar of Valrhona Caraïbe Single-Estate Grand Cru.”
Nita looked in astonishment from Carmela to the Tawalf. Their eyes, already prominent enough, actually started to bug out of their heads.
“Very aromatic,” Carmela said, waving the chocolate bar under her nose. “Long in the mouth… nice overflavors of candied orange and smoky vanilla. Maybe just a hint of cappuccino.” She waved it at them. “Sorry, guys, help me out here. I don’t know where your nose or whatever you smell with is. Are.”
The two foremost Tawalf each reached out a tentative, spindly magenta foreleg. Carmela waved the chocolate bar cautiously under each one.
The first Tawalf made a grab for it, but not quickly enough. Carmela had already snatched the bar back, and Nita had the accelerator trained on his head.
“Ah, ah, ah,” Carmela said. “Hasty hasty. This is yours, all yours… for a price.” She glanced sideways at Nita.
“Information,” Nita said. “You heard what we asked you.”
“Oh, they’re going to have to tell you a lot more than just what you asked them,” Carmela said, waving the chocolate gently under her nose and gazing thoughtfully at the Tawalf. “You’re going to answer all this nice Rirhait’s questions, aren’t you, boys? Or girls. Or whatever. And when you’ve done that, you can form yourselves a little syndicate, and I’ll give that syndicate free title to… this.”
She held up the chocolate bar.
Every single Tawalf stared at it. Nita and Sker’ret spared each other one sidewise glance.
“We can’t!” squeaked one of the Tawalf in the back.
“Our contracts!” moaned another.
“Oh, come on,” Carmela said. “Your ‘contracts’! Like you expect me to believe that somebody actually paid you this much to come in here and take this place over? I really doubt it.” She snickered. “If someone had given the whole bunch of you the value of even half of this, you’d be the highest-paid mercenaries the universe ever saw!” Carmela waved the chocolate bar in the Tawalf’s direction again.
They swayed toward it as if it had the gravitation of a micro–black hole. Nita raised the accelerator again. The Tawalf saw the look in her eye and swayed back. “But no one’s paid you anything like that much,” Carmela said. “So just think. You cooperate with my friends here, and I’m sure they’ll do what they can to see to it that the authorities here treat you fairly. And afterward, when you’ve paid your debt to society, or whatever your species pays its debts to, on the day they let you all go, they give you … this.”
There was a long, long silence.
Then the Tawalf leader said, “No.”
Nita and Sker’ret gave each other another glance at the sound of the scratchy muttering that started to go up from behind the leader.
“Oh, my,” Carmela said. “That’s too bad. Just think what you all could have had!” She glanced past the Tawalf leader to the others behind him. “But just because he got stubborn— Well. Now I’m just going to have to do… this.”
She moved the chocolate bar to her left hand, and very, very slowly, moved her right hand toward it. Carmela took hold of the outer black paper wrapper between finger and thumb. Ever so gently she started to pull on the paper, as if to unwrap it.
“No!” at least half the Tawalf screeched. And the second-in-command shouted, “You’ll ruin it!”
“Right here in front of you,” Carmela said. “While you watch. And with the greatest possible pleasure.” She smiled ever so sweetly. “I’m going to pull the wrapping off, and shred it. I’m going to rip off the foil and crumple it up into a little ball. And then I’m going to take the unspeakably valuable stuff inside … and I am going to break it up into those nice little squares… and I am going to eat… it… all.”
The leader of the Tawalf began to whimper. His second-in-command exchanged meaningful glances with the others.
“The information,” Carmela said.
The noise level among the Tawalf began to increase.
“You can have a moment to think,” Carmela said, and turned away. Nita and Sker’ret stayed as they were, facing the increasingly shaken Tawalf, though Sker’ret turned a few of his eyes toward Carmela.
“And without even laying a finger on them,” Nita said under her breath. “I’m impressed.”
“Yeah, well, it’s just the usual problem with aliens and chocolate,” Carmela said, very amused. “Is it a collectible, or a controlled substance? Or both? And whichever way the species sees it, it’s always worth a lot more in the original packaging.”
“This is cruel,” Sker’ret said. His tone, like Nita’s, was one of reluctant admiration. “I’m not sure you’re not speeding up entropy somewhat.”
“I’d say they had it coming,” Carmela said, “since they seem to have done a fair amount of speeding it up around here themselves.”
The muttering among the Tawalf got louder. Nita, watching the leader and his second-in-command as their subordinates pressed in around them, got the idea that greed, fear, and peer pressure were operating among the aliens in entirely too human a manner. Finally, the noise began to die down a little. Nita glanced at Sker’ret. “Well?” Sker’ret said.
The Tawalf leader’s voice, when he spoke, was surprisingly small. “All right,” he said. “We’ll tell you what you want to know. If we have your word as wizards that you will comply with the agreement as it’s been presented.”
“Oh, yeah, all of a sudden the nicey-niceness of wizards becomes a good thing,” Nita said, though not so far under her breath that she couldn’t be heard.
The look that Sker’ret flashed her was equally ironic, but they were of the same mind. “In the Powers’ names, and the Name of That which They serve,” Sker’ret said, “and as the Crossings’ legal representative present, I give my word.”