Myth-Chief by Robert Asprin & Jody Lynn Nye & Phil Foglio

Author:Robert Asprin & Jody Lynn Nye & Phil Foglio [Asprin, Robert & Nye, Jody Lynn & Foglio, Phil]
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780809572779
Publisher: Wildside Press
Published: 2009-05-26T23:40:38+00:00

Myth - Chief

“Sounds kind of marginal to me,” I said. “Around here, ten gold coins is nothing.” I started to turn back. “Maybe we could just make do with ten percent. Or five.”

“Hold it right there, Hot Pants,” Massha said, dragging me back by my arm. “Don't let your heart get in the way of the real reason we did that. Hermalaya needs the bucks, and you don't want anyone to get the idea that you're a pushover. You handled one difficult situation pretty well. Let's go back to Bunny and turn in this money. We're do-ing pretty darned well right now. Don't forget that.”

We went back and handed over the funds.

Bunny tilted her head as we explained the day's work.

'I wonder if you should get credit for the subsidiary rights, Skeeve,“ she said. ”No offense, but you didn't strike the bargain."

I felt my face go scarlet, but she was right. I couldn't take Massha's glory away from her. “Okay,” I said. “Chalk that contract up to experience. Hermalaya gets the money no matter who gets credit for it.”

“No,” Massha said. “It's his. We work as a team in the field, Bunny. We always have, We play off each other's strengths and weaknesses. I was there. I just jumped in. He would have gotten around Hepzibiltah in the end, but he was starting off from the wrong place, and it would have taken a much longer time. I just cut through some of the thicket. He did finish off the negotiation in the end.”

Bunny smiled at her. The two of them had become very good friends over the years. “Okey-dokey,” she said. “I get it.”

I breathed a sigh of relief as she inked in the profit un-der my name. In spite of setbacks and disappointments, I was collecting a pretty impressive sum. I just wondered what other booby traps Aahz was setting for me. I might have to lay a surprise or two of my own.

TWENTY-FOUR

“Come on,” I said, pulling Dervina along with me through the dank, chilly corridor of the Foxe-Swampburg castle. Centuries of Hermalaya's ancestors glared down at me from fancy gold frames in between sconces giving off a faint, blue light. “He'll be glad to see you.”

“But aren't we expected?” the Gnome asked. The fussy little creature kept tapping her fingertips together over her little round midsection.

“Constantly,” I assured him.

Most of the hallway was deserted, now that about half the servants and almost all the courtiers had been dis-missed, I knew where we were going, because I could see the two guards flanking the door two-thirds of the way up the hall. Dervina looked nervous as we passed them, which I put down to the local livery. Over their already feral faces, the guards wore helmets of bronze cast into the like-ness of insane wolves with slavering jaws and anatomi-cally correct dentition, giving each of them almost as fearsome a snarl as a Pervect. The fur cloaks over their shoulders looked like they might have been skinned off the backs of defeated enemies.

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