MA10 Sweet Myth-tery of Life Page 5

  He passed me the scroll he had been clutching and I realized he had actually been thinking out this suggestion well in advance.

  “Funny name for a soldier,” I said, scanning the document. “Spyder.”

  “Trust me, Boss,” Guido pressed. “This is the person for the job.”

  “You said there were two things?” I stalled. “What’s the other?”

  “Well, I thought you could have a couple personal envoys tag along. You know, reportin’ directly to you. That way you could be doubly sure the army wasn’t hidin’ anything from you.”

  “I see,” I said, toying with the scroll. “And I suppose you have a couple specific people in mind for the envoys, as well?”

  “Um ... As a matter of fact ...”

  “I don’t know, Guido,” I said, shaking my head. “I mean, it’s a good idea, but I’m not sure I can spare both you and Nunzio. If nothing else, I want Nunzio to do a little work with Gleep. I want to find out for sure if there’s anything wrong with him.”

  “Ah ... Actually, Boss,” my bodyguard said, carefully studying his massive hands, “I wasn’t thinkin’ of Nunzio. I was thinkin’ maybe Pookie and me could handle it.”

  More than anything else he had said, this surprised me. Guido and his cousin Nunzio had always worked as a team, to a point where I practically thought of the two of them as one person. The fact that Guido was willing to split the team up was an indication of how concerned he was over the situation. Either that or a sign of how far he was willing to go to get some time alone with Pookie.

  “Really, Boss,” he urged, sensing my hesitation. “There ain’t a whole lot to do here for three bodyguards. I mean, the way I see it, the only one here in the castle who might want to do you any bodily harm is the Queen herself, and I don’t think you have to worry about her until after you’ve made up your mind on the marriage thing. I’m just lookin’ for a way that we can earn our keep ... something useful to do.”

  That did it. His point about reassigning my bodyguards played smack into my current thinking about trimming the team or expanding their duties. Then, too, I wasn’t eager to prolong any discussion which involved my making up my mind about what to do about Hemlock.

  “Okay, Guido,” I said, scribbling my signature across the bottom of the scroll. “You’ve got it. Just be sure to keep me posted as to what’s going on.”

  “Thanks, Boss,” he grinned, taking the scroll and looking at the signature. “You won’t regret this.”

  It hadn’t occurred to me at all that I might regret it ... until he mentioned it. I mean, what could go wrong?

  THOUGH THE VARIOUS administrative hassles of trying to straighten out Possiltum’s finances weighed heavily on my mind, there was another, bigger worry that ran like an undercurrent through my head whenever I was awake.

  Should I or shouldn’t I marry Queen Hemlock?

  Aahz kept saying that I should go along with it, become the royal consort with an easy (not to mention well paying) job for life. I had to admit, in many ways it looked more attractive than having her abdicate and ending up holding the bag for running the kingdom all by myself. I had that “opportunity” once before courtesy of the late King Roderick, and really didn’t want to repeat the experience.

  So why was I dragging my feet on making my decision?

  Mostly, my indecision was due to my reluctance to accept the obvious choice. As much as I was repelled by the known quantity of being king, I was as much or more terrified of the unknown factors involved in marriage.

  Time and time again, I tried to sort out if it was the idea of getting married that scared me, or if it was Queen Hemlock specifically that I couldn’t picture as my wife.

  My wife!

  Every time that phrase crossed my mind, it was like an icy hand grabbed my heart hard enough to make it skip a beat.

  Frankly, I was having trouble picturing anyone I knew in that role. In an effort to get a handle on my feelings, I forced myself to review the women of my acquaintance in that light.

  Massha, my apprentice, was out of the question. While we were close enough as friends, as well as teacher/student, her sheer size was intimidating. The truth was I had trouble thinking of her as a woman. Oh, I knew she was female all right, but I tended to see her as a friend who was female ... not as a female, if you can see the difference.

  Bunny ... well, I supposed that she could be considered a candidate. The problem there was that she was the first woman who had made a solid pass at me, and it had scared me to death. When her uncle, Don Bruce, first dumped her on me, she was all set to playa gangster’s moll. Once I got her straightened out, however, she had settled into being my administrative assistant like a duck takes to water, and the question of anything intimate developing between us never came up again. Thinking of her in terms of a life partner would mean completely restructuring how I viewed her and worked with her, and right now she was far too valuable as my assistant for me to rock the boat.

  Tananda ... I had to smile at the thought of the Trollop assassin as my wife. Oh, she was friendly enough, not to mention very attractive, and for a long time I had a crush on her. It eventually became apparent, however, that the hugs and kisses she bestowed on me were no different than those she gave the rest of the team ... including her brother Chumley. She was just a physically friendly person, and the affection she showed me was that shown for a co-worker, or maybe a kid brother. I could accept that, now. Besides, I somehow couldn’t see her giving up her own career to settle down keeping house for me. No, as much as I loved her, Tananda would never fit as my wife. She was ... well, Tananda.

  That left Queen Hemlock, who I had no real feeling for at all except, perhaps a sense of uneasiness every time she was around. She always seemed extremely sure of herself and what she wanted ... which made her almost my exact opposite. Of course, that in itself was an interesting thought. Then, too, she was the only one who had ever expressed a desire to be paired with me ... and seemed to want it badly enough to fight for it. Even Bunny had backed off once I rebuffed her. I had to admit that it did something to a man’s ego to have a woman determined to bag him ... even if he wasn’t all that drawn to the woman in the first place.

  Unfortunately, that was pretty much it for my list of female acquaintances. Oh, there were a few others I had come into contact with over the years, like Markie ... and Luanna ...

  Luanna!!

  She had almost slipped my mind completely, but once I thought of her, her face sprang into focus as if she were standing in front of me. Luanna. Lovely Luanna. Our paths had only crossed a couple times, most notably during my adventure in the dimension of Limbo, and the last time we met the parting hadn’t been pleasant. In short, I really didn’t know her at all. Still, in many ways, she epitomized everything that was feminine in my mind. Not only did she radiate a soft, vulnerable beauty, her manner was demure. That may not seem like much to you, but it was to me. You see, most of the women I work with can only be called aggressive ... or, less politely, brassy. Even Hemlock, for all her regal blood, was very straightforward about stating her mind and wishes. Bunny had cooled it a bit, once I got her off her moll kick, but had replaced her blatant suggestiveness with a brusque efficient manner that, at times, could be every bit as intimidating as her old sex kitten routine.

  In contrast, Luanna always seemed very shy and hesitant in my presence. Her voice was usually quiet to a point I sometimes had to strain to hear her, and she had a habit of looking down, then peering up at me through her lashes ... as if she felt I could bully her physically or verbally, but trusted me not to. I can’t speak for other men, but it always made me feel ten feet tall ... very powerful and with an overwhelming urge to use that strength to protect her from the hardships of the world.

  Thinking of her while trying to appraise what I would want in a wife, I found myself dwelling on the image of finding her waiting for me at the cl
ose of each day ... and realized the image wasn’t all that objectionable. In fact, once she surfaced in my memory, I found myself thinking of her quite a bit whenever I tried to sort out my current position, and more than occasionally wished I could see her again before I had to make my final decision.

  As it turned out, I got my wish.

  I was in my room, making another of my feeble attempts to make head or tail of the stack of spread sheets that Bunny and Grimble kept passing me on an almost daily basis. As those of you who have been following these adventures from the beginning may recall, I can read ... or, at least, I had thought that I could. Since undertaking the task of sorting out the kingdom’s finances, however, I had found out that reading text, which is to say, words, is a lot different than being able to read numbers.

  I mean, we were all in agreement as to our goal, which was to eliminate or lessen the kingdom’s debt load without either placing a staggering tax burden on the populace or cutting so much off the operating budget that the necessary administrative operations became non-functional. As I say, we were all in agreement ... verbally ... with words. Any time there was a disagreement between Grimble and Bunny on particulars, however, and they came to me to cast the deciding vote or make a decision, they would each invariably support their side of the argument by passing me one or more of those cryptic sheets covered with numbers and not much else, then wait expectantly as I scanned it, as if their case had just become self-explanatory.

  Now, for those of you who have never been placed in this situation, let me offer a little clarification. When I say I can’t read numbers, I don’t mean that I can’t decipher the symbols. I know what a two is and what it stands for and how it differs from, say, an eight. The problem I was confronted with in these arguments was trying to see them in relation to each other. To do a word analogy, if the numbers were words, both Bunny and Grimble could look at a page full of numbers and see sentences and paragraphs, complete with subtleties and innuendos, whereas I would look at the same page and see a mass of unrelated, individual words. This was particularly uncomfortable when they would pass me two pages of what to them was a mystery novel, and ask my opinion on who the killer was.

  Even though I knew they knew I was a numeric illiterate, I had gotten awfully tired of saying “Duh, I don’t know” in varying forms, and, in an effort to salvage a few shreds of my self-respect, had taken to saying instead “Let me look these over and get back to you.” Unfortunately, this meant that at any specific point in time, I had a batch of these “mystery sheets” on my desk that I felt obligated to at least try to make sense of.

  Anyhow, that’s what I was doing when a knock came at my door. In short, I was feeling inept, frustrated, and desperately in need of diversion.

  “Yes?” I called eagerly, hoping beyond hope that it was news of an earthquake or attacking army or something equally disastrous that would require my immediate attention. “Who is it?”

  The door opened, and Massha’s head appeared.

  “You busy, Hot Stuff?” she said with the respect and deference she always shows me as my apprentice. “You’ve got a visitor.”

  “Nothing that can’t wait,” I replied, hastily stacking the offensive spreadsheets and replacing them in their customary spot on the corner of my desk. “Who’s the visitor?”

  “It’s Luanna. You remember, the babe who almost got us killed over in Limbo?”

  In hindsight, I can see that Massha was both expressing her disapproval and trying to warn me with her description of Luanna, but at the time it didn’t register at all.

  “Luanna?” I said, beaming with delight. “Sure, bring her in. Better yet, send her in.”

  “Don’t worry,” Massha sniffed, disdainfully. “I wouldn’t dream of intruding on your little tete-a-tete.”

  Again, her reaction escaped my notice. I was far too busy casting about the room quickly to be sure it was presentable ... which, of course, it was. If nothing else, the maid service in the castle was stellar.

  And she was there ... standing in my room, as lovely and winsome as I remembered.

  “Uh ... Hi, Luanna,” I said, suddenly at a loss for words.

  “Skeeve,” she said in that soft, low voice that seemed to make the simplest statements an exercise in eloquence.

  We looked at each other in silence for a few moments.

  Then, suddenly, it occurred to me that the last time we saw each other, she had left in a huff under the misapprehension that I was married and had a kid.

  “About the last …” I began.

  “I’m sorry about …” she stated simultaneously.

  We both broke off abruptly, then looked at each other and laughed.

  “Okay. You first,” I said finally, with a half bow.

  “I just wanted to apologize for the way I acted the last time we were together. What I heard later from the rumor mill at the Bazaar convinced me that things weren’t what they seemed at the time, and I felt terrible about not having given you a chance to explain. I should have looked you up sooner to say how sorry I was, but I wasn’t sure you’d even want to talk to me again. I ... I only hope you can forgive me ... even though there’s no real reason you should ...”

  Her voice trailed off as she dropped her eyes.

  Looking the way she did, so demure, so defenseless, I could have forgiven her for being a mass murderess, much less for any minor misunderstanding between us.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said, in what I hoped was an offhand manner. “Truth to tell, Luanna, I was about to apologize to you. It must have been terrible for you ... coming to me for help and walking into the ... ah ... situation you did. I’ve been thinking that I should have handled it a lot better than I did.”

  “That’s so sweet of you, Skeeve,” Luanna said, stepping forward to give me a quick hug and a peck of a kiss. “You don’t know how glad I am to hear you say that.”

  Not surprisingly, her brief touch did strange things to my mind ... and metabolism. It was only the second time she had kissed me and the other time I had been into the middle of conning her out of a handkerchief so I could get Aahz out of jail. All of which is to say I was far from immune to her kisses, however casual.

  “So ... ah ... What brings you to Possiltum?” I said, fighting to keep my reactions from showing.

  “Why, you of course.”

  “Me?”

  Despite my feigned surprise, I felt my pulse quicken. I mean, I could have assumed that she was here to see me, but it was nice to have it confirmed that I was the sole purpose of her visit rather than a polite afterthought.

  “Sure. I heard about your new position here, and figured it was too good a chance to pass up.”

  That didn’t sound quite so good.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Oh, I’m getting it all turned around,” she said, cutely annoyed with herself. “What I’m trying to say is that I have a proposal for you.”

  That was better. In fact, it was a little too good to be true. While I had been indulging my fantasies about Luanna as a possible wife, I never dared to think that she might be thinking the same thoughts about me ... as a husband, I mean, not a wife.

  “A proposal?” I said, deliberately stalling to organize my thoughts.

  “That’s right. I figure that you’ve probably got a bit of discretionary funds available now that you’re on the kingdom payroll, and the kind of scams I run have a good return on investment, so I was hoping that I could get a little start-up money from you and ...”

  “Whoa! Stop the music!”

  It had taken a few beats for what she was saying to sink in, obsessed as I was with my own expectations of the conversation. Even now, with my pretty dream-bubble exploding around me, I was having trouble changing gears mentally to focus on what she was actually getting at.

  “Could you back up and take it from the top? You’re here
to ask for money?”

  “Well ... Yes. Not much really ... maybe fifty or seventy-five in gold should do.” she clarified hastily. “The nice thing with scams is they don’t really need much upfront capital.”

  “You mean you want to borrow money from me so you can run a swindle? Here, in Possiltum?”

  The look she leveled on me was, to say the least, cold and appraising. Not at all the coy, shy, averted gaze I was used to from her.

  “Of course. That’s what I do,” she said levelly. “I thought you knew that when you offered me a job. Or are you just miffed because I prefer to operate independently? I suppose this is pretty small potatoes to you, but it’s the best I can do.”

  As she spoke, my mind was racing back over the previous times I had seen or spoken with her. While I was aware then that she was always involved in or running from the results of some swindle or other, I had always assumed that she was a sweet kid who was going along with her partner, Matt. I realized now that I had no basis on which to make that assumption, other than her innocent looks. If fact, beyond her looks, I really didn’t know her at all.

  “Is it?” I said. “Is it really the best you can do?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, couldn’t you do as well or better trying your hand at something legitimate? What if I passed you enough money to start and run a normal business?”

  The last vestige of my idealized fantasies regarding Luanna died as her lip curled in a sneer.

  “You mean run a little shop or grocery store? Me? No thanks. That’s way too much like work. Funny, I always thought that if anyone would understand that, you would. You didn’t get where you are today by hard work and sweat, you did it by fleecing the gullible and flimflamming the ignorant, just like Matt and I did ... just on a larger scale. Of course, we didn’t have a demon helping us along, like you did. Even now, as rich and respectable as you’re supposed to be, I’ll bet you’re pulling down a healthy skim from this kingdom. It’s got to be real easy, what with having the Queen in your pocket and everybody doing whatever you say. All I’m trying to do is to cut myself in for a piece of the action ... and a little piece, at that.”