Myth 13 - Myth Alliances by Asprin, Robert (ebook reader online free .txt) 📕

“Truly, we would enjoy that,” Zol agreed. “I would love a cup of tea, and it would give me great pleasure to sample Wuhs cuisine.”

That evoked a loud clamor from the crowd. All the restaurateurs begged us to dine in their various establish?ments. At a frantic signal from Wensley I realized that I'd

cause a political backlash if I chose one inn over all the rest, but we couldn't eat in all of them.

“Good friends,” I declared, smiling at the dozens of ex?pectant faces, “we are strangers in your town. Would you choose for us?”

Myth 13 - Myth Alliances

SIX

"If you can't say anything nice,

don't say anything at all."

Ñ d. rickles

The resulting non-​argument about where to eat might have been entertaining to watch, but it stretched on for hours. By the time they decided who would have the honor of hosting us, night had fallen.

“That's it, then!” Gubbeen announced, waking us all out of the bored doze we had fallen into. He came over to us, rubbing his hands together. He was still smiling, but he looked tired. “We will all go to Montgomery's Tavern, where you will sample the average in Wuhs cuisine! You will be our guests.”

“But if we are hiring them to help us,” an earnest female in spectacles put in, “then properly, they are our guests, but the cost of meals ought to be accounted for as part of their fee.”

Another overly polite discussion started. “Hold it!” I in?sisted, stopping the argument before it began again. “We'll pay for ourselves. We'll negotiate the fee separately, once we see how serious the situation is.”

“You didn't set the fee up front?” Tananda asked me in a whisper, as eager hands reached out to pull us towards a brightly lit doorway up ahead.

“Uh, no,” I admitted, feeling guilty.

A green eyebrow climbed up her flawless brow. “What if they don't have any money?”

“Well, we can't just leave them under the thumbs of ten Perverts!”

“Just watch me,” Tananda asserted, flicking her middle finger against her thumb. “Nobody's dead. Nobody's starv?ing. Your services have value. You can't just run a major freebie like that. If word got back to the Bazaar...”

I opened my mouth to say that I was retired, but that wasn't true either: I was on sabbatical, as I'd told Wensley ... as I'd told everybody. Some day I would be finished with my studies ... and I didn't know what I wanted to do then. Tananda was right: if I went back to the Bazaar and rumors had gone around that I was giving away my talents for free I'd be flooded with applicants wanting me to take on ridiculously petty tasks, or epic heroics with no hope of remuneration. It had happened before.

“I... I...”

“Don't worry, Skeeve,” Bunny assured me, planting a palm in my chest as she passed by me to go first into the brightly lit restaurant. I stopped, the breath knocked out of me. Bunny works out. She is very strong. “This is my job. I'll take care of it.”

Montgomery's Tavern would not have been called a tav?ern in any other dimension I'd ever visited. It served liquor and spirits, as well as a simple dinner menu, but since it suffered from a total lack of smoke, graffiti, bar fights or drunks, it put me more in mind of a tea room, the kind in the town near my father's farm that my mother visited when she and her fellow teachers held a meeting on a rest-​day. Montgomery's was so orderly and neat I wondered how anyone could relax in it.

“It's a fern bar,” Tananda observed, belting down one drink and signaling for another. “I'd love another one of these lemonades,” she smiled at the innkeeper, a stout Wuhs with ruddy curls.

“I hope you're not finding our citrus martinis too strong,” Montgomery said, filling her glass from a pitcher.

“Not a bit,” Tananda said, monitoring her drink care?fully. Montgomery stopped pouring. Tananda cleared her throat meaningfully. With a startled glance, he filled her glass to the top. “That's better. You might as well leave the pitcher. Thank you, you handsome man.” When Mont?gomery went back to polishing the shiny wooden bar, Tananda shook her head. “They'd get thrown out of the Bazaar for watering their drinks. There's hardly any alco?hol in these at all. I'll have to visit the necessary about six times before I ever get a decent buzz.”

That lack made little difference to me. I was intent on nursing one beer throughout the evening so my head would be clear.

And I needed all of my clarity. Now that they had a champion to save them from their conquerors, the committeefriends of Pareley decided to hold a secret meeting to discuss how they wanted us to do it. Wensley introduced representatives from each of the kingdom's fifteen com?mittees. For people who never fought, these Wuhses sure managed to make agreeing sound like an unresolvable blood feud, even though they never spoke directly to one another, or uttered a single harsh word.

“My learned friend,” orated Wigmore, the chairman of the Committee for Public Health, "probably didn't hear me very well when I explained my position. I know he would concur with all of my points if he had. The absence of in?fluence of a legitimate democratic system in Pareley is deleterious to the well-​being of every Wuhs. It is therefore a