"Is there a circus in town?"
"Not that I"m aware of, your lordship."
"Too bad. Might have added to the Mid-Summer Festival, what?" He frowned at me, then noticed Debreban. "h.e.l.lo, Captain. What are you doing here?"
"Just visiting with my friend, your lordship." Debreban nodded at Shankey.
"Good to see everyone getting along. And howis Lord Cadmus?"
"He"s very well, your lordship."
"Excellent, excellent. Well, carry on, then." He moved out of the way. Shankey and Debreban closed ranks next to me.
Once Perdle was out of earshot, Debreban snickered. "Did yousee his face?"
"Thatwas funny."
"Not to me it wasn"t," I put in. Just to remind them I was there. Neither chose to respond. Maybe Icould get a job here as wallpaper.
"Why ishe here, though?" wondered Shankey.
"Who knows?"
"Overduke Anton. He"ll have word about this little encounter ten minutes from now. Perdle repeats everything to him."
"Why should the overduke bother about me?" asked Debreban. "I told the truth. Iam visiting."
"He"ll figure Lord Cadmus sent you over, then think up ten good reasons why, even if they aren"t true."
"The first one will be. Everyone knows my lord"s interest in your lady. I wish she"d accept his suit and they"d both settle down."
"Don"t worry, we"ll hatch out some kind of plan. Come on, let"s get this over with." Shankey tapped three times on one of the doors, two quick, one slow, and they opened. The pages were still there, now able to have a clear view of the Myhr and Two Stooges show.
The big room beyond had a blue theme all through it, but not in such a way as to bore you. Tall windows allowed in plenty of light and air. The floor was a large-scale mosaic in a hundred shades of polished blue stone; the ceiling was always summer with a painted sky full of fluffy clouds. Very oddly, smack in the center of the room, was a circular pavilion-style tent made of black velvet. The top was suspended from a ceiling rafter like some kind of fabric chandelier. Maybe it was a bed chamber of some sort.
Then I noticedher and the whole room just melted away.
I didn"t know they made them like that any more, sort of an Elizabeth Taylor crossed with Josephine Baker type. There was no way to see her all at once; she was a series of quick, intense perceptions that hit me all over. I wanted to root myself to the floor and stay for a few years to absorb every nuance of this feminine phenomenon.
Eyes, the kind that grab you, beat you up, yet you keep coming back for more. They were a pale crystal blue that made the blues of the room look like so much sludge. To call them living gems leaned toward insult.
Her skin was like honey on cinnamon. I wanted to taste it, to find out whether that smooth-looking texture was as sweet and spicy as it appeared.
And her figure . . . it was seven or eight miles beyondwow . I could have written symphonies just on her breathing alone.
Yes, I drooled. On the inside. Outside, I just stood and gaped a lot. My brain had disconnected, the speech centers shut down, but other parts of me were very much up, alive, active, and real happy. If I didn"t start thinking baseball scores soon she"d be able to tell whether or not I"d been circ.u.mcised.
"Captain Shankey?" she said.
Ohh, I could float to Tahiti on that voice. "My lady," he responded briskly, bowing.
Howcould the guy act like nothing extraordinary was in front of him?
"My lady"-he straightened-"here is the . . . theperson you wished to see. Mr. Myhr."
She nodded. Man, she could give lessons to queens on how to get it right. Regal clothes, too; her long, dark blue gown seemed painted on, hugging her every move.
Rowhr-rowhr. And then some.
Shankey looked at me. "This is the Lady Filima Botello Darmo of House Darmo."
I had just enough brains still working to know what was expected and swept into a low bow. "An honor, lady." The gesture earned me a small smile. Woo hoo.
"Thank you," she said. "You may remove your mask if you will."
Shankey cleared his throat and shot me a narrow-eyed warning. "My lady, he"s not wearing a mask.
That"s hisface ."
She stared for a full minute. It seemed that long. No one else moved the whole time, either. "You"re kidding." Her dulcet tones jarred with abruptly informal speech.
"Uh . . . no, my lady."
Then she stepped close enough so I could feel her breath and inhale it for my own. She"d been eating fruit. Strawberries. Sweet ones. Mmmm.
"You"renot kidding." She reached up and yanked on my nose, jolting me from my Strawberry Fields Forever fog.
"Ow!" I said, backing away. "That"s attached, if you don"t mind."
"You"re. Not. Kidding!" She drew back as well. "Whatare you?"
I flared my lip whiskers, annoyed. "I"m a who, not a what, and the name has been mentioned. Myhr.
Rhymes withpurr ."
"Show respect," Shankey muttered through his teeth.
"Where are you from?" Filima went on, oblivious to him.
"Dallas." There was no recognition of the name from any of them, so I could a.s.sume no equivalent city was in this world. "Dallas, Texas? As in deep-in-the-heart-of?"
"Texas? Where"s that?" she demanded.
"It"s a long way from here, a whole other country if you can believe the tourist hype."
"Are all those from Texas like you?" "I don"t know. I haven"t met everyone who lives there yet." Her eyes blazed, sapphires catching the sun.
Amazing. But I couldn"t let them distract me. "It"s my turn. Why did you have me dragged over here?"
"What?"
"Where I come from it"s not considered neighborly to go around kidnapping people. I"ve got nothing against these guys, they"re only doing a job, but I"d like an explanation of why you wanted to see me.
How do you even know me? We"ve never met." I would have remembered. So would she.
She did a wonderful thing with her lips, tucking them in, then pursing them out again. I wanted to do wonderful things with them, too, but the way her eyes went all glower-like the possibility of that seemed remote. "No, we haven"t, but I had . . . knowledge of you all the same."
"Oh, really?"
"And I know thatyou are connected to the h.e.l.l-river." She spoke like a TV lawyer about to crack the star prosecution witness during the cross-examination. Raymond Burr would have been proud. Shankey and Debreban, in the midst of their fly-on-the-wall opportunity, shifted on their feet as though startled.
Apparently a large clue had been thrown out on the nice blue floor.
But it only got a blank reaction from me. "I am?"
"You will tell me everything about it," she said, with much certainty.
Maybe she was talking about that black mist. "I"d love to, but I don"t know anything. Really. I"m just a tourist pa.s.sing through. What gave you the idea that-"
Some invisible sign must have pa.s.sed from her to Shankey. He cuffed the back of my head. "Answer,"
he snarled.
I paused to turn and shoot him a withering look. "Iam . You guys got something against the truth? I don"t know squat except what I saw last night, and that scared the h.e.l.l out of me."
Filima smiled, all s.e.xy triumph. "Youwere able tosee it."
"Yeah, and I wish I hadn"t. You guys have a serious pollution problem here."
"Very, very few others are aware it exists; certainly none of the ordinary folk of Rumpock."
I shrugged. "Well, sometimes a tourist notices things a resident misses. What is it, anyway?"
"That"s what you"re going to tell me."
I almost went "hah-whazzat?" then sealed up quick. She didn"t seem the type to take ignorance for an answer; she was way too nerved. I recognized her kind of tension. Some guy in a casino I"d been in had bet everything he owned on the turn of a roulette wheel. Filima had that same intense look in her eyes that he had while following the little white ball around the wheel. I"d left before the ball came to rest on either his salvation or destruction. No such freedom for me here. But before I could come up with an appropriately clever response that might get me on the other side of her front door, my stomach growled.
It didn"t just growl, it put on an extended chorus with curtain calls. Shankey frowned, Debreban tried not to smile, and Filima blinked.
"Sorry," I said. "Haven"t had lunch yet."
She blinked again, seeming to take me in on a different level. It was subtle, but I sensed an easing in her luscious body. The blaze in her eyes cooled. "How remiss of me not to offer you refreshment. Captain Shankey, would you be so good as to ring the bell? Three long and two short."
Shankey must have twigged that she was going to try for a softer kind of campaign to get information.
He nodded with sudden cordiality and went to drag on an embroidered bell pull. I was just able to pick out a distant ringing from the far depths of the house. Middle C. Before too long a tubby geezer in formal-looking clothes ushered in a small parade of servant-types in identical blue smocks, all carrying trays. The smells of perfectly cooked food plucked the air like music. The gastronome gang set up a table for two with gold plates and utensils. Within a minute Filima and I were seated opposite each other, and I was invited to pick what I liked from the mobile buffet.
Talk about a change in gears.
I"m pretty adaptable, though, and common sense told me to eat up while I could. I pointed to dishes that I had no name for, but which appealed to my instincts. In the worlds I"d been to it"s better not to inquire too closely about the strange food, just trust that if the natives survive on it then you will, too. Besides, it usuallydoes taste like chicken, even the chicken, which I was sucking down like it would go out of style.
Filima had a goo-ood cook.
And a crafty wine steward. My gla.s.s was filled to the brim. I drank deep to quench my thirst, secure that my weird body chemistry would keep me out of trouble. Terrin and I had made a few pub crawls in our time, usually running out of money before we ran out of sobriety. Even Clem"s potent beer had only given me a pleasant buzz and then mostly because I"d been tired.
"Tasty," I said, grateful.
Filima barely touched her stuff, mostly sipping what looked to be ice water from her goblet. She watched me scarf away, trying to smile pleasantly, but could have saved herself the effort. My back hairs were up-in a very literal sense-and she"d have to do more than just feed me to get what she wanted. I had enough human DNA to resist that bribe. Of course, it also helped that I was clueless. The black mist, or h.e.l.l-river as they called it, was Terrin"s area of expertise.He should be the one here, not me.
So . . . I ate enough for two.
"You live here long?" I asked.
"Why do you ask?" she countered.
I hate when people read ulterior motives into ba.n.a.l conversation. "Because when you answer it"ll cover up the noise when I belch."
Her mouth tucked in again and her eyes flickered. She didn"t seem offended. Amused. Good.
"You gonna answer?" She lifted her chin. "I"ve been here for three years, since my wedding day."
d.a.m.n. She was married. "What"s your husband"s line of work?"
"He doesn"t work. He died just two weeks ago."
d.a.m.n. She was widowed. "I"m sorry. My condolences."
"Thank you. May I ask what your line of work is?"
"I"m an entertainer."
Another one of those subtle-change things took place. She straightened a little and her eyes got brighter, if that was possible. "Really? What do you do?"
"I sing and tell jokes."
She came down a notch. "A patterman, eh?"
I shrugged, filing the name away for future use. "It"s a good life. I travel a lot, meet fun people." At this I glanced at Shankey and Debreban, who were doing their best to be invisible with the rest of the servants.
"I used to do that," she said. "I don"t miss the travel, but the applause was great."
"You used to sing?"
"And dance. I was the best oochie-coochie girl in the five provinces." No little pride in her tone.
I gulped as my imagination put Filima"s superb figure into an oochie-coochie outfit. I"d never seen such a costume, but my internal picture made me think of a Vegas showgirl wrapped in the final silky wisp from the Dance of the Seven Veils, with more beads and feathers than fabric. "I bet you were. Wish our paths had crossed earlier so I could have caught your act."
"You"re sweet, but I"ve hung up my dancing shoes. I"m all out of practice."