Chicks - Chicks 'N Chained Males Part 27

"Not quite," said Mbutu, shifting position in her palm-tree hammock, "but I know where I can get it. But these beads-may I inquire as to their source? For while I have seen a few examples-and I know they must be quite rare and costly-if more were to turn up all at once, they would lose their value, and I would have a harder time paying for that which you need, as well as the trouble for myself and my partner."

The jacamal snorted. "Not much chance of that. We got them from a mad foreigner, a pale-skinned man from the north, who came through the desert himself with nothing more than a horse and a pack with a king's ransom in beads."

Mbutu nodded sagely. "I see. And what became of this foreigner?" Obviously the man was the witch she'd surmised, and if it had been a death curse he'd laid upon the beads, it was not only fiendishly powerful, but would most likely prove impossible to lift.

The jacamal spat again. "Oh, nothing much. Foreigners are valuable in the slave market, so we just bagged him, gagged him, and sold him to a slave merchant in Embeko." The jacamal gave her an evil look. "Now what was this plan you mentioned involving wealth and power in addition to our restoration?"

"Oh, it is simple," Mbutu said, "let me explain it to you . . ."

The villagers hailed Mbutu and Talisha as saviors when they led the jacamals into town, all meekly shackled with ropes and what chains could be found. Talisha, however, stopped the villagers from stoning them, threatening that violence might break Mbutu's nonexistent spell, and moreover, would damage the beasts' value when they were sold to the King's circus in Embeko.

Mbutu collected the money from the grateful villagers, and didn't feel bad about it at all-after all, they were ridding the village of a group of vicious beasts who were far worse than the bandits they'd originally been. And they were at last escaping the dates.

After which they journeyed to Embeko, where Mbutu told tales of her and Talisha having a fantastic battle with the jacamals, full of!num -fire and flashing knives, until finally, by power of blade and sorcery, they had brought the beasts to heel. It sounded much more impressive, overall, than hanging in a palm tree and haggling with enchanted bandits, but it didn't matter-the jacamals danced and cavorted, pranced in circles, and finally ate a condemned prisoner for the amus.e.m.e.nt of the King. It really couldn't have gone any better than it did.

Of course, what Mbutu knew that the jacamals didn't, was that so far as she knew, there was no such treasure as the Lifestaff of Shango in the King's treasury, and even if she wheedled herself into the King's confidence as she promised, avoiding a dozen wizards, sorcerers, and backstabbing courtiers, it would be exceedingly difficult to appropriate a sorcerous object which did not exist, or use it to break a fiendishly foreign spell.

Not that the jacamals needed to know that particular fact, or the King for that matter. After all, he'd already paid Mbutu and Talisha lavishly for the jacamals, which were the talk of all Embeko, beating even the story of the miserly shopkeeper who, upon asking his wife if she thought he was made out of money, very suddenly vanished to leave an extremely wealthy widow. Not that Mbutu and Talisha were doing badly themselves. Mbutu bought a dozen new necklaces, and Talisha new bangles and custom scars, and decked out in this manner, they entered the legendary slave market of Embeko. Mbutu was in paradise-lavishly perfumed and beautiful slaveboys brought her sweetmeats for her pleasure, all of which were wonderful, excluding the nut-stuffed dates, which after the third feast the week before, Mbutu had sworn off of for life.

"And how may the House of Orunmila bring pleasure to you ladies?" asked the slavemaster in his elegant feathered headdress as Mbutu flashed the additional golden rings she had got from the merchant princess.

"Slaves," said Talisha. "We are in the market for a slave. Something male. Something to pique our interest."

"And what might your tastes be?" the slavemaster inquired unctuously.

"Oh, I do not know. . . ." Mbutu fluttered her lashes and looked to Talisha. "What do you think, Bangles?"

The warrior woman laughed. "Oh, let's see them all. We'll tell you what strikes our fancy."

"Of course," said the slavemaster, bowing, "we at the House of Orunmila live only to serve . . ." And then the slaves were brought forth. Some were tall and lean. Some were short and fat. Many were very much to her tastes or Talisha's. But there was still business to attend to.

At last, the slavemaster bowed again, his feathers bobbing like a secretary bird's twin crests. "I see you are ladies of discriminating taste. Perhaps the next might intrigue you."

At his words, the "next" came out-tall, lean, with skin as pale as a frog's belly and hair as red as antelope fur. Talisha looked to Mbutu, and Mbutu inspected the man with the spirit sight. Strong, certainly, and healthy, but foreign as he was, not a witch or mmoatia, or even one blessed by the orishas.

Mbutu shook her head subtly, and Talisha said, "Not quite, but intriguing. Do you have any more like that one?"

"I have not yet begun to list his skills and accomplishments," the slavemaster protested.

Bangles waved him away with a chime of her namesake. "It doesn't matter. He doesn't please my sister.

But I like the foreign look. Do you have any others with this pale skin?"

"Another," the slavemaster allowed, and a moment later a fat older man was brought forth, with steel gray hair and a potbelly.

Mbutu shook her head again. "No, not that one either. Do you have any others?"

The slavemaster hung his head. "I'm sorry, that is the last of them."

Mbutu sniffed. "Are you certain? I was so interested in finding a foreigner, but neither of those were quite suitable."

Talisha smiled, showing her leopard teeth. "I am certain that you have goods you are not showing us."

The slavemaster sighed. "All, I'm afraid, that I would feel honorable selling. For foreigners, the only otherone I have has been unconscious for weeks, victim of . . . ah . . . let us call it a regrettable accident. We have been attempting to revive him, but I'm afraid we may soon have to call it a loss."

"Bring him forth," Mbutu ordered. "I would like to see everything."

The moment they did, Mbutu knew they had the right man. Not only did he fit the jacamal's description-pale of skin, but with hair black as Princess Mfara's and almost as long, and a nose hooked like an eagle's beak-but he also had the feel of a powerful witch. Yet one with his!num drained down to the lowest ebb.

"He looks sickly," Talisha said. "Are you sure he's not dead?"

The slavemaster waved his hand in the negative. "No, no. He is very much alive. But barely and he has been wasting away."

Mbutu pulled off the least of her gold rings, one without any!num , merely value. "I believe I will take him. As a curiosity, if nothing else. Accept this trinket in payment . . ."

"Ah, sweet lady, but I paid so much more for him . . ."

And so the haggling began. In the end, they sealed the bargain, the man in exchange for two gold rings, a gla.s.s necklace, and an ivory earplug. Mbutu sent Talisha to the King's palace to borrow Mumfaro, the youngest and best-tempered of the jacamals, who Mbutu felt vaguely sorry for. At which point they bore away the unconscious witchman and set off across the desert to where Mumfaro knew the treasure trove to be.

After all, splitting the wealth with one bandit as opposed to twenty bandits was much preferable.

The bandits' lair was a ruined caravanserai at a dry oasis, and the treasure was stashed in the hollow of a broken wall-not terribly original, but effective. Talisha brought forth a leather saddlebag and revealed a huge cache of blue beads. Mbutu quickly put her hand over Talisha's mouth before she could exclaim something foolish, like that she'd be the mother's brother to a monkey. Mbutu only took the pouch and laid it across the chest of the sleeping man.

At which point he woke, like a prince from one of her tales. Slowly. Weakly. With lashes aflutter like dying b.u.t.terflies, never quite opening, and Mbutu had more than ample time to propitiate the orisha of parrots so as to understand his speech. "Welcome back to the living," Mbutu said. "Your treasure has been returned to you. All but a handful of beads. And they've caused quite some trouble, let me tell you. .

He sat up and felt his head. "I'm glad. You southerners should learn to fear a gypsy's curse." He then looked at her, revealing eyes a startling blue, bright as his witch beads.

Mbutu blinked and made a subtle gesture against the evil eye. "What is a gypsy? Some type of witch or mmoatia?"

"I am a gypsy," the man replied, glaring with all the azure balefulness of a peac.o.c.k's eye. "We are of the Rom. Travelers. I came because I heard your folk valued beads."

"We do," Mbutu replied, "and evidently your people do as well." "Not so much as you do. And not so much as our freedom," the man said, looking away, and allowing Mbutu to relax her hand. "Slavery is the worst thing in the world to the Rom, and the second worst is stealing from us. To invite the curse of one is to invite the curse of the whole tribe."

Mbutu bit her lip. An entire tribe of foreign witches-all fueling their malice into a single curse. Wellthat easily explained the power they'd been dealing with. Gypsies-hmph! Bad as witches and mmoatia combined. "You are free now," she said, "and you have your beads back. At least most of them."

"Good," he said, then looked at both of them. "Not that I'm ungrateful, but may I ask why you two ladies have rescued me? It doesn't look like you're under a curse yourselves, and I can tell that you are a woman of power."

Mbutu bowed her head. "My name is Mbutu," she said, "but you may call me Baubles." After all, if Talisha was going to keep using it, she might as well make her taunt-name into her pride-name, and there was no one better to start with than a gypsy witch.

"Talisha," said the warrior woman, not understanding the language but obviously understanding it was time for introductions, "Bangles." She chimed her bracelets as explanation.

"I am Davio, of the Rom." He grinned then. "I suppose that would make me Beads."

"Well, Beads," Mbutu said, "Bangles and I have a business proposition for you. There are a number of curses you could end immediately if you felt like it, but there is one in particular-a merchant who is now a beautiful princess-that it might be more profitable to hold off on until we could do it in person. With all appropriate ceremonies. And extra charges. After all, he doesn'tknow it was your curse to begin with."

The gypsy man grinned. "I like the way you think, Baubles. It is good to know thedukerin is practiced this far to the south . . ."

And so it went, and many wondrous tales were told, of a widow whose chests of gold and ivory turned to blood and bone, of a King whose fabulous monsters turned into common bandits in chains, of storks and hippos that changed into thin girls and fat men, and village braggarts who remained exactly as they were, for there are some things even foreign witches find too funny to change.

And of Baubles, Bangles and Beads and how they bankrupted the most beautiful princess in the world, leaving her a happy man in the end.

All hail a true Warrior Woman, one who teaches fourth graders by day, writes by night, and has been a Nebula finalist into the bargain! I stand in awe. Her fourth novel,Black/on/Black, has just been published by Baen. And oh my,waituntil you see what she's done inthisstory!

Hallah Iron-Thighs and the Five Unseemly Sorrows

K.D. Wentworth

It was a miserable, sultry day down in the valleys of deepest Findlebrot. What pa.s.sed for streets, all two of them, were choked with pink dust, pink apparently being the color of choice for most everything in that part of the world. Gerta, and I, Hallah Iron-Thighs, sworn sisters-in-arms, had just escorted a herd of attack goats across the mountains from Alowey. They had been ordered as Queen Maegard the Meek's wedding present to her daughter, the ill.u.s.trious Princess Merrydot. For once, the bandits infesting the pa.s.ses had been fairly scarce. We hadn't been forced to kill more than a dozen, hardly a decent workout for my sword, Esmeralda.

In the distance, the Findlebrotian palace rose before us. It had the unfortunate appearance of being sculpted from icing, then left out in the sun to melt. In keeping with the local color scheme, it was constructed of the most nauseating of pink stone. The turrets were covered with a rounded stucco that dripped with flourishes and curlicues, hardly a warrior's dream for defense. The crenellations were nonexistent. A two-year-old with a battle-ax could have taken it.

Gerta scowled. "I hate this place."

"You can't hate it," I said. My bay mare, Corpsemaker, waggled her ears in agreement. "We just got here. It takes at least half a day to properly loathe a country."

"Well, I hate its smell anyway," she said.

I couldn't argue with that. Findlebrot did have a most peculiar odor, oversweet and noxious as though a perfume caravan had fallen off a mountain and smashed all the bottles in a heap.

"And look at that." She gestured at the pink castle. "It makes me embarra.s.sed just to be close to that eyesore."

"I don't care what it looks like as long as their gold is yellow," I said testily. I flicked my whip at an errant attack goat that was taking aim at a local dog. It had been my decision to accept the Findlebrot run this go-round, though it was very unpopular among our sisters-in-arms. Everyone who came back from Findlebrot went on for days afterward about the locals and their ridiculous official list of "Unseemly Sorrows," any and all of which could be committed without even trying. At the moment, though, our purses were emptier than my favorite serving lad's promises and so we were here.

We escorted the goats and their trainer through the castle portcullis without encountering challenge.

Once inside, the smell of perfume grew even stronger. My eyes began to water.

The castle guard, if one can dignify a bunch of sissies tricked up in red dancing outfits trimmed in gold braid with that designation, surrounded us belatedly. Gerta swore under her breath as she gazed down at their beardless pink faces. The head sissy, swathed in ribbons and medals, stepped forward and muttered something about "uncivilized heathens." He fumbled for a hanky and held it to his nose.

My saddle creaked as I leaned toward him. The pasty-faced little t.u.r.d didn't even top my mare's withers and he reeked strongly of roses. "What was that?" I asked. "I'm afraid my partner, Gerta, here, didn't quite hear you, and her so touchy and all about being left out of the flow of conversation."

Gerta smiled wolfishly and drew her dagger. He flinched and stepped back. "I said, 'Halt where you stand. Creatures dressed in such a brazen, Unseemly fashion cannot be allowed to offend our liege's eyes!' "

Here we go, I thought and shook my head.

Gerta swung a bare leg over her saddle and leaped to the ground to tower over him. "Who are you calling Unseemly, bucko?"

He averted his gaze from her ample cleavage, located conveniently for his perusal before his nose, and turned an innovative shade of red, somewhere between Ripe Tomato and flat-out Fire. "Findlebrot is a highly moral country," he said stiffly. "Our women are admired far and wide for being the most comely, the most demure, the most delicate and refined. We tolerate none of the Five Unseemly Sorrows anywhere within our borders, but certainly not here at court."

"Yeah, yeah," I said. It was much the same in half the new kingdoms we traveled to, these days. The whole world was turning into the most frightful bunch of stuffed shirts. "Just pay up and we'll be on our way."

He flushed further, tending now toward a deep, true Puce, an unusual achievement for one of his pallid coloring. Perspiration beaded up on his chubby neck. "We are experiencing a bit of a problem with the royal cash flow."

I crossed my arms. "That's what they all say."

"This time, however, it is true," he said. "Three times, our most gracious Princess Merrydot has been betrothed, and three times her intended has been kidnapped by a vicious dragon who lives up beyond the highest pa.s.s. King Merwick sent gold to ransom them all, but though the gold disappeared, none of the princes has ever been released. The royal treasury, is, shall we say, dest.i.tute."

"Don't give us that rot," Gerta said. "There are no dragons." She raised her chin proudly. "My valiant foremothers across the channel killed them all!"

"On the contrary," he said, "the vile beast is often seen frolicking up in the mountains after dark-flames shooting everywhere. Word of it is keeping trade out, exports in. No one pays us visits of state anymore.

The situation is becoming quite desperate." He gave us an appraising look. "Despite your shocking propensity for vulgarity, you two do look as though you might be competent with those swords. I don't suppose-"

"Forget it," I said, waving a fist in negation. "Even if there were any left, we don't do dragons. Send your own men up there."

"That is out of the question," he said haughtily. "Every member of our guard is of n.o.ble birth. If they went after the princes, they could very well be killed!"

"I'll just bet." I slid down Corpsemaker's bay side. "Now, about our fee-"

"You will have to wait," he said. "What little is left in the treasury is reserved for essentials such as wrapping paper and ribbon, not to mention satin and taffeta, silver wedding goblets, and those cunning little bundles of rice to throw at the reception. In fact, the royal wedding shower takes place in just a few hours. You cannot imagine how expensive wedding frippery is these days, and of course each time the wedding falls through, we have to resupply. Princess Merrydot, being of a sensitive nature, cannot endurethe sight of implements intended for canceled nuptials."

He flicked a bit of dust off his red sleeve. "It will be necessary for you to apply for your fee next year, after the princess is wed, unless-" he waggled his eyebrows invitingly "-you would care to waive it altogether as a sign of good will?"

I drew Esmeralda from her scabbard with a singing hiss. Gerta moved to my side, her sword also drawn.

He paled. "This is a civilized country. Hooliganism will get you nowhere." He snapped his fingers and a hundred more sissies tricked out in gold braid flooded into the courtyard.

Gerta bounded forward, sword raised. "Death to you all!" she shouted, her blue eyes joyously savage.

"Hallah, stand back! I wish to kill the first fifty myself!"

I shook my head. Glorious death in combat is still all the rage across the channel where Gerta was born, but my mother, Marulla Big-Fist, raised her ten daughters to be n.o.body's fool. "Now wait just a blamed feint-and-parry minute," I said.

My partner's eyes blazed with anger. "Where is your pride? No one cheats Gerta Dershnitzel and gets away with it!"

"Hold!" A tiny figure, covered from head to toe in layers of pink lace, drifted toward us across the courtyard. Her skin possessed that cla.s.sic upper-cla.s.s pallor and she smelled fiercely of violets. "We would speak with these Unseemly creatures."

"Your Majesty, no!" The head guard fell to his knees, clearly horrified at the prospect.

The princess, for that was who she had to be, stamped her dainty slipper-clad foot. "And why not, Major Duero?"

"J-just look at them!" he sputtered. "They are coa.r.s.e, vulgar, rude, tall, completely immodest, nay, even-" he lowered his voice "-bold!Altogether Unseemly in every way! You must not sully your royal ears by discoursing with such!"

"Really?" She tapped a manicured finger against her lovely chin. "Perhaps even bold enough to rescue our fiance?"

"Which one?" Gerta asked loudly, then snorted.