meretrix! This holds Rome’s answer to Parthia on the Nile.”
Kaby watched them as if she wanted to help Mark but scorned to scuffle with a mere—well, Mark had said it in Latin, I guess—call girl.
Then, on the top of the bronze chest, I saw those seven lousy skulls starting at the lock as plain as if they’d been under a magnifying glass, though ordinarily they’d have been a vague circle to my eyes at the distance, and I lost my mind and started to run in the opposite direction, but Illy whipped three tentacles around me, gentle-like, and squeaked, “Easy now, Gretta girl, don’t you be doing it, too. Hold still or Papa spank. My, my, but you two-leggers can whirl about when you have a mind to.”
My stampede had carried his featherweight body a couple of yards, but it stopped me and I got my mind back, partly.
“Unhand it, I say!” Sid repeated without accomplishing anything, and he released
Beau, though he kept a hand near the gambler’s shoulder.
Then my fat friend from Lynn Regis looked real distraught at the Void and blustered at no one in particular, “‘Sdeath, think you I’d mutiny against my masters, desert the Spiders, go to ground like a spent fox and pull my hole in after me? A plague of such cowardice! Who suggests it? Introversion’s no mere last-ditch device. Unless ordered, supervised and sanctioned, it means the end. And what if I’d Introverted ‘ere we got Kaby’s call for succor, hey?”
His warrior maid nodded with harsh approval and he noticed it and shook his free hand at her and scolded her, “Not that I say yea to your mad plan for that Devil’s casket, you half-clad clack-wit. And yet to jettison … Oh, ye gods, ye gods—” he wiped his hand across his face—“grant me a minute in which I may think!”
Thinking time wasn’t an item even on the strictly limited list at the moment, although
Sevensee, squatting dourly on his hairy haunches where Maud had left him threw in a dead—
pan “Thas teilin em, Gov.”
Then Doc at the bar stood up tall as Abe Lincoln in his top hat and shawl and 19th
Century duds and raised an unwavering arm for silence and said something that sounded like:
“Introversh, inversh, glovsh,” and then his enunciation switched to better than perfect as he continued, “I know to an absolute certainty what we must do.”
It showed me how rabbity we were that the Place got quiet as a church while we all stopped whatever we were doing and waited breathless for a poor drunk to tell us how to save ourselves.
He said something like, “Inversh … bosh …” and held our eyes for a moment longer. Then the light went out of his and he slobbered out a “ Nichevo ” and slid an arm far along the bar for a bottle and started to pour it down his throat without stopping sliding.
Before he completed his collapse to the floor, in the split second while our attention was still focused on the bar, Bruce vaulted up on top of it, so fast it was almost like he’d popped up from nowhere, though I’d seen him start from behind the piano.
“I’ve a question. Has anyone here triggered that bomb?” he said in a voice that was very clear and just loud enough. “So it can’t go off,” he went on after just the right pause, his easy grin and brisk manner putting more heart into me all the time. “What’s more, if it were to be triggered, we’d still have half an hour. I believe you said it had that long a fuse?”
He stabbed a finger at Kaby. She nodded.
“Right,” he said. “It’d have to be that long for whoever plants it in the Parthian camp to get away. There’s another safety margin.
“Second question. Is there a locksmith in the house?”
For all Bruce’s easiness, he was watching us like a golden eagle and he caught Beau’s
and Maud’s affirmatives before they had a chance to explain or hedge them and said, “That’s very good. Under certain circumstances, you two’d be the ones to go to work on the chest. But before we
Kaby watched them as if she wanted to help Mark but scorned to scuffle with a mere—well, Mark had said it in Latin, I guess—call girl.
Then, on the top of the bronze chest, I saw those seven lousy skulls starting at the lock as plain as if they’d been under a magnifying glass, though ordinarily they’d have been a vague circle to my eyes at the distance, and I lost my mind and started to run in the opposite direction, but Illy whipped three tentacles around me, gentle-like, and squeaked, “Easy now, Gretta girl, don’t you be doing it, too. Hold still or Papa spank. My, my, but you two-leggers can whirl about when you have a mind to.”
My stampede had carried his featherweight body a couple of yards, but it stopped me and I got my mind back, partly.
“Unhand it, I say!” Sid repeated without accomplishing anything, and he released
Beau, though he kept a hand near the gambler’s shoulder.
Then my fat friend from Lynn Regis looked real distraught at the Void and blustered at no one in particular, “‘Sdeath, think you I’d mutiny against my masters, desert the Spiders, go to ground like a spent fox and pull my hole in after me? A plague of such cowardice! Who suggests it? Introversion’s no mere last-ditch device. Unless ordered, supervised and sanctioned, it means the end. And what if I’d Introverted ‘ere we got Kaby’s call for succor, hey?”
His warrior maid nodded with harsh approval and he noticed it and shook his free hand at her and scolded her, “Not that I say yea to your mad plan for that Devil’s casket, you half-clad clack-wit. And yet to jettison … Oh, ye gods, ye gods—” he wiped his hand across his face—“grant me a minute in which I may think!”
Thinking time wasn’t an item even on the strictly limited list at the moment, although
Sevensee, squatting dourly on his hairy haunches where Maud had left him threw in a dead—
pan “Thas teilin em, Gov.”
Then Doc at the bar stood up tall as Abe Lincoln in his top hat and shawl and 19th
Century duds and raised an unwavering arm for silence and said something that sounded like:
“Introversh, inversh, glovsh,” and then his enunciation switched to better than perfect as he continued, “I know to an absolute certainty what we must do.”
It showed me how rabbity we were that the Place got quiet as a church while we all stopped whatever we were doing and waited breathless for a poor drunk to tell us how to save ourselves.
He said something like, “Inversh … bosh …” and held our eyes for a moment longer. Then the light went out of his and he slobbered out a “ Nichevo ” and slid an arm far along the bar for a bottle and started to pour it down his throat without stopping sliding.
Before he completed his collapse to the floor, in the split second while our attention was still focused on the bar, Bruce vaulted up on top of it, so fast it was almost like he’d popped up from nowhere, though I’d seen him start from behind the piano.
“I’ve a question. Has anyone here triggered that bomb?” he said in a voice that was very clear and just loud enough. “So it can’t go off,” he went on after just the right pause, his easy grin and brisk manner putting more heart into me all the time. “What’s more, if it were to be triggered, we’d still have half an hour. I believe you said it had that long a fuse?”
He stabbed a finger at Kaby. She nodded.
“Right,” he said. “It’d have to be that long for whoever plants it in the Parthian camp to get away. There’s another safety margin.
“Second question. Is there a locksmith in the house?”
For all Bruce’s easiness, he was watching us like a golden eagle and he caught Beau’s
and Maud’s affirmatives before they had a chance to explain or hedge them and said, “That’s very good. Under certain circumstances, you two’d be the ones to go to work on the chest. But before we
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