Robert Asprin - Myth-Fortunes

I was dealing with a couple of the smaller brothers. Using magik to yank curios off the wall, they pelted me with weird junk and street signs. I fended them off as best I could, while trying to keep the debris from hitting other customers. Most of them joined in the fray, some from outrage, others for the fun of a good brawl.

Suddenly, I found myself flung against the bar wall, a commemorative trophy in my arms. All of the would-be combatants were similarly pinioned. The bartender walked up and down between us, wielding a bat-shaped staff—the source, I guessed, of the spell.

"Hold it, hold it, hold it!" he bellowed. "When will you people learn? The free-for-all is tomorrow! No unscheduled fights in here tonight! Now, everyone behave or I am tossing you all out into the street!"

The goggle-eyed Deveel brother pointed a finger, which was the only body part he could move. "That Pervert started it!"

Aahz sneered at him. "That's Per-vect, and all I did was buy your sister a drink. She didn't turn me down!"

"Oh, yeah? You had to put a spell on her, because why would she talk to you for one second, let alone

long enough to get your hands on her?"

The bartender kept us hanging there until we settled the argument. As the first lights of dawn began to lighten the sky, we arrived at a truce, negotiated chiefly by Guido and the largest brother, who began to recognize that, appearances aside, his baby sister might not have been totally innocent of provocation.

Once the bartender let us down, the big brother shook hands with Guido. The Deveel family removed their much-chastened sister from Bunny's custody and thence from the bar. I sat down, my ears ringing, and called for a fruit juice.

"What did you tell her?" I asked Bunny. She and Tananda had spent the last three hours of the fray sitting at a side table with the hefty woman and her slim husband.

"That men had responsibilities, but so do women," Bunny said with a sly smile. "If she wants to drive her brothers crazy, she doesn't have to involve a bunch of strangers."

"Sandbagged," Aahz groaned, accepting an ice pack for his head. The veins in his yellow eyes were ochre. "Just my luck I had to get involved with a girl who had family in the neighborhood."

I grinned. "Maybe you shouldn't have asked who her daddy was, but whether she had any brothers."

"You're learning, kid."

When we got back to the site in the morning, both of us were somewhat shopworn. Aahz was battered from getting tossed around between seven or eight large Deveel brothers. I nursed a bruise on the side of my head, but I had to admit he looked worse.

"Oh, Mr. Aahz!" Miss Tauret exclaimed as we entered the And Company office. "What happened? You look as though a building fell on you!" Her hand flew to her mouth as though trying to take back her words. In Aegis, such a thing could happen.

"I'm okay," Aahz said, rolling his yellow eyes her way. "It was pretty tough, but I got through with just a few scrapes."

She rose from her desk. "Let me get you some fresh coffee! Please, go sit down. I'll have it in your office in just a moment. What can I do to make you feel better?"

Aahz opened his mouth, then paused, looking at her warily. "You don't have a bunch of big, older brothers, do you?

"Why, no," Miss Tauret said, her little gray ears turning this way and that. "Just one sister. She is younger than I am." She looked at me and flirted her eyelashes. "I glyphed her all about you yesterday. She was so impressed that you saved the pyramid."

"Uh, that's nice," I said.

"I taught the kid everything he knows," Aahz purred, leaning over the desk and staring deeply into her eyes.

"You did?" she rested her elbow on the counter and her chin on her hand.

"Yeah," Aahz said.

"Uh, excuse me," I said. I hurried into our office to look at the previous day's paperwork. Miss Tauret had been interested in Aahz since the first day, and after last night he was vulnerable to a little sympathetic female attention with no possibility of reprisals from angry relatives. While I was glad for him, I didn't have to watch.

Miss Tauret's attentiveness certainly cheered Aahz up. She came in and out of our room all day whenever we were in there, hoisting the empty beer barrel onto her meaty shoulder as if it was weightless and, even more impressively, bringing the fresh one in and tapping it for Aahz's convenience. After I took the morning rounds of the site, I found her rubbing his shoulders. He peered out from under the cold compress on his eyes and gave me a wink.

The receptionist was not the only Ghord who paid us closer attention since the day I had picked up the pyramid. Many of the workers who had held us at arm's length got into the habit of talking with us or glyphing when they noticed us walking around. A lot of the girls giggled when I went past, though they were openly friendly if I actually stopped to talk with them. All of them were pretty impressed by the feat I had performed. Miss Tauret let it be known to everyone what Aahz had said about teaching me, so we were both made much of around the site.

Beltasar was much more cooperative with me since that day, too. She kept me apprised of the progress the Scarabs were making. In fact, I was even present when the hardworking beetles laid the final stone on the third tier. I couldn't take credit for it, but there were fewer accidents on site since the pyramid had been reseated. There was never a day when there wasn't one, but Doctor Cobra had had to make fewer pyramid calls.

The very next day the first stone of the fourth tier was laid, to great fanfare from Samwise. He made a speech and everybody was given an extra measure of beer. I was starting to like the Valley of Zyx. It wouldn't be a bad place to spend eternity.

One more milestone, so to speak, occurred during that next week. Aahz managed to sell a stone on the ground floor of Phase Two, and nagged the carvers into getting started on it so there would be something to show his potential customers. That meant laying out the foundation underneath the invisible ramps.

Swarms of the Scarabs walked backwards on their hands to roll the debris off the site. They smoothed it out in two days flat and tamped the thick foundation into place, all in less time than it would take me to paper a single wall. I was incredibly impressed. With a crowd of customers and workers on Camel-back and magik carpets sailing alongside, the slab itself, chosen by Aahz and the master scribe for its smooth sides and perfection of proportion, was transported by Beltasar's crack team over the surface of the desert. The weather, as usual, was perfect. Emissaries from the Pharaoh Suzal's court were in attendance. I wasn't happy to see Gurn there, sneering at everybody as if that was in his job description. I looked around, hoping to see Chumley, but he didn't show up. Aahz and I had not wanted to send a message to him directly, worrying that we might blow his cover in the court.

The Scarabs settled the stone at the edge of the new foundation, placing it just where Aahz and the purchaser had agreed it would go. It wasn't at a corner or in the center of any of the walls, so it must have been cheap as slabs went. Still, it was an impressive hunk of rock. We all gathered around to watch. The Scarabs hung onto people's clothes and headdresses or hovered in mid-air to get a better view. Gurn insinuated himself just ahead of me. I had no trouble seeing over his head, but having him so close made me feel as though something slimy had wriggled into my clothes.

The master scribe, Ay-Talek, a Ghordess with the head of a fishing bird, invited us to watch from the front row as her finest stonecarver began the first line of text on the stone. Cay-Man, a Ghord with a long, reptilian face, bowed to us all and picked up his tools.