Mayer Alan Brenner - Spell of Intrigue

“So what are you trying to tell me here?” I said. “You’re willing to go for a divorce?”

“I’d rather be a widow.”

“Easier said than done.”

“No, I don’t think so.” Her hand paused. The wormball was close enough to my face that I had to cross my eyes to see it clearly, and the heat was extreme. So far I’d kept myself from shrinking back in the chair, but the next time she started moving I figured I’d better be prepared to do something fast. “You know,” she commented, “I’m enjoying this more than I’d expected, and I’d looked forward to enjoying it quite a lot.”

“Don’t say I never show you a good time,” I said. “Just out of curiosity, suppose you actually succeed in frying my cerebellum with that thing. How do you plan to get hold of the ring you mentioned then? The ring you say is the main reason you’ve come after me in the first place.”

“I said I’d take it off your smoking body, and I still will.”

“Ah, yes,” I responded, “you did say that, and in so many words. What would you do, though, if it didn’t happen to be on my body, as indeed it does not?”

“That’s the oldest bluff there is.”

“No doubt. It happens to be most effective, however, when it’s true.”

“True? You’ve never said anything true in your life. You wouldn’t recognize a true statement if it -”

“You’re sure you’re ready to take the risk? It’s a little hard to go back once I’ve become a smoldering corpse, you know. What would you do then if you found you’d guessed wrong? More to the point, what about your associates?”

It was a calculated gamble. True, she hadn’t mentioned any partners. She didn’t seem nearly as sharp as me, though, or to be more precise, as sharp as the being she thought I really was, and I had a hunch she knew it, too; it may have had a lot to do with the fact that the two of them were distinctly on the outs. That being the case, I didn’t think she would have decided to go after me - or him - on her own, ring or no ring as inducement, and if she wasn’t in this alone she was in it with somebody else.

Continuing to be conversational wasn’t my last-ditch gambit, either, by any means. My walking stick was within reach, propped against the side of the desk, for one, and for another I figured I was capable of more frenzied agility than she was used to expecting from Gash. Physicality was always a useful last resort, or an option to turn to when you couldn’t think of anything else and figured you might as well do something . But I did have a brain, or so I’d been told, and I figured it would be a reasonable idea to find out just how good a weapon it could be on its own terms, before I started in on my more usual behavior of trying to throw it at people, using its gross characteristic of mass in an attempt to knock them out before I lost consciousness myself through the impact of cumulative whiplash.

She had the corner of one lip between her teeth and was gnawing it absently in thought as she watched me. Not moving her eyes away, she fumbled around her neck with her free hand, got hold of a round palm-sized crystal disk hung from a silver chain, raised it in front of her face, and then squinted at me through it. “You say you don’t have the ring?”

“I don’t have the ring.”

As I said the words again, a regular pattern of silver motes ran across the surface of the disk like a school of tiny minnows. Her frown deepened. Her pursed lips narrowed to a ominous line. Abruptly, she thrust the wormball out straight into my face.

My head was whipping back out of gut reaction as she moved, but I felt a fiery lash across my forehead and heard the quick sizzle of hot grease. She was the one who yelped, though, as she fell backward into her chair. Her arm was jerking uncontrollably, the forearm twisting spastically back and forth. The worms that had covered the front side of the floating colony, the side that had barely grazed my skin, had been crisped, and they had melted droopingly all over her palm, an evil-looking brown smoke rising off their twisted bodies. The rest of the worms had broken entirely out of their ball and were slinking their way out of the vicinity in every direction off across the tabletop and up along her lashing arm. She stared at me for a second, this time with a clear mixture of shock and fright, and then turned her attention to the worms, cupping her free hand and pointing it down at them. A flattened vortex appeared beneath her palm. The worms leapt or were sucked off the table, some coming free with a reluctant slurping pop , and the bunch of them darted in a straight spinning cloud toward the vortex like arrows off a multiple-fire crossbow heading for a competition target. Sparks showered out, and then the last of the worms were gone.

Singed tracks wound up her forearm. I figured my forehead probably looked the same. What I couldn’t figure was what had happened, and why. Obviously that wasn’t what she’d expected. It sure wasn’t what I’d expected. What I did while I thought, though, was release my grip behind the desk on Monoch, the sword disguised as a walking stick, fold my arms, and grin at her.

She didn’t grin back. “l told him this wouldn’t work, “ she said under her breath, “but I never expected that .”

Okay, I thought, I have the advantage. I had her off-balance. It was a perfect moment to hit her with a mop-up blow. The major problem was that I still didn’t know what to use for a mop.

The ring; I should concentrate on the ring. She wanted the ring, but I didn’t have it. Any way you looked at it, that was going to be a problem. I could take one of two approaches: either keep on trying to convince her I really didn’t have the ring, or go for letting her believe I did have it but just didn’t want to turn it over to her. Or that I had it hidden and I’d lead her to it if she made me a good enough offer. If I could get her to accept that I didn’t have it, the unavoidable question would be where it was. Under the circumstances, I doubted she’d buy the line that I didn’t know what she was talking about; I could keep on trying it, but it would be a holding action that wouldn’t hold long at all, I could tell. Maybe I could sort of tell her the truth, that I’d been working with others and I’d turned the ring over to them, but I’d have to tell her who the others were and then it would be their lives on the line. Unless I didn’t identify the right others ...

Who did I know that I was mad enough at to want to sic this harridan and her pals on?

Then it hit me that that wasn’t the only way to go about this. “Very well,” I said. “Let’s discuss this ring. Let’s discuss , like adults, not chew up each other’s flesh like razor-tooth rabbits. Razor-teeth are beneath us, perhaps you’ll agree now?”

She was in some pain, it seemed; not much, but enough to make her more receptive. I was in some pain, too, but my edge over her was that I’d been expecting it. “It’s clear you’re interested in getting your hands on this ring,” I continued. “I think perhaps you’ll believe me now when I tell you I don’t have it. I did have it, though, if we’re talking about the same ring, and I presume we are.”

She blinked at me. She’d probably thought I’d just kick her out the door, or through the wall, or into the next dimension, as long as I had the drop on her. I was playing the role of Master Plotter, though, or at least I thought I was, so I was trying to live up to a higher standard. “The plot for the ring was mine, but not mine alone,” I said. A small gleam of triumph appeared on her face; she knew she’d scored one, even if it was a point I was letting her win. “Mine was the plot, but not the implementation. With me in this scheme was someone you will recall, whose name I am sure I will not need to mention. Especially under the circumstances, it would be unwise were I to do so. Things between us after we acquired the ring did not go according to my plan. As a result, as I said, I do not now have the ring. Suffice it to say I was outwitted; there, are you happy?”