Book 08 - Petty Pewter Gods Read Online Free Page B

in his prime.
    His eyes were a blazing blue, almost as gorgeous as mine. His
hair was white and there was a lot of it, flying out all around his
head in tangles and spikes. His beard was white, too, and had not
been trimmed in decades. Despite his lovely eyes he seemed to be
bored or almost asleep.
    Everybody stared at me like they expected me to do something
clever. I did not have my cane nor my tap shoes, so I
couldn’t go into my dance routine. Those words that escaped
my mouth still had no discernible meaning, so I could not sing. I
reached deep into my trick bag for the last thing left.
    I tried to stand up.
    I made it! But to stay standing up I had to hang on to one of
the ugly guys. This particular one lacked a forehead and had a
mouth like a lamprey. I bet all the girls wanted to tongue-kiss
him. His eyes were fish eyes, too, yellow and shadowy and covered
by that milky membrane.
    That popped up and down a couple of times, but otherwise he
ignored me. I managed to croak, “Who
are
you people?
What
are you?”
    Two of these characters could pass for giants and one for human,
but the rest were not like anything I had ever seen on the streets
of TunFaire. You spend any time at all out there, you will see
members or virtually every sentient species, from pixies the size
of your thumb to giants twenty feet tall. You will even see some
horrors like the ratmen, who were created by sorcery run amok.
    Maybe that was what we had here, fugitives from some cellar way
up at the pinnacle of the Hill, where our magician masters live.
Trouble was, for the last four generations most of them people had
spent their lives in the Cantard, managing the war. None of them
would have messed up this much.
    Some things you could be sure of just by experience.
    I sagged. My ugly buddy did not help. I hung on like a drowning
man, gradually pulling myself back into our world. I had had
practice climbing lampposts on nights when the weather had turned
incredibly alcoholic. “I know you people can talk.”
    Speaking of talk, where was my curse, the feathered prince of
gab, the Goddamn Parrot? He sure wasn’t in this
basement—unless he was dead. Even the Dead Man could not stop
his beak from rattling here.
    The big guy, who was pretty obviously the head weirdo, nodded to
the guy who had feathers for ears. But Beanpole Man just looked at
me and shrugged like he did not have a notion.
    I muttered. “I have been kidnapped by morons.”
    Yeah. Right. And what did that say about the blinding intellect
of the guy who got kidnapped?
    Gravity would not leave me alone. I sagged yet again.
    Maybe I should let go, fall back down, go to sleep, and
eventually wake up again somewhere else, where all the nightmares
had not yet wormed their ways into every human mind.
    Et tu, Cthulhu?
The world is full of crackpots, and who
can you trust?
----

7
    The greenish woman moved toward me. “Please accept our
apologies, Mr. Garrett. We needed to see you quickly. Daiged,
Rhogiro, and Ringo,” she said, aiming a wicked nail with each
name by way of making introductions, “had to work fast. They
aren’t used to being gentle.”
    “No kidding.”
    I looked around for the Goddamn Parrot. Still no sign of him.
Maybe he had had sense enough to get away. Maybe I was in real luck
and he mouthed off and got his neck wrung.
    Somehow some of the woman’s arms had disappeared. Her hair
had become more managable. Her color had improved, her teeth had
lost their sharpness, and her neckline now plunged to navel
level.
    I had fallen in with shapeshifters.
    Now that I noticed it, the giants were several feet shorter, the
ugly boys were less repulsive, and the long pale guy had ears. The
sexy gal had changed, too, though she had been fine the way she
was. She had shortened up and gone blonde. She giggled. Her appeal
had not faded a bit.
    Why would she want to turn into a bimbo?
    Soon they all looked normal, within the very extended range
considered normal in TunFaire. They could