Read Dinner at Deviant's Palace for Free Online Page B

did.
    Her story about Sandoval having invented playing cards, for example, and naming the aces after his own title, was, Rivas knew, exactly backward. Rivas had read a journal kept during the First Ace’s reign, and had learned that the citizens of Ellay had wanted to confer the title of king upon the man who had founded the currency, had the wall built, broken the terror hold of the piratical “motorcyclists” known as the hooters, and re-instituted agriculture. Sandoval had accepted the job but not the title. “There’ve been too many kings,” he was reported to have said; “and Queen or Jack or Joker won’t do—I’ll be the first Ace.”
    The old woman seemed to be winding down anyway. “I see success for you both,” she said. “The spirits say you’re cookin’ with gas. For you, man,” she went on, pointing at Barrows, “I see an increase in your fortune, I see those old brandy bottles just a-rolling toward you.”
    Rivas looked over at Barrows. Yes, the chance of mention of brandy had firmly set the Toothtalker’s hook—the old man’s eyes were wide and his knuckles were white on the arms of the chair.
    “And for you,” she continued, now pointing at Rivas and eyeing his bare wedding ring finger, “I see… a reunion with a long-lost lover, a wedding and… six unsporting children.”
    Rivas blinked. You old phony, he thought in instant panic, don’t say that , he believes your idiot predictions! The musician glanced apprehensively at the old man and, sure enough, Barrows was staring at him coldly and nodding.
    “I wondered how great the risk of that would be,” Barrows murmured.
    Rivas abruptly decided that he’d go after Urania unpaid and independently if he had to—but leaving to perform a redemption right now would almost certainly cost him his job, and Barrow’s payment would mean the difference between a leisurely, well-fed year or two in which to court another position on the one hand, and poverty and bad food and the selling off of possessions and hasty, undignified begging for any sort of job on the other. And if at all possible he wanted to prevent Barrows from hiring some other redemptionist who’d certainly only manage to muddy the water and put the Jaybirds on their guard.
    “Look,” he said evenly, “this old lady’s a fraud, and no more able to tell the future than I am. Now just because she—”
    “Don’t try to claim that , Rivas,” rasped Barrows. “After she knew—”
    “She just said you’d get a lot of money! That’s a standard fortuneteller’s line, dammit, same as the one she gave me! She didn’t know you’re the guy that distills it.”
    The Toothtalker, disconcerted that so innocuous a prediction had caused such rancor, had been listening closely, and her eyebrows went up at Rivas’s last sentence. “Yes I did,” she said instantly. “The vibratory dimensions told me everything. Greg Rivas and Irwin Barrows, you two are.”
    Smothering a curse, Rivas sprang out of his chair, crossed to the window and picked up the telephone receiver, which had quieted down but began buzzing again when he jiggled it. “Damn it,” he shouted at Barrows, “none of this is real. Look.” He unscrewed the perforated plastic cap on the earpiece and a large wasp flew out; it looped a confused figure-eight in front of his eyes and then lighted on his cheek and stung him. “Ow, goddammit.”
    “You see?” cried the Toothtalker triumphantly. “You can’t mess with scientifical machinery with impunity!” The wasp found the window and disappeared outside. “Look, you made me lose my… high frequency receptor.”
    Rivas saw that Barrows, who evidently didn’t know how telephones were supposed to have worked, was even more impressed with the Toothtalker’s powers now than he’d been a minute ago. “Holy smokes,” the old man exclaimed, “Rivas isn’t going to die, is he?”
    Rivas started to say, scathingly, “Of a wasp sting ?” but the old woman, with the