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“Ah, right on time,” Prince Lorimel said with a smug smile. He tossed his head ever so slightly, sending his lovely tresses into modest disarray. “How do I look? It’s very important to present the properly rumpled aspect, you know. For some reason, it drives the ladies wild. Of course for the full effect, it would be nice if I had a small bruise on my cheek, just beside my left eye-left’s my good side. Gudge, I don’t suppose you could reach over and give me one?”
To his credit, Gudge lunged forward in his chains most eagerly, but came up short as to fist-swinging range. “Sorry, m’lud,” he said, subsiding. “I can’t be reachin’ ’ee ’thout strainin’ me arm summat fierce, nay. It’d have t’ be comin’ outa th’ socket fer me t’ do yer biddin’.”
Prince Lorimel snorted. “Isn’t that just like you, Gudge: Self, self, self. I ask you to do one teensy favor for me and-”
“Oh, b’lieve me, m’lud, if’n I could get loose o’ these here chains, I’d be givin’ yer fine face a bruisin’ that’d be th’ talk o’ Intermeejit Earth, aye.”
The elf prince’s aspect softened. “Why, Gudge, you do give a rat’s ass. How sweet. Consider yourself forgiven.”
“Oh, good,” said Gudge.
He dropped his head onto his chest and muttered something further which the elf prince did not quite catch but which he presumed must be a sequence of well-deserved thanks and praise from his devoted lackey. Prince Lorimel might have asked Gudge to repeat some of the better compliments had the last lock upon the dungeon door not opened precisely then and the door itself swung wide.
“By the four hundred and twenty-eight rings of ultimate power!” Prince Lorimel gasped. “What vision of loveliness is this?”
Gudge cast a dour eye at the doorway where stood a tall, svelte figure draped in a bloodred spill of silk from shoulders to ankles, the skirt thereof slit all the way up to both hips. This sensual confection was tightly cinched at the waist with a gold belt studded with rubies the size of rat skulls as well as a few actual rat skulls for luck. Glossy raven hair artfully obscured half of a piquantly shaped, violet-eyed face before pouring down over creamy white arms, nor did it cease to pour until it reached a rump of such enticing curves and proportions as to make strong men weep.
“ ’Ee k’n stop weepin’ naow, m’lud,” Gudge said gruffly. “ ’Tis nowt but Lord Belg’s daughter, what’s as wicked as she’s beautiful, aye.”
The glorious apparition in the doorway turned back and spoke to someone as yet hidden from sight. “Are you sure this is the right dungeon, Turnkey? There’s no one in here but a man and his really ugly dog.”
The troll’s gravelly voice was loud enough for Prince Lorimel and Gudge to hear his reply: “Nah, that’s the elf prince, right enough. He’ll look better if ye take ’im out in daylight.” Here he laughed.
“Did I give you permission to laugh?” Something just outside the door went FOOM! Acrid smoke drifted into the dungeon, smoke that reeked of incinerated troll.
“So you’re the elf prince.” A dainty, sandaled foot crossed the dungeon threshold. “I’m Beverel. So pleased to make your soon-to-be-brief acquaintance.” A laugh dripping with malice and unplumbed depths of cruelty bubbled from those full, red, delectable lips as the evil overlord’s offspring closed in on the helpless captives.
“Ah, sweet Beverel, if I must die, so be it.” Prince Lorimel lifted his head at an angle contrived to drop a come-hither veil of golden hair across one eye. “Only swear that it will be your fair hand that rips the breath from my body, for it has already taken my heart.”
“Oh, gyarkh!” said Gudge, who had a low tolerance for artificial sweets.
“I think your dog’s sick,” Beverel observed.
“That is not my dog,” Prince Lorimel replied, glaring icy daggers at his companion. “If he were, he would be better bred and more useful. That is my servant, Gudge of Willowstone-Thickly. You can slit his throat if he bothers you. I won’t mind.”
“I’m not touching that thing.” Beveral drew back in distaste. “Still, I can’t say as I care to have… that staring at me so intently while I parley with you. It’s one thing to tell my victims exactly what sort of gruesome torments I’m going to put them through before death’s sweet release, but I’ve never done it in front of an audience before, and I can’t say I like it.” A faint blush tinged those alabaster cheeks. “I’m just the eensy-beensy-teensiest bit scared of public speaking.”
“Lovely idol of my soul, the only gruesome torment that I fear is losing sight of you.” Prince Lorimel opened his luminous blue eyes as wide as they would go, which had the incongruous effect of making him look dead sexy and very much like a lemur at the same time. “Can’t you get one of the servants to kill him for you?”
Beverel’s succulent lips pooched out in an adorable pout. “If Daddy finds out I got one of the servants to lend a paw, he’ll never let me hear the end of it. He thinks I’m soft.”
“And so you are, in all the most scrumptious places,” Prince Lorimel drawled. “But you know, you could always kill the servant, afterward.”
“Oooh, aren’t you the sweetie to think of that. But no, no, Daddy would figure it out. He keeps very detailed household accounts.” Abruptly, Beverel’s face brightened. “I know! I’ll get Vug.”
“Vug?” Gudge echoed. “Wossat, some ma
“Well, you got the foul part right. Vug’s my sister.” Beverel raised one elegant hand for amplification’s sake and shouted, “Hey, Vug! Get your fat butt down to Dungeon Seventeen now!”
A fresh magical FOOM! sounded from the corridor, followed almost immediately by the entrance of a short, plump young woman whose mousy hair was confined to a pair of untidy braids. Her round, plain face was distorted with distress and revulsion as she picked her way down the dungeon steps. “Beverel, what did you do to poor old Thungil? He’s nothing but a puddle of troll fat, and him with just one more day to go before retirement, too!”
Beverel shrugged. “It saves Daddy money on pensions.”
“Yes, but you even liquefied his keys! Daddy’s not going to be happy if we can’t lock and unlock the dungeon doors.”
“Shut up, Vug,” Beverel said casually. “It’s not as if we’re going to need to lock or unlock anything once I see to it that our prisoners are… taken care of. Mwahaha!”
“Taken care of? But Daddy said-”
“What Daddy doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” Beverel replied suavely. “And what Daddy doesn’t find out from a certain tattletale little sister I could mention, won’t hurt you.”
Vug’s eyes brimmed with tears. “You always ruin everything.”
“Stop your namby-pamby whining, you puny excuse for an evil overlord’s daughter!” Beverel snapped, slapping Vug smartly across the face for emphasis. “I’m your elder and your better; you’ll do as I command you. Now take this wretched object-”
“That’d be me,” Gudge said stolidly.
“Shut up, Gudge,” Prince Lorimel put in for no better reason than to keep in practice.
“-put an iron collar and a pair of cuffs on him, take him out of here, and get rid of him,” Beverel went on. “I don’t much care how you do it as long as you have the castle limner make detailed sketches of the really juicy bits, afterward.”
Vug’s shoulders slumped. “Yes, Beverel,” she said. “As you command.” She went about freeing Gudge from his fetters and saddling him with the prescribed iron collar, leading chain, and traveling manacles, according to her received orders, then gave him a shy look. “Er, shall we go?” she asked timidly.
Beverel uttered a loud growl of impatience and demanded of Prince Lorimel, “Do you see what I have to put up with?”
“My poor, suffering darling,” the elf prince replied, batting his eyelashes madly. “Tell me all your troubles. Let me share your pain.” He turned a glowering visage to Gudge and in a voice of fiery wrath bellowed, “Don’t just stand there, you moron! Help that stupid girl get you out of our sight before she upsets my beautiful Beverel any further. Go!”