“Really? I didn’t know that.”
Just goes to show how rattled I was. I couldn’t even remember how little Vic knew about our operation and the people in it.
“That was when I first ran into the Boy Wonder. He was in trouble then, too … in fact, Skeeve seems to have a knack for trouble. Remind me sometime to tell you about the spot he was in when I did loom up.”
“Why not now?” he said, leanin’ back in his chair. “I’m not going anywhere, and there’s no time like the present for learning more about one’s business associates.”
As you’ve probably noticed, I was eager to get off the spot, and talking’ about Skeeve seemed to be just the ticket I was lookin’ for.
“Well, at the time his big green mentor had taken off for Perv, see … some kinda family problem. Anyway, the king puts me touch on Skeeve to stand in for him, supposedly so’s his royalness could take a bit of a vacation . . . say, for a day or so. What the Man neglected to mention to our colleague was that his bride-to-be, a certain Queen Hemlock, was due ta show up expectin’ ta tie the knot with whoever was warmin’ the throne just then.”
“Queen Hemlock?”
“Let me tell you, she was a real sweetheart. Probably would have ended up on the gallows at an early age if she hadn’t been the daughter of a king. As it was, she ended up runnin’ the richest kingdom in that dimension and was out to merge with me best military force around . . . which turned out to be the kingdom that Skeeve was babysittin’.”
Vic frowned.
“If she was already in a position to buy anything she wanted; what did she need an army for?”