The Philosophical Strangler by Eric Flint

I made frantic little waving motions with my hands. You know the ones: shuddup, shuddup, shuddup.

Magrit’s sneer deepened. “And what’s your problem, Ignace? Don’t want any mention of the Rap Sheet in your presence?”

Very frantic waving motions: shuddup, shuddup, shuddup.

“You remember the Rap Sheet, don’t you? You ought to, Ignace. You helped steal it.”

“Absolutely!” shrilled the salamander perched on her shoulder. Wittgenstein reared up like a herald. “Ignace was deeply involved! Totally! Integrally!”

SHUDDUP, SHUDDUP, SHUDDUP.

Jenny and Angela were staring at me, wide-eyed.

“You stole the Rap Sheet?” gasped Angela.

“Is that what you were doing in Prygg?” demanded Jenny. She stared at Greyboar. “So that’s why you won’t ever talk about it!”

I clutched my head. The whole world would know!

“Shut up!” I cried.

“Whatever for, Ignace?” demanded Wittgenstein. As always, the high pitch of the familiar’s voice grated on my ears. “Since when have you become so modest?”

Wittgenstein swiveled his neck and peered intently at Jenny and Angela.

“Yes, yes, ladies! You are in the presence of terrible desperadoes! The very men who were complicit in the theft of Ozar’s Rap Sheet which drew down the wrath of that mighty empire upon poor, downtrodden Grotum. Responsible, I say, for the invasion of Pryggia and the ensuing horrors and atrocities.”

He rose to his full height and pointed at me. “J’accuse!”

“Oh, stop it,” said Magrit.

Wittgenstein snickered. “But it’s all true, Magrit! You know it is. You were there, after all.” Snicker, snicker. “It was your plot in the first place.”

Wittgenstein’s beady red eyes rolled back to Jenny and Angela. Again, that nasty snicker. “From subtle hints, I’d say the two of you have formed a romantic attachment to this Ignace fellow. Dummies.”

Jenny and Angela nodded. Gwendolyn frowned. Magrit sneered. Shelyid looked confused. Zulkeh didn’t.

Wittgenstein snickered again. Then, hissed: “Cradle robber. Bigamist cradle robber.”

“He is not a bigamist!” snapped Jenny.

Angela giggled. “More like a trigamist.” She put her arm around Jenny, and smiled seraphically. “As for the charge of robbing the cradle—well—”

“It’s true,” pronounced Jenny. “We are but lambs, led astray by this lustful beast.” She put her arm around me and rubbed her hip against mine. The motion involved was not, uh, lamblike.

For the first time, the wizard Zulkeh spoke.

“Do I understand correctly? Is it true that this wight has engaged in carnal intercourse with both of you hoydens? Who have, in your turn, transgressed the well-established bounds of heterosexual propriety?”

Jenny and Angela nodded happily.

“Like I said,” piped up Wittgenstein. “A bigamist cradle robber.” The salamander goggled the girls. “And dykes, to boot.”

“Bah!” spoke Zulkeh. The wizard stroked his beard. “You would do well, Magrit, to silence that unnatural beast. Its ignorance is beyond belief. The charge of bigamy is utterly specious, inasmuch as bigamy presupposes the sundering of lawful bonds through subterfuge, whereas we have, in this instance—I misdoubt me not—neither lawful bonds to be sundered nor any subterfuge utilized in not so doing. This—” he continued, while everyone was trying to catch up with the tortured logic—”being due to the fellow Ignace’s well-known disdain for all moral precepts.”

He waved his hand in judgment.

“As well accuse a wolf of moral turpitude for being a carnivore. Now, as to the charges of cradle robbing and perversion, it seems to me, at first glance, that we have to deal with more substantive matters. I would remind all present, in regard to the first, of the well-known precepts of Nabokov Laebmauntsforscynneweëld. Then, dealing with the problem of perversion, we can begin with the texts of Sappho Sfondrati-Piccolomini, in whose execrable verses are clearly—”

“Enough!” bellowed Magrit. She planted her hands on the arms of the chair and swiveled her ample figure toward Zulkeh. Her plain and modest long dress fit her middle-aged matronly appearance. But the scowl on her face was as ferocious as you’d expect from one of the world’s down-home, no-fooling, proper witches. “Enough already!”

The wizard glared at her. I expected another of the mighty wrangles between the two of them which I had gotten used to—sort of—while we were in Prygg.

But Greyboar interrupted. “Why are you here?”