The Philosophical Strangler by Eric Flint

Chapter and verse, chapter and verse. The one and only time in my life I blessed pedantry!

Zulkeh even offered to speak on our behalf should the Rules and Ethics Committee prove obstreperous. But, in the event, his intercession was quite unnecessary. When I consulted with them, the Committee was every bit as emphatic as the mage.

“Of course!” stated Pathos.

“Practically a necessity, under the code of professional ethics,” intoned Bathos.

Cannabis didn’t say anything coherent. He just drooled at Angela and Jenny, muttering something about shinnying up a tree. I think.

* * *

So that was that. Jenny and Angela and I got married that same evening. Before a standing-room-only crowd at The Trough. I insisted on the venue, and since there Are No Rules For Heroes when it comes to this kind of stuff, who could object?

I even insisted that the Oldsters at the Old Bar preside over the ceremony. Which they did, or tried to, until their argument over precedents and hallowed traditions got so snarled up that Greyboar got disgusted and went ahead and finished the ceremony himself.

Then there was a gigantic celebration, in which Leuwen broke every tradition and footed the entire bill. Almost broke my heart, that, because I wasn’t able to participate in more than a round or two before Jenny and Angela hauled me back to the house and upstairs to the Connubial Bed, as it was now renamed.

But my incipient heartbreak was gone before we even got home and after that I didn’t give it the least thought. Truth is, I didn’t give much of anything what you could properly call thought for quite a few hours.

* * *

I woke up early the next morning, before sunup. Our bedroom was still dark. Somehow or other, I’d wound up in the middle, and I could hear Angela murmuring something in her sleep to my left and felt Jenny move in her sleep to my right.

I can always tell them apart, even in the dark. Even though I couldn’t have begun to tell you whose leg was which, in that tangle we were in.

So I knew it was Jenny’s hand which made that funny little caressing stroke on my ribs that tells you the sleeping person who made it wants you there. And I knew it was Angela’s hair I was kissing. And I remembered the way her face had looked when it had been floating somewhere over me earlier and the way Jenny had laughed and she and Angela had each put a hand on my chest and squeezed me really tight and Angela had laughed too and said, “See, Ignace? You don’t miss that hole in your heart at all, now that it’s gone.”

And the funny thing is, I really don’t. Even though we’re all going to starve to death if we live that long.

Screw it. Bring on that sorry dragon!

Comes down to it, I’ll bet Hrundig knows a recipe for cooking the mangy beasts.

* * *

I guess I was talking out loud, and woke the girls up. Jenny chuckled, stroked me again, and whispered: “He does. We got it from him before he left.”

Angela nuzzled me. “So don’t whine about the money we’re going to spend on onions and mushrooms,” she murmured. “We’ll need it for the stuffing.”