Princesses Don't Play Nice Read online

  Princesses of the Pizza Parlor

  episode 3: Princesses Don't Play Nice

  Sunday luncheons were always the busiest time of the week at Max's Pizza, as station wagons and mini-vans clogged the parking lot while their passengers filled the seats. But like any force of nature, this tide of humanity withdrew almost as swiftly as it crashed in, leaving behind a strand line of crumbs and crusts. In the back corner, one table was close to pristine, if only because its occupant had bribed the busboy to take care of it first. What it lacked in grease puddles and burned crunchy bits, it made up for in clutter. There was a heavy stack of dog-eared books holding down one corner of the tablecloth, and a small laptop computer sitting on the next. Several large posters lay rolled up under the table, while on top of it was the map of a town, along with a mismatched assortment of figurines and game pieces that had long since outlived their original purpose.

  It was the figurines that first roped in the attention of the five-year-old whose family was just now finishing lunch, but the dice were what really kept her there. The brightly colored plastic polyhedrons came in every shade of a particularly psychedelic rainbow, and were nothing like the inquisitive little girl had ever seen. Her parents had tried to pull her away once already, but the blonde girl in the white one-piece who was stationed at the table had reassured them that little Cecelia wasn't getting in the way. In face, CeCe was more than happy to help the older girl as she sorted the dice into various color groups, and waddled off a few minutes later, satisfied in the knowledge that she'd been helpful.

  "I see you made a new friend," Uncle noted as he returned from the toilet. Helen just smiled as she quickly rearranged the dice into their actual, proper piles. "Should we add another chair to the table, you think?"

  Helen giggled. "We might have to wait a few years until CeCe knows her times tables," she said. "Still, she'd be more fun than Natalie coming in."

  "Seriously, is the girl that bad?" He had to ask. Helen's classmate had pushed her way into joining the game last week, and he still wasn't sure if it would have been better to just say no. The ever-positive Claire had spoken up for her cousin, said to give her a go, and the other girls had grudgingly acquiesced, but Uncle was afraid that 'grudge' would be the operative word here. Helen's friend Shelby shared a lot with her barbarian princess avatar, especially in the temper department.

  "Natalie is..." Helen let it hover in the air for a moment. "She's got to be in the middle of stuff, even if it's got nothing to do with her. Especially if it doesn't. And she's not good at asking 'bout stuff, either."

  "Understood." Yeah, this wasn't going to be a fun day...

  The other girls trickled in, one by one: Cynthia with a bright red ribbon on her ponytail to match the poodle skirt she was wearing; Katelyn with her bangs brushed back for a change, revealing hazel eyes; Shelby in denim overalls, curly hair held by a green band; and Claire, also in denim overalls but also sporting a t-shirt with the happy yellow visage of an electric rodent from the world's most popular monster-catching game. The little anime fan had a headband with pointy yellow ears to match it.

  "Gotta be the best fan, huh?" Uncle asked her.

  "Like no one ever was!" came the enthusiastic reply.

  "Okay, then!" he said as the giggles died down. "I got a text from Natalie's dad saying she'll be a little late, so let's go over our characters first. Now, there've been a lot of emails flying around this week.." And wow, was that ever an understatement. "...and a lot of little details worked in. Some of these everyone knows. Other stuff only your individual princesses know for now. And of course," he said with a malicious chuckle, "there's stuff you won't ever know until it's too late. But for now, let's keep to the present. The princesses have arrived in Pazh Milna, capital of Carpazha, after a few more days on the road. They've had some time to rest and recuperate. So what've they been up to?"

  "We're writing letters to home!" Claire shouted ahead of the rush.

  Uncle didn't even bat an eye at that one. The little anime fan had come up with much weirder ideas in previous game sessions, so this seemed pretty normal in comparison. He even had a few ideas of his own, gleaned from an internet forum years ago, that would fit here.

  It was a quiet afternoon in the Laughing Cat Inn, the third which the gathered princesses had enjoyed so far. The little establishment on the outskirts of Pazh Milna was a cozy structure of chalk blocks, dark grey mortar, and orange-red roofing tiles that was snuggled in between a gaggle of identically constructed neighbors. From the second-floor patio, one had a wondrous view of the deep blue Sea of Peace, and the rates were quite reasonable, even before they had bargained with the owner to pay in fruit off of Flora's Staff of Plenty.

  In the past three days, the staff had produced diminutive, thimble-sized oranges, crisp pears with sandpapery outer skins, and a pair of huge, spiky fruit like nothing anyone had ever seen. The first giant of vegetation had weighed in at almost twenty pounds all by itself, tasting sweetly sour when raw, but its smaller, unripened brother had tasted more like pork when roasted. The innkeeper saved all the seeds from everything, treating them like gold in hand. All in all, it had been a good, if spontaneous, choice on Bianca's part. When the little witch had seen the inn's placard with its smiling black feline, she'd immediately insisted on staying there.

  Right now, each of them was concentrating on writing. There was a message service just around the corner that helpfully offered sheets of creamy white paper, small bottles of ink, and cheap quills for mere pennies, and Princess Cassandrella had finally nagged the others into agreeing to let their families know how things were going.

  Princess Gwenevrael, daughter of King Artundus of the Fifth Court and duchess of the Lonely Grove, wrote with a flowing and graceful hand that would have met with the approval of her childhood tutors. Her words were just as courtly, couched in vagaries and nuance as she tried to relate the events of the last week in a way which would not scandalize the court. Gwen was quite deliberate in the way she referred to her new friend, Selvi, and no one reading the missive would realize the barbarian princess's origins.

  Selvi Khan's-daughter, on the other hand, had very little use for the written word. She was literate, despite much argument with her mother years ago, and it was only after seeing her father going over reports from the hinterlands that she came to realize its use. Her letter now resembled one of those reports, crossed with a bit of warrior's epic. She went into great detail on the specifics of each battle, but skipped some details concerning her new friend, Gwen.

  The letter of Princess Flora Fidella Del'Monica was more lyrics than prose, as she strived to pen verses worthy of their adventures so far. She had spent much of the last three days studying with the bard who called the Laughing Cat her second home. Her time with the woman had helped provide context for many things her Uncle Alviss taught her over the years, including her favorite methods for communing with nature. It would take a lot of practice, but she figgered she could find a way to bring together bard-craft and her druidic heritage eventually. Along the edge of the paper, she scratched in a long series of lines -- some long, some short, some slanted this way or that. It looked like some a random scribble, unless one was in the know about the secret language of the druids and its written form.

  The piece of paper on the table in front of Princess Cassandrella was remarkably pristine, with only a small portion of its surface filled with carefully drawn but slightly blocky letters. The moon princess had taken far loner to start than the rest, not wishing to spoil the creamy lunar pallor of the page with unnecessary scratchings. It had also taken her some time to find a way to describe the past week in a way that would place her blessed mother the high priestess of Selunika into
a state of apoplectic conniption. In the end she'd elided over the encounter with the thieving ant-folk ("a wonderful picnic, but for the pests"), downplayed her run-in with the malevolent mushroom men ("time spent meeting the common folk of the forest"), and outright fibbed about the fight with the murderous rosebush princess ("an afternoon's entertainment with a lady in her garden; her voice must simply be heard to be believed").

  Prevarication and equivocation were big, scary words to her, so she tried not to think of the letter in that way. It was... an exercise in creative writing; that was all. To soften the blow to her conscience, she doodled in the picture of a happy bunny rabbit along the left margin before moving on to more truthful matters: her dress. "Alas, in travel my favorite skirts were left with rips," she wrote, "but I have found a wonderful replacement here in town, all red like the setting sun. And they have pockets!" Her mother would be so envious, she felt.

  If ink were blood, then Princess Bianca had absolutely murdered her letter home. There were furious scribbles, cross-outs, and lines that veered off to form separate thoughts so that the finished missive looked like some sort of literary hydra, dripping blackish ichor all over the castle rugs. Her words held some clue as to why, though it would take much analysis before anyone could decipher the handwriting. The little witch was bristling with anger at Gran'Mama, with each spiky loop and bloody tittle like a stab at the old bat's face. In the past few days, she'd finally broken down and had a professional take a look at the fancy magic rod which she'd been gifted with, and as she'd suspected, the thing was nothing but trouble -- a wondrous rod that randomly supplied one of twenty or more random outcomes, like some uncaring deity were rolling dice every single time she activated it. Not all of these outcomes were advantageous for her. Case in point: the other reason that her letter was such a mess was because Bianca was hardly larger than her own feline familiar, and it was all because of the rod's capricious nature. She needed both hands to properly write with a quill.

  "Okay, that's all for me," Bianca said as she signed her name. She dotted the i with all the force she could muster, blunting the quill and spattering ink.

  She rode her broom down to the ground floor, while the others took the stairs. It was a little lazy of her, yes, and it certainly attracted the stares and mutters of the locals, but she wasn't about to struggle up and down those steps if she didn't have to! The rest of the princesses were fast enough on their feet and caught up well before she reached their destination.

  The messaging office was a funny little shop, hardly more than a shed built on the corner of a busy intersection. The lines were always long, but they moved quickly, passing beneath the sign with its green top hat fast enough to set it to swinging. Lined up along the back of the shed was a shelf full of hats jut like the one on the sign. To her witchy senses, each one tingled with power. Somewhere out in the wide world, Bianca knew, there were masters of conjuration, abjuration, and millinery who held the secret of making such hats and tying them into a grand network. Every court on the two northern continents, and perhaps those of the south as well, had similar enchanted headwear, capable of sending letters and occasionally small objects. For those who inherited the things, it was quite lucrative, and the local hatsman was more than happy to accept their shiny new Carpazhan shillings before sending their letters into the ether with a wave of his magic wand.

  "Well, that's done," she groused as they wandered towards the nearest market plaza. "So, we did what Cassie wanted. Can we talk about where we're going next? Because I really --" She never got to finish that sentence.

  "Hi, everyone!" Natalie Perkins flounced into the pizza parlor ten minutes late and seventy decibels loud. It wasn't just her voice; her shoes had thick heels that went -stamp- on the floor and her frilly top had bells that went -jingle- with her every step. There was no way humanly possible to ignore the ruckus, though Shelby and Cynthia tried.

  "Hello, Natalie," Uncle said equitably, in the misplaced hope that the girls would follow his example. "We were afraid you weren't coming."

  "No, no, it just took longer than I thought to print off my character sheet." A sheaf of paper was thrust at him so forcefully that he almost lost the tip off his nose. "Here she is, Princess Isabel Cœur de Lion Solaire!"

  "Princess?" Shelby had a sour look on her face.

  "My suggestion," said Uncle. "We've got a theme going on, after all. But..." He thumbed through the pages. "This is a lot more than we discussed via email."

  "Oh, Kyle had some last-minute ideas."

  Uncle was pinching the bridge of his nose as he skimmed through. "So I can see... Okay, I can let you get away with the celestial heritage, since it fits pretty well with what we discussed before about the solar paladin bond, and it gives your character a few more options at the lower levels. The Headband of Precocity goes well with it, too. But I'm going to have to nix the flying unicorn mount, the bridle of invisibility, the lasso of truth, and... I'm kind of tempted to let you keep the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, just with a geas that makes it impossible for you to count to three properly... but nope," he decided with the scratch of a red pen. "Most of this stuff is well beyond what a level five paladin should have."

  Natalie jingled as she rolled her shoulders in a shrug. "Eh... Kyle said you might say that, but it was worth a shot. So, what's going on?" She dragged a chair over to sit beside Claire and produced a dice bag from her little purse. "We started yet?"

  "Just getting to it," said Uncle. "While I get your spell cards organized, why don't you introduce us to Princess Isabel?"

  "Hello!" a voice interrupted the princesses' conversation, stopping Bianca in mid-sentence. The owner of that vigorous contralto swept through the market crowds, parting them like some prophet of old. Heads turned and eyes stared in eye at the sight of the paladin as she made her grand entrance. The young woman was tall, almost of a height with Selvi, and clad in a lithe, flexible armor whose enchantments had obviously cost more than its burnished, golden metal. Her head was bare, black tresses falling perfectly out from under a golden headband fitted with a diamond-shaped stone, like a third eye in her forehead. Upon her chest was a blazon, the sun in all its grandeur with rays of red, white, and blue radiating from it.

  The princesses stared along with everyone else, unsure of what they were seeing -- except for Cassandrella, who cautiously asked: "Izzy? Is that you?"

  "It certainly is, Cassie!" The paladin beamed.

  "Um, ladies?" the moon princess said, all too aware that four pairs of eyes had transferred their stare to her. "Let me introduce to you my cousin. Princess Isabel Cœur de Lion Solaire, granddaughter of the High Priest of Solastria."

  "Wait, wait," Shelby interrupted. "You two are sharing a back story now?" The black-haired girl's suspicious stare was enough to wilt Claire at twenty paces, so across the table the girl was practically melting into the checked tablecloth.

  "I'll take credit for this one," Uncle said quickly. "Natalie's princess needed a good reason to be introduced into the party, and I didn't want to wave my hands and go 'Poof! there's a paladin!' or something equally ridiculous. It makes sense that a moon princess and a solar paladin might know each other, so I went with that. Got a problem with it?" he asked, metaphorically spearing the little naysayer with an arched eyebrow.

  "Nah, guess it's okay..." Shelby's face, all scrunched up and fuming, did not match her words one bit.

  "Okay, so before we get started for real," Uncle continued, "We have some things to go over. First, Natalie. Your brother said he'd give you the basic run-down on how things work, and I'll be happy to fill in the blanks as we go. Any burning questions right now?"

  "Nope!" the girl shouted, raising her dice bag and shaking it loudly. The bells in her sleeve were louder still. "He even let me use some of his extra dice!"

  "Good. Now, something new for today..." He drew a small stack of laminated rectangles out of his bag and removed the tangle of rubber bands holding it together. Each one was about the size of a trump ca
rd, cut from bright red construction paper and featuring a crest, a pizza with crossed swords, glued to them before lamination. "These represent Hero Points. Whenever you need a second chance on a bad roll, or want to improve your chances of getting some incredibly brave and reckless action to work, you can play the hero card. The full scope of their usefulness is up for discussion, but if I say no, then that means no." He passed one card to Natalie and two to everyone else. "Generally you get one card just for being an adventurer, and another anytime I feel like you earned it. After last week, you all definitely did."

  "So what do we do now?" asked Shelby.

  "I should be asking you ladies that." Uncle lay out a sketchy, hand-drawn map. "Here's the basic outline of the area you're in, known to elven scholars and cartographers as the Hundred Kingdoms, because they can never bother to count how many actual countries are currently within its borders. Knowledge checks, ladies."

  Five large dice clattered across the map, followed belatedly by Natalie's metallic twenty-sider. Three of them came up 18, 19, and 20, lined up neat like peas in a pod.

  "Not bad..." Uncle said as he passed sticky notes to Clair, Natalie, and Shelby. "Now, let's put that knowledge to good use."

  The Laughing Cat's main room was largely empty in the mid-afternoon, and the five -- now six -- princesses had a table to themselves. It was big and ancient as pieces of furniture went, and carved from a single massive tree trunk. At the moment it had a map unfurled across its face.

  Gwen was proud of that map. While not of elven make, it did not offend her sensibilities when she looked at it. Now she could only wish to understand it properly. The region of the Hundred Kingdoms was considered a constant source of headache for elven cartographers, who preferred their political boundaries to remain constant for at least a century at a time. The human lands which lay between the Sea of Peace and the Broken Sea further west were a patchwork of shifting alliances, fealties, and languages. The half-elf's knowledge was sorely out of date.