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When he saw them, he froze. They froze too.

“She’s here!” the man bellowed. “She’s here!”

There was a commotion within. The door was pulled open, sending Obaday sprawling and the companions tumbling inside.

They were in a hall, in the center of which was a big table covered in food. Meats and cheese and fruit were piled in pyramids.

In one corner stairs led up. Deeba saw layers of smoke drifting from them, thankfully too dispersed to pay attention. The room was full of junk: suits of armor, old globes, game pieces, oily engines, and all manner of other moil.

The man from the corridor ran in behind them and slammed the door. Deeba and her companions faced the Hex.

There were three men and three women, all freakishly similar to each other. They wore identical jackets and trousers and conical hats. Each hat had different letters neatly stitched into it. The man who’d followed them in had i. The others had iv, ii, v, vi, and iii.

“Quick!” shouted the book. “Before they cast a spell!”

“Get her!” shouted the man wearing i. “It’s the girl.”

“You heard Aye,” said a woman who wore iv.

Jones reached for his club. Before he had a chance to move, the Hex pointed at Deeba with a simultaneous motion. They all spoke a word at the same instant.

“Alive!”

“Come!”

“Girl!”

“That!”

“And!”

“Get!”

A crackle of light burst from each of their forefingers, flew together, and became one. It zipped through the air, whining.

Obaday appeared in front of Deeba. He still held his little mirror, and he swung it like a racket. He intercepted the humming light and belted it out of the air, as if returning a serve. It slammed with a phutt! into the table.

“How’d you move so fast?” gaped Jones.

The couturier looked rather amazed himself.

“But…I don’t think it was going to hit her,” said Lectern.

“They were aiming at that armor,” said the book. “That was an ordersquito.”

The companions looked at the armor, then at each other. Then at Obaday’s mirror, and finally at the end of the table, where the little spell had been deflected.

On the table, one of the huge piles of fruit rumbled, spilled, tumbled into a new configuration, and stood up.

86

The Unintended Attacker

The fruit-thing rose, and unfolded.

It was taller than Jones. Deeba saw pears and peaches, apples and grapefruit all moving together like muscles. It stretched out arms at the end of which were bunches of bananas splayed into open hands. Its head was a watermelon, with bulging kiwi-fruit eyes.

The thing looked ridiculous.

“We’re being menaced by fruit?” said Obaday sarcastically. “Oh scary.”

“Wait!” said the book, and “No!” said Jones, but Obaday had picked up a knife from the table and swung it casually at the thing.

The fruit-figure caught Obaday’s wrist with one of its bunch-of-banana hands, and it began to squeeze. Obaday stared at it in astonishment, and then cried out in pain. The melon-head was mouthlessly snarling.

“Not what we had in mind,” said one of the Hex.

“We were thinking of a tin-man sort of thing,” said another.

“But a fructbot will do,” finished a third.

There was a crack from Obaday’s wrist, and he screamed.

The fruit-monster swung cherries and strawberries and black currants sausaged into a tail, ending in a pineapple like a spiked club. It sent Obaday sailing through the air to land with a horrible thud.

The fruit-devil raised its banana claws, and ran at Deeba.

The Hex laughed and watched their inadvertent creation on the rampage.

Deeba leapt away from it. Jones grabbed it and tried to electrocute it, but the charge seemed only to annoy the fruit. It flicked him away. The little half-transparent utterlings could only scamper out of its path and occasionally slap it, completely without effect. Lectern cowered.

The towering fruity menace slammed its bananas and its pineapple into the wood of the table, sending food flying. Each blow bruised and smashed the fruit that made it, but the fragrant stuff still held together. Deeba dodged its sweet-smelling blows.

It stamped,