Free The Dastard by Piers Anthony

conscience. I keep my word.”
    “I've kept my word with you.”
    “What, you mean to say you never looked into my tent last night?”
    “I mean to say I never saw anything you didn't want to show.”
    Maybe that counted. The Dastard kept his word when he couldn't help it. “So what makes this encounter different from what I've already seen?”
    “All you have seen so far is spot minor unhappenings. This will be a big one.”
    “If you're going to unhappen it anyway, why bother? Why not just take a different path?”
    “Because this is how I get my pleasure in life. By changing things to make other people worse off than I am.”
    This took more than a passing effort of understanding. “You enjoy making others unhappy?”
    “Yes! Because that makes me better off than they are.”
    “But why don't you just use your talent to make yourself better off without hurting anyone else?”
    “I would if I could. I'd like to marry a princess, and spend the rest of my life in useless indolence, much respected by all who meet me. But I haven't found a princess to marry, or even a girl to smooch along the way.” He glanced sidelong at Becka, but she turned dragon for just a moment, warning him off. “So it's easier to make others worse off.”
    He did have a point, of a sort. But she was short on sympathy, knowing his nature. “Well then, maybe you should just find a princess to smooch, instead of messing with unimportant folk.”
    “If I find one, I will certainly do my best to win her. Meanwhile, I'll continue to seek nexi.”
    Becka wondered if she was supposed to help him find a princess. But she didn't know any princesses. “Okay, I'll just watch and not interfere.”
    “Thank you,” he said insincerely. “This way.” He walked back along the path they had followed the day before.
    “But we've already been there,” she protested.
    “I have a sense about it. I go where there is a nexus. I don't care what direction it is.”
    So they walked back toward the Sea Hag's statue. Becka would have preferred some other direction, because the statue was creepy, but had no choice.
    After an hour they met a young woman walking the opposite way.
    She was rather pretty, in a disheveled way, if a person liked that type. She had wild black hair and wild black eyes, and her clothing seemed to have been randomly assembled without regard to color or pattern. But beneath it all she had a somewhat too-prominent bosom that sported more than an eyeful of cleavage, thanks to inadequate buttoning. Naturally, the Dastard's eyeballs were heating. Becka was disgusted.
    “Who are you?” the Dastard inquired in his crudely abrupt way.
    The creature let out a laugh that was halfway between the squeak of a stuck door hinge and the squeal of a stuck road hog. “I'm Ann Arcky. My talent is absentmindedness.”
    Obviously true: Her wardrobe and hairstyle suggested as much. But the Dastard's eyes were still glued to her bouncily heaving décolletage.
    There was something else: As the woman spoke, a fuzzy balloon appeared over her head, then faded. She was an odd one, certainly.
    Since the Dastard was for the moment distracted, Becka asked a question. “What is that bubble over your head?”
    “Well, it's a medium-length story,” Ann said. “And sort of scattered, or maybe I should say scatterbrained.”
    “Go ahead and tell it,” the Dastard said. “We're listen--”
    But his voice cut off in midword, leaving the “ing” cut off and dropping to the ground, for Ann had just inhaled, popping loose a button. Becka didn't want to admit she was jealous of such ability, so she kept her mouth shut, in contrast to the Dastard, whose mouth was hanging open.
    “I came from Mundania,” Ann said. “I was always sort of disorganized, always losing thoughts. Then I wandered into--what's this land called?”
    “Xanth,” Becka said.
    “Zanth,” Ann agreed. “I got here, I don't know how, I just sort of blundered, and couldn't find my way out, and