And she made a tattoo with her gilded heels on the gleaming parquetry of the floor. Clad in yellow silk tunic and pantaloons, she was very pretty in a small, slight way. Her small-chinned, bright-eyed face was oddly attractive under its canopy of gleamingly smooth black hair. Her swift movements had the quality of restless fluttering. At the moment her every gesture conveyed anger and unbearable irritation, but there was also a kind of studied ease about her manner that suggested to the Mouser, who was hugely enjoying everything, a scene that had been played and replayed many times.
The room suited her well, with its silken hangings and fragile furniture. Low tables, scattered about, were crowded with jars of cosmetics, bowls of sweetmeats, and all sorts of frivolous bric-a-brac. The flames of slim tapers swayed in the warm breeze from the open windows.
On delicate chains were suspended a full dozen cages of canaries, nightingales, love birds, and other tiny warblers, some drowsing, others chirruping sleepily. Here and there were strewn small fluffy rugs. All in all, a very downy nest amidst the stoniness of Lankhmar.
Muulsh was somewhat as she had described him—fat, ugly, and perhaps twenty years older than she. His gaudy tunic fitted him like a sack. The look of mingled apprehension and desire he fixed upon his wife was irresistibly comic.
“Oh, Atya, my little dove, do not be angry with me. I try so hard to please you, and I love you so very much,” he cried, and tried to lay his hand on her arm. She eluded him. He hurried clumsily after her, immediately bumping into one of the bird cages, which hung at an inconvenient height. She turned on him in a miniature fury.
“Disturb my pets, will you, you brute! There, there, my dears, don’t be frightened. It’s just the old she-elephant.”
“Damn your pets!” he cursed impulsively, holding his forehead. Then he recollected himself and dodged backward, as if in fear of being thwacked with a slipper.
“Oh! So in addition to all your other crude affronts, we are also to be damned?” she said, her voice suddenly icy.
“No, no, my beloved Atya. I forgot myself. I love you very much, and your feathered pets as well. I meant no harm.”
“Of course you meant no harm! You merely want to torment us to death. You want to degrade and—”
“But, Atya,” he interrupted placatingly, “I don’t think I’ve really degraded you. Remember, even before I married you, your family never mingled with Lankhmar society.”
That remark was a mistake, as the eavesdropping Mouser, choking back his laughter, could plainly see. Muulsh must have realized it too, for as Atya went white and reached for a heavy crystal bottle, he retreated and cried out, “I’ve brought you a present.”
“I can imagine what it’s like,” she sneered disdainfully, relaxing a trifle but still holding the bottle poised. “Some trinket a lady would give her maid. Or flashy rags fit only for a harlot.”
“Oh, no, my dear. This is a gift for an empress.”
“I don’t believe you. It’s because of your foul taste and filthy manners that Lankhmar won’t accept me.” Her fine, decadently weak features contracted in a pout, her charming bosom still rising and falling from anger. “’She’s the concubine of Muulsh the moneylender,’ they say, and snigger at me. Snigger!”
“They’ve no right to. I can buy the lot of them! Just wait until they see you wearing my gift. It’s a jewel that the wife of the Overlord would give her eyeteeth to possess!”
At mention of the word “jewel” the Mouser sensed a subtle shiver of anticipation run through the room. More than that, he saw one of the silken hangings stir in a way that the lazy breeze could hardly account for.
He edged cautiously forward, craning his neck and peered down sideways into the space between the hangings and the wall. Then slowly a smile of elfish amusement appeared on his compact, snub-nosed face.
Crouched in the faintly amber luminescence that filtered through the draperies were two scrawny men, naked except for dark breechcloths. Each carried a bag big enough to fit loosely over a human head. From these bags leaked a faint soporific scent that the Mouser had noticed before without being able to place.
The Mouser’s smile deepened. Noiselessly he drew forward the slim fishpole at his side and inspected the line and the stickily-smeared claws that served for a hook.
“Show me the jewel!” said Atya.
“I shall, my dear. At once,” answered Muulsh. “But don’t you think we’d first best close the sky-window and the other ones?”
“We’ll do nothing of the kind!” snapped Atya. “Must I stifle just because a lot of old women have given way to a silly fear?”
“But, my dove, it’s not a silly fear. All Lankhmar is afraid. And rightly.”
He moved as though to call a slave. Atya stamped her foot pettishly. “Stop, you fat coward! I refuse to give way to childish frights. I won’t believe any of those fantastic stories, no matter how many great ladies swear to them. Don’t you dare have the windows closed. Show me the jewel at once, or—or I’ll never be nice to you again.”
She seemed close to hysteria. Muulsh sighed and resigned himself.
“Very well, my sweet.”
He walked over to an inlaid table by the door, clumsily ducking past several bird cages, and fumbled at a small casket. Four pairs of eyes followed him intently. When he returned there was something in his hand that glittered. He set it down on the center of the table.
“There,” he said, stepping back. “I told you it was fit for an empress, and it is.”
For a space there was breathless silence in the room. The two thieves behind the draperies edged forward hungrily, quietly loosening the drawstrings of the bags, their feet caressing the polished floor like cats’ paws.
The Mouser slid the slim fishing rod through the sky-window, avoiding the silver chains of the cages, until the pendant claw was poised directly above the center of the table, like a spider preparing to drop on an unsuspecting large red beetle.
Atya stared. A new dignity and self-respect crept into Muulsh’s expression. The jewel gleamed like a fat, lucent, quivering drop of blood.
The two thieves crouched to spring. The Mouser joggled the rod slightly, gauging his aim before he dropped the claw. Atya reached out an eager hand and moved toward the table.
But all these intended actions were simultaneously interrupted.
There was a beat and whirr of powerful wings. An inky bird a little larger than a crow flapped through a side window and skidded down into the room, like a fragment of blackness detached from the outer night. Its talons made arm-long scratches as it hit the table. Then it arched its neck, gave a loud, shuddering squawk, and launched itself toward Atya.
The room whirled with chaotic movements. The gummed claw halted midway in its drop. The two thieves fought ungracefully to keep their balance and avoid being seen. Muulsh waved his arms and shouted, “Shoo! Shoo!” Atya collapsed.
The black bird swept close past Atya, its wings brushing and striking the silver cages, and beat out into the night.
Again there was momentary silence in the room. The gentle songbirds had been quite stilled by the incursion of their raptorial brother. The rod vanished through the sky-window. The two thieves scuttled behind the draperies and noiselessly edged toward a door. Their looks of bafflement and fright were giving way to professional chagrin.
Atya rose to her knees, dainty hands pressed to her face. A shudder tightened around Muulsh’s fleshy neck and he moved toward her.
“Did it—did it hurt you? Your face. It struck at you.”
Atya dropped her hands, revealing an unmaimed countenance. She stared at her husband. Then all at once the stare changed to a glare, like a pot suddenly come to a boil.
“You big useless hen!” she cried out. “For all you cared, it might have pecked out both my eyes! Why didn’t you do something? Yelling ‘Shoo! Shoo!’ when it struck at me! And the jewel gone forever now! Oh, you miserable capon!”
She rose to her feet, taking off one of her slippers with a wildly determined air. Muulsh retreated, protesting, and bumped into a whole cluster of bird cages.
Only Fafhrd’s tossed-aside cloak marked the spot where the Gray Mouser had left him. Hastening to the roof-edge, he made out Fafhrd’s large form some distance away across the roofs of the adjoining warehouses. The barbarian was staring at the moonlit sky. The Mouser gathered up the cloak, leaped the narrow gap, and followed.
When the Mouser reached him, Fafhrd was grinning with great satisfaction so that his big white teeth showed. The size of his supple, brawny frame and the amount of metal-studded leather he wore in the form of armbands and broad belt were as much out of tune with civilized Lankhmar as were his long, copper hair, handsomely rugged features, and pale Northern skin, ghostly in the moonlight. Firmly clutching his heavy hawking glove at the wrist was a white-capped eagle, which ruffled its feathers and made a disagreeable gargling noise in its throat at the Mouser’s approach.