After a long, uncertain pause, the girl in violet nervously patted with her free hand the cloth of gold beside her and Vlana seated herself there, carefully not too close, and the two women spoke together in low voices, Vlana taking the lead, though not obviously.
The Mouser took off his own gray, hooded cloak, folded it almost fussily, and laid it beside Fafhrd’s. Then they unbelted their swords, and the Mouser set them atop folded robe and cloak.
Without those weapons and bulking garments, the two men looked suddenly like youths, both with clear, close-shaven faces, both slender despite the swelling muscles of Fafhrd’s arms and calves, he with long red-gold hair falling down his back and about his shoulders, the Mouser with dark hair cut in bangs, the one in brown leather tunic worked with copper wire, the other in jerkin of coarsely woven gray silk.
They smiled at each other. The feeling each had of having turned boy all at once made their smiles for the first time a bit embarrassed. The Mouser cleared his throat and, bowing a little, but looking still at Fafhrd, extended a loosely spread-fingered arm toward the golden couch and said with a preliminary stammer, though otherwise smoothly enough, “Fafhrd, my good friend, permit me to introduce you to my princess. Ivrian, my dear, receive Fafhrd graciously if you please, for tonight he and I fought back to back against three and we conquered.”
Fafhrd advanced, stooping a little, the crown of his red-gold hair brushing the bestarred canopy, and knelt before Ivrian exactly as Vlana had. The slender hand extended to him looked steady now, but was still quiveringly a-tremble, he discovered as soon as he touched it. He handled it as if it were silk woven of the white spider’s gossamer, barely brushing it with his lips, and still felt nervous as he mumbled some compliments.
He did not sense, at least at the moment, that the Mouser was quite as nervous as he, if not more so, praying hard that Ivrian would not overdo her princess part and snub their guests, or collapse in trembling or tears or run to him or into the next room, for Fafhrd and Vlana were literally the first beings, human or animal, noble, freeman, or slave, that he had brought or allowed into the luxurious nest he had created for his aristocratic beloved—save the two love birds that twittered in a silver cage hanging to the other side of the fireplace from the dais.
Despite his shrewdness and new-found cynicism it never occurred to the Mouser that it was chiefly his charming but preposterous coddling of Ivrian that was keeping doll-like and even making more so the potentially brave and realistic girl who had fled with him from her father’s torture chamber four moons ago.
But now as Ivrian smiled at last and Fafhrd gently returned her her hand and cautiously backed off, the Mouser relaxed with relief, fetched two silver cups and two silver mugs, wiped them needlessly with a silken towel, carefully selected a bottle of violet wine, then with a grin at Fafhrd uncorked instead one of the jugs the Northerner had brought, and near-brimmed the four gleaming vessels and served them all four. With another preliminary clearing of throat, but no trace of stammer this time, he toasted, “To my greatest theft to date in Lankhmar, which willy-nilly I must share sixty-sixty with”—he couldn’t resist the sudden impulse—”with this great, longhaired, barbarian lout here!” And he downed a quarter of his mug of pleasantly burning wine fortified with brandy.
Fafhrd quaffed off half of his, then toasted back, “To the most boastful and finical little civilized chap I’ve ever deigned to share loot with,” quaffed off the rest, and with a great smile that showed white teeth held out his empty mug.
The Mouser gave him a refill, topped off his own, then set that down to go to lvrian and pour into her lap from their small pouch the gems he’d filched from Fissif. They gleamed in their new, enviable location like a small puddle of rainbow-hued quicksilver.
Ivrian jerked back a-tremble, almost spilling them, but Vlana gently caught her arm, steadying it, and leaned in over the jewels with a throaty gasp of wonder and admiration, slowly turned an envious gaze on the pale girl, and began rather urgently but smilingly to whisper to her. Fafhrd realized that Vlana was acting now, but acting well and effectively, since Ivrian was soon nodding eagerly and not long after that beginning to whisper back. At her direction, Vlana fetched a blue-enameled box inlaid with silver, and the two of them transferred the jewels from Ivrian’s lap into its blue velvet interior. Then Ivrian placed the box close beside her and they chatted on.
As he worked through his second mug in smaller gulps, Fafhrd relaxed and began to get a deeper feeling of his surroundings. The dazzling wonder of the first glimpse of this throne room in a slum, its colorful luxury intensified by contrast with the dark and mud and slime and rotten stairs and Ordure Boulevard just outside, faded, and he began to note the rickettiness and rot under the grand overlay.
Black, rotten wood and dry, cracked wood too showed here and there between the drapes and also loosed their sick, ancient stinks. The whole floor sagged under the rugs, as much as a span at the center of the room. A large cockroach was climbing down a gold-worked drape, another toward the couch. Threads of night-smog were coming through the shutters, making evanescent black arabesques against the gilt. The stones of the large fireplace had been scrubbed and varnished, yet most of the mortar was gone from between them; some sagged, others were missing altogether.
The Mouser had been building a fire there in the stove. Now he pushed in all the way the yellow flaring kindler he’d lit from the fire-pot, hooked the little black door shut over the mounting flames, and turned back into the room. As if he’d read Fafhrd’s mind, he took up several cones of incense, set their peaks a-smolder at the fire-pot, and placed them about the room in gleaming, shallow, brass bowls—stepping hard on the one cockroach by the way and surreptitiously catching and crushing the other in the base of his flicked fist. Then he stuffed silken rags in the widest shutter-cracks, took up his silver mug again, and for a moment gave Fafhrd a very hard look, as if daring him to say just one word against the delightful yet faintly ridiculous doll’s house he’d prepared for his princess.
Next moment he was smiling and lifting his mug to Fafhrd, who was doing the same. Need of refills brought them close together. Hardly moving his lips, the Mouser explained sotto voce, “Ivrian’s father was a duke. I slew him, by black magic, I believe, while he was having me done to death on the torture rack. A most cruel man, cruel to his daughter too, yet a duke, so that Ivrian is wholly unused to fending or caring for herself. I pride myself that I maintain her in grander state than ever her father did with all his serving men and maids.”
Suppressing the instant criticisms he felt of this attitude and program, Fafhrd nodded and said amiably, “Surely you’ve thieved together a most charming little palace, quite worthy of Lankhmar’s Overlord Karstak Ovartamortes, or the King of Kings at Horborixen.”
From the couch Vlana called in her husky contralto, “Gray Mouser, your princess would hear an account of tonight’s adventure. And might we have more wine?”
Ivrian called, “Yes, please, Mouse.”
Wincing almost imperceptibly at that earlier nickname, the Mouser looked to Fafhrd for the go-ahead, got the nod, and launched into his story. But first he served the girls wine. There wasn’t enough for their cups, so he opened another jug and after a moment of thought uncorked all three, setting one by the couch, one by Fafhrd where he sprawled now on the pillowy carpets, and reserving one for himself. Ivrian looked wide-eyed apprehensive at this signal of heavy drinking ahead, Vlana cynical with a touch of anger, but neither voiced their criticism.
The Mouser told the tale of counter-thievery well, acting it out in part, and with only the most artistic of embellishments—the ferret-marmoset before escaping ran up his back and tried to scratch out his eyes—and he was interrupted only twice.
When he said, “And so with a whish and a snick I bared Scalpel—” Fafhrd remarked, “Oh, so you’ve nicknamed your sword as well as yourself?”
The Mouser drew himself up. “Yes, and I call my dirk Cat’s Claw. Any objections? Seem childish to you?”
“Not at all. I call my own sword Graywand. All weapons are in a fashion alive, civilized and nameworthy. Pray continue.”
And when he mentioned the beastie of uncertain nature that had gamboled along with the thieves (and attacked his eyes!), Ivrian paled and said with a shudder, “Mouse! That sounds like a witch’s familiar!”