During this endeavor he was assisted by the fact that he never quite altogether lost sight of a larger white and violet visual reality around him. There were patchy flashes and glimpses of it alternating with the grainy dark dirt, and he was also helped by the faint yellow glow continuing to emanate from his upper face.
When the Mouser finally re-won all the territory he’d lost by his incautious sally, he was surprised to see fair Hisvet still going through all the motions of talking, and the winsome maids through those of attending her every word, as animatedly as before. Whatever was she saying?
While carefully maintaining all underground breathing routines, he concentrated his attention on other channels of sensation than the visual, seeking to widen and deepen, and bringing to bear all his inner powers, and after a time his efforts were rewarded.
The next heavy drop fell into the pool of the waterclock with an audible dulcet plash! He almost, but not quite, gave a start.
Almost immediately a glow wasp buzzed and a diamond-fly whirred its transparent wings against the wire-thin pale bars.
Hisvet leaned back on her elbows and said in silver tones, “At ease, girls.”
They appeared to relax their attention—a little, at any rate.
She tapped three fingers against the ruby rondure of her lips as she yawned prettily. “My, that was a most lengthy and boring lecture,” she commented. “Yet you endured it most commendably, dear Threesie,” she addressed the dark-haired maid. “And you too, Foursie,” she told the fair-haired one. She picked up from beside her a long emerald-headed pin and flourished it playfully. “There was not once the need for me to make use of this upon either of you,” she said, laughing, “to recall to attention the willful wandering mind and wake the lazy dreamer.”
Both girls shaped their lips to appreciative smiles, while giving the pin most sour looks.
Hisvet handed it to Foursie, who bore it somewhat gingerly across the room to a drawered chest topped with cosmetics and mirrors, and inserted it into a spherical black cushion that held jewel-headed others such, compassing all the hues of the rainbow.
Meanwhile Hisvet addressed Threesie, whose eyes widened as she listened. “During my talk I twice got the distinct impression that we were being spied on by an evil intelligence, one of the criminous sort my father deals with, or one of our own enemies or a cast-off lover perchance.” She searched her gaze around the walls, lingering somewhat overlong, the Mouser felt, in his direction.
“I will meditate on it,” she continued. “Dear Threesie, fetch me my silver-inlaid black opal figure of the world of Nehwon which I call the Opener of the Way.”
Threesie nodded dutifully and went to the same chest Foursie had just visited, passing her midway.
“Dear Foursie,” Hisvet greeted the blonde, “fetch me a beaker of white wine. My throat has grown quite dry with all that stupid talking.”
Foursie bowed her fair-thatched head and came to the low table set against the wall behind which the Mouser was embedded in earth invisible to him. He studied her appreciatively as she unstoppered the carafe he’d so disastrously snatched at and neatly filled a shining glass so tall and narrow it looked like a measuring tube. Her white uniform tunic was secured down the front with large circular jet buttons.
Returning to her mistress, she went down on her knees without bending her slender body in any other way and proffered the refreshment.
“Taste it first,” Hisvet instructed.
Getting this instruction, not uncommonly given servants by aristocrats, Foursie threw back her head and poured a short gush of the fluid between her parted lips without touching them to the glass, which she next held out to show its level was perceptibly decreased.
Hisvet accepted it, saying, “That was well executed, Foursie. Next time don’t wait for instruction. And you might lick your lips and smile to show that you enjoyed.”
Foursie bobbed her head.
“Dear demoiselle,” Threesie called from where she knelt at the chest of drawers, “I cannot find the Opener.”
“Have you searched carefully for it?” Hisvet called back, her voice becoming slightly thin. “It is an oblate sphere big as two thumbs, inset with silver bounding the continents and flat diamonds for the cities and a larger amethyst and turquoise making the death and life poles.”
“Dear demoiselle, I know the Opener,” Threesie called respectfully.
Hisvet, who was looking at Foursie again, shrugged her shoulders, then set the narrow glass to her lips and downed its contents in three swallows. “That was refreshing.” Again the lip pats.
A rutching sound turned her attention back to Threesie. “No, do not open the other drawers,” she directed. “It would not be there. Just search the top one thoroughly and find it. Set out the contents one by one on top of the chest if necessary.”
“Yes, demoiselle.”
Hisvet caught Foursie’s eye again, rolled hers toward busy Threesie, sketched another shrug, and commented confidingly, “This could become a tiresome annoyance, you know, a true weariness. No, girl, don’t bob your head. That’s all right on Threesie, but it’s not your style. Incline it once, demurely.”
“Yes, mistress.” Her single nod was shy as a virgin princess’s.
“How are you doing, Threesie?”
The brunette turned to face them. Her reply was barely loud enough to cross the room. “Demoiselle, I must confess myself defeated.”
After a rather long pause, Hisvet said reflectively, “That could be quite bothersome for you, Threesie, you know. As senior maid present, you would be wholly responsible for any deficiencies, disappearances, or thefts. Think about it.”
After another pause, she sighed and said, holding out the empty glass, “Foursie, fetch me the springy implement of correction.”
The blonde inclined her head, took the glass, and walking somewhat more slowly, returned to the low table, set down the glass, refilled it, and reached across to seize the magically suspended white whip, which she lifted with a little twist and bore off with the glass, thereby solving a minor mystery for the Mouser. The whip had simply been hanging on a hook on the wall. But since the wall had been and was again invisible to him, so was the hook protruding from it.
He felt a stirring of interest in the scene he spied on from his confining point of vantage, and was duly grateful to have his mind taken a little off his own troubles. He knew something of Hisvet’s ways and could guess the next developments, or at least speculate rewardingly. Dark-haired Threesie seemed well cast as the villain or culprit of this triangular piece. Leaning back against the chest of drawers and scowling, she looked a bird of ill omen in her uniform black tunic, though the large circular alabaster buttons going down the front added a comic note. Foursie did her kneeling trick a second time. Hisvet accepted the whip and replenished drink, saying graciously, “Thank you, my dear. I feel much better with these both by me. Well, Threesie?”
“I am thinking, demoiselle,” that one said, “and it comes to me that when I entered this room Foursie was crouched where I stand now with the drawer open I have just searched thoroughly, and she was rummaging around in it. She pushed it shut at once, but may well have taken somewhat from it, I realize now, and hid about her person.”
“Demoiselle, that’s not true!” Foursie protested, turning pale. “The drawer was never open, nor I at it.”
“She is a vicious little liar, dear mistress,” Threesie shot back. “Mark how she blanches!”
“Hush, girls,” Hisvet reproved. “I have thought of a simple way to settle this most unseemly dispute. Threesie dear, had Foursie opportunity to hide the Opener elsewhere in the room after she took it, if she did? As I recall, I entered shortly after you did.”
“No, mistress, she had not.”
“Well, then.” Hisvet said, smiling. “Threesie, come here. Foursie dear, strip off your tunic, so she may search you thoroughly.”
“Demoiselle!” the blonde uttered reproachfully. “You would not shame me so.”
“No shame at all,” Hisvet assured her ingenuously, lifting her silver eyebrows. “Why, child, suppose I were entertaining a lover, I might very well—probably would—have you and Threesie disrobe, so as not to embarrass him, or at all events make us both feel conspicuous. Or we might have the whim to ask one of you or both to join in our play under direction. Frix understood these things, as I hope Threesie does. Frix was incomparable. Not even Twosie comes close to matching her. But as you know, Frix managed to work out her term of service, discharge the geas my father set upon her. There’s never been another Onesie, and that’s why.”
Both maids nodded agreement, though somewhat grimly in their two different styles. They’d each heard somewhat too much about the Incomparable Onesie.
The Mouser was beginning to enjoy himself. Why, look, the piece was barely begun and Hisvet had managed to switch around the roles of the two other characters! He wished Fafhrd were here, he’d enjoy hearing Frix praised so. He’d been quite gone on the princess of Arilia, especially when she’d been Hisvet’s imperturbable slave-maid. Though the large loon wouldn’t appreciate being entombed, that was certain. Probably too big to survive by scavenging air in any case. Which reminded him, he’d best keep in mind his own breathing. And not lose sight of the ever-present possibility of the intrusion into the scene of some third force from either the under- or overworld. Talk about having to watch two ways!