The Mouser made the mistake of trying to sheathe his bloodied sword, forgetting that Scalpel’s scabbard was no longer wire-stiffened, which made the action difficult. He cursed the scabbard, limp as Svivomilo’s now nerveless tail.
Four cuirassed and helmeted rats with pikes at the ready appeared at two of the rocky doorways. Brandishing his red-dripping sword and gleaming dirk, the Mouser raced through an untenanted doorway and with a chittering scream to clear the way ahead of him, sprinted across the concourse to the marble doorway he’d noted earlier, and plunged down the white stairway.
The usual nook in the turn of the stairs held only three compartments, each with a silver-fitted door of ivory. Into the central one there was going a white-booted rat wearing a voluminous white cloak and hood and bearing in his white-gloved right hand an ivory staff with a large sapphire set in its top.
Without an instant’s pause the Mouser ended his plunging descent with a dash into the nook. He hurled ahead of him the white-cloaked rat and slammed and hooked fast behind them the ivory door.
Recovering himself, the Mouser’s victim turned and with outraged dignity and brandished staff demanded through his white mask set with diamonds, “Who dareth dithturb with rude thcufflingth Counthillor Grig of the Inner Thircle of Thirteen? Mithcreant!”
While a part of the Mouser’s brain was realizing that this was the lisping white rat he had seen aboard Squid sitting on Hisvin’s shoulder, his eyes were informing him that this compartment held not a box for droppings, but a raised silver toilet seat, up through which came the sound and odor of rushing seawater. It must be one of the water-privies Svivomilo had mentioned.
Dropping Scalpel, the Mouser threw back Grig’s hood, dragged off his mask over his head, tripped the sputtering councillor and forced his head down against the far side of the privy’s silver rim, and then with Cat’s Claw cut Grig’s furry white throat almost from ratty ear to ear, so that his blood gushed down into the rushing water below. As soon as his victim’s writhings stilled, the Mouser drew off Grig’s white cloak and hood, taking great care that no blood got on them.
At that moment he heard the booted footsteps of several persons coming down the stairs. Operating with demonic speed, the Mouser placed Scalpel, the ivory staff, and the white mask and hood and cloak behind the seat of the privy, then hoisted the dead body so that it sat on the same, and himself stood crouching on the silver rim, facing the hooked door and holding the limp trunk erect. Then he silently prayed with great sincerity to Issek of the Jug, the first god he could think of, the one whom Fafhrd had once served.
Wavy and hooked browned-iron pike-blades gleamed above the doorways. The two to either side were slammed open. Then after a pause, during which he hoped someone had peered under the central door just enough to note the white boots, there came a light rapping, and then a respectful voice inquiring, “Your pardon, Nobility, but have you recently seen anything of a person in gray with cloak and mask of finest gray fur, and armed with rapier and dagger?”
The Mouser answered in a voice which he tried to make calm and dignifiedly benign, “I have theen nothing, thir. About thirty breathth ago I heard thomeone clattering at thpeed down the thtairth.”
“Our humblest thanks, Nobility;” the questioner responded, and the booted footsteps continued rapidly down toward the fifth level.
The Mouser let off a long soft sigh and chopped short his prayer. Then he set swiftly to work, for he knew he had a considerable task ahead of him, some of it most grisly. He wiped off and scabbarded Scalpel and Cat’s Claw. Then he examined his victim’s cloak, hood, and mask, discovering almost no blood on them, and set them aside. He noted that the cloak could be fastened down the front with ivory buttons. Then he dragged off Grig’s tall boots of whitest suede and tried them on his own legs. Though their softness helped, they fitted abominably, the sole covering little more than the area under his toes. Still, this would keep him reminded to maintain a rat’s gait at all times. He also tried on Grig’s long white gloves, which fitted worse, if that were possible. Still, he could wear them. His own boots and gauntlets he tucked securely over his gray belt.
Next he undressed Grig and dropped his garments one by one into the water, retaining only a razor-sharp ivory-and-gold-fitted dagger, a number of small parchment scrolls, Grig’s undershirt, and a double-ended purse filled with gold coins struck with a rat’s head on one side, circled by a wreath of wheat, and on the other a complex maze (tunnels?) and a numeral followed by the initials S. F L. B “Since the Founding of Lankhmar Below?” he hazarded brilliantly. He hung the purse over his belt, fixed the dagger to it by a gold hook on its ivory sheath, and thrust the scrolls unscanned into his own pouch.
Then with a grunt of distaste he rolled up his sleeves and using the ivory-handled dagger, proceeded to dismember the furry corpse into pieces small enough to force through the silver rim so that they splashed into the water and were carried away.
This horrid task at last accomplished, he made a careful search for blood splatters, wiped them up with Grig’s under-shirt, used it to polish the silver rim, then dropped it after the other stuff.
Still not giving himself a pause, he pulled on again the white suede boots, donned the white cloak, which was of finest wool, and buttoned it all the way down the front, thrusting his arms through the slits in the cloak to either side.
Then he put on the mask, discovered that he had to use the dagger to extend narrowly the eye-slits at their inner ends to be able to see at all with his own close-set human eyes. After that he tied on the hood, throwing it as far forward as practicable to hide the mask’s mutilations and his lack of be-furred rat ears. Finally he drew on the long, ill-fitting white gloves.
It was well that he had worked as speedily as he had, allowing himself no time for rest, for now there came booted footsteps up the stairs and the nastily hooked pike-blades a-wave again, while below the door of his compartment there appeared typically crooked rat-boots of fine black leather embossed with golden scroll-work.
There was a sharper knocking and a grating voice, polite yet peremptory, said, “Your pardon, Councillor. This is Hreest. As Lieutenant Warden of the Fifth Level, I must ask you to open the door. You have been closeted a long while in there, and I must assure myself that the spy we seek is not holding a knife at your throat.”
The Mouser coughed, took up the sapphire-headed ivory staff, drew wide the door and majestically strode forth with a slight hobble. Resuming with tired legs the aching, tip-toe rat-gait had given him a sudden torturing cramp in his left calf.
The pike-rats knelt. The fancy-booted rat whose black clothes, mask, gauntlets and rapier-scabbard were also covered with fine-lined golden arabesques, dropped back two steps.
Directing only a brief gaze at him, the Mouser said coolly, “You dare dithturb and hathten Counthillor Grig at hith eliminathionth? Well, perhapth your reathonth are good enough. Perhapth.”
Hreest swept off his wide-brimmed hat plumed with the breast-feathers of black canaries. “I am certain they are, Nobility. There is loose in Lankhmar Below a human spy, magically changed to our size. He has already murdered that skillful if unruly and conceited swordsman Svivomilo.”
“Thorry newth indeed!” the Mouser lisped. “Thearch out thith thpy at onthe! Thpare no ecthpenthe in men or effort. I will inform the Counthil, Hreetht, if you have not.”
And while Hreest’s voice followed him with ratly apologies, thanks, and reassurances, the Mouser stepped regally down the white marble stairs, his limp hardly noticeable due to the grateful support afforded by his ivory staff. The sapphire in its top twinkled like the blue star Ashsha. He felt like a king.
Fafhrd rode west through the gathering twilight, the iron-shod hooves of the Mingol mare striking sparks from the flinty substance of the Sinking Land. The sparks were becoming faintly visible, just as were a few of the largest stars. The road, mere hoof dints, was becoming hard to discern. To north and south, the Inner Sea and the Sea of the East were sullen gray expanses, the former wave-flecked. And now finally, against the last dirty pink ribbon of sunset fringing the west, he made out the wavery black line of squat trees and towering cactuses that marked the beginning of the great Salt Marsh.
It was a welcome sight, yet Fafhrd was frowning deeply—two vertical furrows springing up from the inside end of either eyebrow.