Without more ado than a smile, she began deftly to unbutton Grig’s long white robe. The Mouser lifted his arms a little and let himself be undressed as effortlessly as in a dream, and with even less attention paid the process, for he was most eagerly scanning the violet-masked figure on the bed. He knew to a certainty who it must be, beyond all contributing evidence, for the silver dart was throbbing in his temple and the hunger which had haunted him for days returned redoubled.
The situation was strange almost beyond comprehension. Although guessing that Frix and the other must have used an elixir like Sheelba’s, the Mouser could have sworn they were all three human size, except for the presence of the familiar vermin, scuttlers and slitherers, so huge.
It was a great relief to have his cramping rat-boots deftly drawn off, as he lifted first one leg, then the other. Yet although he submitted so docilely to Frix’s ministrations, he kept hold of his sword Scalpel and of the belt it hung from and also, on some cloudy impulse, of Grig’s mask. He felt the smaller scabbard empty on the belt and realized with a pang of apprehension that he had left Cat’s Claw behind in Grig’s apartment along with the latter’s ivory staff.
But these worries vanished like the last snowflake in spring when the one on the bed asked cajolingly, “Will you partake of refreshment, dearest guest?” and when he said, “I will most gladly,” lifted a violet-gloved hand and ordered, “Dear Frix, fetch sweetmeats and wine.”
While Frix busied herself at a far table, the Mouser whispered, his heart a-thump, “Ah, most delectable Hisvet—For I deem you are she?”
“As to that, you must judge for yourself,” the tinkling voice responded coquettishly.
“Then I shall call you Hisvet,” the Mouser answered boldly, “recognizing you as my queen of queens and princess of princesses. Know, delicious Demoiselle, that ever since our raptures ‘neath the closet tree were so rudely broken off by an interruption of Mingols, my mind, nay, my mania has been fixed solely on you.”
“That were some small compliment—” the other allowed, lolling back luxuriously, “if I could believe it.”
“Believe it you must,” the Mouser asserted masterfully, stepping forward. “Know, moreover, that it is my intention that on this occasion our converse not be conducted over Frix’s shoulder, dear companion that she is, but at the closest range. I am fixedly desirous of all refreshments, omitting none.”
“You cannot think I am Hisvet!” the other countered, starting up in what the Mouser hoped was mock indignation “Else you would never dare such blasphemy!”
“I dare far more!” the Mouser declared with a soft amorous growl, stepping forward more swiftly. The vermin hanging round about moved angrily, striking against their silver bars and setting their cages a little a-swing, and clashing, clattering, and hissing more. Nevertheless the Mouser, dropping his belt and sword by the edge of the bed and setting a knee thereon, would have thrust himself directly upon Hisvet, had not Frix come bustling up at that moment and set between them on the coarse linen a great silver tray with slim decanters of sweet wine and crystal cups for its drinking and plates of sugary tidbits.
Not entirely to be balked, the Mouser darted his hand across and snatched away the vizard of violet silk from the visage it hid. Violet-gloved hands instantly snatched the mask back from him, but did not replace it, and there confronting him was indeed the slim triangular face of Hisvet, cheeks flushed, red-irised eyes glaring, but pouty lips grinning enough to show the slightly overlarge pearly upper incisors, the whole being framed by silver-blonde hair interwoven like that of Frix, but with even finer wire of silver, into two braids that reached to her waist.
“Nay,” she said laughingly, “I see you are most wickedly presumptuous and that I must protect myself.” Reaching down on her side of the bed, she procured a long slender-bladed gold-hilted dagger. Waving it playfully at the Mouser, she said, “Now refresh yourself from the cups and plates before you, but have a care of sampling other sweetmeats, dear guest.”
The Mouser complied, pouring for himself and Hisvet. He noted from a corner of his eye that Frix, moving silently in her silken robe, had rolled up Grig’s white boots and gloves in his white hood and robe and set them on a stool near the floor-to-ceiling painting of the man and the leopardess and that she had made as neat a bundle of all the rest of the Mouser’s garb—his own garb, mostly—and set them on a stool next the first. A most efficient and foresighted maid, he thought, and most devoted to her mistress—in fact altogether too devoted: he wished at this moment she would take herself off and leave him private with Hisvet.
But she showed no sign of so doing, nor Hisvet of ordering her away, so without more ado the Mouser began a mild love-play, catching at the violet-gloved fingers of Hisvet’s left hand as they dipped toward the sweetmeats or plucking at the ribbons and edges of her violet robe, in the latter case reminding her of the discrepancy in their degree of undress and suggesting that it be corrected by the subtraction of an item or two from her outfit. Hisvet in turn would deftly jab with her dagger at his snatching hand, as if to pin it to tray or bed, and he would whip it back barely in time. It was an amusing game, this dance of hand and needle-sharp dagger—or at least it seemed amusing to the Mouser, especially after he had drained a cup or two of fiery colorless wine—and so when Hisvet asked him how he had come into the rat-world, he merrily told her the story of Sheelba’s black potion and how he had first thought its effects a most damnably unfair wizardly joke, but now blessed them as the greatest good ever done him in his life—for he twisted the tale somewhat to make it appear that his sole objective all along had been to win to her side and bed.
He ended by asking, as he parted two fingers to let Hisvet’s dagger strike between them, “How ever did you and dear Frix guess that I was impersonating Grig?”
She replied, “Most simply, gracious gamesman. We went to fetch my father from the council, for there is still an important journey he, Frix, and I must make tonight. At a distance we heard you speak and I divined your true voice despite your clever lispings. Thereafter we followed you.”
“Ah, surely I may hope you love me as dearly, since you trouble to know me so well,” the Mouser warbled infatuatedly, slipping hand aside from a cunning slash. “But tell me, divine one, how comes it that you and Frix and your father are able to live and hold great power in the rat-world?”
With her dagger she pointed somewhat languidly toward the vanity table holding the black and white vials, informing him, “My family has used the same potion as Sheelba’s for countless centuries, and also the white potion, which restores us at once to human-size. During those same centuries we have interbred with the rats, resulting in divinely beautiful monsters such as I am, but also in monsters most ugly, at least by human standards. Those latter of my family stay always below ground, but the rest of us enjoy the advantages and delights of living in two worlds. The inter-breeding has also resulted in many rats with human-like hands and minds. The spreading of civilization to the rats is largely our doing, and we shall rule as chiefs and chieftesses paramount, or even goddesses and gods, when the rats rule men.”
This talk of interbreeding and monsters startled the Mouser somewhat and gave him to think, despite his ever more firmly gyved ensorcelment by Hisvet. He recalled Lukeen’s old suggestion, made aboard Squid, that Hisvet concealed a she-rat’s body under her maiden robes and he wondered—somewhat fearfully yet most curiously—just what form Hisvet’s slim body did take. For instance, did she have a tail? But on the whole he was certain that whatever he discovered under her violet robe would please him mightily, since now his infatuation with the grain-merchant’s daughter had grown almost beyond all bounds.
However, he outwardly showed none of this wondering, but merely asked, as if idly, “So your father is also Lord Null, and you and he and Frix regularly travel back and forth between the big and little worlds?”
“Show him, dear Frix,” Hisvet commanded lazily, lifting slim fingers to mask a yawn, as though the hand-and-dagger game had begun to bore her.
Frix moved back against the wall until her head with its natural jet-black sheath and copper-gleaming plaits, for she had thrown back her hood, was between the cages of the pocket-viper and the most enraged scorpion. Her dark eyes were a sleepwalker’s, fixed on things infinitely remote. The scorpion darted his moist white sting between the bars rat-inches from her ear, the viper’s trifid tongue vibrated angrily against her cheek, while his fangs struck the silver rounds and dripped venom that wetted oilily her yellow silken shoulder, but she seemed to take no note whatever of these matters. The fingers of her right hand, however, moved along a row of medallions decorating the glow-worm tank behind her, and without looking down, she pressed two at once.