The painting of the girl and crocodile moved swiftly upward, revealing the foot of a dark steep stairway.
“That leads without branchings to my father’s and my house,” Hisvet explained.
The painting descended. Frix pressed two other medallions and the companion painting of man and leopardess rose, revealing a like stairway.
“While that one ascends directly by way of a golden rat-hole to the private apartments of whoever is Lankhmar’s seeming overlord, now Glipkerio Kistomerces,” Hisvet told the Mouser as the second painting slid down into place. “So you see, beloved, our power goes everywhere.” And she lifted her dagger and touched it lightly to his throat. The Mouser let it rest there a space before taking its tip between fingers and thumb and moving it aside. Then he as gently caught hold of the tip of one of Hisvet’s braids, she offering no resistance, and began to unweave the fine silver wires from the finer silver-blonde hairs.
Frix still stood like a statue between fang and sting, seeming to see things beyond reality.
“Is Frix one of your breed?—combining in some fashion the finest of human and ratly qualities,” the Mouser asked quietly, keeping up with the task which, he told himself, would eventually and after an admittedly weary amount of unbraiding, allow him to arrive at his heart’s desire.
Hisvet shook her head languorously, laying aside her dagger. “Frix is my dearest slave and almost sister, but not by blood. Indeed she is the dearest slave in all Nehwon, for she is a princess and perchance by now a queen in her own world. While a-travel between worlds, she was ship-wrecked here and beset by demons, from whom my father rescued her, at the price that she serve me forever.”
At this, Frix spoke at last, though without moving else but her lips and tongue, not even her eyes to look at them. “Or until, sweetest mistress, I three times save your life at entire peril of my own. That has happened once now, aboard Squid, when the dragon would have gobbled you.”
“You would never leave me, dear Frix,” Hisvet said confidently.
“I love you dearly and serve you faithfully,” Frix replied. “Yet all things come to an end, blessed Demoiselle.”
“Then I shall have the Gray Mouser to protect me, and you unneeded,” Hisvet countered somewhat pettishly, lying on an elbow. “Leave us for the nonce, Frix, for I would speak privately with him.”
With merriest smile Frix came from between the deadly cages, made a curtsy toward the bed, resumed her yellow mask and swiftly went off through the second unsecret doorway, curtained with filmy silver.
Still lifted on her elbow, Hisvet turned toward the Mouser her slender form and her taper-face alight with beauty. He reached toward her eagerly, but she captured his questing hands in her cool fingers and fondling them asked, or rather stated, her eyes feeding on his, “You will love me forever, will you not, who dared the dark and fearsome tunnels of the rat-world to win me?”
“That will I surely, O Empress of Endless Delights,” the Mouser answered fervently, maddened by desire and believing his words to the ends of the universe of his feelings—almost.
“Then I think it proper to relieve you of this,” Hisvet said, putting the fingers of her two hands to his temple, “for it would be an offense against myself and my supreme beauty to depend on a charm when I may now wholly depend on you.”
And with only the tiniest tweak of pain inflicted, she deftly squeezed with her fingernails the silver dart from under the Mouser’s skin, as any woman might squeeze out a blackhead or whitehead from the visage of her lover. She showed him the dart gleaming on her palm. He for his part felt no change in his feelings whatever. He still adored her as divinity—and the fact that previously in his life he had never put any but momentary trust in any divinity whatever seemed of no importance at all, at least at this moment.
Hisvet laid a cool hand on the Mouser’s side, but her red eyes were no longer languorously misty; they were sparklingly bright. And when he would have touched her similarly she prevented him, saying in most businesslike fashion, “No, no, not quite yet! First we must plan, my sweet—for you can serve me in ways which even Frix will not. To begin, you must slay me my father, who thwarts me and confines my life unbearably, so that I may be imperatrix of all and you by most favored consort. There will be no end to our powers. Tonight, Lankhmar! Tomorrow, all Nehwon! Then … the conquest of other universes beyond the waters of space! The subjugation of the angels and demons, of heaven itself and hell! At first it may be well that you impersonate my father, as you have Grig—and done most cleverly, by my own witnessing, pet. You are of men the most like me in the world for deceptions, darling. Then—”
She broke off at something she saw in the Mouser’s face. “You will of course obey me in all things?” she asked sharply, or rather asserted.
“Well…” the Mouser began.
The silver drape billowed to the ceiling and Frix dashed in on silent-silken slippers, her yellow robe and hood lying behind her.
“Your masks! Your masks!” she cried. “’Ware! ‘Ware!” And she whirled over them to their necks an opaque violet coverlet, hiding Hisvet’s violet-robed form, the Mouser’s unclad body, and the tray between them. “Your father comes with armed attendants, lady!” And she knelt by the head of the bed nearest Hisvet and bowed her yellow-masked head, assuming a servile posture.
Hardly were the white and violet masks in place and the silver curtains settled to the floor than the latter were jerked rudely aside. Hisvin and Skwee appeared, both unmasked, followed by three pike-rats. Despite the presence of the huge vermin in their cages, the Mouser found it hard to banish the illusion that all the rats were actually five feet and more tall.
Hisvin’s face grew dusky red as he surveyed the scene. “Oh, most monstrous!” he cried at Hisvet. “Shameless filth! Loose with my own colleague!”
“Don’t be dramatic, Daddy,” Hisvet countered, while to the Mouser she whispered tersely, “Slay him now. I’ll clear you with Skwee and the rest.”
The Mouser, fumbling under the coverlet over the side of the bed for Scalpel, while presenting a steady white be-diamonded mask at Hisvin, said blandly, “Calm yourthelf, counthillor. If your divine daughter chootheth me above all other ratth and men, ith it my fault, Hithvin? Or herth either? Love knowth no ruleth.”
“I’ll have your head for this, Grig,” Hisvin screeched at him, advancing toward the bed.
“Daddy, you’ve become a puritanical dodderer,” Hisvet said sharply, almost primly, “to indulge in antique tantrums on this night of our great conquest. Your day is done. I must take your place on the Council. Tell him so, Skwee. Daddy darling, I think you’re just madly jealous of Grig because you’re not where he is.”
Hisvin screamed, “O dirt that was my daughter!” and snatching with youthful speed a stiletto from his waist, drove it at Hisvet’s neck betwixt violet mask and coverlet—except that Frix, lunging suddenly on her knees, swung her open left hand hard between, as one bats a ball.
The needlelike blade drove through her palm to the slim dagger’s hilt and was wrenched from Hisvin’s grasp.
Still on one knee, the bright blade transfixing her out-stretched left palm and dripping red a little, Frix turned toward Hisvin and advancing her other hand graciously, she said in clear, winning tones, “Govern your rage for all our sakes, dear my dear mistress’s father. These matters can be composed by quiet reason, surely. You must not quarrel together on this night of all nights.”
Hisvin paled and retreated a step, daunted most likely by Frix’s preternatural composure, which indeed was enough to send shivers up a man’s or even a rat’s spine.
The Mouser’s fumbling hand closed around Scalpel’s hilt. He prepared to spring out and dash back to Grig’s apartment, snatching up his bundle of clothes on the way. At some point during the last score or so heartbeats, his great undying love for Hisvet had quietly perished and was now beginning to stink in his nostrils.
But at that instant the violet drapes were torn apart and there rushed from the Mouser’s chosen escape route the rat Hreest in his gold-embellished black garb and brandishing rapier and dirk. He was followed by three gaurdsmen-rats in green uniforms, each with a like naked sword. The Mouser recognized the dirk Hreest held—it was his own Cat’s Claw.
Frix moved swiftly behind the head of the bed to the post she’d earlier taken between viper and scorpion cage, the stiletto still transfixing her left hand like a great pin. The Mouser heard her murmur rapidly, “The plot thickens. Enter armed rats at all portals. A climax nears.”