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Hisvet was concerned. Every time he had embraced a girl this disastrous half-day, the slim
triangular face of Hisvin's daughter had got ghostily in the way, making the visage of his
companion of the moment dull and gross by comparison, while from the tiny silver dart in his
temple a feeling of sick boredom and unjoyful satiety had radiated through all his flesh.
Reflected from his flesh, this feeling filled his mind. He was dully aware that the rats,
despite the great losses they had suffered aboard _Squid_, threatened Lankhmar. Rats were deterred
even less than men by numerical losses and made them up more readily. And Lankhmar was a city for
which he felt some small affection, as of a man for a very large pet. Yet the rats menacing it
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had, whether from Hisvet's training or some deeper source, an intelligence and organization that
was eerily frightening. Even now he could imagine troops of black rats footing it unseen across
the lawns and along the paths of the Plaza beyond the closet trees' glow, encircling him in a
great ambush, rank on black rank.
He was aware too that he had lost whatever small trust the fickle Glipkerio had ever had in
him and that Hisvin and Hisvet, after their seemingly total defeat, had turned the tables on him
and must be opposed and defeated once again, just as Glipkerio's favor must be re-won.
But Hisvet, far from being an enemy to be beaten, was the girl to whom he was in thrall,
the only being who could restore him to his rightful, calculating, selfish self. He touched with
his fingertips the little ridge the silver dart made in his temple. It would be the work of a
moment to squeeze it out point-first through its thin covering of skin. But he had a dread of what
would happen then: he might not lose only his bored satiety, but the juice of all feeling, or even
life itself. Besides, he didn't want to give up his silver link with Hisvet.
A tiny treading on the gravel of the path, a very faint rutching that was nevertheless more
than that of one pair of footsteps, made him look up. Two slim nuns in the black robes of the Gods
_of_ Lankhmar and in the customary narrow, jutting hoods which left faces totally shadowed were
approaching him, long-sleeved arm in arm.
He had known courtesans in the Plaza of Dark Delights to adopt almost any garb to inflame
the senses of their customers, new or old, and capture or recapture their interest: the torn smock
of a beggar girl, the hose and short jerkin and close-cropped hair of a page, the beads and
bangles of a slave-girl of the Eastern Lands, the fine chain mail and visored helmet and slim
sword of a fighting prince from those same areas of Nehwon, the rustling greenery of a wood nymph,
the green or purplish weeds of a sea nymph, the prim dress of a schoolgirl, the embroidered garb
of a priestess of any of the Gods _in_ Lankhmar -- the folk of the City of the Black Toga are
rarely or never disturbed by blasphemies committed against such gods, since there are thousands of
them, and easily replaced.
But there was one dress that no courtesan would dare counterfeit: the simple, straight-
falling black robes and hood of a nun of the Gods _of_ Lankhmar.
And yet...
A dozen yards short of him, the two slim black figures turned off the path toward the
nearest closet tree. One parted its rustling, pendant branches, black sleeve hanging from her arm
like a bat's wing. The other slipped inside. The first swiftly followed her, but not before her
hood had slipped back a little, showing for an instant by a wasp's violet pulse the smiling face
of Frix.
The Mouser's heart leaped. So did he.
As the Mouser arrived inside the bower amid an explosion of dislodged white blooms, as if
the tree herself were throwing flowers to welcome him, the two slim black figures faced around
toward him and dropped back their hoods. The same as he had last seen it aboard _Squid_, Frix's
dark hair was confined by a silver net. The smile still curved her lips, though her gaze was
distant and grave. But Hisvet's hair was itself a silver-blonde wonder, her lips pouted
enticingly, as if blowing him a kiss, while her gaze danced all over his person with naughty
merriment.
She moved toward him a step.
With a happy roaring shout only he could hear, blood rushed through the Mouser's arteries
toward his center, reviving his limp manhood in a mere moment, as a magically summoned genie
offhandedly builds a tower.
The Mouser imitated his blood, rushing blindly to Hisvet and clapping his arms around her.
But with a concerted movement like a half-circling in a swift dance, the two girls had
changed places, so that it was Frix he found himself embracing, and with cheek pressed to cheek,
for at the last moment she had swayed her head aside.
The Mouser would have disengaged himself then, murmuring courteous and indeed almost
sincere excuses, for through her robe Frix's body felt slimly enticing and most interestingly
embossed, except that at that instant Hisvet leaned her head over Frix's shoulder and, tipping her
elfin face sideways, planted her half-parted lips on the Mouser's mouth, which instantly began to
imitate that of the industrious bee sipping nectar.
It seemed to him that he was in the Seventh Heaven, which is reserved for only the most
youthful and beauteous of the gods.
When at last Hisvet removed her lips from his, keeping her face so close that the fresh
scar Cat's Claw had made was a blue-edged pink ribbon from magnificent nostril to velvet-rounded
slender jaw, it was instantly to murmur to him, "Rejoice, delicious Dirksman, for you have kissed
with your own the actual lips of a Demoiselle of Lankhmar, which is a familiarity almost beyond
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imagining, and you have kissed _my_ lips, an intimacy which passeth all understanding. And now,
Dirksman, embrace Frix closely whilst I preoccupy your eyes and solace your face, which is truly
the noblest area of the skin, the very soul's vizard. It is demeaning work for me, to be sure, as
if a goddess should scrub and anoint with oil a common soldier's dirty boot, yet know that I do it
right gladly."
Meanwhile Frix's slim fingers were unbuckling his ratskin belt. With the faintest slither
and tiniest double _thunk_, it slipped with Scalpel and Cat's Claw to the springy close-cropped
turf bleached almost white by the closet tree's perpetual shade.
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