The Knight and Knave of Swords by Fritz Leiber Read Free Book Online

both tall Skor and short Mikkidu were peering wide-eyed beyond him. He turned on his stool. A little more of Ississi showed above the blanket—to wit, a small patch of pale forehead and one large green silver-lashed eye peering unwinking through her long silvery hair.
    He turned back very deliberately and, after a sharp "Well?" to get their attention, asked in his blandest voice, "Whatever are you looking at so engrossedly?"
    "Uh—nothing at all," Mikkidu stammered, while Skor only shifted gaze to look at the Mouser steadily.
    "Nothing at all?" the Mouser questioned. "You don't perhaps see the chest somewhere in this cabin? Or perceive some clue to its present disposition?"
    Mikkidu shook his head, while after a moment Skor shrugged, eyeing the Mouser strangely.
    "Well, gentlemen," the Mouser said cheerily, "that sums it up. The chest must be aboard this ship, as you both say. So hunt for it! Scour Seahawk high and low—a chest that large can't be hid in a seaman's bag. And use your eyes, both of you!" He thumped the shrouded box once more for good measure. "And now—dismiss!"
    (They both know all about it, I'll be bound. The deceiving dogs! the Mouser thought. And yet ... I am not altogether satisfied of that.)
5
    When they were gone (after several hesitant, uncertain backward glances), the Mouser stepped back to the bunk and, planting his hands to either side of the girl, stared down at her green eye, supporting himself on stiff arms. She rocked her head up and down a little and to either side, and so worked her entire face free of the blanket and her eyes of the silken hair veiling them and stared up at him expectantly.
    He put on an inquiring look and flirted his head toward the hatchway through which the men had departed, then directed the same look more particularly at her. It was strange, he mused, how he avoided speaking to her whenever he could except with pointings and gestured commands. Perhaps it was that the essence of power lay in getting your wishes gratified without ever having to speak them out, to put another through all his paces in utter silence, so that no god might overhear and know. Yes, that was part of it at least.
    He formed with his lips and barely breathed the question, "How did you really come aboard Seahawk ?"
    Her eyes widened and after a while her peach-down lips began to move, but he had to turn his head and lower it until they moistly and silkily brushed his best ear as they enunciated, before he could clearly hear what she was saying—in the same Low Lankhmarese as he and Mikkidu and Skor had spoken, but with a delicious lisping accent that was all little hisses and gasps and warblings. He recalled how her scent had seemed all sex in the chest, but now infinitely flowery, dainty, and innocent.
    "I was a princess and lived with the prince Mordroog, my brother, in a far country where it was always spring," she began. "There a watery influence filtered all harshness from the sun's beams, so that he shone no more bright than the silvery moon, and winter's rages and summer's droughts were tamed, and the roaring winds moderated to eternal balmy breezes, and even fire was cool—in that far country."
    Every whore tells the same tale, the Mouser thought. They were all princesses before they took to the trade. Yet he listened on.
    "We had golden treasure beyond all dreaming," she continued, "unicorns that flew and kittens that flowed were my pets, and we were served by nimble companies of silent servitors and guarded by soft-voiced monsters—great Slasher and vasty All-Gripper, and Deep Rusher, who was greatest of all.
    "But then came ill times. One night while our guardians slept, our treasure was stolen away and our realm became lonely, farther off and more secret still. My brother and I went searching for our treasure and for allies, and in that search I was raped away by bold scoundrels and taken to vile, vile 'Brulsk, where I came to know all the evil there is under the hateful sun."
    This