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

too is a familiar part of each harlot's story, the Mouser told himself, the raping away, the loss of innocence, instruction in every vice. Yet he went on listening to her ticklesome whispering.
    "But I knew that one day that one would come who would be king over me and carry me back to my realm and dwell with me in power and silvery glory, our treasures being restored. And then you came."
    Ah, now the personal appeal, the Mouser thought. Very familiar indeed. Still, let's hear her out. I like her tongue in my ear. It's like being a flower and having a bee suck your nectar.
    "I went to your ship each day and stared at you. I could do naught else at all, however I tried. And you would never look at me for long, and yet I knew that our paths lay together. I knew you were a masterful man and that you'd visit upon me rigors and inflictions besides which those I'd suffered in dreadful 'Brulsk would be nothing, and yet I could not turn aside for an instant, or take my eyes away from you and your dark ship. And when it was clear you would not notice me, or act upon your true feelings, or any of your men provide a means for me to follow you, I stole aboard unseen while they were all stowing and lashing and you were commanding them."
    (Lies, lies, all lies, the Mouser thought—and continued to listen.)
    "I managed to conceal myself by moving about amongst the cargo. But when at last you'd sailed from harbor and your men slept, I grew cold, the deck was hard, I suffered keenly. And yet I dared not seek your cabin yet, or otherwise disclose myself, for fear you would put back to 'Brulsk to put me off. So I gradually freed of its lashings a chest of fabrics I'd marked, working and working like a mouse or shrew—the knots were hard, but my fingers are clever and nimble, and strong whenever the need is—until I could creep inside and slumber warm and soft. And then you came for me, and here I am."
    The Mouser turned his head and looked down into her large green eyes, across which golden gleams moved rhythmically with the lamp's measured swinging. Then he briefly pressed a finger across her soft lips and drew down the blanket until her ribbon-fettered ankle was revealed and he admired her beautiful small body. It was well, he told himself, for a man to have always a beautiful young woman close by him—like a beautiful cat, yes, a young cat, independent but with kitten ways still. It was well when such a one talked, speaking lies much as any cat would ('Twas crystal clear she must have had help getting aboard—Skor and Mikkidu both, likely enough), but best not to talk to her too much, and wisest to keep her well bound. You could trust folk when they were secured—indeed, trussed!—and not otherwise, no, not at all. And that was the essence of power—binding all others, binding all else! Keeping his eyes hypnotically upon hers, he reached across her for the loose hanks of black ribbon. It would be well to fetter her three other limbs to foot and head of bunk, not tightly, yet not so loosely that she could reach either wrist with other hand or with her pearly teeth—so he could take a turn on deck, confident that she'd be here when he returned.
6
    On Rime Isle Cif, strolling alone across the heath beyond Salthaven, plucked from the slender pouch at her girdle a small male figure of sewn cloth stuffed with lint. He was tall as her hand was long and his waist was constricted by a plain gold ring which would have fitted one of her fingers—and that was a measure of the figure's other dimensions. He was dressed in a gray tunic and gray, gray-hooded cloak. She regarded his featureless linen face and for a space she meditated the mystery of woven cloth—one set of threads or lines tying or at least restraining another such set, with a uniquely protective pervious surface the result. Then some odd hint of expression in the faintly brown, blank linen face suggested to her that the Gray Mouser might be in need of more golden protection than