The Knight and Knave of Swords

by Fritz Leiber

  So much for the furniture of his dream, vision, or true sighting. The actors included slim Hisvet herself wearing a violet wrap whose color matched the hangings and her lips. She was seated on the bed's foot, looking as merry and schoolgirl innocent (and devilishly attractive) as always, her fine silver-blond hair drawn through a small ring of that metal behind her head, while standing at dutiful attention close before her were two barefoot maids with hair cropped short and wearing identical closely fitting hip-length black and white tunics. Hisvet was lecturing them, laying out rules of some sort, apparently, and they were listening most earnestly, although they showed it in different ways, the brunette nodding her head, smiling her understandings, and darting her gaze with sharp intelligence, while the blonde maintained a sober and distant, yet wide-eyed expression, as though memorizing Hisvet's every word, inscribing each one in a compartment of her brain reserved for that purpose alone.

  But although Hisvet worked her violet lips and the tip of her mottled blue and pink tongue continuously in the movements of speech and lifted an admonitory right forefinger from time to time and once touched it successively on the tips of the outspread fingertips of her supine left hand to emphasize points one, two, three, and four, not a single word could the Gray Mouser hear. Nor did any one of the three ever look once in his direction, even the saucy dark-haired wench whose gaze went everywhere else.

  Since both maids in their very short tunics were quite as attractive as their ravishing mistress, their disregard of him began to wound the Mouser's vanity not a little.

  Since there seemed nothing for the moment to do but watch them, the Mouser soon developed a hankering to see their naked shapes. So far as the maids were concerned, he might get his wish simply by waiting. Hisvet had a remarkable instinct for such matters and was perfectly willing to let other women entertain for her—distribute her favors, as it were.

  But as to her own secret person, it still remained a mystery to the Mouser, whether under the robes, wraps, and armor she affected there was a normal maiden form or a slender rat tail and eight tits, which his imagination pictured as converging pairs of large-nippled and large-aureoled bud-breasts, the third pair to either side of her umbilicus and the fourth close together upon her pubis.

  It also was a mystery to him whether the three females and he were all now of rat size or human size—ten inches or five feet high. Certainly he'd had none of the shape-changing elixir that was used in moving between Lankhmar Above and the rat city of Lankhmar Below.

  His hankerings continued. Surely he deserved some reward for all the underground perils he'd braved. Women could do men so much good so easily.

  There remained the problem of the three women's perfect inaudibility.

  Either, he guessed, they were engaged in an elaborate pantomime (plotted by Hisvet to tease him?), or it was a dream despite its realism, or else there was some hermetic barrier (most likely magical) between his ears and them.

  Supporting this last possibility was the point that while he could see the giant luminescent insects move about in their cages, striking the silver bars with wing and limb while making their bright shinings and flashes, no angry buzzings or sounds of any sort came down from them; while (most telling of all in its way) only silence accompanied the infrequent but regular plashes of the singular crystalline drops into the shimmering pool of the waterclock so close at hand.

  One final circumstance suggestive of magic at work and matching the strange quiet of the scene otherwise so real: miraculously suspended in the air above the near edge of the low table, in a vertical attitude with ring-pommeled small silver grip uppermost, was a tapering whip of white snow-serpent hide scarcely a cubit long, so close at hand he could perceive its finely rugose surface, yet spy no thread or other explanation of its quiet suspension.

  Well, that was the scene, he told himself. Now to decide on how to enter it, assert himself as one of the actors. He would lean suddenly forward, he told himself, reach out his right hand, seize with his three bottom fingers the neck of the carafe, unstopper it with forefinger and thumb preparatory to putting it to his parched lips, saying meanwhile something to the effect of, "Greetings, dearest delightful demoiselle, do me the kindness of interrupting this charade to give an old friend notice. Don't be alarmed, girls," that last being for the two maids, of course.

  No sooner thought than done!

  But, from the start, things went most grievously agley. On his first move he felt himself gripped by a general paralysis that struck like lightning. His whole front was bruised, his right hand and arm scraped, from every side dark brown grainy walls rushed in upon him, his "Greetings" became on the first syllable a strangled growl that stabbed his ears, pained his whole skull, and changed to a fit of coughing that left him with what seemed a mouthful of raw dirt.

  He was still in the same horrid buried predicament he'd been in ever since he'd slipped down out of the full-moon ceremony on Gallows Hill into the cold cruel ground that was at once so strangely permeable to his involuntary passage through it and so adamantly resistant to his attempts to escape it. This time he'd been fooled by the perfection of the occult vision, which let him see through solid earth for a distance around him, into thinking he was free, disregarding the evidence of all his other avenues of awareness. Evidently he had somehow been brought to Lankhmar's underenvirons, and nothing now remained to do but begin anew the slow game of regularizing his breathing, calming his pounding heart, and freeing his mouth grain by grain of the dirt that had entered it during his spasm, carefully working his tongue to best advantage, in order to assure bare survival. For after the pain in his skull subsided he became aware of a general weakness and a wavering of consciousness that told him he was very near the edge between being and not being and must work most cunningly to draw back from it.

  During this endeavor he was assisted by the fact that he never quite altogether lost sight of a larger white and violet visual reality around him. There were patchy flashes and glimpses of it alternating with the grainy dark dirt, and he was also helped by the faint yellow glow continuing to emanate from his upper face.

  When the Mouser finally re-won all the territory he'd lost by his incautious sally, he was surprised to see fair Hisvet still going through all the motions of talking, and the winsome maids through those of attending her every word, as animatedly as before. Whatever was she saying?

  While carefully maintaining all underground breathing routines, he concentrated his attention on other channels of sensation than the visual, seeking to widen and deepen, and bringing to bear all his inner powers, and after a time his efforts were rewarded.

  The next heavy drop fell into the pool of the waterclock with an audible dulcet plash! He almost, but not quite, gave a start.

  Almost immediately a glow wasp buzzed and a diamond-fly whirred its transparent wings against the wire-thin pale bars.

  Hisvet leaned back on her elbows and said in silver tones, "At ease, girls."

  They appeared to relax their attention—a little, at any rate.

  She tapped three fingers against the ruby rondure of her lips as she yawned prettily. "My, that was a most lengthy and boring lecture," she commented. "Yet you endured it most commendably, dear Threesie," she addressed the dark-haired maid. "And you too, Foursie," she told the fair-haired one. She picked up from beside her a long emerald-headed pin and flourished it playfully. "There was not once the need for me to make use of this upon either of you," she said, laughing, "to recall to attention the willful wandering mind and wake the lazy dreamer."

  Both girls shaped their lips to appreciative smiles, while giving the pin most sour looks.

  Hisvet handed it to Foursie, who bore it somewhat gingerly across the room to a drawered chest topped with cosmetics and mirrors, and inserted it into a spherical black cushion that held jewel-headed others such, compassing all the hues of the rainbow.

  Meanwhile Hisvet addressed Threesie, whose eyes widened as she listened. "During my talk I twice got th
e distinct impression that we were being spied on by an evil intelligence, one of the criminous sort my father deals with, or one of our own enemies or a cast-off lover perchance." She searched her gaze around the walls, lingering somewhat overlong, the Mouser felt, in his direction.

  "I will meditate on it," she continued. "Dear Threesie, fetch me my silver-inlaid black opal figure of the world of Nehwon which I call the Opener of the Way."

  Threesie nodded dutifully and went to the same chest Foursie had just visited, passing her midway.

  "Dear Foursie," Hisvet greeted the blonde, "fetch me a beaker of white wine. My throat has grown quite dry with all that stupid talking."

  Foursie bowed her fair-thatched head and came to the low table set against the wall behind which the Mouser was embedded in earth invisible to him. He studied her appreciatively as she unstoppered the carafe he'd so disastrously snatched at and neatly filled a shining glass so tall and narrow it looked like a measuring tube. Her white uniform tunic was secured down the front with large circular jet buttons.

  Returning to her mistress, she went down on her knees without bending her slender body in any other way and proffered the refreshment.

  "Taste it first," Hisvet instructed.

  Getting this instruction, not uncommonly given servants by aristocrats, Foursie threw back her head and poured a short gush of the fluid between her parted lips without touching them to the glass, which she next held out to show its level was perceptibly decreased.

  Hisvet accepted it, saying, "That was well executed, Foursie. Next time don't wait for instruction. And you might lick your lips and smile to show that you enjoyed."

  Foursie bobbed her head.

  "Dear demoiselle," Threesie called from where she knelt at the chest of drawers, "I cannot find the Opener."

  "Have you searched carefully for it?" Hisvet called back, her voice becoming slightly thin. "It is an oblate sphere big as two thumbs, inset with silver bounding the continents and flat diamonds for the cities and a larger amethyst and turquoise making the death and life poles."

  "Dear demoiselle, I know the Opener," Threesie called respectfully.

  Hisvet, who was looking at Foursie again, shrugged her shoulders, then set the narrow glass to her lips and downed its contents in three swallows. "That was refreshing." Again the lip pats.

  A rutching sound turned her attention back to Threesie. "No, do not open the other drawers," she directed. "It would not be there. Just search the top one thoroughly and find it. Set out the contents one by one on top of the chest if necessary."

  "Yes, demoiselle."

  Hisvet caught Foursie's eye again, rolled hers toward busy Threesie, sketched another shrug, and commented confidingly, "This could become a tiresome annoyance, you know, a true weariness. No, girl, don't bob your head. That's all right on Threesie, but it's not your style. Incline it once, demurely."

  "Yes, mistress." Her single nod was shy as a virgin princess's.

  "How are you doing, Threesie?"

  The brunette turned to face them. Her reply was barely loud enough to cross the room. "Demoiselle, I must confess myself defeated."

  After a rather long pause, Hisvet said reflectively, "That could be quite bothersome for you, Threesie, you know. As senior maid present, you would be wholly responsible for any deficiencies, disappearances, or thefts. Think about it."

  After another pause, she sighed and said, holding out the empty glass, "Foursie, fetch me the springy implement of correction."

  The blonde inclined her head, took the glass, and walking somewhat more slowly, returned to the low table, set down the glass, refilled it, and reached across to seize the magically suspended white whip, which she lifted with a little twist and bore off with the glass, thereby solving a minor mystery for the Mouser. The whip had simply been hanging on a hook on the wall. But since the wall had been and was again invisible to him, so was the hook protruding from it.

  He felt a stirring of interest in the scene he spied on from his confining point of vantage, and was duly grateful to have his mind taken a little off his own troubles. He knew something of Hisvet's ways and could guess the next developments, or at least speculate rewardingly. Dark-haired Threesie seemed well cast as the villain or culprit of this triangular piece. Leaning back against the chest of drawers and scowling, she looked a bird of ill omen in her uniform black tunic, though the large circular alabaster buttons going down the front added a comic note. Foursie did her kneeling trick a second time. Hisvet accepted the whip and replenished drink, saying graciously, "Thank you, my dear. I feel much better with these both by me. Well, Threesie?"

  "I am thinking, demoiselle," that one said, "and it comes to me that when I entered this room Foursie was crouched where I stand now with the drawer open I have just searched thoroughly, and she was rummaging around in it. She pushed it shut at once, but may well have taken somewhat from it, I realize now, and hid about her person."

  "Demoiselle, that's not true!" Foursie protested, turning pale. "The drawer was never open, nor I at it."

  "She is a vicious little liar, dear mistress," Threesie shot back. "Mark how she blanches!"

  "Hush, girls," Hisvet reproved. "I have thought of a simple way to settle this most unseemly dispute. Threesie dear, had Foursie opportunity to hide the Opener elsewhere in the room after she took it, if she did? As I recall, I entered shortly after you did."

  "No, mistress, she had not."

  "Well, then." Hisvet said, smiling. "Threesie, come here. Foursie dear, strip off your tunic, so she may search you thoroughly."

  "Demoiselle!" the blonde uttered reproachfully. "You would not shame me so."

  "No shame at all," Hisvet assured her ingenuously, lifting her silver eyebrows. "Why, child, suppose I were entertaining a lover, I might very well—probably would—have you and Threesie disrobe, so as not to embarrass him, or at all events make us both feel conspicuous. Or we might have the whim to ask one of you or both to join in our play under direction. Frix understood these things, as I hope Threesie does. Frix was incomparable. Not even Twosie comes close to matching her. But as you know, Frix managed to work out her term of service, discharge the geas my father set upon her. There's never been another Onesie, and that's why."

  Both maids nodded agreement, though somewhat grimly in their two different styles. They'd each heard somewhat too much about the Incomparable Onesie.

  The Mouser was beginning to enjoy himself. Why, look, the piece was barely begun and Hisvet had managed to switch around the roles of the two other characters! He wished Fafhrd were here, he'd enjoy hearing Frix praised so. He'd been quite gone on the princess of Arilia, especially when she'd been Hisvet's imperturbable slave-maid. Though the large loon wouldn't appreciate being entombed, that was certain. Probably too big to survive by scavenging air in any case. Which reminded him, he'd best keep in mind his own breathing. And not lose sight of the ever-present possibility of the intrusion into the scene of some third force from either the under- or overworld. Talk about having to watch two ways!

  In response to Hisvet's, "And so, no nonsense, child. Strip, I said!" Foursie had been arguing, "Have compassion, demoiselle. To disrobe for a lover would be one thing. But to strip to be searched by a fellow servant is simply too humiliating. I couldn't bear it!"

  Hisvet sprang up off the bed. "I've quite lost patience with you, you prudish little bitch. Who are you to say what you'll bear—or bare, for that matter? Threesie, grip her arms! If she struggles, pinion them behind her."

  The dark maid, who was already back of Foursie, seized and tightly held her elbows down at her sides, meanwhile smiling somewhat evilly at her mistress across the fair maid's shoulder. Hisvet reached out a straight right arm, chucked the girl's chin up until they were looking each other straight in the eye, and then proceeded very deliberately to unbutton the top black button.

  Foursie said, with as much dignity as she could muster, "I would have submitted to you, demoiselle, without my arms held."

 
; But Hisvet said only, very deliberately also, "You are a silly schoolgirl, Foursie dear, needing considerable teaching, which you're going to get. You would submit to me? But not to my maid acting on my orders? To begin with, Threesie is not your equal fellow servant. She outranks you and is empowered to correct you in my absence."

  As she spoke she went on undoing the buttons, taking her time and digging her knuckles and pressing the large buttons into the girl's flesh edgewise as she did so. At the undoing of the third button the maid's small, firm, pink-nippled breasts popped out. Hisvet continued, "But as it is, you're getting your way, aren't you, Foursie? I am disrobing you and not dear Threesie here, though she is witnessing. In fact, I'm 'maiding' you, how's that for topsy-turvy? You're getting the deluxe treatment, one might say, though I strongly doubt you will get much pleasure from it."

  She finished with the buttons, looked the girl up and down, lightly flicked her breasts with the back of her hand, and said with a cheery laugh, "There, that wasn't so bad now, was it, dear? Threesie, finish."

  Grinning, the dark maid slid the white tunic down Foursie's arms and off them.

  "Why, you are blushing, Foursie," Hisvet observed, chuckling. "On Whore Street that's a specialty, I'm told, and ups the price. Inspect the garment carefully," she warned Threesie. "Feel along each seam and hem. She may have pilfered something smaller than the Opener. And now, dear child, prepare yourself to be searched from head to toe by a maid who is your superior, whilst I direct and witness." Taking up the silver-handled whip of white snow-serpent hide from the bed and gesturing with it, she directed Foursie, "Lift out your arms a little from your sides. There, that's enough. And stand so that your entire anatomy is more accessible. A little wider stance, please. Yes, that will do."