by Fritz Leiber
“Greetings, Little Man,” Fafhrd prison-growled. “So you’ve come to sell your share to Ogo the Blind, or at least give him a viewing?—if such expression may be used of a sightless man.”
“How did you know that?” the Mouser whispered sharply.
“It was the obvious thing to do,” Fafhrd answered somewhat condescendingly. “Sell the jewels to a dealer who could note neither their night-glow nor daytime invisibility. A dealer who must judge them by weight, feel, and what they can scratch or be scratched by. Besides, we stand just across from the door to Ogo’s den. It’s very well guarded, by the by—at fewest, ten Mingol swordsmen.”
“At least give me credit for such trifles of common knowledge,” the Mouser answered sardonically. “Well, you guessed right; it appears that by long association with me you’ve gained some knowledge of how my wit works, though I doubt that it’s sharpened your own a whit. Yes, I’ve already had one conference with Ogo, and tonight we conclude the deal.”
Fafhrd asked equably, “Is it true that Ogo conducts all his interviews in pitchy dark?”
“Ho! So there are some few things you admit not knowing! Yes, it’s quite true, which makes any interview with Ogo risky work. By insisting on absolute darkness, Ogo the Blind cancels at a stroke the interviewer’s advantage—indeed, the advantage passes to Ogo, since he is used by a lifetime of it to utter darkness—a long lifetime, since he’s an ancient one, to judge by his speech. Nay, Ogo knows not what darkness is, since it’s all he’s ever known. However, I’ve a device to trick him there if need be. In my thick, tightly drawstringed pouch I carry fragments of brightest glow-wood, and can spill them out in a trice.”
Fafhrd nodded admiringly and then asked, “And what’s in that flat case you carry so tightly under your elbow? An elaborate false history of each of the jewels embossed in ancient parchment for Ogo’s fingers to read?”
“There your guess fails! No, it’s the jewels themselves, guarded in clever wise so that they cannot be filched. Here, take a peek.” And after glancing quickly to either side and overhead, the Mouser opened the case a handbreadth on its hinges.
Fafhrd saw the rainbow-twinkling jewels firmly affixed in artistic pattern to a bed of black velvet, but all closely covered by an inner top consisting of a mesh of stout iron wire.
The Mouser clapped the case shut. “On our first meeting, I took two of the smallest of the jewels from their spots in the box and let Ogo feel and otherwise test them. He may dream of filching them all, but my box and the mesh thwart that.”
“Unless he steals from you the box itself,” Fafhrd agreed. “As for myself, I keep my share of the jewels chained to me.”
And after such precautionary glances as the Mouser had made, he thrust back his loose left sleeve, showing a stout browned-iron bracelet snapped around his wrist. From the bracelet hung a short chain which both supported and kept tightly shut a small, bulging pouch. The leather of the pouch was everywhere sewed across with fine brown wire. He unclicked the bracelet, which opened on a hinge, then clicked it fast again.
“The browned-iron wire’s to foil any cutpurse,” Fafhrd explained offhandedly, pulling down his sleeve.
The Mouser’s eyebrows rose. Then his gaze followed them as it went from Fafhrd’s wrist to his face, while the small man’s expression changed from mild approval to bland inquiry. He asked, “And you trust such devices to guard your half of the gems from Nemia of the Dusk?”
“How did you know my dealings were with Nemia?” Fafhrd asked in tones just the slightest surprised.
“Because she’s Lankhmar’s only woman fence, of course. All know you favor women when possible, in business as well as erotic matters. Which is one of your greatest failings, if I may say so. Also, Nemia’s door lies next to Ogo’s, though that’s a trivial clue. You know, I presume, that seven Kleshite stranglers protect her somewhat overripe person? Well, at least then you know the sort of trap you’re rushing into. Deal with a woman!—surest route to disaster. By the by, you mentioned ‘dealings.’ Does that plural mean this is not your first interview with her?”
Fafhrd nodded. “As you with Ogo…. Incidentally, am I to understand that you trust men simply because they’re men? That were a greater failing than the one you impute to me. Anyhow, as you with Ogo, I go to Nemia of the Dusk a second time, to complete our deal. The first time I showed her the gems in a twilit chamber, where they appeared to greatest advantage, twinkling just enough to seem utterly real. Did you know, in passing, that she always works in twilight or soft gloom?—which accounts for the second half of her name. At all events, as soon as she glimpsed them, Nemia greatly desired the gems—her breath actually caught in her throat—and she agreed at once to my price, which is not low, as basis for further bargaining. However, it happens that she invariably follows the rule—which I myself consider a sound one—of never completing a transaction of any sort with a member of the opposite sex without first testing them in amorous commerce. Hence this second meeting. If the member be old or otherwise ugly, Nemia deputes the task to one of her maids, but in my case, of course…” Fafhrd coughed modestly. “One more point I’d like to make: ‘overripe’ is the wrong expression. ‘Full-bloomed’ or ‘the acme of maturity’ is what you’re looking for.”
“Believe me, I’m sure Nemia is in fullest bloom—a late August flower. Such women always prefer twilight for the display of their ‘perfectly matured’ charms,” the Mouser answered somewhat stifledly. He had for some time been hard put to restrain laughter, and now it appeared in quiet little bursts as he said, “Oh, you great fool! And you’ve actually agreed to go to bed with her? And expect not to be parted from your jewels (including family jewels?), let alone not strangled, while at that disadvantage? Oh, this is worse than I thought.”
“I’m not always at such a disadvantage in bed as some people may think,” Fafhrd answered with quiet modesty. “With me, amorous play sharpens instead of dulls the senses. I trust you have as much luck with a man in ebon darkness as I with a woman in soft gloom. Incidentally, why must you have two conferences with Ogo? Not Nemia’s reason, surely?”
The Mouser’s grin faded and he lightly bit his lip. With elaborate casualness he said, “Oh, the jewels must be inspected by the Eyes of Ogo—his invariable rule. But whatever test is tried, I’m prepared to out-trick it.”
Fafhrd pondered, then asked, “And what, or who are, or is, the Eyes of Ogo? Does he keep a pair of them in his pouch?”
“Is,” the Mouser said. Then with even more elaborate casualness, “Oh, some chit of a girl, I believe. Supposed to have an intuitive faculty where gems are concerned. Interesting, isn’t it, that a man as clever as Ogo should believe such superstitious nonsense? Or depend on the soft sex in any fashion. Truly, a mere formality.”
“‘Chit of a girl,’” Fafhrd mused, nodding his head again and yet again and yet again. “That describes to a red dot on each of her immature nipples the sort of female you’ve come to favor in recent years. But of course the amorous is not at all involved in this deal of yours, I’m sure,” he added, rather too solemnly.
“In no way whatever,” the Mouser replied, rather too sharply. Looking around, he remarked, “We’re getting a bit of company, despite the early hour. There’s Dickon of the Thieves Guild, that old pen-pusher and drawer of the floor plans of houses to be robbed—I don’t believe he’s actually worked on a job since the Year of the Snake. And there’s fat Grom, their subtreasurer, another armchair thief. Who comes so dramatically a-slither?—by the Black Bones, it’s Snarve, our overlord Glipkerio’s nephew! Who’s that he speaks to?—oh, only Tork the Cutpurse.”
“And there now appears,” Fafhrd took up, “Vlek, said to be the Guild’s star operative these days. Note his smirk and hear how his shoes creak faintly. And there’s that gray-eyed, black-haired amateur, Alyx the Picklock—well, at least her boots don’t squeak, and I rather admire her courage in adventuring here, where the Guild’s animosity toward freelance females is as ill a byword
as that of the Pimps Guild. And, just now turning from the Street of the Gods, who have we but Countess Kronia of the Seventy-seven Secret Pockets, who steals by madness, not method. There’s one bone-bag I’d never trust, despite her emaciated charms and the weakness you lay to me.”
Nodding, the Mouser pronounced, “And such as these are called the aristocracy of thiefdom! In all honesty I must say that notwithstanding your weaknesses—which I’m glad you admit—one of the two best thieves in Lankhmar now stands beside me. While the other, needless to say, occupies my ratskin boots.”
Fafhrd nodded back, though carefully crossing two fingers.
Stilling a yawn, the Mouser said, “By the by, have you yet any thought about what you’ll be doing after those gems are stolen from your wrist, or—though unlikely—sold and paid for? I’ve been approached about—or at any rate been considering a wander toward—in the general direction of the Eastern Lands.”
“Where it’s hotter even than in this sultry Lankhmar? Such a stroll hardly appeals to me,” Fafhrd replied, then casually added, “In any case, I’ve been thinking of taking ship—er—northward.”
“Toward that abominable Cold Waste once more? No, thank you!” the Mouser answered. Then, glancing south along Silver Street, where a pale star shone close to the horizon, he went on still more briskly, “Well, it’s time for my interview with Ogo—and his silly girl Eyes. Take your sword to bed with you, I advise, and look to it that neither Graywand nor your more vital blade are filched from you in Nemia’s dusk.”
“Oh, so first twinkle of the Whale Star is the time set for your appointment too?” Fafhrd remarked, himself stirring from the wall. “Tell me, is the true appearance of Ogo known to anyone? Somehow the name makes me think of a fat, old, and overlarge spider.”
“Curb your imagination, if you please,” the Mouser answered sharply. “Or keep it for your own business, where I’ll remind you that the only dangerous spider is the female. No, Ogo’s true appearance is unknown. But perhaps tonight I’ll discover it!”
“I’d like you to ponder that your besetting fault is overcuriosity,” said Fafhrd, “and that you can’t trust even the stupidest girl to be always silly.”
The Mouser turned impulsively and said, “However tonight’s interviews fall out, let’s rendezvous after. The Silver Eel?”
Fafhrd nodded, and they gripped hands together. Then each rogue sauntered toward his fateful door.
The Mouser crouched a little, every sense a-quiver, in space utterly dark. On a surface before him—a table, he had felt it out to be—lay his jewel box, closed. His left hand touched the box. His right gripped Cat’s Claw and with that weapon nervously threatened the inky darkness all around.
A voice which was at once dry and thick croaked from behind him, “Open the box!”
The Mouser’s skin crawled at the horror of that voice. Nevertheless, he complied with the direction. The rainbow light of the meshed jewels spilled upward, dimly showing the room to be low-ceilinged and rather large. It appeared to be empty except for the table and, indistinct in the far left corner behind him, a dark low shape which the Mouser did not like. It might be a hassock or a fat, round, black pillow. Or it might be… The Mouser wished Fafhrd hadn’t made his last suggestion.
From ahead of him a rippling, silvery voice quite unlike the first called, “Your jewels, like no others I have ever seen, gleam in the absence of all light.”
Scanning piercingly across the table and box, the Mouser could see no sign of the second caller. Evening out his own voice, so it was not breathy with apprehension, but bland with confidence, he said, to the emptiness, “My gems are like no others in the world. In fact, they come not from the world, being of the same substance as the stars. Yet you know by your test that one of them is harder than diamond.”
“They are truly unearthly and most beautiful jewels,” the sourless silvery voice answered. “My mind pierces them through and through, and they are what you say they are. I shall advise Ogo to pay your asking price.”
At that instant the Mouser heard behind him a little cough and a dry, rapid scuttling. He whirled around, dirk poised to strike. There was nothing to be seen or sensed, except for the hassock or whatever, which had not moved. The scuttling was no longer to be heard.
He swiftly turned back, and there across the table from him, her front illumined by the twinkling jewels, stood a slim naked girl with pale straight hair, somewhat darker skin, and overlarge eyes staring entrancedly from a child’s tiny-chinned, pouty-lipped face.
Satisfying himself by a rapid glance that the jewels were in their proper pattern under their mesh and none missing, he swiftly advanced Cat’s Claw so that its needle point touched the taut skin between the small yet jutting breasts. “Do not seek to startle me so again!” he hissed. “Men—aye, and girls—have died for less.”
The girl did not stir by so much as the breadth of a fine hair; neither did her expression nor her dreamy yet concentrated gaze change, except that her short lips smiled, then parted to say honey-voiced, “So you are the Gray Mouser. I had expected a crouchy, sear-faced rogue, and I find…a prince.” The very jewels seemed to twinkle more wildly because of her sweet voice and sweeter presence, striking opalescent glimmers from her pale irises.
“Neither seek to flatter me!” the Mouser commanded, catching up his box and holding it open against his side. “I am inured, I’ll have you know, to the ensorcelments of all the world’s minxes and nymphs.”
“I speak truth only, as I did of your jewels,” she answered guilelessly. Her lips had stayed parted a little, and she spoke without moving them.
“Are you the Eyes of Ogo?” the Mouser demanded harshly, yet drawing Cat’s Claw back from her bosom. It bothered him a little, yet only a little, that the tiniest stream of blood, like a black thread, led down for a few inches from the prick his dirk had made.
Utterly unmindful of the tiny wound, the girl nodded. “And I can see through you, as through your jewels, and I discover naught in you but what is noble and fine, save for certain small subtle impulses of violence and cruelty, which a girl like myself might find delightful.”
“There your all-piercing eyes err wholly, for I am a great villain,” the Mouser answered scornfully, though he felt a pulse of fond satisfaction within him.
The girl’s eyes widened as she looked over his shoulder somewhat apprehensively, and from behind the Mouser the dry and thick voice croaked once more, “Keep to business! Yes, I will pay you in gold your offering price, a sum it will take me some hours to assemble. Return at the same time tomorrow night and we will close the deal. Now shut the box.”
The Mouser had turned around, still clutching his box, when Ogo began to speak. Again he could not distinguish the source of the voice, though he scanned minutely. It seemed to come from the whole wall.
Now he turned back. Somewhat to his disappointment, the naked girl had vanished. He peered under the table, but there was nothing there. Doubtless some trapdoor or hypnotic device…
Still suspicious as a snake, he returned the way he had come. On close approach, the black hassock appeared to be only that. Then as the door to the outside slid open noiselessly, he swiftly obeyed Ogo’s last injunction, snapping shut the box, and departed.
Fafhrd gazed tenderly at Nemia lying beside him in perfumed twilight, while keeping the edge of his vision on his brawny wrist and the pouch pendant from it, both of which his companion was now idly fondling.
To do Nemia justice, even at the risk of imputing a certain cattiness to the Mouser, her charms were neither overblown, nor even ample, but only…sufficient.
From just behind Fafhrd’s shoulder came a spitting hiss. He quickly turned his head and found himself looking into the crossed blue eyes of a white cat standing on the small bedside table beside a bowl of bronze chrysanthemums.
“Ixy!” Nemia called remonstratingly yet languorously.
Despite her voice, Fafhrd heard behind him, in rapid succession, the click of a bra
celet opening and the slightly louder click of one closing.
He turned back instantly, to discover only that Nemia had meanwhile clasped on his wrist, beside the browned-iron bracelet, a golden one around which sapphires and rubies marched alternately in single file.
Gazing at him from betwixt the strands of her long dark hair, she said huskily, “It is only a small token which I give to those who please me…greatly.”
Fafhrd drew his wrist closer to his eyes to admire his prize, but mostly to palpate his pouch with the fingers of his other hand, to assure himself that it bulged as tightly as ever.
It did, and in a burst of generous feeling he said, “Let me give you one of my gems in precisely the same spirit,” and made to undo his pouch.
Nemia’s long-fingered hand glided out to prevent. “No,” she breathed. “Let never the gems of business be mixed with the jewels of pleasure. Now if you should choose to bring me some small gift tomorrow night, when at the same hour we exchange your jewels for my gold and my letters of credit on Glipkerio, underwritten by Hisvin the Grain Merchant…”
“Right,” Fafhrd said briefly, concealing the relief he felt. He’d been an idiot to think of giving Nemia one of the gems—and with it a day’s opportunity to discover its abnormalities.
“Until tomorrow,” Nemia said, opening her arms to him.
“Until tomorrow, then,” Fafhrd agreed, embracing her fervently, yet keeping his pouch clutched in the hand to which it was chained—and already eager to be gone.
The Silver Eel was far less than half filled, its candles few, its cupbearers torpid, as Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser entered simultaneously by different doors and made for one of the many empty booths.
The only eye to watch them at all closely was a gray one above a narrow section of pale cheek bordered by dark hair, peering past the curtain of the backmost booth.
When their thick table-candles had been lit and cups set before them and a jug of fortified wine, and fresh charcoal tumbled into the red-seeded brazier at table’s end, the Mouser placed his flat box on the table and, grinning, said, “All’s set. The jewels passed the test of the Eyes—a toothsome wenchlet; more of her later. I get the cash tomorrow night—all my offering price! But you, friend, I hardly thought to see you back alive. Drink we up! I take it you escaped from Nemia’s divan whole and sound in organs and limbs—as far as you yet know. But the jewels?”