continuing to support Cif with her other arm.
The outwearied woman grasped it and gulped the watered brandy greedily.
“Have you had any rest at all since coming out this noon?” Afreyt demanded.
“I lay in the tent awhile, but it made me nervous.'
“So you're coming up at once with me. There's a new matter we must discuss alone. Gale! Take over here at the face. Fingers can help you — it's a sort of work her deft hands should be good at.'
“Oh good!” said Gale.
Fingers: “You honor me.'
Cif made no demur, accepting support but asking, “What new matter?'
“All in good time.'
Just past the jog they encountered Mikkidu returning with empty pails. Afreyt addressed him, “I'm taking the lady Cif home for long-needed rest. You're in charge now. Gale and our new friend Fingers are working the face. See that they aren't kept at it too long and are both sent to Cif's house by midnight.'
When he shot Cif a look of inquiry, she nodded and then remembered to give him Fafhrd's ring.
Aboveground the dogcart had been unloaded and Skullick was greeting Mannimark and Faf's berserk Gort as they came loping in.
Afreyt poured Cif a mouthful of hot soup and directed, “Hitch up fresh dogs. I'm driving the lady Cif home. She needs rest badly. No other load. Here Mikkidu has the ring.'
“Mara and May were due to go this trip,” Skullick pointed out. The blond girls waved from where they huddled in the shelter tent.
“I'll take them, of course,” Afreyt said. “Girls, climb aboard! And take a blanket with you. And another for Lady Cif.'
Returning to Salthaven, they all had the wind at their backs, which was some improvement. None was inclined to talk. Midway Cif asked suspiciously, “Was there poppy dust in the watered brandy you fed me? It has a sickly, bitter aftertaste.'
“Only enough to induce tranquillity and encourage sleep, but not enforce it.'
Afreyt drove straight to Cif's and had the girls return the cart to the barracks before wending to their own homes. She warmed a solid meal while Cif got comfortable, saw it consumed, then poured them both brandy and handed Cif the letter Pshawri had entrusted to her, saying, “I've read it, of course. Matter of import for you, certainly.'
Cif studied the broken green seal and the violet-inked address as she unfolded it. “This sheet was in the Captain's last mail bag from Lankhmar,” she averred, “before he distributed the letters to his men.'
Then she was silent while she read to herself the following:
I hope this finds you alive and continuing to prosper on your northern adventure in service of that notable rogue the Gray Mouser.
I am to tell you he has more reason to make you his lieutenant than even he weens.
When you were young I pointed him out to you among other noteworthy Lankhmarts. But I did not see fit to tell you (or him) that he was your father. Such tactics seldom work out, to my knowledge and experience, and I would scorn to curry favor in such a way.
It happened in my salad days, before I became a professional woman, and while I was body maid to the dancer Ivrian and we were all caught up in a supernal intrigue involving the Thieves Guild, some of its jeweled relics, and the Mouser's uncouth barbarian comrade Fafhrd.
They vied with each other to seduce me. Fafhrd loved me the more, but the Mouser was tricksier and measured his drinks more carefully — and mine. The best of what I know of the uses of evil and falsity was taught me by that devil.
But now you find yourself by chance in service of the very same man, you may find the knowledge of advantage to you. Use it as you see fit. Luckily the relationship is supported by evidence. Triads of equidistant moles run in his family.
Thanks for the silver ring and seven rilks.
Prosper,
Cif lifted her eyes to Afreyt's. “That letter rings true to me,” she said, nodding soberly.
“You think so too?” the other replied.
“By Skama's scales, what else! It is man's nature to plant his seed where'er the soil looks good.'
“A hero's doubly so…” Afreyt chimed, “whence else his deeds of daring?'
Cif mused, “When we told Mou and Faf of our courting of the stranger gods Odin and Loki in Rime Isle's service and even setting sexual lures and ties for them, I recall they hinted of their own conquests among female divinities — the viewless Stardock princesses, some nixies of the sea, the rat queen Hisvet, and some princess of the air who served her as a maid.'
Afreyt pointed out, “This woman claiming Pshawri as her son would seem to have no noble blood at all, let alone divine. How would you feel should he claim son-right of Captain Mouser?'
Cif looked up sharply. “Pshawri has served Mou faithfully and may do more than that in this now quest! I favor Pshawri's claim. The resemblances between them run deep — Mou bears upon his hip a triad of dark moles.'
“Another question,” Afreyt went on. “Has your Gray lover ever professed to you any out-of-way sexual tastes?'
“Has your red-haired barbarian?” Cif countered.
“I don't know if you could rightly call it out-of-way,” the other said with a wry laugh, “but once when we were playing somewhat listlessly abed, he suggested inviting Rill to join us. I told him I'd strangle him first and indeed tried to. In the excitement of the delirium this led to, the original proposal was forgotten at the time and just how playful or serious it had been at the time of it being made.'
Cif laughed, then grew thoughtful in turn. “I once recall the Mouser pestering me as to whether I'd ever felt an attraction to the same sex as my own. At the time I put him in his place, of course, telling I had no truck with any such filthy practices, but since I have wondered once or twice about his curiosity.'
Afreyt looked at her quizzically. “Oh,” she said, “so you didn't tell him about our…” She left her words hanging.
“But we were barely more than girls when that happened,” Cif protested.
“True indeed,” Afreyt said. “Barely fourteen, as I recall. But you are drowsing off, I plainly see. And so, to tell the truth, am I.'
25
Next time the Gray Mouser came first to consciousness, he had forgotten not only who but what he was.
He wondered why a darkness-dwelling creature that was no more than a limp fleshy pocket not moist enough for its own comfort and occupied by two hard, smooth, pointy semicircular ridges that fit together neatly and by a sort of blind sessile snail busy exploring itself and its container endlessly and scavenging life-giving air from the dry grainy outside, should be equipped with a mighty mind capable of mastering whole worlds of life and experience.
The sentient pocket with in-dwelling restless mollusk knew of its mind's might from the variety and rapid sequence of its inscrutable mysterious thoughts and memories which threatened momently to burst into clarity and stain the omnipresent dark with flaring colors. It knew its dry, grainy, closely packed immediate surroundings by a
