Deviaticus Lert. Their townhouse was easily enough found, with its pair of towers rearing against the sky like a dowager’s horned headdress. He secured a room in an inn across the street, and for some few days observed carefully who came and went by the sisters’ gate. Their door was kept by an immense old gogmagog, in his sand- colored skin so like to the color of the wall that he seemed like a guardian statue.
Regularly, in the early afternoon, an open palanquin would be carried forth past him by four gasping and staggering servants. In the palanquin rode a monstrously fat old creature, swathed in veils of white and powder- blue silk, with blue paint emphasizing the bright and brass-colored eyes wherewith she kept a sharp regard on the passing traffic.
Her habits were most regular. Cugel followed the palanquin at a respectful distance, and learned that Dame Vaissa was invariably borne off to the vicinity of Prince Kandive’s palace. There she remained, engaged, as far as Cugel could learn, in bibulous merriment, elephantine flirtation, and the adjudication of young lovers’ quarrels. Generally, she was carried home in the early hours of the morning, a time — as Cugel was pleased to note — when the streets of Kaiin were dark, the haunt of footpads and other persons intent on mischief.
But three faint stars were visible when Cugel, waiting in the deep shadow of an alley, heard the uneven tramping footfall of Dame Vaissa’s bearers returning to the house of Lert. He drew a white handkerchief from his pocket and waved it, a brief ghostly flash in the shadows but clearly visible to the hired bullies who waited in the doorway of the tenement opposite.
When the palanquin came abreast of the tenement, the bullies poured forth, brandishing clubs, with which they proceeded to break the kneecaps of Dame Vaissa’s bearers. These crumpled to the ground with screams of pain, unable to so much as raise a hand in protest as Dame Vaissa was spilled from her palanquin into the street. Their screams were as nothing to Dame Vaissa’s.
“Ho! Brigands! Murderers! Avaunt!” roared Cugel, bounding from the shadows with drawn sword. “How dare you! Fly, you worthless sons of Deodands! Oh, cowards, to attack a helpless lady!” He beat the nearest of the bullies with the flat of his sword, far more vigorously than had been agreed on, with the result that the man snarled and went for him in earnest with his club. Cugel’s cheap blade was shattered. There had been murder done, but for the fact that Dame Vaissa rose ponderously on hands and knees and extended one beringed hand. She uttered a phrase of excoriation and the bullies were instantly alight as torches, burning to puffs of ash too quickly to shriek. Cugel, singed by proximity, danced backward.
“Fair madam, speak!” he cried, wondering whether his eyebrows had been crisped away. “Did the varlets hurt you? Allow me!” he added, hastening to lend an arm as Dame Vaissa endeavored to rise to her feet. Cugel winced in pain, for her weight was fair to pull his arm from its socket and her nails dug into his flesh; but the darkness hid his expression.
“I thank you, kind gallant, I am only a little bruised,” said Dame Vaissa, in a voice husky and breathless. “Alack! Your sword has been broken.”
“It was my father’s,” said Cugel, with an artful catch in his voice, “But no matter! It perished in the best of causes. Madam, we must not linger here; there may be others yet lurking. Pray allow me to escort you to your house. I will return with some of your household to collect the bearers. Where do you reside?”
Dame Vaissa permitted herself to be led, teetering on four-inch heels, to the house of Lert, and prudently resisted swooning from shock until she had charmed them past the door-warden and was comfortably seated in her own front hall. She revived long enough to waddle to the front door and murmur an incantation, in order that the gogmagog might permit Cugel egress; for it was so ensorceled as to permit entry only grudgingly, but was even less inclined to allow departure. Cugel led the gardener and scullery-boy back to the injured chair-bearers, who were still groaning and rolling in the street. There he left them to manage recovering their fellows, and wasted no time in running back to the house of Lert, cheerily giving the gogmagog the entry-password.
Dame Vaissa had been revived with a brandy posset, and was sitting up to receive Cugel when he returned. She bestowed upon him many coquettish expressions of gratitude, and would have pressed a purse of gold upon him as well, had Cugel not refused with a perfect imitation of chivalry. She saw him to the door, once again interceding for him with the door-warden; she implored Cugel to return by daylight, that she might converse with him at greater length during more respectable hours, and this Cugel gladly agreed to do. As he departed, he noted a staircase opening off the left of the hall, as one also opened off the right. He cast his gaze up there, hoping to spy a cage, but none was in evidence. Rather, from the top of the leftmost stair, a gaunt wraith peered down, a lean- chopped harpy in an old dressing gown, hair in curling papers, watching him with sunken yellow eyes.
Bowing and kissing Dame Vaissa’s plump hand, he made his exit.
“It is so rare to find a brave
“Dear madam, I merely did what any true man would do. Would, indeed, that I had been able to act more effectively! Would that I had been able to carry away arms and armor from our estates at Kauchique, before I was sent into exile! Sadly, the fallen fortunes of my house have left me barely able to defend a fair lady’s honor.”
“How you do flatter an old woman,” said Dame Vaissa, with a titter. “Am I correct, then, in assuming that you have presently no occupation?”
“A gentleman never has an occupation, dear lady. He has only pastimes.” Cugel affected a lofty sneer into the distance. ‘Nonetheless, it is true that I am, at the moment, without funds or prospects. Yes.”
“Then I do wish you would allow me to offer you a position in my household,” said Dame Vaissa, leaning forward to place her hand upon Cugel’s knee. “The duties would be nominal, of course. And you would be doing
“Why, madam, you place me in a delicate position as regards mine honor,” said Cugel, making a gesture as though he were about to clap his hand to the pommel of his sword and then looking down with a well-acted rueful glance, as though remembering that it had broken. “How can I refuse my protection to a woman alone?…Though I had heard you have a sister.”
“Oh, her!” Dame Vaissa made a dismissive gesture. “Poor creature’s a recluse. Never came out in society at all, and now she’s half-mad. Lives upstairs among her books. And, whereas I have a robust constitution and a healthy appetite, she has withered away like an old spider. You wouldn’t find it worthwhile making her acquaintance, I can assure you. However,” and her amber eyes brightened, “I can think of one person you ought to meet, if you would reside here with us. Assist me to rise, kind sir.”
She extended a coy hand. Cugel hauled her to her feet from the chaise-lounge upholstered in lavender plush that was her customary receiving-seat, and she took a few rolling steps before muttering Phandaal’s Hovering Platform. At once a disc, not quite a yard across, appeared before her, floating some three inches above the floor. A black rod, seemingly made of onyx, extended upward from one side, and curved at the end into a sort of tiller. Dame Vaissa stepped up on the disc and it moved forward at her command.
“There! Much more convenient. Let us proceed, dear Cugel.”
She drifted before him like a great untethered balloon, up a flight of stairs and into a conservatory on the second floor of the main house. Cugel felt sweat prickling his forehead from the moment he entered the room, for it was disagreeably warm within. The upper walls and domed ceiling were all of glass, admitting the dull red light of the sun, but no breath of wind. He saw every variety of fruit tree growing in immense pots, and ferns, and orchids, and flowering vines that festooned the walls like tapestries. A fountain in the form of a Deodand urinating gushed quietly near the room’s center, adding a further degree of moistness to the air.
Near the fountain, a ring of iron depended on a long chain from the ceiling, and small cups were set at either side of the ring. Perched between them was a green bird, with a long trailing tail of scarlet and a nutcracker beak. As Cugel approached, it cocked its head to regard him, with an ancient reptilian eye; then returned its attention to the woman, no less ancient and reptilian, who was offering it a slice of some pink fruit.
“Won’t he have his sweet ripe breakfast? Look! It’s the very first of the season, so it is, and Trunadora cut it up specially for her little precious Pippy. Won’t he have some?” She placed the slice between her withered lips and leaned close to offer it to the bird, who took it diffidently.
“What are
