'Kill both of us?' Harpirias asked. 'Kill only me?'
But words were useless. Evidently she had already uttered every word of his language that she understood, all four or five of them. He knew only two or three words of hers, and none that would help him now.
She was imploring him with her eyes. Looking desperately at him, then looking toward the pile of furs. Offering herself to him once more.
Harpirias realized that he had probably caught the gist of her anguished charade correctly. Her father the king had ordered her to bear a royal heir. He would settle for nothing less. If Harpirias sent her away as he had before, Toikella’s ire would be aroused to a murderous heat.
Whether it was the girl that he would kill, or Harpirias, or the two of them, was not something that he had been able to get from her. But it made no difference. The implications were clear that some sort of violence would come from this, unless he yielded to the king’s blind insistence.
And, trapped between the cynical lies that Konnaam had told and the dynastic expectations of King Toikella, Harpirias saw that he had no choice.
'All right,' he said to her. 'Come on. I’ll make a little prince for you, if that’s what your father wants so badly.'
He didn’t expect her to understand anything of that, nor did she. But when he caught her lightly by the wrist and drew her toward the bed of furs her eyes brightened in immediate comprehension. A kind of glow came into her face that made her seem almost attractive.
Not that she was particularly repugnant, Harpirias thought. Stockier and more muscular than he really preferred a woman to be, and somewhat deficient in bodily cleanliness, perhaps, and the dark spaces in her smile where front teeth were missing disturbed him. But — even so -
He had never been an outstanding model of moral fastidiousness himself. In his time Harpirias had embraced more than a few young women whose deportment and appearance would have raised eyebrows at the Coronal’s court. That laughing red-haired dancing girl long ago in Bombifale, the one with the fiery eyes and the hoarse shrill voice of a fish-peddler — and that slim-legged juggler lass in the holiday town of High Morpin, who could swear like a sailor — and especially that swaggering broad-hipped huntress he had met while wandering alone in the forests back of Normork, who had showed him a trick or two when he was eighteen that would never have crossed his mind -
There had been others. More than a few, more than a few. If he was forced now to add a swarthy smudge-faced barbarian girl to the list, well, so be it. Diplomats have to perform all sorts of unusual things in the course of their duties, Harpirias told himself once again. His mission would very likely fail if he persisted in his prissy refusal to honor Toikella’s wishes in this matter. Therefore it could be construed as his professional duty to oblige the king. And if he was not in fact the Coronal, for all that Toikella had chosen to believe he was, it was certainly true that the blood of Coronals past ran in his veins. The king would have to be satisfied with that.
So be it. So be it.
Harpirias unfastened the robe of white fur and held it open as the girl slipped out of it.
She was naked beneath it. Her body was lean and taut-fleshed, with small hard breasts and nicely flaring hips. Apparently she had oiled herself from head to foot with something — could it be hajbarak grease, he wondered? — that gave her a smooth and agreeably slippery feel, and masked to some extent the scent of her unwashed skin.
They dropped down together to the pile of hides. Harpirias quickly wriggled into the middle of the heap, for it was much too cold in the ice-walled room for him to want to expose his unclothed body very long to the air. Though apparently the girl would have preferred to remain on top of the pile rather than within it, she seemed to understand his need, and after a bit she followed him underneath. Once they were safely covered, side by side and snug beneath the mound of furs, she laughed and pressed her hand against his chest, rolling over and pushing him down so that she could climb into the upper position.
'That’s how you like it, is it? Fine. Whatever you want.'
She grinned down at him. There was a playful sparkle in her eyes, as though this were some sort of game for her. Harpirias wondered how old she was. Twenty? Younger, maybe. Fifteen? There was no telling.
He tried to kiss her, but she averted her mouth. Not their custom, apparently. So be it, Harpirias thought. That little sliver of carved bone stuck through her upper lip would have caused difficulties anyway.
She said something to him in her language. 'I don’t understand,' he told her. She laughed and said it again. Othinor words of tender passion? Somehow he doubted that. Maybe she was just telling him her name.
'Harpirias,' he said. 'My name is Harpirias. What’s yours?'
She giggled. Said something again, a single word, which a moment later she said a second time. Perhaps it was of some significance; but of course, he hadn’t a clue to its meaning.
'Shabilikat?' he ventured.
His attempt at mimicking her sent the girl into a gale of wild laughter.
'Shabilikat,' he said again. 'Shabilikat.'
It seemed to amuse her inordinately to hear him repeating the word. But when he tried it one more time she put her hand over his mouth; and then, an instant later, she wrapped her powerful thighs around his waist, straddling him in a manner that left him without much of an urge to make further attempts at conversation.
It was a long night, and an active one, and rather more pleasant than Harpirias had anticipated, although the style of it was very strange to a man accustomed to the more polished women of the Majipoor aristocracy. Yet he accommodated readily enough to the lusty vigor of her lovemaking, the eager clawing hands, the fierce rocking thrusts, the robust uproarious outbursts of hilarity at what struck him as oddly inopportune moments. She seemed insatiable. Harpirias, though, after long months of unbroken continence, was far from troubled by that.
Somewhere along the way the furs with which he had covered them went flying to one side, but he hardly noticed the cold. Eventually — he had no idea how many hours later it was — he tumbled suddenly into the deepest and darkest of sleeps, the way one might tumble into a well; and when he woke, much later, he discovered that she had covered him once again while he slept and had slipped out of his room without awakening him.
He could not know, naturally, whether he had indeed sired a little princeling for Toikella on her that night. But if the effort had been a failure, he told himself, well, then, he would be quite willing to make another try at it.
10
The king, the next day, was in a far more congenial mood than he had been yesterday. He greeted Harpirias at the entrance to the throne chamber with hugs and bellows of hearty affection, and then with lascivious grins and winks and sniggers and nudges that made Harpirias wince with barely concealed embarrassment. Plainly Toikella had had a full report from the girl and had been very much pleased by what he heard.’ • But he still refused to let Harpirias draw him into any specific negotiations. He was in truth, as Korinaam had said, a man who disliked being hurried.
Harpirias had the Shapeshifter deliver a tactfully worded request for a discussion of the welfare of the hostages. Toikella’s reply was cool and brief, and even Harpirias could tell that it was a refusal.
He looked toward Korinaam. 'He says no, does he?' 'The king wishes to assure you that all will be well in regard to everything you wish, but he asserts that this is not the time to talk about it. He is going to set out on a hunting trip three days hence and it would be unlucky for him to engage in matters of any substance until he returns.'
'Which will be how long? A week? A month?'
'Two days. One to ascend, one to return. Perhaps a third day if the animals make themselves scarce.'
'By the Lady! If this keeps up we’re
'You are invited to accompany him,' Korinaam continued smoothly. 'I advise that you accept. The midsummer royal hunt is a great sacred festival of these people, and he is honoring you greatly by asking you to come.'
'Well, then,' Harpirias said, somewhat mollified. But all this delay was irksome to him none the less.
The rest of that morning’s meeting was devoted to plans for the trip. Afterward, as he and Korinaam were returning to their lodging house, Harpirias said, 'You taught that girl how to say words like ‘please’ and ‘I come in,’ didn’t you?'
'I felt that the situation was dangerous. She needed my help.'
'Dangerous to whom?'
'The king was very resentful of her failure to seduce you that first night. He saw it as something close to treason on her part. It is always dangerous to attract the resentment of a barbarian king.'
'And you think he would have had her killed if I hadn’t allowed her to—'
'There was that possibility. It seemed wisest to me not to risk it. The king was determined to have his way. He would only have sent another woman to you if this one hadn’t succeeded.'
'No doubt you’re right,' said Harpirias. Then, when they had walked on a few steps, something else crossed his mind and he asked the Metamorph, 'Do you happen to know the meaning of the Othinor word ‘shabilikat’?'
'What?'
' ‘Shabilikat,’ ' Harpirias repeated. 'Or something approximately like that. It’s a word that she spoke just as she and I were— were about to—'
'Say it again.'
Harpirias pronounced it once more, clearly, carefully. Korinaam was slow to respond. Then he began to laugh, not a familiar thing coming from him. The laughter began as a quiet inward sound but quickly grew to a guffaw.
'So it’s funny, is it?'
'Obscene, actually. So— terribly— filthy— ' Korinaam appeared positively electrified by the word. 'Of course you’re mispronouncing it hideously. It’s more like—' And he delivered himself of something that had the same number of syllables, but was studded with an impossible array of jaw-cracking consonants heaped together like boulders. 'Is that more like what she actually said?'
'I suppose. What does it mean?'
