With her dagger she pointed somewhat languidly toward the vanity table holding the black and white vials, informing him, "My family has used the same potion as Sheelba's for countless centuries, and also the white potion, which restores us at once to human-size. During those same centuries we have interbred with the rats, resulting in divinely beautiful monsters such as I am, but also in monsters most ugly, at least by human standards. Those latter of my family stay always below ground, but the rest of us enjoy the advantages and delights of living in two worlds. The inter-breeding has also resulted in many rats with human-like hands and minds. The spreading of civilization to the rats is largely our doing, and we shall rule as chiefs and chieftesses paramount, or even goddesses and gods, when the rats rule men."
This talk of interbreeding and monsters startled the Mouser somewhat and gave him to think, despite his ever more firmly gyved ensorcelment by Hisvet. He recalled Lukeen's old suggestion, made aboard _Squid_, that Hisvet concealed a she-rat's body under her maiden robes and he wondered — somewhat fearfully yet most curiously — just what form Hisvet's slim body did take. For instance, did she have a tail? But on the whole he was certain that whatever he discovered under her violet robe would please him mightily, since now his infatuation with the grain-merchant's daughter had grown almost beyond all bounds.
However, he outwardly showed none of this wondering, but merely asked, as if idly, "So your father is also Lord Null, and you and he and Frix regularly travel back and forth between the big and little worlds?"
"Show him, dear Frix," Hisvet commanded lazily, lifting slim fingers to mask a yawn, as though the hand-and-dagger game had begun to bore her.
Frix moved back against the wall until her head with its natural jet-black sheath and copper-gleaming plaits, for she had thrown back her hood, was between the cages of the pocket-viper and the most enraged scorpion. Her dark eyes were a sleepwalker's, fixed on things infinitely remote. The scorpion darted his moist white sting between the bars rat-inches from her ear, the viper's trifid tongue vibrated angrily against her cheek, while his fangs struck the silver rounds and dripped venom that wetted oilily her yellow silken shoulder, but she seemed to take no note whatever of these matters. The fingers of her right hand, however, moved along a row of medallions decorating the glow-worm tank behind her, and without looking down, she pressed two at once.
The painting of the girl and crocodile moved swiftly upward, revealing the foot of a dark steep stairway.
"That leads without branchings to my father's and my house," Hisvet explained.
The painting descended. Frix pressed two other medallions and the companion painting of man and leopardess rose, revealing a like stairway.
"While that one ascends directly by way of a golden rat-hole to the private apartments of whoever is Lankhmar's seeming overlord, now Glipkerio Kistomerces," Hisvet told the Mouser as the second painting slid down into place. "So you see, beloved, our power goes everywhere." And she lifted her dagger and touched it lightly to his throat. The Mouser let it rest there a space before taking its tip between fingers and thumb and moving it aside. Then he as gently caught hold of the tip of one of Hisvet's braids, she offering no resistance, and began to unweave the fine silver wires from the finer silver-blonde hairs.
Frix still stood like a statue between fang and sting, seeming to see things beyond reality.
"Is Frix one of your breed? — combining in some fashion the finest of human and ratly qualities," the Mouser asked quietly, keeping up with the task which, he told himself, would eventually and after an admittedly weary amount of unbraiding, allow him to arrive at his heart's desire.
Hisvet shook her head languorously, laying aside her dagger. "Frix is my dearest slave and almost sister, but not by blood. Indeed she is the dearest slave in all Nehwon, for she is a princess and perchance by now a queen in her own world. While a-travel between worlds, she was ship-wrecked here and beset by demons, from whom my father rescued her, at the price that she serve me forever."
At this, Frix spoke at last, though without moving else but her lips and tongue, not even her eyes to look at them. "Or until, sweetest mistress, I three times save your life at entire peril of my own. That has happened once now, aboard _Squid_, when the dragon would have gobbled you."
"You would never leave me, dear Frix," Hisvet said confidently.
"I love you dearly and serve you faithfully," Frix replied. "Yet all things come to an end, blessed Demoiselle."
"Then I shall have the Gray Mouser to protect me, and you unneeded," Hisvet countered somewhat pettishly, lying on an elbow. "Leave us for the nonce, Frix, for I would speak privately with him."
With merriest smile Frix came from between the deadly cages, made a curtsy toward the bed, resumed her yellow mask and swiftly went off through the second unsecret doorway, curtained with filmy silver.
Still lifted on her elbow, Hisvet turned toward the Mouser her slender form and her taper-face alight with beauty. He reached toward her eagerly, but she captured his questing hands in her cool fingers and fondling them asked, or rather stated, her eyes feeding on his, "You will love me forever, will you not, who dared the dark and fearsome tunnels of the rat-world to win me?"
"That will I surely, O Empress of Endless Delights," the Mouser answered fervently, maddened by desire and believing his words to the ends of the universe of his feelings — almost.
"Then I think it proper to relieve you of _this_," Hisvet said, putting the fingers of her two hands to his temple, "for it would be an offense against myself and my supreme beauty to depend on a charm when I may now wholly depend on _you_."
And with only the tiniest tweak of pain inflicted, she deftly squeezed with her fingernails the silver dart from under the Mouser's skin, as any woman might squeeze out a blackhead or whitehead from the visage of her lover. She showed him the dart gleaming on her palm. He for his part felt no change in his feelings whatever. He still adored her as divinity — and the fact that previously in his life he had never put any but momentary trust in any divinity whatever seemed of no importance at all, at least at this moment.
Hisvet laid a cool hand on the Mouser's side, but her red eyes were no longer languorously misty; they were sparklingly bright. And when he would have touched her similarly she prevented him, saying in most businesslike fashion, "No, no, not quite yet! First we must plan, my sweet — for you can serve me in ways which even Frix will not. To begin, you must slay me my father, who thwarts me and confines my life unbearably, so that I may be imperatrix of all and you by most favored consort. There will be no end to our powers. Tonight, Lankhmar! Tomorrow, all Nehwon! Then… the conquest of other universes beyond the waters of space! The subjugation of the angels and demons, of heaven itself and hell! At first it may be well that you impersonate my father, as you have Grig — and done most cleverly, by my own witnessing, pet. You are of men the most like me in the world for deceptions, darling. Then — "
She broke off at something she saw in the Mouser's face. "You will of course obey me in all things?" she asked sharply, or rather asserted.
"Well…" the Mouser began.
The silver drape billowed to the ceiling and Frix dashed in on silent-silken slippers, her yellow robe and hood lying behind her.
"Your masks! Your masks!" she cried. "'Ware! 'Ware!" And she whirled over them to their necks an opaque violet coverlet, hiding Hisvet's violet-robed form, the Mouser's unclad body, and the tray between them. "Your father comes with armed attendants, lady!" And she knelt by the head of the bed nearest Hisvet and bowed her yellow-masked head, assuming a servile posture.