Hardly were the white and violet masks in place and the silver curtains settled to the floor than the latter were jerked rudely aside. Hisvin and Skwee appeared, both unmasked, followed by three pike-rats. Despite the presence of the huge vermin in their cages, the Mouser found it hard to banish the illusion that all the rats were actually five feet and more tall.
Hisvin's face grew dusky red as he surveyed the scene. "Oh, most monstrous!" he cried at Hisvet. "Shameless filth! Loose with my own colleague!"
"Don't be dramatic, Daddy," Hisvet countered, while to the Mouser she whispered tersely, "Slay him now. I'll clear you with Skwee and the rest."
The Mouser, fumbling under the coverlet over the side of the bed for Scalpel, while presenting a steady white be-diamonded mask at Hisvin, said blandly, "Calm yourthelf, counthillor. If your divine daughter chootheth me above all other ratth and men, ith it my fault, Hithvin? Or herth either? Love knowth no ruleth."
"I'll have your head for this, Grig," Hisvin screeched at him, advancing toward the bed.
"Daddy, you've become a puritanical dodderer," Hisvet said sharply, almost primly, "to indulge in antique tantrums on this night of our great conquest. Your day is done. I must take your place on the Council. Tell him so, Skwee. Daddy darling, I think you're just madly jealous of Grig because you're not where he is."
Hisvin screamed, "O dirt that was my daughter!" and snatching with youthful speed a stiletto from his waist, drove it at Hisvet's neck betwixt violet mask and coverlet — except that Frix, lunging suddenly on her knees, swung her open left hand hard between, as one bats a ball.
The needlelike blade drove through her palm to the slim dagger's hilt and was wrenched from Hisvin's grasp.
Still on one knee, the bright blade transfixing her out-stretched left palm and dripping red a little, Frix turned toward Hisvin and advancing her other hand graciously, she said in clear, winning tones, "Govern your rage for all our sakes, dear my dear mistress's father. These matters can be composed by quiet reason, surely. You must not quarrel together on this night of all nights."
Hisvin paled and retreated a step, daunted most likely by Frix's preternatural composure, which indeed was enough to send shivers up a man's or even a rat's spine.
The Mouser's fumbling hand closed around Scalpel's hilt. He prepared to spring out and dash back to Grig's apartment, snatching up his bundle of clothes on the way. At some point during the last score or so heartbeats, his great undying love for Hisvet had quietly perished and was now beginning to stink in his nostrils.
But at that instant the violet drapes were torn apart and there rushed from the Mouser's chosen escape route the rat Hreest in his gold-embellished black garb and brandishing rapier and dirk. He was followed by three gaurdsmen-rats in green uniforms, each with a like naked sword. The Mouser recognized the dirk Hreest held — it was his own Cat's Claw.
Frix moved swiftly behind the head of the bed to the post she'd earlier taken between viper and scorpion cage, the stiletto still transfixing her left hand like a great pin. The Mouser heard her murmur rapidly, "The plot thickens. Enter armed rats at all portals. A climax nears."
Hreest came to a sudden halt and cried ringingly at Skwee and Hisvin, "The dismembered remains of Councillor Grig have been discovered lodged against the Fifth Level sewer's exit-grill! The human spy is impersonating him in Grig's own clothes!"
Not at the moment, except for mask, the Mouser thought, and making one last effort cried out, "Nonthenthe! Thith ith midthummer madneth! I am Grig! It wath thome other white rat got tho foully thlain!"
Holding up Cat's Claw and eyeing the Mouser, Hreest continued, "I discovered this dagger of human device in Grig's apartment. The spy is clearly here."
"Kill him in the bed," Skwee commanded harshly, but the Mouser, anticipating a little the inevitable, had rolled out from under his sheets and now took up guard position naked, the white mask cast aside, Scalpel gleaming long and deadly in his right hand, while his left, in lieu of his dirk, held his belt and Scalpel's limp scabbard, both doubled.
With a weird laugh Hreest lunged at him, rapier a-flicker, while Skwee drew sword and came leaping across the foot of the bed, his boot crunching glass against tray beneath the coverlet.
Hreest got a bind on Scalpel, carrying both long swords out to the side, and stepping in close stabbed with Cat's Claw. The Mouser struck his own dirk aside with his doubled belt and drove his left shoulder into Hreest's chest, slamming him back against two of his green uniformed sword-rats, who were thereby forced to give ground too.
At almost the same instant the Mouser parried high to the side with Scalpel, deflecting Skwee's rapier when its point was inches from his neck. Then swiftly changing fronts, he fenced a moment with Skwee, beat the rat's blade aside, and lunged strongly. The white-clad rat was already in retreat across the foot of the bed, from the head of which Hisvet, now unmasked, watched critically, albeit a little sulkily, but the Mouser's point nevertheless reached Skwee's sword-wrist and pinked it halfway through.
By this time the third green-clad rat, a giant relatively seven feet tall, who had to duck through the doorway, came lunging fiercely, though a little slowly. Meanwhile Hreest was picking himself up from the floor, while Skwee dropped his dagger and switched his rapier to his unwounded hand.
The Mouser parried the giant's lunge, a hair's-breadth from his naked chest, and riposted. The giant counter-parried in time, but the Mouser dropped Scalpel's tip under the other's blade and continuing his riposte, skewered him through the heart.
The giant's jaw gaped, showing his great incisors. His eyes filmed. Even his fur seemed to dull. His weapons dropped from his nerveless hands and he stood dead on his feet a moment before starting to fall. In that moment the Mouser, squatting a little on his right leg, kicked out forcefully with his left. His heel took the giant in the breastbone, pushing his corpse off Scalpel and sending it careening back against Hreest and his two greenclad sword-rats.
One of the pike-rats leveled his weapon for a run at the Mouser, but at that moment Skwee commanded loudly, "No more single attacks! Form we a circle around him!"
The others were swift to obey, but in that brief pause Frix dropped open the silver-barred door that was one end of the scorpion's cage, and despite her dagger-transfixed hand lifted the cage and heaved it sharply, sending its fearsome occupant flying to land on the foot of the bed, where it jigged about, big by comparison as a large cat, clashing its claws; rattling its chelicerae, and menacing with its sting over its head. Most of the rats directed their weapons at it. Snatching up her dagger, Hisvet crouched at the opposite corner from it, preparing to defend herself from her pet. Hisvin dodged in back of Skwee.
At the same time Frix dropped her good hand to the medallons on the glow-worm tank. The Mouser didn't need the prompting of her wild smile and over-bright eyes. Snatching up the gray bundle of his clothes, he dashed up the dark steel stairs three at a time. Something hissed past his head and struck with a _zing_ the riser of a stone step above and clattered down. It was Hisvet's long dagger and it had struck point-first. The stairway grew dark and he began taking its steps only two at a time, crouching low as he could and peering wide-eyed ahead. Faintly he heard Skwee's shrill command, "After him!"
Frix with a grimace drew Hisvin's stiletto from her palm, lightly kissed the bleeding wound, and with a curtsey presented the weapon to its owner.
The bedroom was empty save for those two and Hisvet, who was drawing her violet robe around her, and Skwee, who was knotting with spade teeth and good hand a bandage round his injured wrist.