Pyramids

breathless feel about it, which was probably not to be wondered at. Assassins liked the night on general principles, but the night of the necropolis was something else. Or rather, it was the same thing, but a lot more of it. Besides, it was the only city anywhere on the Disc where an assassin couldn’t find employment.
    He reached the light well that opened on the embalmers’ courtyard and peered down. A moment later he landed lightly on the floor and slipped into the room of cases.
    “ Hallo, lad .”
    Teppic opened the lid of the case. It was still empty.
    “ She’s in one of the ones at the back ,” said the king. “ Never had much of a sense of direction .”
    It was a great big palace. Teppic could barely find his way around it by daylight. He considered his chances of carrying out a search in pitch darkness.
    “ It’s a family trait, you know. Your grandad had to have Left and Right painted on his sandals, it was that bad. It’s lucky for you that you take after your mother in that respect .”
    It was strange. She didn’t talk, she chattered. She didn’t seem to be able to hold a simple thought in her head for more than about ten seconds. Her brain appeared to be wired directly to her mouth, so that as soon as a thought entered her head she spoke it out loud. Compared to the ladies he had met at soirees in Ankh, who delighted in entertaining young assassins and fed them expensive delicacies and talked to them of high and delicate matters while their eyes sparkled like carborundum drills and their lips began to glisten…compared to them, she was as empty as a, as a, well, as an empty thing. Nevertheless, he found he desperately wanted to find her. The sheer undemandingness of her was like a drug. The memory of her bosom was quite beside the point.
    “ I’m glad you’ve come back for her ,” said the king vaguely. “ She’s your sister, you know. Half sister, that is. Sometimes I wish I’d married her mother, but you see she wasn’t royal. Very bright woman, her mother .”
    Teppic listened hard. There it was again: a faint breathing noise, only heard at all because of the deep silence of the night. He worked his way to the back of the room, listened again, and lifted the lid of a case.
    Ptraci was curled up on the bottom, fast asleep with her head on her arm.
    He leaned the lid carefully against the wall and touched her hair. She muttered something in her sleep, and settled into a more comfortable position.
    “Er, I think you’d better wake up,” he whispered.
    She changed position again and muttered something like: “Wstflgl.”
    Teppic hesitated. Neither his tutors nor Dios had prepared him for this. He knew at least seventy different ways of killing a sleeping person, but none to wake them up first.
    He prodded her in what looked like the least embarrassing area of her skin. She opened her eyes.
    “Oh,” she said. “It’s you.” And she yawned.
    “I’ve come to take you away,” said Teppic. “You’ve been asleep all day.”
    “I heard someone talking,” she said, stretching in a fashion that made Teppic look away hurriedly. “It was that priest, the one with the face like a bald eagle. He’s really horrible.”
    “He is, isn’t he?” agreed Teppic, intensely relieved to hear it said.
    “So I just kept quiet. And there was the king. The new king.”
    “Oh. He was down here, was he?” said Teppic weakly. The bitterness in her voice was like a Number Four stabbing knife in his heart.
    “All the girls say he’s really weird ,” she added, as he helped her out of the case. “You can touch me, you know. I’m not made of china.”
    He steadied her arm, feeling in sore need of a cold bath and a quick run around the rooftops.
    “You’re an assassin, aren’t you,” she went on. “I remembered that after you’d gone. An assassin from foreign parts. All that black. Have you come to kill the king?”
    “I wish I could,” said Teppic. “He’s really beginning to get on my nerves. Look, could you take your bangles off?”
    “Why?”
    “They make such a noise when you walk.” Even Ptraci’s earrings appeared to chime the hours when she moved her head.
    “I don’t want to,” she said. “I’d feel naked without them.”
    “You’re nearly naked with them,” hissed Teppic. “Please!”
    “ She can play the dulcimer ,” said the ghost of Teppicymon XXVII, apropos of nothing much. “ Not very well, mind you. She’s up to page five of ‘Little Pieces for