The Second Book of Lankhmar

with distaste the three pools of pink slime in front of the gold audience couch and looked for something to throw over them. Elakeria coyly clutched her coverlet around her. He dragged from a corner a colorful rug that was a duke's ransom and made that do.
    There was the noise of hooves on tiles. In the high, wide archway from which the drapes had been torn there appeared Kreeshkra, still on horseback arid leading the other two Ghoulish mounts, empty saddled. Fafhrd swung the skeleton girl down and embraced her heartily, somewhat to the Mouser's and Elakeria's shock, but soon said, “Dearest love, I think it best you put on again your black cloak and hood. Your naked bones are to me the acme of beauty, but here come others they may disturb.”
    “Already ashamed of me, aren't you? Oh, you dirty-minded puritanical Mud Folk!” Kreeshkra commented with a sour laugh, yet complied, while the rainbows in her eye sockets twinkled.
    The others Fafhrd had referred to consisted of the councillors, soldiers, and various relatives of the late overlord, including the gentle Radomix Kistomerces-Null and his seventeen cats, each now carried and cosseted by some noble hoping to gain favor from Lankhmar's most likely next overlord.
    Not all the new arrivals were so commonplace. One heralded by more hoof-cloppings on tile, was Fafhrd's Mingol mare, her tether bitten through. She stopped by Fafhrd and glared her bloodshot eyes at him, as if to say, “I am not so easily got rid of. Why did you cheat me of a battle?”
    Kreeshkra patted the beast's nose and observed to grim Fafhrd, “You are clearly a man who attracts deep loyalty in others. I trust you have the same quailty yourself.”
    “Never doubt me, dearest,” Fafhrd answered with fond sincerity.
    Also among the newcomers and returners was Reetha, looking suavely happy as a cat who has licked cream, or a panther some even more vital fluid, and naked as ever except for three broad black leather loops around her waist. She threw her arms about the Mouser “You're big again!” she rejoiced. “And you beat them all!”
    The Mouser accepted her embrace, though he purposely put on a dissatisfied face and said sourly, “You were a big help!—you and your naked army, deserting me when I most needed help. I suppose you finished off Samanda!”
    “Indeed we did!” Reetha smirked like a sated leopardess. “What a sizzling she made! Look, doll, her belt of office does go three times round my waist. Oh yes! we cornered her in the kitchen and brought her down. Each of us took a pin from her hair. Then—”
    “Spare me the details, darling,” the Mouser cut her short. “This night for nine hours I've been a rat, with all of a rat's nasty feelings, and that's quite long enough. Come with me, pet; there's something we must attend to ere the crowd gets too thick.”
    When they returned after a short space, the Mouser was carrying a box wrapped in his cloak, while Reetha wore a violet robe, around which was still triply looped, however, Samanda's belt. And the crowd had thickened indeed. Radomix Kistomerces-no-longer-Null had already been informally vested with Lankhmar's overlordship and was sitting somewhat bemused on the golden seashell audience couch along with his seventeen cats and also a smiling Elakeria, who had wrapped her coverlet like a sari around her sylphlike figure.
    The Mouser drew Fafhrd aside. “That's quite a girl you've got,” he remarked, rather inadequately, of Kreeshkra.
    “Yes, isn't she,” Fafhrd agreed blandly.
    “You should have seen mine,” the Mouser boasted. “I don't mean Reetha there, I mean my weird one. She had—"
    “Don't let Kreeshkra hear you use that word,” Fafhrd warned sharply through sub voce .
    “Well, anyhow, whenever I want to see her again,” the Mouser continued conspiratorially, “I have only to swallow the contents of this black vial and—”
    “I'll take charge of that,” Reetha announced crisply, snatching it out of his hand from behind him. She glanced at it, then expertly pitched it through a window into the Inner Sea.
    The Mouser started a glare at her which turned into an infuriating smile.
    Flapping her black robe to cool her, Kreeshkra came up behind Fafhrd. “Introduce me to your friends, dear,” she directed.
    Meanwhile around the golden couch was an ever-thickening press of courtiers, nobles, councillors, and officers. New titles were being awarded by the dozen to all first-comers. Sentences of perpetual