The Second Book of Lankhmar

and hidden by a loose robe of violet silk except when the wind briefly molded a flat curve of her girlish anatomy. There was a violet hood, half thrown back. The sleeves were puffed but snug at the wrists. She was bare-foot, her skin showing as creamy there as on her face, except for a tinge of pink about the toes.
    She looked them all three one after another quickly in the eye. “You were whispering of the fleets that failed,” she said accusingly. “Fie, Master Slinoor. We must all have courage.”
    “Aye,” Fafhrd agreed, finding that a cue to his liking. “Even dragons need not daunt a brave man. I've often watched the sea monsters, crested, horned, and some two-headed, playing in the waves of outer ocean as they broke around the rocks sailors call the Claws. They were not to be feared, if a man remembered always to fix them with a commanding eye. They sported lustily together, the man dragons pursuing the woman dragons and going—” Here Fafhrd took a tremendous breath and then roared out so loudly and wailingly that the two helmsmen jumped—" Hoongk! Hoongk! ”
    “Fie, Swordsman Fafhrd,” Hisvet said primly, a blush mantling her cheeks and forehead. “You are most indelicate. The sex of dragons—”
    But Slinoor had whirled on Fafhrd, gripping his wrist and now crying, “Quiet, you monster-fool! Know you not we sail tonight by moonlight past the Dragon Rocks? You'll call them down on us!”
    “There are no dragons in the Inner Sea,” Fafhrd laughingly assured him.
    “There's something that tears ships,” Slinoor asserted stubbornly.
    The Mouser took advantage of this brief interchange to move in on Hisvet, rapidly bowing thrice as he approached.
    “We have missed the great pleasure of your company on deck, Demoiselle,” he said suavely.
    “Alas, sir, the sun mislikes me,” she answered prettily. “Now his rays are mellowed as he prepared to submerge. Then too,” she added with an equally pretty shudder, “these rough sailors—” She broke off as she saw that Fafhrd and the master of Squid had stopped their argument and returned to her. “Oh, I meant not you, dear Master Slinoor,” she assured him, reaching out and almost touching his black robe.
    “Would the Demoiselle fancy a sun-warmed, wind-cooled black plum of Sarheenmar?” the Mouser suggested, delicately sketching in the air with Cat's Claw.
    “I know not,” Hisvet said, eyeing the dirk's needle-like point. “I must be thinking of getting the White Shadows below before the evening's chill is upon us.”
    “True,” Fafhrd agreed with a flattering laugh, realizing she must mean the white rats. “But ‘twas most wise of you, Little Mistress, to let them spend the day on deck, where they surely cannot hanker so much to sport with the Black Shadows—I mean, of course, their black free commoner brothers, and slim delightful sisters, to be sure, hiding here and there in the hold.”
    “There are no rats on my ship, sportive or otherwise,” Slinoor asserted instantly, his voice loud and angry. “Think you I run a rat-brothel? Your pardon, Demoiselle,” he added quickly to Hisvet. “I mean, there are no common rats aboard Squid .”
    “Then yours is surely the first grain ship so blessed,” Fafhrd told him with indulgent reasonableness.
    The sun's vermilion disk touched the sea to the west and flattened like a tangerine. Hisvet leaned back against the taffrail under the arching tiller. Fafhrd was to her right, the Mouser to her left with the plums hanging just beyond him, near the silver cages. Slinoor had moved haughtily forward to speak to the helmsmen, or pretend to.
    “I'll take that plum now, Dirksman Mouser,” Hisvet said softly.
    As the Mouser turned away in happy obedience and with many a graceful gesture, delicately palpating the net bag to find the most tender fruit, Hisvet stretched her right arm out sideways and without looking once at Fafhrd slowly ran her spread-fingered hand through the hair on his chest, paused when she reached the other side to grasp a fistful and tweak it sharply, then trailed her fingers rightly back across the hair she had ruffled.
    Her hand came back to her just as the Mouser turned around. She kissed the palm lingeringly, then reached it across her body to take the black fruit from the point of the Mouser's dirk. She sucked delicately at the prick Cat's Claw had made and shivered.
    “Fie, sir,” she pouted. “You told me ‘twould be sun-warmed and ‘tis not. Already all