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whisper that was like the ghosts of wavelets kissing the hull. She smiled.
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    On deck, Ourph had directed one of the younger Mingols to take the tiller, the other to heat him gahvey. He sheltered from the wind behind the false deck of the timber cargo, looking toward the cabin and shaking his head wonderingly. The rest of the crew snored in the forecastle's shadow. While on Rime Isle in her low-ceilinged yellow bedroom Cif woke with the thought that the Gray Mouser was in peril. As she tried to recollect her nightmare, moonlight creeping along the wall reminded her of the mer-ghost which had murdered Zwaaken and lured off Fafhrd from sister Afreyt for a space, and she wondered how Mouser would react to such a dangerous challenge.
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    Bright and early the next morning the Mouser threw on a short gray robe, belted it, and rapped sharply on the cabin's ceiling. Speaking in a somewhat hoarse whisper, he told the impassive Mingol thus summoned that he desired the instant presence of Master Mikkidu. He had cast a disguising drape across the transported chest that stood between the crowding casks that narrowed farther the none-too-wide cabin, and now sat behind it on the stool, as though it were a captain's flat desk. Behind him on the crosswise bunk that occupied the cabin's end Ississi reposed and either slept or shut-eyed waked, he knew not which, blanket-covered except for her streaming silver hair and unconfined save for the thick black ribbon tying one ankle securely to the bunk's foot beneath the blanket.
    (I'm no egregious fool, he told himself, to think that one night's love brings loyalty.)
    He nursed his throat with a cuplet of bitter brandy, gargled and slowly swallowed.
    (And yet she'd make a good maid for Cif, I do believe, when I have done with disciplining her. Or perchance I'll pass her on to poor maimed and isle-locked Fafhrd.)
    He impatiently finger-drummed the shrouded chest, wondering what could be keeping Mikkidu. A guilty conscience? Very likely!
    Save for a glimmer of pale dawn filtering through the curtained hatchway and the two narrow side ports glazed with mica, which the lashed casks further obscured, the oil-replenished swaying lamp still provided the only light.
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    There was a flurry of running footsteps coming closer, and then Mikkidu simultaneously rapped at the hatchway and thrust tousle-pated head and distracted eyes between the curtains. The Mouser beckoned him in, saying in a soft brandy-smoothed voice, "Ah, Master Mikkidu, I'm glad your duties, which no doubt must be pressing, at last permit you to visit me, because I do believe I ordered that you come at once."
    "Oh, Captain, sir," the latter replied rapidly, "there's a chest missing from the stowage forward. I saw that it was gone as soon as Trenchi wakened me and gave me your command. I only paused to rouse my mates and question them before I hurried here."
    (Ah-ha, the Mouser thought, he knows about Ississi, I'm sure of it, he's much too agitated, he had a hand in smuggling her aboard. But he doesn't know what's happened to her now—suspects everything and everyone, no doubt—and seeks to clear himself with me of all suspicion by reporting to me the missing chest, the wretch!)
    "A chest? Which chest?" the Mouser meanwhile asked blandly. "What did it contain? Spices? Spicy things?"
    "Fabrics for Lady Cif, I do believe," Mikkidu answered.
    "Just fabrics for the Lady Cif and nothing else?" the Mouser inquired, eyeing him keenly. "Weren't there some other things? Something of yours, perhaps?"
    "No, sir, nothing of mine," Mikkidu denied quickly.
    "Are you sure of that?" the Mouser pressed. "Sometimes one will tuck something of one's own inside another's chest—for safekeeping, as it were, or perchance to smuggle it across a border."
    "Nothing of mine at all," Mikkidu maintained. "Perhaps there were some fabrics also for the other lady ... and, well, just fabrics, sir and—oh, yes—some rolls of ribbon."
    "Nothing but fabrics and ribbon?" the