It was a strange feeling, to be creeping across the roof of your own palace, trying to avoid your own guards, engaged on a mission in direct contravention of your own decree and knowing that if you were caught you would have yourself thrown to the sacred crocodiles. After all, he'd apparently already instructed that he was to be shown no mercy if he was captured.
Somehow it added an extra thrill.
There was freedom of a sort up here on the rooftops, the only kind of freedom available to a king of the valley. It occurred to Teppic that the landless peasants down on the delta had more freedom than he did, although the seditious and non-kingly side of him said, yes, freedom to catch any diseases of their choice, starve as much as they wanted, and die of whatever dreadful ague took their fancy. But freedom, of a sort.
A faint noise in the huge silence of the night drew him to the riverward edge of the roof. The Djel sprawled in the moonlight, broad and oily.
There was a boat in midstream, heading back from the far bank and the necropolis. There was no mistaking the figure at the oars. The flarelight gleamed off his bald head.
One day, Teppic thought, I'll follow him. I'll find out what it is he does over there.
If he goes over in daylight, of course.
In daylight the necropolis was merely gloomy, as though the whole universe had shut down for early-closing. He'd even explored it, wandering through streets and alleys that contrived to be still and dusty no matter what the weather was on the other, the living side of the water. There was always a 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.