'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 Tiny Fingers”.'
Teppic crept to the passage leading out of the embalming room and listened hard. Silence ruled in the palace, broken only by heavy breathing and the occasional clink behind him as Ptraci stripped herself of her jewellery. He crept back.
'Please hurry up,' he said, 'we haven't got a lot of-'
Ptraci was crying.
'Er,' said Teppic. 'Er.'
'Some of these were presents from my granny,' sniffed Ptraci. 'The old king gave me some, too. These earrings have been in my family for ever such a long time. How would you like it if you had to do it?'
'You see, jewellery isn't just something she wears,' said the ghost of Teppicymon XXVII. 'It's part of who she is.' My word, he added to himself, that's probably an Insight. Why is it so much easier to think when you're dead?
'I don't wear any,' said Teppic.
'You've got all those daggers and things.'
'Well, I need them to do my job.'
'Well then.'
'Look, you don't have to leave them here, you can put them in my pouch,' he said. 'But we must be going. Please!'
'Goodbye,' said the ghost sadly, watching them sneak out to the courtyard. He floated back to his corpse, who wasn't the best of company.
The breeze was stronger when they reached the roof. It was hotter, too, and dry.
Across the river one or two of the older pyramids were already sending up their flares, but they were weak and looked wrong.
'I feel itchy,' said Ptraci. 'What's wrong?'
'It feels like we're in for a thunderstorm,' said Teppic, staring across the river at the Great Pyramid. Its blackness had intensified, so that it was a triangle of deeper darkness in the night. Figures were running around its base like lunatics watching their asylum burn.
'What's a thunderstorm?'
'Very hard to describe,' he said, in a preoccupied voice. 'Can you see what they're doing over there?'
Ptraci squinted across the river.
'They're very busy,' she said.
'Looks more like panic to me.'