'I don't want to go back. Why should I want to go back? It's the crocodiles for me. I'm not going back, not just for crocodiles.'
'Um. Perhaps I could pardon you, or something,' said Teppic.
'Oh yes,' said Ptraci, looking at her nails. 'You said you were the king, didn't you.'
'I am the king! That's my kingdom over-' Teppic hesitated, not knowing in which direction to point his finger - 'somewhere. I'm king of it.'
'You don't look like the king,' said Ptraci.
'Why not?'
'He had a golden mask on.'
'That was me!'
'So you ordered me thrown to the crocodiles?'
'Yes! I mean, no.' Teppic hesitated. 'I mean, the king did. I didn't. In a way. Anyway, I was the one who rescued you,' he added gallantly.
'There you are, then. Anyway, if you were the king, you'd be a god, too. You aren't acting very god-like at the moment.'
'Yes? Well. Er.' Teppic hesitated again. Ptraci's literal mindedness meant that innocent sentences had to be carefully examined before being sent out into the world.
'I'm basically good at making the sun rise,' he said. 'I don't know how, though. And rivers. You want any rivers flooding, I'm your man. God, I mean.'
He lapsed into silence as a thought struck him.
'I wonder what's happening in there without me?' he said.
Ptraci stood up and set off down to the gorge.
'Where are you going?'
She turned. 'Well, Mr King or God or assassin, or whatever, can you make water?'
'What, here?'
'I mean to drink. There may be a river hidden in that crack or there may not, but we can't get at it, can we? So we have to go somewhere where we can. It's so simple I should think even kings could understand it.'
He hurried after her, down the scree to where You Bastard was lying with his head and neck flat on the ground, flicking his ears in the heat and idly applying You Vicious Brute's Theory of Transient Integrals to a succession of promising cissoid numbers. Ptraci kicked him irritably.
'Do you know where there is water, then?' said Teppic. . . . e/27. Eleven miles . . .
Ptraci glared at him from kohl-ringed eyes. 'You mean you don't know? You were going to take me into the desert and you don't know where the water is?'
'Well, I rather expected I was going to be able to take some with me!'
'You didn't even think about it!'
'Listen, you can't talk to me like that! I'm a king!' Teppic stopped.
'You're absolutely right,' he said. 'I never thought about it. Where I come from it rains nearly every day. I'm sorry.'
Ptraci's brows furrowed. 'Who reigns nearly every day?' she said.
'No, I mean rain. You know. Very thin water coming out of the sky?'
'What a silly idea. Where do you come from?'