The light that came into the King's eyes had a sublimating effect upon his face. "Mary Legs? Indeed, I can tell you about her. But tell me first, have you seen her lately? Tell me, is she all right?"
"She's dead," Drake said. "I killed her."
The King's fat face flattened slightly; fires flickered in his pale eyes. Then his face filled out again, and the fires faded away. "No," he said, "she may be dead, but you did not kill her. No one would kill Mary Legs. Killing Mary Legs would be like killing the sun and the stars and the sky, and even if a man could kill these things he would not do so, and neither would he kill Mary Legs."
"I did not kill her on purpose," he introduced himself and told the King about the Fly by Night's encounter with the Lambda-Xi field, of how he had locked Saint Annabelle Leigh in the starboard storeroom to die. "If I had not been so selfish," he concluded, "she would still be alive today."
The King looked at him pityingly. "And now your hands are bloodied, and you must seek her ghost."
"Yes," said Drake. "Now I must seek her ghost—and destroy it."
The King shook his head. "You may seek it all you want, and you may even find it. But you will never destroy it, Nathaniel Drake. It will destroy you. Knowing this, I will help you find it. Come with me."
He spoke a few words into an intercom at his elbow, then came around the bar and led the way down a spiral staircase into a subterranean room. Their entry brought vein-like ceiling lights into luminescence, and the room turned out to be a large hall. Cushioned chairs were arranged in rows on either side of a narrow ramp that protruded from a velvet-curtained stage, and to the right of the stage, a chromium piano stood.
"It is fitting that I tell you about her here," King Tutankhamen said, "for this is where she danced. Come, we will take the best seats in the house."