The Anvil of the World

HOW beautiful is Salesh, that white city by the sea, in festival time!

Her broad ways are strung with bright lanterns, and banners of purple and crimson stream from her high towers. Slender Youth runs laughing in gilded sandals through her gardens, pulling fragrant roses down to scatter the petals, and Age lies sated on cushions by her winepresses, tonguing the goblet of life for its last drop of pleasure. Smoke of sweet incense rises from her braziers, rises with the music of sistrums, citherns, tambours, lyres, and trumpets brazen-throated. Here lovers come as bees to the comb, rolling in honey of unbridled excess, for in Festival time in Salesh nothing is forbidden. The god of the flesh raises his staff in benign blessing on his votaries, and sweet Delight leads the merry dance!

Or so it says on the brochure put out by the Festival Guild. Needless to say, it’s hard to find a hotel room in Salesh at that time of year.



In anticipation of the busy holiday, Smith was cleaning out the drains at the Hotel Grandview.

It was the first time he’d done it in all the months he’d been the hotel’s proprietor. The Children of the Sun tended to be forgetful in matters regarding ecosystems both large and small, and he had been content all this while to send the Grandview’s waste down its main flush pipe without ever wondering where it Went afterward.

However, when he had received a notice that the Grandview was due for its first safety inspection, and noted that drains were foremost on the list of things to be inspected, it occurred to him that he’d better have a look at them first. On prising up the iron trap just outside the hotel’s kitchen, he was astonished to discover that the barrel-wide pipe below was almost completely blocked with a solid greenish sludge, leaving an aperture for flow no bigger around than an average drinking straw.

Smith knelt on the paving stones, staring at it in bewilderment, while his staff stood looking on unhelpfully.

“You know, some of the gentlemen and ladies been complaining their washbasins drain slow,” offered Porter Crucible. “I’ll bet that’s why.”

“What do I do now?” said Smith plaintively. He looked up at the porters. “I guess we’ll just have to get scrapers and take turns digging it out.”

The porters took a step back, in perfect unison.

“That’s as much as our Porters’ Union certificates are worth, you know,” said Crucible. “We’re already on ten-year probation from transferring out of the Keymen’s Union.”

“Anyway, we couldn’t get our shoulders down that pipe,” added Pinion. “And you couldn’t either, come to that.”

“Somebody small and skinny could, though,” added Bellows, and they turned to stare at Burnbright. She backed away, looking outraged.

“There’s a Message Runners’ Union too,” she protested. “And I would not either fit down there! I’ve got breasts now, you know. And hips!”

Which was true; she had recently grown those very items, and filled out her scarlet uniform snugly enough to be ogled by gentlemen guests when she raced through the hotel bar.

“Nine Hells,” muttered Smith, and clambered to his feet. “I’ll dig it out as far as I can. Where’s a shovel?”

“What were you on about just now?” Mrs. Smith, emerging from the kitchen, inquired of Burnbright. She wiped her hands on her apron and peered down at the opened drain. “Great heavens! What a disgusting mess. No wonder the drains are sluggish.” She pulled out a smoking tube and packed it with fragrant amberleaf.

“It’s got to be cleared before the safety inspectors get here,” said Smith, who had found a shovel and now stuck it experimentally into the sludge. The sludge, which was roughly the consistency of hard cheese, fought back.

“Oh, you’ll never get rid of it like that,” Mrs. Smith advised, flicking the flint-and-steel device with which she lit her amberleaf. She took a drag, waved away smoke, and explained: “There’s a fearfully caustic chemical you can buy. You just pour it down the drain, leave it to dissolve everything away, and Hey Presto! Your drains are whisper-fresh by morning. Or so the chemists claim.”

“Doesn’t that pipe drain into the open ocean?” asked Crucible.

“Haven’t the slightest idea,” said Mrs. Smith. She eyed Burnbright. “You’re young and agile; jump up there, child, and investigate.”

Burnbright scrambled up on the edge of the parapet and hung the upper part of her body over, peering down the cliff.

“Yes!” she cried. “I can see where it comes out! Big trail of slime goes right into the sea!”

“No problem, then!” said Smith cheerfully, putting back the shovel. “Can we buy that stuff in bulk?”



By midafternoon the porters had brought back ten barrels of tempered glass marked SCOURBRASS’S FOAMING WONDER, with instructions stenciled in slightly smaller letters underneath that and, smaller still, a scarlet skull and crossbones followed by the words: POISON. Use caution when handling. Not to be added to soups, stews, or casseroles. Smith mixed up the recommended dosage for particularly long-standing clogs and poured it into the drain. He was gratified to see a jet of livid green foam rise at once, as though fighting to escape from the pipe, then sink back, bubbling ominously. He stacked the opened barrel next to the hotel’s toolshed, beside the nine unopened ones, and returned to the kitchen in a happy mood.

“Looks like that stuff’s working,” he said to Mrs. Smith, who was busy jamming a small plucked and boned bird up the gaping nether orifice of a somewhat larger boned bird. “Er—what’s this?”

“Specialty dish of the evening,” she panted. “Hard-boiled egg in a quail in a rock hen in a duck in a goose in a sea dragon, and the whole thing roasted and glazed in fruit syrup and served with a bread sauce. Miserably complicated to make, but it’s expected at Festival time, and besides”— she gave a final shove and the smaller bird vanished at last, “—rumor hath it there’s some sort of journalist has booked a table for this evening, and it always pays to impress the restaurant critics.”

Smith nodded. The Hotel Grandview was an old building with uncertain plumbing in a distinctly unfashionable part of town, but its restaurant had a steadily growing gourmet clientele that was keeping them in business. That was entirely due to Mrs. Smith’s ability to turn a sausage or a handful of cold oatmeal into cuisine fit for anybody’s gods, let alone the gastronomes of a seaside resort.

“So I shall need Burnbright to run down to that Yendri shop for a sack of those funny little yellow plums, because they’ll fit in the sea dragon’s eye sockets after it’s cooked and give it a fearfully lifelike air,” Mrs. Smith added.

“I’ll send her now,” said Smith, filching a piece of crisply fried eel from a tray and wandering out in search of Burnbright.

He was expecting a certain amount of whining. He was right.

“I hate going into Greenietown!” wailed Burnbright. “They always look at me funny! They’re all a bunch of oversexed savages.”

“Look, they’re not going to rape you,” Smith told her. “They have to take a vow they won’t do anything like that before they’re allowed to open shops in our cities.”

“Well, they’re always lying in wait by the mountain roads and raping our long-distance messengers,” claimed Burnbright. “At the Mount Flame Mother House for Runners—”

“Do you know anybody that’s ever actually happened to?”

“No, but everybody knows—”

“You can run all the way back,” Smith told her, slipping a coin into her hand and gently ushering her toward the hotel’s front door.

“Why can’t Smith or Bellows or one of them go?” Burnbright persisted.

“Because they’ve gone up to the caravan depot to pick up Lord Ermenwyr’s trunks,” said Smith.

“Eeew,” said Burnbright, and sped out the door.

She did not particularly care for Lord Ermenwyr either, despite the fact that he was the Hotel Grandview’s patron. Burnbright’s immediate disfavor was due to the fact that Lord Ermenwyr consistently made overtures of an improper nature to her during his frequent visits, and she thought he was a creepy little man, patron or no.

Smith ducked into the bar to see if all was going well, took a brief detour through the indoor section of the restaurant (silent as a temple at that hour, with its folded napkins and crystal set out expectantly) and slipped behind his desk to look over the guestbook. The Grandview was full up with reservations, as he’d hoped it would be for the holiday. His eye fell on the name just below Lord Ermenwyr’s: Sharplin Coppercut.

Smith knit his brows, thinking the name was familiar. Some kind of journalist? Maybe the food critic Mrs. Smith was expecting? As he wondered, a thin shadow moved across the doorway and a thin and elegantly dressed man followed after it. Behind him a city porter struggled with a ponderous trunk.

The elegant man came straight to the desk, moving silent as his shadow, and in a quiet voice said; “Sharplin Coppercut.”

Smith blinked at him a moment, “Oh!” he said belatedly, “You have a reservation. Right, here you are: Room 2. It’s just up those stairs, sir, first door on the left. Come to have fun at the Festival, have you?”

“I do hope so,” said Coppercut, stamping the ledger with his house sign. He replaced his seal in its pendant box and swept the lobby with a penetrating gaze. “Have you a runner on the premises?”

“Yes, sir, we’re a fully equipped hotel. We can send your correspondence anywhere in the city. She’s stepped out for a moment, but I’ll be happy to send her up as soon as she gets back, sir,” Smith offered.

“Please do,” said Coppercut, showing his teeth. He went upstairs as quietly as he had done everything else, though the porter thumped and labored after him, cursing under the weight of the trunk.

Then there was a commotion of another kind entirely, for in through the street door came two of the biggest men Smith had ever seen. They were built like a pair of brick towers. That they managed to get through the doorway side by side was extraordinary; it seemed necessary to bend time and space to do it. They had to come in side by side, however, for they bore on their massive shoulders the front traces of a costly looking palanquin. Into the lobby it came, and two more giants bearing the rear traces ducked their heads to follow. They were followed by a tall Yendri, who wore the plain white robe of a physician. Behind them came Porters Crucible, Pinion, Old Smith, Bellows, and New Smith, bearing each no less than three trunks.

“Smith,” hissed a voice from within the palanquin. “Is the lobby empty?”

“At the moment,” Smith replied.

In response, the palanquin’s curtains parted, and Lord Ermenwyr slid forth, nimble as a weasel. He straightened up and stood peering around warily. He wore an inky black ensemble that contrasted sharply with the unnatural pallor of his skin. He wore also a pomaded beard and curled mustaches, and clenched between his teeth a jade smoking tube from which a sickly green fume trailed.

“Safe at last,” he muttered. “Hello, Smith; we’re traveling incognito, you see, I mean even more so than usual, hence all the cloak-and-dagger business, and I don’t suppose you’ve got my suite key ready, have you, Smith?”

“Right here, my lord,” said Smith, handing it over the counter. Lord Ermenwyr took it and bolted for the stairs, with the tails of his coat flying out behind him. His palanquin-bearers gaped after him; then, exchanging glances, they hoisted the palanquin after them and lumbered toward the staircase. They got it up into the hall with inches to spare, tugging awkwardly. The Yendri bowed apologetically to Smith.

“His lordship is somewhat agitated,” he said.

“That’s all right,” Smith assured him. “As soon as you give him his fix, he’ll calm down.”

The Yendri looked shocked. Smith realized that he was quite a young man, slender and smooth-faced, and though his features would undoubtedly one day be as harshly angular as the others of his race, he had at the moment a certain poetic look. His stammered reply was cut short by a shriek from upstairs:

“Willowspear! For Hell’s sake, my medication!”

“See?” said Smith. The Yendri hurried upstairs.

“What was all that?” demanded Mrs. Smith, emerging from the kitchen with a frown, wiping her hands on her apron.

“Lord Ermenwyr’s arrived,” Smith explained.

“Oh,” she said. “Who was that he was yelling after?”

“He’s got a doctor with him,” said Smith.

“Instead of Madam Balnshik, this time? I never saw such a hypochondriac in my life,” stated Mrs. Smith. “Do you suppose the doctor knows about…?”

“He’d have to, wouldn’t he?” said Smith. “By the way, I think your food critic’s arrived.”

“Ah!” Mrs. Smith edged sidelong behind the desk to look at the register. She studied it a moment. “Let’s see… Coppercut?” she scowled. “No, no. That man doesn’t write restaurant reviews. Far from it! He’s a—”

“Here we are!” caroled Lord Ermenwyr, sliding gracefully down the banister of the staircase. The four giants hurried after him, taking the stairs, however, and followed at a slight distance by the Yendri doctor.

“My lord—” he gasped.

“All together again!” Lord Ermenwyr landed with a crash and skittered across the lobby. His pupils had gone to pinpoints. “Good old Smith! You’ve had the drains cleaned since I was here last, haven’t you? And Mrs. Smith, how charming to see you! Nursie sends her best, she’d have been here but Mother had another damned baby”—here the giants and the Yendri doctor bowed involuntarily—”and Nursie adores babies, obsessed with the horrible little things in all their lace and woolies and whatnot—I keep warning everyone that they’ll find a cradle full of tiny gnawed bones one of these days, but nobody listens. Smith! Good to see you! Have I checked in yet?”

“No, Master,” one of the giants reminded him, in a terrifyingly deep voice with slightly odd enunciation. Smith looked at him sharply and exchanged a glance with Mrs. Smith.

“How careless of me.” Lord Ermenwyr took out his seal and stamped HOUSE KINGFISHER in five places on the register’s page. “And I haven’t done introductions yet, have I? Smith, Mrs. Smith, these are my bodyguards: Cutt, Crish, Stabb, and Strangel. Aren’t those great names? And this is my personal physician.” He waved a hand at the Yendri. “Agliavv Willowspear. A man who knows his antidepressants!”

Willowspear bowed.

“Yes, yes, I know he’s a greenie, but he’s utterly trustworthy,” said Lord Ermenwyr in a stage whisper. “Known him all my life. Mother’s always succoring defenseless orphans, alas. Anyway, I had to bring him; he’s one of Mother’s disciples and he’s on a vision quest or something, isn’t that right, Willowspear?”

“In a manner of speaking, my lord,” said Willowspear.

“A vision quest to Salesh at festival time?” said Mrs. Smith, regarding him keenly.

“Yes, lady.” Willowspear drew himself up and met her gaze. “My father, Hladderin Willowspear—”

Burnbright entered clutching a small bag presumably containing yellow plums, and, seeing Lord Ermenwyr at the desk, did her best to tiptoe through to the kitchen unobserved. About three paces on, however, her gaze riveted on Willowspear. Her mouth fell open, but she made no sound and kept moving forward, though her gaze remained on the Yendri. The result was that she walked straight into a chair and fell over it with a crash.

Everyone turned to stare at her.

“And it’s little Burnbright!” yodeled Lord Ermenwyr, vaulting the back of a sofa to land beside her and pull her to her feet. “Nine Hells, you’ve grown tits! When did that happen?”

“Girls grow up overnight, they say,” Smith explained, moving between them quickly, closely followed by Willowspear.

“Don’t they, just? Burnbright, runner dearest, you’ll have to come recite the latest news for me tomorrow, eh?” Lord Ermenwyr leered around Smith at her. “Private little tete-a-tete in my chamber? I like the morning report over my tea and pastry. I have breakfast in bed, too. Wouldn’t you like—”

“Her knee is bleeding,” Willowspear pointed out. Burnbright took her eyes from him for the first time and peered down at her leg dazedly. “Oh,” she said. “It is.”

“Well!” Lord Ermenwyr cried. “I’ll allot you the services of my personal physician to tend to it, how about that? Off to the kitchen with her, Willowspear, and plaster up that gorgeous leg, and make sure the other one’s undamaged, while you’re at it. She earns her living with those, after all.” “That would be beautiful—I mean—nice,” said Burnbright. “And as soon as he’s done, you’ve got a customer in Room 2,” Smith told her.

“Right,” she said, wide-eyed, as Willowspear took her hand and led her away.

“I’m talking too much, aren’t I?” said Lord Ermenwyr, looking around with an abrupt change of mood. “Oh, God, I need to get laid. Not safe, though. Smith, might we have a cozy chat in the bar? Just you and I and the bodyguards? There are a few little things you need to know.”

Mrs. Smith rolled her eyes. Smith muttered a silent prayer to his ancestors, but said, “Right away, lord.”

At that moment another guest arrived with some fanfare, a well-to-do lady who had apparently donned her festival costume early and seemed to be going as the Spirit of the Waters, to judge from the blue body paint and strategically placed sequins. Two goggle-eyed city porters followed her, with trunks that presumably contained the clothes she was not wearing.

Smith braced himself, expecting Lord Ermenwyr to engage in another display of sofa-vaulting; to his immense relief, instead the lordling gave the woman an oddly furtive look and plucked at Smith’s sleeve.

“I’ll just step into the bar now, if you don’t mind,” he muttered. “Pray join me when you’ve got a minute.”

He slunk away, with the bodyguards bumping into one another somewhat as they attempted to follow closely.

Smith stepped behind his desk to register the Spirit of the Waters, or Lady Shanriana of House Goldspur as she was known when in her clothes. Mrs. Smith lingered, seemingly loath to go back to the kitchen just yet.

When Lady Shanriana was safely on her way upstairs to her room, Mrs. Smith leaned close and said quietly, “Those are demons the lordling’s got with him.”

“That’s what I thought,” Smith replied. “With a glamour on them, I guess.”

“I can always tell when somebody’s talking around a pair of tusks, no matter how well they’re hidden. The accent’s unmistakable,” said Mrs. Smith. “But perhaps they’ll mind their manners. Nurse Balnshik was capable of civilized behavior, as I recall.”

Smith shivered pleasurably, remembering the kind of behavior of which Nurse Balnshik had been capable.

“She didn’t have tusks, of course,” he said irrelevantly.

At that moment Burnbright and Willowspear returned from the kitchen. She seemed to be leaning on his arm to a degree disproportionate to the tininess of the sticking plaster on her knee.

“I’ve never heard of using hot water and soap on a cut,” she was saying breathlessly. “It seems so simple! But then, you probably said some sort of spell over it too, didn’t you? Because there’s really no pain at all—”

“There you are, Willowspear,” said Lord Ermenwyr edgily, popping out of the bar. “I need you to check my pulse. Where’s Smith?”

“Just coming, lord,” said Smith, stepping from behind the counter. “And, Burnbright? You need to step up to Room 2.”

“Oh. All right,” she said, and climbed the stair unsteadily.

Smith and Willowspear followed Lord Ermenwyr into the bar, where he retreated to the farthest darkest booth and sat looking pointedly back and forth between Smith and the barman. Smith took the hint.

“Seven pints of Black Ship Stout, Rivet, then go mind the front desk for a bit,” he said. Rivet looked bewildered, but complied.

When they were settled in the booth (all but the bodyguards, who would never have fit in there anyway but made a solid wall in front of it) Lord Ermenwyr had a gulp of his pint, leaned forward in the gloom, and said, “I’m afraid I’m in certain difficulties, Smith.”

Smith groaned inwardly, but had a bracing quaff of his own pint, and said merely, “Difficulties, you say.”

“Yes, and it’s necessary I…hem… lie low for a while. That’s why I’m here.”

Smith thought to himself that his lordship could scarcely have chosen a more public place to go to ground than a resort hotel at Festival time, but he raised an eyebrow and said, “Really?”

“Yes, yes, I know what you’re thinking, but I have my reasons!” Lord Ermenwyr snapped. “I’d better explain. I belong to certain, shall we say, professional organizations? Hereditary membership, thanks to Daddy. The AFA, the WWF, NPNS, BSS—”

“And those would be?”

“Ancient Fraternity of Archmagi,” Lord Ermenwyr explained impatiently. “World Warlocks’ Federation. Ninth Plane Necromancers’ Society. Brotherhood of Sages and Seers. To name but a few. And I, er, seem to have made an enemy.

“It all started when I attended this banquet and wore all my regalia from all the groups of which I’m a member. Well, apparently that wasn’t considered quite in good taste, as some of the societies aren’t on the best of terms, but I’m new at this so how was I supposed to know? And several people took offense that I was wearing the Order of the Bonestar on the same side of my chest as the Infernal Topaz Cross and carrying the Obsidian Rod in my left hand.

“Just a silly little misunderstanding, you see? But one gentleman was rather more vocal than the rest of them. He’d been drinking, and I’d been, mmm, self-medicating, and I might have been clever at his expense or something, because he seems to have developed a dislike for me quite out of all proportion to anything I may or may not have said.”

Smith drank the rest of his pint in a gulp. “Go on,” he said, feeling doomed already.

“And then we ran for the same guild office, and I won,” Lord Ermenwyr. “I even won fairly. Well, reasonably fairly. But evidently this gentleman had wanted all his life to be the Glorious Slave of Scharathrion, and that I of all people should have dashed his hopes was too much. Rather silly, considering that all the title amounts to is being treasurer to a fraternity of pompous idiots obsessed with power; but there it is, and he’s decided to kill me.”

“All right,” said Smith patiently. “And that’s not against the club rules?”

Lord Ermenwyr squirmed in his seat. “Not as such, because he’s filed a formal declaration of intent to challenge me to a duel. Out of all the interminable number of fraternal bylaws, he got hold of one that’ll permit him to take my office if he defeats me in formal combat.

“Of course, he’s got to find me to do that,” he added, snickering.

“And so you’re hiding out here?”

“Exactly,” Lord Ermenwyr replied. “Perfect place for it! Magi are an antisocial lot, because they think they’re cleverer than everyone else, so what better place for me to dodge him than in the midst of the mundane mob he so detests? These duels always take place on a blasted heath or a mountaintop or somewhere equally dramatic. He won’t want to stoop to showing off his wizardly prowess in Salesh High Street, not he!”

“You haven’t touched that beer,” Smith said to Willowspear. “Don’t you drink?”

“No, sir, not alcohol,” Willowspear replied, pushing the glass toward him. “Please, help yourself.”

“Thanks.” Smith took the stout and drank deep before asking Lord Ermenwyr, “You haven’t tried to buy your enemy off?”

“That was the first thing I did, when I saw how he was taking it,” Lord Ermenwyr admitted, his gleam of glee fading somewhat. ” ‘Here,’ I said, ‘you can take your old staff of office, I don’t want it. Be the Glorious Slave of Scharathrion, if it means that much to you!’ But he insists it has to be bought in blood. Mine, I need hardly add. So I took to my heels.”

“What about—” Smith looked around furtively. “What about your lord father?”

All four of the bodyguards genuflected, slopping their drinks somewhat.

“He’s no use at all,” said Lord Ermenwyr bitterly. “He said that any son of his ought to be able to make mincemeat of a third-rate philtermonger like Blichbiss, and it was high time I learned to stand on my own and be a man, et cetera et cetera ad infinitum, and I said, ‘I hate you, Daddy,’ and ran like hell. And here I am.”

“Master, you mustn’t speak of the Master of Masters that way,” Cutt growled gently. “He is confident his noble offspring will bring swift and hideous death to his enemies, followed by an eternity of exquisite torment.”

“Oh, shut up and watch the door,” Lord Ermenwyr told him.

“So—you didn’t come here because you want me to kill this man for you,” Smith ventured.

“You?” Lord Ermenwyr gave a brief bark of laughter. “Oh, no no no! Dear old Smith, you’re the best at your trade (I mean, your former trade) I’ve ever seen, but Blichbiss is a mage! Way out of your league. No, all I need you to do is keep my visit here a secret. I’m just going to lurk in my suite until the problem goes away. I’ll have my meals sent up, and a courtesan or two, and if the luscious little Burnbright will keep me posted on local news and go out for my prescriptions now and then, I ought to get along famously. And … er … if you could manage to find a sheep for the boys to kill every couple of days, that would be nice too,” he added.

“When you do you think it’ll blow over?” Smith asked. “I’d always heard magi had long memories.”

“He’ll have to give up eventually,” Lord Ermenwyr assured him. “Don’t look so worried! It’s not as though there’s going to be a battle, with bodies scattered all over your nice clean hotel.”

“And you can keep him healthy?” Smith asked Willowspear.

“As healthy as I ever am,” said Lord Ermenwyr.

“I do the will of the Unwearied Mother,” said Willowspear, bowing his head. “And I will die, if necessary, to protect Her child.”

“I am not a child, I’m a slightly underage playboy, and there’s no need to get histrionic about it,” said Lord Ermenwyr testily. “We’re simply going to have a pleasant and very low-profile holiday by the sea.”

“Good, then,” said Smith, draining the second stout. “Because the hotel’s up for having its first safety inspection soon. It would be nice if nothing happened to queer things.”

“Oh, what could happen?” said Lord Ermenwyr breezily, lifting his glass.

Smith just shook his head, watching the lordling drink. He supposed that benign heavenly beings who incarnated into the flesh with the purpose of defeating worldly evil knew best how to go about their divine jobs; but surely there had been a better way to do it than singling out a Lord of Evil, marrying him, and forcing him to behave himself? Let alone bringing a lot of highly unstable and conflicted children into the world.

At least Lord Ermenwyr was only half a demon. Maybe only a quarter.



By evening the hotel was full and so was the restaurant, especially the outdoor terrace overlooking the bay, for Festival was scheduled to begin with a grand fireworks extravaganza. In keeping with the theme of unbridled sexual license to celebrate the primordial union of the First Ancestors, the fireworks really should have come at the end of Festival; but by that time the populace of Salesh was generally too sore and hungover to pay proper attention to further pyrotechnics.

The guests, resplendent in their body paint and masks, whooped and applauded as the bright rockets soared upward with a thrilling hiss, exploded into flowers of scarlet and emerald fire, and drifted down into the afterglow of sunset. Ships in the harbor ran colored lanterns up into their riggings and fired charges of colored paper from their cannons, so that streamers and confetti littered the tideline for days afterward. Partygoers rowed back and forth on the black water, occasionally colliding with other little boats and exchanging interesting passengers.

Barely audible all the way out on Salesh Municipal Pier, musicians played songs of love and longing to entice those who had not already paired off into the Pleasure Houses. The night was warm for spring, and the white waxen blossoms of Deathvine perfumed the air wherever they opened; so there were few who resisted the call to yield up their souls to delight.

“Where the hell are all our servers?” demanded Smith, struggling out to the center buffet with an immense tray that bore the magnificent Ballotine of Sea Dragon. Diners exclaimed in delight and pointed at its egg-gilded scales, its balefully staring golden eyes.

“The servers? Whanging their little brains out in the bushes, what do you think?” Crucible replied sourly. He took the ballotine from Smith and held it aloft with the artificial smile of a professional wrestler, acknowledging the diners’ cheers a moment, before setting it down and going to work on it with the carving knife.

“We’ve got to get more people out here! Where’s Burnbright?”

“She ran off crying,” said Crucible, sotto voce, producing the first perfectly stratified slice of dragon-goose-duck-hen-quail-egg and plopping it down on the plate of a lady who wore nothing but glitter and three large artificial sapphires.

“What?”

“Asked her what was the matter. She wouldn’t tell me. But I saw her talking to that doctor,” muttered Crucible, sawing away at another slice. He gave Smith a sidelong sullen glare. “If that bloody greenie’s been and done something to our girl, me and the boys will pitch him down the cliff. You tell his lordship so.”

“Hell—” Smith turned wildly to look up at the lit windows of the hotel. Lord Ermenwyr, like most of the other guests, was seated on his balcony enjoying the view of the fireworks. Cutt and Crish were ranged on one side of him, Stabb and Strangel on the other, and behind his chair Agliavv Willowspear stood. Willowspear was gazing down onto the terrace with an expression of concern, apparently searching through the crowd.

“Smith!” trumpeted Mrs. Smith, bearing a five-tiered cake across the terrace with the majesty of a ship under full sail. “Your presence is requested in the lobby, Smith.” As she drew near she added, “It’s Crossbrace from the City Wardens. I’ve already seen to it he’s got a drink.”

Smith felt a wave of mingled irritation and relief, for though this was probably the worst time possible to have to pass an inspection, Crossbrace was easygoing and amenable to bribes. Dodging around Bellows, who was carrying out a dish of something involving flames and fruit sauce, Smith paused just long enough to threaten a young pair of servers with immediate death if they didn’t crawl out from under the gazebo and get back to work. Then he straightened his tunic, ran his hands through his hair, and strode into the hotel, doing his best to look confident and cheerful.

“Smith!” Crossbrace toasted him with his drink, turning from an offhand examination of the hotel’s register. “Joyous couplings. Thought I’d find you joyously coupling with some sylph!”

“Joyous couplings to you, too,” said Smith heartily, noting that Crossbrace was in uniform rather than Festival undress. “Who has time to joyously couple when you’re catering the orgy? You’ve got a drink? Have you dined? We’ve got a Sea Dragon Ballotine out on the terrace that’s going fast!”

“Business first,” said Crossbrace regretfully. “Little surprise inspection. But I expect you’re all up to code, eh, in a first-class establishment like this?”

“Come and see,” said Smith, bowing him forward. “What are you drinking? Silverbush? Let me just grab us a bottle as we go through the bar.”

The inspection was cursory, and went well. No molds were discovered anywhere they didn’t belong. No structural deficiencies were found, nor any violations of Salesh’s codes regarding fire or flood safety. Crossbrace contented himself with limiting the upstairs inspection to a walk down the length of the corridor. Then they went back down to the kitchen, by which time they’d half emptied the bottle of Silverbush and some of the guests on the restaurant terrace were beginning to writhe together in Festival-inflamed passion.

“And you’ve got to see the drains, of course,” Smith insisted, opening the door into the back area. Crossbrace followed him out readily, and looked on as Smith, with a flourish, flung the trap wide.

“Look at that!”

“Damn, you could eat out of there,” said Crossbrace in admiration. He took down the area lamp and shined it into the drain, as the distant sound of erotic enchantment drifted across the water. “Beautiful! And that’s an old pipe, too. City records says this place was built back in Regent Kashlar’s time.”

“S’right,” affirmed Smith, refilling Crossbrace’s glass and having a good gulp himself from the bottle. “But they built solid back then.”

Somewhere close at hand, hoarse panting rose to a scream of ecstasy.

“Didn’t they, though?” Crossbrace had another drink. “What’s your secret?”

“Ah.” Smith laid a finger beside his nose. “Scourbrass’s Foaming Wonder! See?” He waved a hand at the ten canisters neatly stacked against the wall.

“That’s great stuff,” said Crossbrace, and stepped close to read the warning.

Smith heard, ominous under all the giggling and groaning, the sound of someone running through the kitchen. The area door flew open, and Pinion stared out at him, looking panic-stricken.

“Boss! Somebody’s gone and died in—”

Crossbrace straightened up abruptly and turned around. Pinion saw him and winced. “In Room 2,” he finished miserably.

“Oh, dear,” Crossbrace said, sobering with alchemical swiftness. “I suppose in my capacity as City Warden I’d better have a look, hadn’t I?”

Smith ground his teeth. They went back upstairs.

“He’d ordered room service,” Pinion explained. “Never called to have the dishes taken away. I went up to see was he done yet, and nobody answered the knock. Opened the door finally and it was dark in here, except for the light coming in from the terrace and a little fire on the hearth. And there he sits.”

Smith opened the door cautiously and stepped inside, followed by Crossbrace and Pinion. “Mr. Coppercut?” he called hopefully.

But the figure silhouetted against the window was dreadfully motionless. Crossbrace swore quietly and, finding a lamp, lit it.

Sharplin Coppercut sat at the writing table, sagging backward in his chair. His collar had been wrenched open, and he stared at the ceiling with bulging eyes and a gaping mouth, rather as though he was about to announce that he’d just spotted a particularly fearsome spider up there.

On the table across the room were the dishes containing his half-eaten meal. The chair had been pushed back and fallen, the napkin dropped to the floor, and a small table midway between the dinner table and the desk lay on its side, with the smoking apparatus it had held scattered across the carpet.

“That’s the Sharplin Coppercut, isn’t it?” said Crossbrace.

“He’s the only one I know of,” groaned Smith, going to the body to feel for a pulse. He couldn’t find one.

“Saw his name in the register. Dear, dear, Smith, you’ve got a problem on your hands,” stated Crossbrace.

“Oh, gods, he’s stone dead. Crossbrace, you know it wasn’t our food!”

“Sat down to eat his dinner,” theorized Crossbrace, studying the dining table. “Had his appetizer; ate it all but a bit of parsley. Drank half a glass of wine. Working his way through a plate of fried eel—that’s your house specialty, isn’t it?—when he comes over queer and needs air, so he loosens his collar and gets up to go to the window. Bit clumsy by this time, so he bumps over the smoking table on his way. Makes it to the chair and collapses, but dies before he can get the window open. That’s the way it looks, wouldn’t you say?”

“But there was nothing wrong with the eels,” Smith protested. “I had some myself this aftern—” He spotted something on the table and stared at it a moment. Then his face lit up.

“Yes! Crossbrace, come look at this! It wasn’t food poisoning at all!”

Crossbrace came around to look over the corpse’s shoulder. There, scrawled on a tablet bearing the Hotel Grand-view imprimis, were the words AVENGE MY MURD.

“Oh,” he said. “Well, this puts a different light on it.”

“Somebody killed him,” said Smith. “And he took the trouble to let us know!” He felt like embracing Coppercut. An accidental death by food poisoning could wreck a restaurant’s reputation, but a high-profile revenge slaying in one could only be considered good publicity.

“So somebody killed him,” said Crossbrace thoughtfully. “Gods know he had a lot of enemies. Poison in his wine? Poisoned dart through the window? Could have been a mage hired to do the job with a sending, for that matter. Look at the coals in the fireplace, what’d he want with a fire on such a warm night? Suspicious. Maybe a smoke efrit suffocated him? Lucky break for you, Smith.”

“Isn’t it?” Smith beamed at the corpse.

“But it makes a lot more work for me.” Crossbrace sighed. “I’ll have to get the morgue crew up here, then I’ll have to investigate and question everybody, which will take all bloody night. Then I’ll have to file a report in triplicate, and there’s his avengers to notify, because he must have kept some on retainer … and here it is Festival time, and I had an alcove booked at the Black Veil Club for tonight.”

“That’s a shame,” said Smith warily, sensing what was coming.

“It cost me a fortune to get that alcove, too. My lady friend will be furious. I think I’m going to do you a favor, Smith,” Crossbrace decided.

“Such as?”

“It’s Festival. I’m going to pretend this unfortunate incident hasn’t yet happened to stain your restaurant’s good name, all right? We both know it wasn’t food poisoning, but rumors get out, don’t they? And the funniest things will influence those clerks in the Permit Office.” Crossbrace swirled his drink and looked Smith in the eye.

“But we do have a famous dead man here something’s got to be done about. So I’ll come back in two days’ time, when Festival’s done and everything’s business as usual. You’ll have a body for me and not only that, you’ll have found out who, where, when, how, and why, so all I have to do is arrest the murderer, if possible, and file the paperwork. I’ll have a Safety Certificate for you. Everybody wins. Right?”

“Right,” said Smith, knowing a cleft stick when he saw one.

“See you after Festival, then,” said Crossbrace, and finished his drink. He handed the glass to Smith. “Thanks.”



Having sworn Pinion to secrecy and sent him down to serve food, Smith finished the bottle of Silverbush and indulged in some blistering profanity. As this accomplished nothing, he then proceeded to examine the room more closely, while the sounds of a full-scale orgy floated up from the terrace below.

There was no trace of anything suspicious on the uneaten food, nor anything that his nose could detect in the wine. The empty appetizer plate had held some sort of seafood, to judge from the smell, but that was all. No hint of Scour-brass’s Foaming Wonder, which relieved Smith very much.

He dragged Coppercut’s body to the bed, laid it out, and examined him with a professional’s eye for signs of subtle assassination. No tiny darts, no insect bites, no wounds in easily overlooked places; not even a rash. Coppercut was turning a nasty color and going stiff, but other than that he seemed fine.

Straightening up, Smith looked around the room and noticed that the low coals were smoking out in the fireplace. He approached it cautiously, in case there really was an efrit or something less pleasant in there, and bent down to peer in. The next moment he had grabbed a poker and was raking ashes out onto the hearth, but it was just about too late: for of the gray ruffled mass of paper ash there, only a few blackened scraps were left intact. Muttering to himself, he picked them up and carried them out to the circle of lamplight on the table. Writing. Bits of scrolls?

Spreading them out, turning them over, he found that some were in what was obviously a library scribe’s neat hand; others in a rushed-looking backhand that consistently left off letter elements, like the masts on the little ship that signified the th sound, or the pupil of the eye that stood for the suffix ln. Two hands, but no sense: He had the words journeyed swiftly to implore and so great was his and unnatural, also ghastly tragedy and swift anger and they could not escape.

Only one offered any clue at all. It said to the lasting sorrow of House Spellmetal, he—

The name Spellmetal was vaguely familiar to Smith. He knit his brows, staring at the fragment. House Spellmetal. Somebody wealthy, some dynasty that had suffered notoriety. When had that been? Ten years ago? Fifteen? More? Smith attempted to place where he’d been living when the name was in the news. And there had been a scandal, and the son and heir of House Spellmetal had died. A massacre of some kind, not a decent vendetta.

Smith turned and stared at the fireplace again. Now he noticed the scribe’s case sitting open in a chair. He went over and peered into it. Three-quarters empty, though it had clearly held more. Someone had pulled out most of the case’s contents and burned them.

“Blackmail,” he said aloud.

He looked speculatively at Sharplin Coppercut. Closing the scribe’s case and tucking it under his arm, Smith went out and locked the door behind him.

The dead man lay on his bed, staring up in horror. Below his window bosoms jiggled, thighs danced, bottoms quivered, tongues sought for nectar, and slender Youth kicked off its golden sandals and got down to business. Life pulsed and shivered, deliciously, deliriously, in every imaginable variation on one act; but it had finished with Sharplin Coppercut.