The Anvil of the World (14 page)

Lord Ermenwyr shuddered.

"No, silly child, it'll be the Hotel Grandview: Fried Eel Dinners A Specialty," decided Mrs. Smith.

"The real estate agent said there was a much better location on Windward Avenue," said Lord Ermenwyr. "Surely you'd rather do business somewhere a bit less crumbling?"

"I like this. It's got potential," Smith assured him.

"Some people enjoy a challenge, Master," Balnshik told Lord Ermenwyr, draping a furred cloak about his shoulders.

"But it's so weather-beaten," he fretted.

"I should prefer to say it has character," said Mrs. Smith. "One can go a long way on character. Wouldn't you say so, Mr. Smith?"

"Yes," he said, slipping an arm about her and looking up at the improbable future shining in the clouds. "I'd say so."

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?"