The Anvil of the World (21 page)

After his wagon came a dozen clowns dressed as phalluses, running to and fro on tiny spindly legs and peering desperately through tiny eyeholes as they tried to avoid falling over one another. They were great favorites with the little children in the audience.

Next came rolling a half-sized replica of the famous war galley
Duke Rakut's Pride,
its decks crowded with sailors and mermaids, waving cheerfully at the crowd despite their various amatory entanglements. Halfway down the block between Hawser and Cable its topmast became entangled in an advertising banner stretched across Front Street at roof level, and the parade had to be halted long enough for a sailor to disengage, scramble up the mast with his knife, and cut the banner's line, for which he received cheers and applause.

After that, more musicians: the Runners' Trumpeting Corps, long-legged girls resplendent in their red uniforms and flaring scarves, lifting curiously worked horns to blare the Salesh Fanfare with brazen throats. Behind them came the drummers of the Porters' Union, thundering mightily on steel drums with their fists, so that the din rolled and echoed between the housefronts for blocks. And after them, a contingent from the Anchor Street Bakery came pulling a giant cake on wheels, from the top of which children costumed as cherubs threw sweet rolls to the crowd.

Male jugglers marched after, miraculously keeping suggestively painted clubs in the air without stopping their forward momentum, though each bore a female acrobat with her legs twined about his waist in mimicked intimate union. The girls occasionally leaned far backward and walked with their hands, or juggled small brass balls.

More floats, more Spirits of This or That relating to the procreative act, more bands, a few civic leaders borne along in decorated carts to applause or execration. Brilliant streamers flew, and confetti in every color, and bird kites towed on ribbons, and banners that flared like the ice lights in northern kingdoms where sunlight came so seldom there were a hundred different words for darkness.

When it had all gone by at last, the throng of merrymakers followed it down the hill, shedding clothing as they went, donning masks, seizing flowers from hedges that grew over walls, lighting scarlet lamps; and it was Festival!

Though householders less inclined to revel at Pleasure's fountains issued out into the street and swept up the stepped-on bits of sweet roll, or complained bitterly about the flowers torn from their hedges.

"Damned Anchor Street Bakery," said Mrs. Smith, as she and Smith retreated through the lobby. "I may have some competition! With all those bloody cherubs throwing free treats to the crowd, the voting in the dessert category may be swayed."

"Are you worried?"

"Not particularly," she said, lighting her smoking tube.

"Free treats or not, the master baker at Anchor Street uses nothing but wholemeal flour. I'd like to see anybody make a palatable fairy cake out of a mess of stone-ground husks!"

She swept upstairs, trailing smoke, to don her finery for the contest. Smith followed her as far as the landing, where he rapped cautiously at the door to Lord Ermenwyr's suite.

"Come in, damn you," said a deathly voice from within.

Smith opened the door and peeked inside. Lord Ermenwyr was sprawled on the parlor couch with his head hanging backward off the edge and his eyes rolled back, so that for one panicky moment Smith thought he needed to be resuscitated.

"My lord?" He hurried inside. But the ghastly figure on the couch waved a feeble hand at him.

"Assist me, Smith. What time is it?"

"Halfway between Third and Fourth Prayer Interval," said Smith, lifting Lord Ermenwyr into a sitting position.

"Doesn't tell me a lot, does it, since I don't worship your gods, and I wouldn't pray to them even if I did," moaned Lord Ermenwyr. "Is it drawing on toward evening, or are my eyes simply dying in their sockets?"

"It'll be sunset in half an hour," Smith said, fetching him a carafe of water and pouring him a cup.

"I wish I really was a vampire; I'd be feeling great about now." Lord Ermenwyr looked around sourly. "But I am alone, abandoned by all who ever claimed they loved me."

"We are still here, Master," said a slightly reproachful voice. Smith turned, startled to note the four bodyguards lined up against the wall on either side of the balcony window. The glamour was off them and their true nature was quite evident; they resembled nothing so much as a quartet of standing stones with eyes and teeth, looming in the shadows.

"Well, aren't you the faithful ones," said Lord Ermenwyr, sipping from his cup. "Careful where you sit, Smith. The Variable Magnificent's undoubtedly lurking around in the shape of an especially ugly end table or hassock."

"No, I'm not," said a voice from the bedroom, and Lord Eyrdway stepped into view. Smith had to stare a moment to be certain it was really he; for he had altered his height, appearing several inches shorter, and lengthened his nose, and moreover was wearing a full suit of immaculate formal evening dress.

"Hey!" Lord Ermenwyr cried in outrage. "I didn't say you could wear my clothes! You'll get slime all over them."

"Ha-ha, you fell for it," Lord Eyrdway said. "I wouldn't wear your old suits anyway; the trouser crotches wouldn't fit me. I only copied them. It's all me, see?" He turned to display himself. "I'm going to go out and find a party. Who'll recognize me with clothes on?"

"Want to hear me waste advice, Smith?" said Lord Ermenwyr. "Listen: Eyrdway, don't drink. If you do, you will begin to boast, and as you're not at home in the land of spoiled darlings, someone will take offense at your boasting and call you out, and then you'll kill him, and then the bad people will chase you again. You don't want that to happen, do you, Way-way?"

"It won't happen, Worm-worm," his brother told him, grinning evilly. "I'm going to be clever. I'm going to be brilliant, in fact."

"Of course you will," Lord Ermenwyr repeated, sagging back on the cushions. "How silly of me to imagine for a moment you'll get yourself into trouble. Go. Have a wonderful time." He sat forward abruptly and his voice sharpened, "But those had better not be my pearl earrings you're wearing!"

"No, I copied those too," said Lord Eyrdway, shooting his neck forward out of his collar a good two yards so he could dangle the earrings before his brother's eyes. "You think I'd touch something that had been in your ears? Ugh!"

"Retract yourself! The last thing I need in my condition is a close-up of your face," said Lord Ermenwyr, swatting at him with one of the cushions. "Perfidious princox!"

"I know you are, but what am I?"

"Get out!"

"I'm going," Lord Eyrdway said, dancing to the door, colliding with it, then flinging it wide. "Look out, Salesh; you've never seen true youth and beauty until tonight!"

Lord Ermenwyr gagged.

"Open a window, Smith. I'd rather not vomit all over your carpets."

"You could do with a little fresh air," Smith said, opening the window and letting out some of the smoke. "No wonder you stop breathing all the time."

"It's not my fault I'm chronically ill," said Lord Ermenwyr. "I was born sickly. It's Daddy's fault, probably. He didn't infuse me with enough of the life force when he begot me. And the rest is Eyrdway's fault. He used to try to smother me in the cradle when Nursie wasn't looking, you know."

"I guess these things happen in families," said Smith. He took up a sofa cushion and used it as a fan to wave smoke out the window.

"Oh, the horror of siblings," Lord Ermenwyr said, closing his bloodshot eyes. "You're an orphan, aren't you, Smith? Lucky man. Yet you've got people who love you. Nobody would shed a tear if I gasped out my irrevocable last."

"You're just saying that because you haven't had your medication," said Smith encouragingly. "Where's Willowspear, anyway?"

"Vision questing, I assume," Lord Ermenwyr replied. "Do you know how to give an injection?"

"A what?" Smith frowned in puzzlement.

"Where you shoot medicine into someone's arm through a needle?"

Smith blanched. "Is that a demon thing?"

"I'd forgotten your race is dismally backward in medical practice," Lord Ermenwyr sighed. "Fetch me the green box on my dresser, and I'll show you."

Smith found the box, and watched in horrified fascination as Lord Ermenwyr drew out a glass tube shaped like a hummingbird, with a long needle for a beak. Removing a tiny cartridge of something poison-green from the box, he flipped up the hummingbird's tail feathers and loaded the cartridge; then opened and shut its tiny wings experimentally, until a livid green droplet appeared at the end of the needle.

"And Mr. Hummyhum is ready to play now," said Lord Ermenwyr, rolling up his sleeve. Taking out an atomizer, he squeezed its bulb until a fine mist of something aromatic wet his arm; then, with a practiced jab, he gave himself an injection. Smith flinched.

"There. My pointless life is prolonged another night," said Lord Ermenwyr wearily. "What are you looking so pale about? You're an old hand at sticking sharp things into people."

"It's different when you're killing," said Smith. "But when you're
saving
a life ... it just seems perverse, somehow. Stabbing somebody to keep them alive, brr!"

"Remind me to tell you about invasive surgery sometime," said Lord Ermenwyr, ejecting the spent cartridge and putting the hummingbird away. "Or trepanning! Think of it as making a doorway to let evil spirits out of the body, if it'll help."

"No, thanks," said Smith fervently. He couldn't take his eyes off the glass bird, however. "You could shoot poison into somebody with one of those things to kill them, and it'd barely leave a mark, would it?"

"You wouldn't even need poison," Lord Ermenwyr told him, rubbing his arm. "A bubble of air could do it. It's not the sort of murder you could do by stealth very easily, though. Well, maybe
you
could. What, are you still trying to find out who killed that wretched journalist?"

Smith nodded.

"I know who didn't kill him, and I know what he didn't die of. That's about it."

"What did he die of, by the way?"

"I've no idea. There's not a mark on him."

"You haven't done an autopsy?" Lord Ermenwyr turned to stare at him. Smith stared back. "Oh, don't tell me you people don't do autopsies either!"

"I don't think we do," Smith admitted. "What's an autopsy?"

Lord Ermenwyr explained.

"But that's desecrating the corpse!" yelled Smith. "Ye gods, you'd have the angry ghost and every one of his ancestors after you in this world and the next!"

"All you have to do is tell them you're conducting a forensic analysis," said Lord Ermenwyr. "I've never had any trouble."

"I still couldn't do it," said Smith. "That's even worse than sticking needles into somebody. Cutting up a corpse in cold blood's an abomination."

"Oh, I wouldn't know anything about abominations, not me," said Lord Ermenwyr, beginning to grin as his medication took affect. "Look here, why don't I do the job for you? I take it the idea of a demon fooling around with a corpse doesn't violate your sense of propriety quite as badly?"

"I guess it would be different for you," Smith conceded.

"Well then!" Lord Ermenwyr sprang to his feet. "I've even got a set of autopsy tools with me. Isn't that lucky? One ought never to travel unprepared, at least that's what Daddy says. The restaurant's closed tonight, isn't it? We can just open him up in the kitchen!"

"No!" Smith protested. "What if he decided to haunt in there, ever after? The restaurant's our whole reputation. We could be ruined!"

"And it wouldn't be terribly sanitary, either, I suppose," Lord Ermenwyr said, rummaging in a drawer. "Where did I leave that bone saw? No matter; we'll just wait until everyone's gone off to Festival, and we'll bring him up here. More privacy!"

Smith went downstairs and waited, nervously, as one by one the guests came down in their Festival costumes and walked out or ordered bearers to take them into the heart of town, where most of the evening's Festival activities were going on. Mrs. Smith emerged from the kitchen, followed by Crucible and Pinion bearing between them the Sea Dragon Bombe on a vast platter. It was glorious to see, spreading wings like fans of ruby glass, and light glittered on its thousand emerald scales.

Mrs. Smith herself was no less resplendent, swathed in tented magnificence of peacock-blue satin and cloth of gold, her hair elaborately coifed, her lips crimsoned. A wave of perfume went before and followed her.

"We're off to the civic banqueting hall. Wish me luck, Smith," she said. "I'll need it. I've just been informed the Anchor Street Bakery got a shipment of superfine manchet flour from Old Troon Mills this morning."

"Good luck," said Smith. "They use too much butter-cream, anyway."

"And the bombe is loaded with aphrodisiacs," said Mrs. Smith, pulling out her best smoking tube--black jade, a foot long and elaborately carved--and setting it between her teeth. "So we must hope for the best. Be a dear and give us a light?"

Smith gave her a light and a kiss. As he leaned close, Mrs. Smith murmured; "Burnbright's gone out with young Willowspear."

"You mean to the Festival?" Smith started.

"They spent ages out there together on the parapet," she said. "When I went into the bar to get a bottle of passion-fruit liqueur for the serving sauce, they came sneaking through. Thought I didn't see them. But I saw their faces; I know that look. They ran out through the garden and went over the wall. I don't expect they'll be back until morning, but you might leave the side door unlocked."

Smith was trying to imagine Willowspear doing something as earthly as scrambling over a wall with a girl. "Right," he said, nodding slowly. "Side door. Well. Return victorious, Mrs. Smith."

"Death to our enemies," she replied grimly. Pulling her yards of train over one arm and puffing out clouds of smoke, she strode forth into the night, and Crucible and Pinion followed her with the bombe.

Leaving Bellows on duty in the lobby and the two other Smiths in the bar to deal with any late-night emergencies, Smith hurried upstairs and rapped twice on Lord Ermenwyr's door. It was immediately flung wide by Lord Ermenwyr, who stood there grinning from ear to ear.