Kage Baker - The Anvil of the World

“Actually—” Smith pulled the clay disk off over his head. “I’m supposed to find Levendyloy Alder and ask for, uh, detoxification. The full treatment.” He held out the disk. The Yendri looked up and focused on him intently.

“I am Alder,” he informed Smith. “You have been ill? You have been, hm, wounded.” He leaned over and took the disk. He passed it under his nostrils and scowled. “Poisoned. Hm. Please. Come inside.”

He led Smith behind the counter into a changing room with shelves. “Your clothes and belongings in there,” he said. He vanished behind a curtain as Smith stripped down and filled a shelf, setting all his knives in his right boot and resting Parradan Smith’s case on top of the pile with great care. Peeling off his bandages too, he considered his battered body and sighed. One of these days, he told himself, I won’t be able to run fast enough.

When the Yendri returned, he was carrying a teapot and small cup. “This way,” he said, gesturing with the cup, and Smith followed him through the curtain and into a tiled corridor. They passed arched entrances to rooms with hot and cold pools, where other people swam or lounged in the water and talked. The Yendri led him to a room with a heavy door, handed him the teapot and cup, and worked the valve lock that opened the door. Steam billowed out, hot enough to make the hall seem chilly by comparison. Smith peered in and caught a glimpse of boulders and swirling water.

“Go in,” said the Yendri, “Sit, and drink the tea. All of it, as quickly as you can. It will cleanse you. In an hour I will bring you out.”

“All right,” said Smith, and stepped in cautiously. The door closed behind him, and in a moment the air cleared enough for him to see that the room was tank-shaped, with a drain at the bottom. Water gushed from a tap in the ceiling and streamed down the rock walls, which radiated intense heat, and splattered and swirled off the boulders before finally cycling down the drain. There was one curved stone seat, awkward to sit on.

“Drink the tea,” said a disembodied voice. Smith looked up and saw a grate in the wall, high up. He could just discern the Yendri’s face behind it.

“You’re going to watch me?” he asked.

“Sometimes your people faint,” the Yendri replied. “The tea, please.”

“All right.” Smith sipped it grudgingly, but found it surprisingly good, hot and spicy. He drank it all and only when he had emptied the teapot did he notice the aftertaste.

“This isn’t a purge, is it?” he asked.

“Yes,” the Yendri replied. Smith groaned.

In the next hour a great deal of nasty stuff went down the drain, including a couple of old tattoos, exuding from his frantic skin like black syrup. Smith saw dirt from every place he’d ever lived coming to the surface, the yellow dust of Troon, the red dust of Mount Flame City, some gray residue he didn’t want to think about. Occasionally jets of hot water shot from the ceiling, flooding the filth down the drain and almost washing Smith away with it. He clung to the stone perch and cursed the Yendri steadily. The Yendri watched him, impassive; and at the end of the hour shut off the water and came to let Smith out.

Smith had planned to throttle him the minute he could reach him, but collapsed on him instead. He let the Yendri support him back down the hall to a room with a tepid pool. The Yendri toppled him in and told him to swim. Smith decided to drown, but found to his astonishment that his strength was returning, and with it an extraordinary sense of well-being. After he had splashed about a while a pair of hulking bath attendants came to haul him out, slap him with cold towels, and make him drink a lot of plain water.

They led him at last to a massage chamber, where he was soaped and rinsed and oiled and kneaded. Then they applied fresh bandages to his wounds.

By that time Smith felt wonderful and no longer wanted to kill anybody. This made the events of the next few moments all the more unfortunate.

When the attendants had done with him, they indicated he should dress himself again. He floated out to the changing room, seemingly ten years younger than he had been when he left it.

A bulky man in very fine clothes was removing them in there, and three other men stood attendance on him, taking his garments one by one and folding them with care. Smith nodded as he passed them and went to his shelf. It didn’t occur to him until his hand was on his clothes that he knew one of the men. Apparently it occurred to the other man at the same moment.

Smith heard the muttered exclamation and grabbed frantically in his right boot. He turned with a knife in his hand in time to see the other man advancing on him, drawing a blade fully ten inches long.

“This is for my cousins, you pig,” snarled the man, preparing to slash at Smith. Before he could do so, however, Smith acted without thinking and threw his little knife.

Acting without thinking was something he generally did under circumstances such as the one in which he presently found himself. The details of circumstance might vary, but the result was always the same: a corpse at his feet and a great deal of trouble.

He looked down now at the body that had his knife hilt protruding from its left eye socket, then looked at the other three men. Was that his heartbeat echoing off the tiled walls? The fight had taken place in almost complete silence.

“I’m sorry,” he gasped. “I’m dead, aren’t I?”

The bulky man nodded, staring at him with mild amazement. “Nice work, though,” he said. “Striker was one of my best.” He gestured, and his remaining vassals seized Smith, and forced him to his knees. He turned to draw a blade from his clothes. Smith spotted a tattoo on his bare back.

“You’re a Bloodfire,” he stammered. “You wouldn’t be Lord Kashban Beatbrass, by any chance?”

“I am,” the lord replied, turning with a curved ceremonial blade.

“I’ve got something of yours!”

“And I’ll have something of yours in a minute.” Lord Kashban grabbed him by the hair.

“No! Listen,” cried Smith, and hurriedly explained what had happened to Parradan Smith.

“That’s his case on the shelf,” he said, tilting his head in its direction with some difficulty. “I promised him I’d deliver it to you. He said you’d pay well. I was on my way to your house, I swear.”

The lord paused, looking thoughtful. He got the case down from the shelf and opened it. Lord Tinwick’s cup gleamed at him. He lifted it out, examined it, checked the inscription on the base.

“What did you do with Parradan’s body?” he inquired.

“It’s in a stone cairn on the north side of the road from Troon, about two days’ journey from the Red House up there,” said Smith.

“All right,” said Lord Kashban. He looked down at Smith, studying him. “You worked in Port Chadravac for a while, didn’t you? Weren’t you one of the Throatcutters?”

“Not exactly,” said Smith miserably. “I was sort of a consultant for them. A specialist.”

“Yes, you were,” the lord agreed, and awe came into his face, though his voice remained level and quiet. “Artist is more like it. Nine Hells! Nobody ever saw you coming. They said you could vanish out of a locked room. What are you doing running from anyone?”

“I didn’t want to do it anymore,” Smith explained. “Just because a man’s good at something doesn’t mean he enjoys it.”

Lord Kashban shook his head. “Unbelievable. All right; Parradan said I’d reward you, so I will. You have your life. Let him go,” he told his men, who dropped Smith’s arms at once.

“Honor on your house,” said Smith, staggering to his feet. He grabbed his clothes and pulled them on.