Kage Baker - The Anvil of the World

“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.”