Kage Baker - The Anvil of the World

“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.

Mrs. Smith had retired when he went to her, and was sitting up in bed smoking, calmly reading a broadside. The staff inhabited the long attic that ran the length of the hotel, divided into several rooms, far enough above the garden for the sounds of massed passion to be a little less evident as it filtered up through the one narrow gabled window.

“Not going out, Smith?” she inquired. Her gaze fell on the case he carried, and she looked up at him in sharp inquiry. “Dear, dear, have we had a contretemps of some kind?”

“You said Sharplin Coppercut isn’t a food critic,” said Smith. “What kind of journalist is he, then?”

“He’s a scandalmonger,” Mrs. Smith replied. “Writes a column that runs in all the broadsides. A master of dirty innuendo and shocking revelation. He’s done some unauthorized biographies of assorted famous persons, too, instant best-sellers if I recall correctly. I’ve read one or two. Racy stuff. Mean-spirited, however.”

“He dressed pretty well, for somebody living on a writer’s salary,” said Smith.

“You’re speaking of him in the past tense,” observed Mrs. Smith.

“Well, he’s dead.”

“I can’t say I’m surprised,” said Mrs. Smith, taking a drag and exhaling smoke. “I assume you mean he’s been murdered?”

“It looks that way.” Smith sagged into a chair.

“Hmph.” Mrs. Smith regarded the scribe’s case. “My guess would be, he blackmailed the wrong person. They do say he made more money being paid not to write, if you understand me. Had a network of spies in every city digging up dirt for him. Did his research, too. It was what made his stuff so entertaining, you see—never indulged in empty insinuation. When that man threw mud, it stuck.”

“Why would he have been writing about the House Spell-metal scandal?” Smith wondered. Mrs. Smith’s eyes widened.

“He was fool enough to blackmail those people? They’re still angry about it, and they’ve got a long reach. How d’you know that was who did for him?”

Smith explained how the body had been found and about the scroll fragments that had survived the fire. “I’ve been trying to remember what the scandal was all about,” he said. “I was working on a long-run freighter back then, and we didn’t put into port much, so I don’t think I ever heard the whole story.”

Mrs. Smith made a face. “I believe it requires a stiff drink, Smith,” she said.

Getting out of bed, she pulled a dressing gown on over her voluminous shift and poured herself an impromptu cocktail from the bottles on her dresser. She poured one for Smith too, and when they were both settled again said, “I’ll tell you as much as I know. It was in all the broadsides at the time; there were ballads, and somebody even attempted to mount a play on the subject, but House Spellmetal had it suppressed with breathtaking speed. D’you remember a self-proclaimed prophet, called himself the Sunborn?”

“Vaguely,” said Smith. “Came to a bad end, didn’t he?”

“Very. That was at the end of the story, however. It all started out in wine and roses, as they used to say. He was a charismatic. Could charm the birds down out of the trees and anyone’s clothes off. Preached deliverance through excess; with him it was Festival all year long, every day. If he’d confined himself to having a good time, he might still be with us.

“Unfortunately, he really believed what he taught.” Mrs. Smith shook her head.