Kage Baker - The Anvil of the World

“Where is your sister, then?” Smith asked, keeping a wary eye in the coastline.

“Ah, this is the clever part,” said Lord Ermenwyr, laying a finger alongside his nose. “She’s at the Monastery of Rethkast. Which is on the Rethestlin, you see? So if we’d set out on foot to rescue her, we’d have had to have hired porters and spent weeks trudging across plains and mountains and other dreary things.

“This way, we just sail along the coast to the place where the Rethestlin flows into the sea, and float up the river until we’re at the monks’ back door. The Ruby Incomparable descends to her little brother’s loving arms, he bears her off in triumph, and we all sail back to Salesh to pick up the supporting cast before going off on a pleasure cruise of indeterminate length.”

Smith groaned.

“You don’t have a problem with my beautiful plan, do you, Smith?” Lord Ermenwyr glared at him.

“No,” said Smith, wishing Balnshik were there to give the lordling the back of her hand. “I have a lot of problems with your plan. See those sails on the horizon? The purple ones? Those are warships, my lord. They belong to Deliantiba. It’s got a blockade on Port Blackrock just now. We can’t sail through, or they’ll board us and confiscate our vessel, if we’re lucky.”

“Oh. And if we’re not lucky?”

“We’ll hit a mine, or take a bucketful of clingfire or a broadside of stone shot,” Smith told him.

Lord Ermenwyr stared at the purple sails a long moment.

“There’s a ship merchant in Salesh who’s going to find that seven hundred of his gold pieces have suddenly turned into asps,” he said. “The smirking bastard. No wonder he had so many of these recreational vessels up for sale.”

“And even if the blockade wasn’t there,” Smith continued, “what makes you think that the Rethestlin is navigable?”

Lord Ermenwyr turned, staring at him. “I beg your pardon?”

“He doesn’t know about the falls. He can’t read maps,” said Willowspear with venom. “His lord father had a geographer captured especially to teach him, but he wouldn’t learn. He was a spoiled little blockhead.”

Now Lord Ermenwyr turned to stare at Willowspear, and Smith stared too. Willowspear looked back at them with smoldering eyes.

“Why, my old childhood friend and family retainer,” said Lord Ermenwyr, “is that Resentment I see in your face at last? Yes! Let it out! Revel in the dark side of your nature! Express your rage!”

Without a word, and quicker than a striking snake, Willowspear stood up and punched him in the mouth. Lord Ermenwyr tottered backward and fell, and his bodyguards were beside him quicker than Willowspear had been, snarling like avalanches.

“You have struck our Master,” said Stabb. “You will die.”

But Lord Ermenwyr held up his hand.

“It’s all right! I did ask for it. You may pick me up, however. I have to admit I was no good at maps,” he added, as his bodyguards lifted him and dusted him off with solicitous care, “I just wasn’t interested in them.”

“Really?” said Smith, too struck by the surrealism of the moment to come up with anything better to say.

“He defaced his tutor’s atlas,” snapped Willowspear. “He crossed out the names of cities and wrote in things like Snottyville and Poopietown. I could not believe Her son would do such things.”

“Neither could Daddy,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “I thought he was going to toss me off a battlement when he saw what I’d done. He actually apologized to the man and set him free. I had got it through my nasty little head that the blue wriggly lines meant water, though. And where there’s water, you can float on it, can’t you? So how do we have a problem, Smith?” He narrowed his eyes.

“Do you know what a waterfall is?” Smith watched the purple sails.

“Of course.”

“How do you sail up one?”

Lord Ermenwyr thought about that.

“So … sailors don’t have some terribly clever way of getting around the problem?” he said at last.

“No.”

“Well, we’ll figure something out,” said Lord Ermenwyr, and turned to look at the warships. “Aren’t those things getting closer?”

“Yes!” said Willowspear, undistracted from his fury.

“Do you think they’ve seen us?”

“It’d be a little hard to miss the striped sails,” said Smith.

“All right, then; we’ll just go around their silly blockade,” Lord Ermenwyr decided. “It’ll delay us, I suppose, but it can’t be helped.”

Smith was already steering a course out to sea, but within the next quarter hour it became clear that one warship was breaking from its squadron and making a determined effort to pursue them. Lord Ermenwyr watched its progress from the aft rail. Willowspear stalked forward and prayed ostentatiously, like a gaunt figurehead.

“I think we need to go faster, Smith,” the lordling remarked after a while.

“Notice how they’ve got three times the spread of canvas we have?” said Smith, glancing over his shoulder.

“That’s bad, is it?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Well, can’t we just do something sailorly like, er, clap on more sail?”

“Notice how they’ve got three masts, and we have one?”

“I know!” Lord Ermenwyr cried. “We’ll light the boiler and get the invisible oarsmen going!”

“That would probably be a good idea,” Smith agreed.

“Yes! Let them eat our dust! Or salt spray, or whatever.”

Smith nodded. Lord Ermenwyr fidgeted.

“Ah … do you know how to get the mechanism working?” he asked politely.

The boiler took up most of a cabin amidships, and it had been cast of iron in the shape of a squatting troll, whose gaping mouth was closed by a hinged buckler. Fortunately for everyone concerned, its designer had thoughtfully attached small brass plaques to the relevant bodily orifices, marked LIGHT BURNER HERE and FILL WITH OIL HERE and RELIEVE PRESSURE BY OPENING THIS VALVE.

“How whimsical,” Lord Ermenwyr observed. “If I ever have to transform a deadly enemy into an inanimate object, I’ll know what form to give him.” He shuddered as Smith yanked open the oil reservoir.

“Empty,” Smith grunted. “Did your ship merchant sell you any fuel?”

“Yes! Now that you mention it.” The lordling backed out of the cabin and opened the door to the cabin opposite, revealing it to be solidly stacked with small kegs. “See?”

Smith sidled through and pulled a keg down to examine it. “Well, it’s full,” he stated. “Good stuff, too; whale oil.”

“You mean it’s been rendered down from whales?” Lord Ermenwyr grimaced.

“That’s right.” Smith tapped the image stenciled in blue on the keghead, a cheery-looking leviathan.

“But, Smith—they’re intelligent. Like people.”

“No, they’re not; they’re fish,” said Smith, looking around for a funnel. “Mindless. Here we go. You hold that in place while I pour, all right?”

“Promise me you won’t throw the empties overboard, then,” said Lord Ermenwyr, reaching out gingerly with the funnel. “Certain mindless fish have been known to stalk fishermen with something remarkably like intelligence. And a sense of injury.”

Smith shrugged. When the oil reservoir had been filled, when the water pump had been opened, when the burner had been lit with a handy fireball and the troll’s eyes begun to glow an ominous yellow behind their glass lenses, Lord Ermenwyr stood back and regarded the whole affair with an expression of dissatisfaction.

“Is that all?” he said. “I was expecting a rush of breathtaking speed.”

“It has to boil first,” said Smith.

There came a thump and clatter on the deck above their heads.