Kage Baker - The Anvil of the World

Smith sighed, warming his hands at the little stove… He looked around the saloon. It was quite elegant. More polished brass and nautical curtains, bulkheads paneled in expensive woods, not one whiff of mildew. And nothing useful. No weapons other than in potential: a couple of pointless works of art in one corner, a dolphin and a seagull cast in bronze, slightly larger than life and heavy enough to kill somebody with. They didn’t suit Smith’s tastes, as art. He preferred mermaid motifs himself, especially mermaids with fine big bosoms like—

“Here,” said Lord Ermenwyr, pressing on him a stoneware cup of black wine. “A good stiff drink’s what you want, Smith.”

“I’ll tell you what I want,” Smith replied, taking the cup and setting it down. “I want to know who killed Strangel.”

Lord Ermenwyr shifted in his seat.

“He isn’t really dead,” he said hastily. “Not as we think of being dead. Really. With demons, you see—”

“They were the Steadfast Orphans,” said Willowspear. “Those of our people who refused to accept the Lady’s marriage and … and subsequent offspring. They are an order of fighters, Smith. They will kill if they believe it’s justified.”

“Like Flowering Reed,” Lord Ermenwyr explained. “He was one of them.”

“Hell,” said Smith, with feeling. “Are they after you again?”

After an awkward pause, Lord Ermenwyr said, “I don’t think so. They might have been on their way to Hlinjerith.”

Smith thought of the pleading man on the landing, and his horror registered on his face.

“They wouldn’t harm those men,” Willowspear assured him. “Especially not if they were ill. The Orphans are stubborn and intolerant and—and bigoted, but they never attack unless they are attacked first.”

“So as to have the moral edge,” sneered Lord Ermenwyr. “Mind you, they have no difficulty hiring someone else to kill for them. And they’ll go to great lengths to arrange ‘accidents,’ the hypocritical bastards.”

“Strangel charged them, so they took him out,” said Smith. “All right. But what’d they go after me for?”

“I think they’d probably spotted me on deck by then,” the lordling replied, “and it’s open season on me all year round, you know, what with me being an Abomination and all.”

“But they worship your mother, don’t they?” Smith knitted his brows. “I’ve never understood why they think she won’t mind if they murder her children.”

“They worship Her as a sacred virgin,” Willowspear explained. “And it is thought that Her … defilement, hm, is a temporary state of affairs, and if, hm, if Her husband and children cease to exist, then the cosmic imbalance will be righted and She will be released from Her, hm, enslavement and return to Her proper consciousness.”

“It doesn’t help that Daddy’s a Lord of Darkness,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “Complete with black armor and other evil clichés. But the fact is, the Orphans simply don’t like anybody. They despise people like Willowspear for not holding to the Old Faith. They don’t like demons just on principle, because chaos isn’t in line with their idea of cosmic harmony. And they really hate your people, Smith. Especially now. Which is unfortunate, because nobody else likes you much either.”

“Oh, what did we ever do to anybody?” Smith demanded. He was cold, and tired, and starting to feel mean.

Lord Ermenwyr pursed his lips. “Well… let’s start with acting as though you’re the only people in the world and it all belongs to you. The rest of us get relegated to ‘forest denizen’ status, as though we were another species of beast, or maybe inconvenient rock formations. It never seems to occur to you that we might resent it.

“Then, too, there’s the innocent abandon with which you wreck the world, and I say innocent because I really can’t fathom how anybody but simpletons could pour sewage into their own drinking water. You cut down forests, your mines leave cratered pits like open sores, and—have you noticed how expensive fish is lately? You’ve nearly fished out the seas. I might add that the whales are not fond of you, by the way.”

“And the other races never do anything wrong, I suppose,” said Smith.

“Oh, by no means; but they don’t have quite the impact of the Children of the Sun,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “You’re such ingenious artificers, you see, that’s part of the problem. Yet I do so love your cities, and your clever toys, like this charming boat for example. I’d be desolated if I had to live in the forest like the Yendri. Do you know, they didn’t even have fire until Mother taught them how to make it? I can’t imagine dressing myself in leaves and living in a bush and, and having nasty tasteless straj for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.” He glared at Willowspear, who rolled his eyes.

“It is a simple and harmonious life, my lord,” he said. “And it harms not the earth, nor any other living thing.”

“But it’s damned boring,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “Give me the Children of the Sun any day. If only they would learn to use birth control!” He looked back at Smith imploringly.

“Sex is good for you,” said Smith. “And you don’t get a baby every time, you know. If we have more than anybody else, it’s because we’re made better than other people, see? Physically, I mean, and no offense to any races present. But you can’t ask people not to make love.”

“But—” Lord Ermenwyr pulled at his beard in frustration. “You could use—”

“They don’t know about it, my lord,” said Willowspear.

“I beg your pardon?” The lordling stared.

“They don’t know about it,” said Willowspear quietly, gazing into his cup of wine. “My Burnbright was as innocent as a child on the subject. She didn’t believe me when I explained. Even afterward, she was skeptical. And, of course, with our baby on the way, there has been no opportunity—”

“Oh, you’re lying!”

“I swear by your Mother.”

Lord Ermenwyr began to giggle uneasily. “So that’s why prostitutes always seem so surprised when I—”

“What are you talking about?” Smith demanded, looking from one to the other of them. Lord Ermenwyr met his stare and closed his eyes in embarrassment.

“No, Smith, you’re a man of the world, surely you know,” he said.

“What?”

“Oh, gods, you’re old enough to be my father, this is too—it really is too—you really don’t know, do you?” Lord Ermenwyr opened his eyes and began to grin. He set down his drink, wriggled to the edge of his seat, and leaned forward. Swiftly, in terse but admirably descriptive words, he told Smith.

Smith heard in blank-faced incomprehension.

“Oh, that’d never work,” he said at last.

On the seventh day, they came to the falls.

Smith had been expecting them. He had heard the distant rumble, seen the high haze of mist and the land rising ahead in a gentle shelf.

“You’d better fetch his lordship,” he told Willowspear, who was standing at the rail between Cutt and Crish, scanning the riverbank. So far there had been no sign of the Yendri.

“What is it?”

“We’re going to run out of navigable river up ahead, and he’ll have to decide what he wants us to do next.”

“Ah. The Pool of Reth,” said Willowspear.

“You knew about it?”

“The monastery is not far above. Three days’ journey this way, perhaps. His Mother corresponds with them often.”

“Fine. What are we going to do about the waterfall?”

Willowspear spread his slender hands in a shrug. “My lord assumed you would think of a way. You people are so clever, after all,” he added, with only the faintest trace of sarcasm.