Kage Baker: The Anvil of the World

“Aren’t you going to cauterize it with something?” she inquired, wincing as Smith’s wound was probed. Smith grunted and turned his face away.

“Do you use a sword to cut through flowers?” replied the Yendri, extracting the bolt and regarding it critically. “Ah, but I forget; you people do. It may surprise you to learn that the most violent solution to a difficulty is not always the best one.”

“I was just asking, for goodness sake!” said Burnbright, and stormed away.

“Got anything for pain?” Smith asked through clenched teeth. Flowering Reed shook his head.

“I do not keep opiates for my personal use,” he said. “I believe it is better to learn to bear with inevitable suffering.”

“I see,” said Smith.

“When you and all your people learn to see, there will be rejoicing and astonishment through the worlds,” said Flowering Reed.

Smith endured in silence as his wound was cleaned, and the Yendri took a pungent-smelling ointment from his pack and anointed the wound. As Smith shifted so the bandage could be wound about his leg, he looked over at Flowering Reed.

“What do you make of the attack today?” he inquired.

Flowering Reed shrugged again. “One of your people’s interminable quarrels. Filth slew filth, and so filth lusted after vengeance.”

Smith decided there was no point attempting to defend the blood feud as part of his cultural heritage. “But who do you think they were after?”

“I have no idea, nor any interest in the matter,” said Flowering Reed. “Though if I cared to speculate on such a thing, I might begin by observing who defended himself most viciously.”

He tied off the bandage, and Smith sat up awkwardly. “Parradan Smith?”

“Perhaps. On the other hand, your people are always ready to unleash violence upon others. He may simply have been the best prepared.”

“Nice to get an unbiased opinion,” said Smith, getting to his feet.

“Leave me now. I must pray and cleanse myself.”

“Go ahead.” Smith limped away, and Burnbright came running to lend her shoulder for support.

“Isn’t he awful?” she hissed. “Now he’ll put his nose in the air and meditate on how much better he is than anybody else.”

“At least he was willing to fix my leg,” Smith said.

“Only because you asked him. They have to if they’re asked; it’s part of their religion or something. Don’t think for a minute he’d have offered on his own.”

“You don’t like the Yendri very much, do you?”

“They’re always raping runners,” Burnbright informed him. “Not so much caravan runners like me, but the solos, the long-distance messengers, all the time.”

“That’s what I’d always heard, but I thought it was just stories,” said Smith. “Since they’re supposed to be so nonviolent.”

Burnbright shook her head grimly.

“They say it’s an act of love, not violence, and their girls take it as a compliment, so why shouldn’t we? Self-righteous bastards. We learned all sorts of defenses against them at the mother house.”

“Nice to know,” said Smith. “How’s Crucible’s arm?”

“It’s huge, and it’s turning all sorts of colors,” she said. “I don’t think he’ll be able to crank tomorrow. That means you’ll have to take his place on the key. That’s what Caravan Masters do.”

“Oh,” said Smith, who had been looking forward to a day of riding stretched out on the shipment of flour from Old Troon Mills.

“Funny about the dead glider,” Burnbright said.

“What was funny about him?”

“He was from Troon.” She helped him to a seat beside the fire. “I recognized him. He used to hang out at the Burning Wheel. That’s the bar where all the gamblers go.”

“You think Lord Ermenwyr’s a gambler as well as a vampire?” Smith asked her wryly.

She flushed. “Well? I never saw him any other time but after dark until today, did you? And he never eats anything, and he looks just terrible! But he’s not a gambler. He’s somebody’s ambassador, was what I heard, and he’s been called off the job because he’s sick so they’re sending him to the spa. What, you think the gliders were after him?” She looked surprised.

“He thinks so.”

“Hmmm.” Her face was bright with speculation. Just then Mrs. Smith called for her, and she ran off to the kitchen pavilion.

No one slept particularly well that night. The Smith’s baby screamed for two hours instead of the usual one. Smith divided watches with the keymen, taking the first shift, so he was up late anyway, getting stiffer and more chilled before Keyman Bellows took his place. Just as Smith had got himself drunk enough to pretend his wounded leg belonged to somebody else so he could doze off, he found himself sitting up, his heart pounding. He turned his head, staring into the west beyond the ring of carts. The faintest of touches on his face, a trace of moisture in the air, a scent as powerful and distinct as the sea’s but certainly not the sea.

Across the fire from him, Mrs. Smith leaned up on one elbow in her bedroll.

“Wind’s shifted,” she muttered. “That’s the Greenlands. We’ll see it, tomorrow.”

Smith lay back, wondering what she meant, and then he remembered the dark mountain.

He had forgotten it next morning, in the haze of his hangover and the confusion of breaking camp. He took Keyman Crucible’s place on the key, crowding beside him as Crucible pedaled, and the effort of winding for the push-off alone was enough to make Smith’s biceps twinge. By the time they were three hours on their way he had mentally crossed key-man off the list of possible careers for himself.

Busy with all this, Smith did not glance up at the horizon until the noon meal was handed along the line, and then he saw it: a rise of forested land to the northwest, and above it a black jagged cone. It didn’t seem very big until his mind grappled with a calculation of the distance. Then his eyes wouldn’t accept how immense it must be.

He put it out of his mind and attempted to unwrap his lunch with one hand. It was a pocket roll stuffed with highly spiced meat. He chewed methodically, looking back along the line of cars, and wondered again what the purpose of the glider attack had been. Robbery seemed unlikely, at least of the cargo. The most valuable thing they were carrying was Lady Seven Butterflies’s holistic eggs, and the mental image of a corps of gliders attempting to fly, bearing between them perhaps a cargo net full of big violet eggs, was enough to make him grin involuntarily.

What if one of the passengers had something they wanted? The fact that the dead man had an assassin’s tattoo didn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t also a thief. One man may in his time take many professions, as Smith knew too well.

He looked forward at the cart where the Smiths rode. They were jewelers; were they carrying any of their wares?

He turned back to look at the cart that Parradan Smith and the Yendri shared. They rode in mutual silence. Parradan Smith watched the eastern horizon. Flowering Reed’s uneasy stare was fixed on the black mountain to the northwest. Smith ruled out the Yendri, who was carrying very little luggage and had no trunks at all. His race disdained personal possessions and produced nothing anyone would want, traded in nothing but medicinal herbs and the occasional freshwater pearl.

Parradan Smith, on the other hand, was couriering something. What? The instrument case he carried didn’t seem heavy enough to be loaded with gold, as Burnbright had speculated.

Which left Lord Ermenwyr. Drugs, money, jewelry: The Lordling undoubtedly had plenty that would interest a thief.

Smith cranked again on the key, scanned the sky. No wings, at least.