“Didn’t he say that all the Steelsmoke girls are born with tails, too? That was what I heard!” said Burnbright.
“He interviewed the doctor who did the postnatal amputations,” Mrs. Smith said. “Thoroughly ruthless, Sharplin Coppercut, and ruthlessly thorough. When his demise is made public, I imagine a number of highborn people will drink the health of his murderer in sparkling wine.”
“But he went after lowborn people too,” Burnbright quavered.
“Quite so. It seems unlikely you’ll solve this, Smith.”
Mrs. Smith leaned back and lit her smoking tube. She blew twin jets of smoke from her nostrils and considered him. “Perhaps Crossbrace could be persuaded with a bribe, instead of a likely suspect? Unlimited access to the bar? Or I’d be happy to cater a private supper for him.”
“It all depends on how—” Smith looked up as he heard a cautious knock at the kitchen door.
“Come in,” said Mrs. Smith.
Willowspear entered the kitchen and stopped, seeing Smith. “I beg your pardon,” he said, a little hoarsely. His eyes were watering and inflamed.
“Was the pinkweed getting to you?” Smith inquired.
Willowspear nodded, coughing into his fist. Burnbright, who had spun about the moment she heard his voice, came at once to his side.
“Would you like to sit down?” she asked, in a tone of concern Smith had never heard her use. “Can I get you a cup of water?”
“Yes, thank you,” said Willowspear. Smith and Mrs. Smith exchanged glances.
“Are their lordships getting along?” Smith inquired.
“Reasonably well,” Willowspear replied, sinking onto the stool Burnbright brought for him. “My lord Ermenwyr is reclining on his bed, tossing fireballs into the hearth. My lord Eyrdway is reclining on a couch and has transformed himself into a small fishing boat, complete with oars. They are past speech at the present time, and so are unlikely to quarrel, but are still in fair control of their nervous systems. Thank you, child.” He accepted a cup of water from Burnbright, smiling at her.
“You’re awfully welcome,” said Burnbright, continuing to hover by him.
“It’s very kind of you,” he said.
“Not at all!” she chirped anxiously. “I just—I mean—you’re not like them. I mean, you looked like you needed—er—”
“A drink of water?” prompted Mrs. Smith.
“That’s right,” said Burnbright.
“I did,” said Willowspear. He took a careful sip. “I’m not accustomed to pinkweed smoke in such concentration. I don’t indulge in it, myself.”
“Well, but it’s full of nasty fumes in here!” said Burnbright, pointing at Mrs. Smith’s smoking tube.
“Nothing but harmless amberleaf,” said Mrs. Smith in mild affront. Burnbright ignored her.
“Would you like to step out in our back area until you feel better?” she asked Willowspear. “There’s lovely fresh air, and—and a really nice view!”
“Perhaps I—”
“Would you like me to show you?”
They stared into each other’s eyes for a moment.
“I—yes,” said Willowspear, and Burnbright led him out the back door.
Mrs. Smith blew a smoke ring.
“Well, well,” she remarked.
“I didn’t think she had a sex drive,” said Smith wonderingly.
“It’s Festival, Smith,” Mrs. Smith replied.
“I guess she had to fall in love sooner or later,” said Smith. “I just never thought it’d be with a Yendri.”
Mrs. Smith shrugged.
“They taught her to despise greenies at the mother house, from the time she was old enough to stagger around on her little legs. That would only make the attraction more powerful, once it hit,” she said. “The thrill of the forbidden, and all that.”
She paused a long moment, her gaze unreadable, and took another drag on her smoking tube. “Besides,” she added, exhaling smoke, “it’s in her blood.”
At that moment a small pan on the hearth hissed as its contents foamed up, and Mrs. Smith leaped to her feet. “Hell! She’s gone and left that syrup on the fire!” Muttering imprecations, she snatched it off and dumped its molten contents on the marble countertop, where the red stuff ran and spread like a sheet of gore.
“What on earth?” Smith scrambled to his feet, staring.
“It’s the candy glass for the dragon’s wings,” Mrs. Smith explained, glaring at the door through which Burnbright and Willowspear had disappeared. “Grab a spatula and help me. If we don’t pull this mess into wing shapes before it hardens, it’ll be wasted. Gods and goddesses, I could wring that child’s neck sometimes!”
Smith, being a wise man, grabbed a spatula.
By that afternoon, Smith was too busy to continue his investigation.
Salesh had stretched on her silken couch and awakened once again, blinking through wine-fogged eyes at her lover Festival. After a brief moment of confusion and search for headache remedies, she had recollected who he was and taken him back into her insatiable embrace with renewed vigor.
The solemn bells for Third Prayer Interval signaled the start of the grand Parade of Joyous Couplings along Front Street. Its staging area was just around the corner on Hawser, so guests at the Hotel Grandview had a fine view of the proceedings.
With a shrill wail of pipes, with a chime and rattle of tambourines, here came the first of the revelers, clad in a shower of rose petals and very little else! They danced, they tossed their wild hair, they bounded athletically for the edification of the assembled crowd along the street’s edge. Winsome girls rode the shoulders of bull-mighty boys, and from small baskets the girls tossed aphrodisiac comfits to onlookers.
Behind them, a team of men costumed as angels towed a wide flat wagon. Riding in it were some two dozen nurses who bore in their arms the bounty of last year’s Festival, pretty three-month-olds decked in flowers. The babies stared around in bewilderment, or wept at all the noise, or slept in sublime indifference to the passion that had created them.
Following after, likewise crowned in flowers, were scores of little children born of previous Festivals, marching unevenly behind the foremost, who carried a long banner between them reading: LOVE MADE US. They trotted doggedly along, pushing back wreaths that slipped over their eyes. They stared uncertainly into the sea of adult faces, searching for their mothers, or waved as they had been told, or held hands with other children and laboriously performed the dance steps they had been taught for this occasion.
Next came the Salesh Festival Orchestra, blaring with enthusiasm a medley that began with “Burnished Beard on My Pillow,” continued into “The Lady Who Could Do It Thirty Times Without Stopping” and concluded with a rousing arrangement of “The Virgins of Karkateen.” After them came the parade floats sponsored by the different businesses and guilds of Salesh.
Here, steering badly as it lumbered along, for all that it was driven with ingenious gear ratios by its clockwork rowers, was a thirty-foot gilded galley bearing the Spirit of Love, in her scarlet silks. Her breasts were the size of harbor buoys, and puppeteers worked her immense languid hands as she blessed the crowd.
Here was a float presenting the Mother of Fire in her garden, a towering lady wreathed in red and yellow scarves, which were kept in constant motion by concealed technicians working a series of bellows under the float. Their scrambling legs were just visible under the skirts of the pageant wagon, and now and then a hand would flash into view as it tossed a fistful of incense onto one of the several braziers that were housed in giant roses of flame-colored enameled tin.