“I guess these things happen in families,” said Smith. He took up a sofa cushion and used it as a fan to wave smoke out the window.
“Oh, the horror of siblings,” Lord Ermenwyr said, closing his bloodshot eyes. “You’re an orphan, aren’t you, Smith? Lucky man. Yet you’ve got people who love you. Nobody would shed a tear if I gasped out my irrevocable last.”
“You’re just saying that because you haven’t had your medication,” said Smith encouragingly. “Where’s Willowspear, anyway?”
“Vision questing, I assume,” Lord Ermenwyr replied. “Do you know how to give an injection?”
“A what?” Smith frowned in puzzlement.
“Where you shoot medicine into someone’s arm through a needle?”
Smith blanched. “Is that a demon thing?”
“I’d forgotten your race is dismally backward in medical practice,” Lord Ermenwyr sighed. “Fetch me the green box on my dresser, and I’ll show you.”
Smith found the box, and watched in horrified fascination as Lord Ermenwyr drew out a glass tube shaped like a hummingbird, with a long needle for a beak. Removing a tiny cartridge of something poison-green from the box, he flipped up the hummingbird’s tail feathers and loaded the cartridge; then opened and shut its tiny wings experimentally, until a livid green droplet appeared at the end of the needle.
“And Mr. Hummyhum is ready to play now,” said Lord Ermenwyr, rolling up his sleeve. Taking out an atomizer, he squeezed its bulb until a fine mist of something aromatic wet his arm; then, with a practiced jab, he gave himself an injection. Smith flinched.
“There. My pointless life is prolonged another night,” said Lord Ermenwyr wearily. “What are you looking so pale about? You’re an old hand at sticking sharp things into people.”
“It’s different when you’re killing,” said Smith. “But when you’re saving a life … it just seems perverse, somehow. Stabbing somebody to keep them alive, brr!”
“Remind me to tell you about invasive surgery sometime,” said Lord Ermenwyr, ejecting the spent cartridge and putting the hummingbird away. “Or trepanning! Think of it as making a doorway to let evil spirits out of the body, if it’ll help.”
“No, thanks,” said Smith fervently. He couldn’t take his eyes off the glass bird, however. “You could shoot poison into somebody with one of those things to kill them, and it’d barely leave a mark, would it?”
“You wouldn’t even need poison,” Lord Ermenwyr told him, rubbing his arm. “A bubble of air could do it. It’s not the sort of murder you could do by stealth very easily, though. Well, maybe you could. What, are you still trying to find out who killed that wretched journalist?”
Smith nodded.
“I know who didn’t kill him, and I know what he didn’t die of. That’s about it.”
“What did he die of, by the way?”
“I’ve no idea. There’s not a mark on him.”
“You haven’t done an autopsy?” Lord Ermenwyr turned to stare at him. Smith stared back. “Oh, don’t tell me you people don’t do autopsies either!”
“I don’t think we do,” Smith admitted. “What’s an autopsy?”
Lord Ermenwyr explained.
“But that’s desecrating the corpse!” yelled Smith. “Ye gods, you’d have the angry ghost and every one of his ancestors after you in this world and the next!”
“All you have to do is tell them you’re conducting a forensic analysis,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “I’ve never had any trouble.”
“I still couldn’t do it,” said Smith. “That’s even worse than sticking needles into somebody. Cutting up a corpse in cold blood’s an abomination.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t know anything about abominations, not me,” said Lord Ermenwyr, beginning to grin as his medication took affect. “Look here, why don’t I do the job for you? I take it the idea of a demon fooling around with a corpse doesn’t violate your sense of propriety quite as badly?”
“I guess it would be different for you,” Smith conceded.
“Well then!” Lord Ermenwyr sprang to his feet. “I’ve even got a set of autopsy tools with me. Isn’t that lucky? One ought never to travel unprepared, at least that’s what Daddy says. The restaurant’s closed tonight, isn’t it? We can just open him up in the kitchen!”
“No!” Smith protested. “What if he decided to haunt in there, ever after? The restaurant’s our whole reputation. We could be ruined!”
“And it wouldn’t be terribly sanitary, either, I suppose,” Lord Ermenwyr said, rummaging in a drawer. “Where did I leave that bone saw? No matter; we’ll just wait until everyone’s gone off to Festival, and we’ll bring him up here. More privacy!”
Smith went downstairs and waited, nervously, as one by one the guests came down in their Festival costumes and walked out or ordered bearers to take them into the heart of town, where most of the evening’s Festival activities were going on. Mrs. Smith emerged from the kitchen, followed by Crucible and Pinion bearing between them the Sea Dragon Bombe on a vast platter. It was glorious to see, spreading wings like fans of ruby glass, and light glittered on its thousand emerald scales.
Mrs. Smith herself was no less resplendent, swathed in tented magnificence of peacock-blue satin and cloth of gold, her hair elaborately coifed, her lips crimsoned. A wave of perfume went before and followed her.
“We’re off to the civic banqueting hall. Wish me luck, Smith,” she said. “I’ll need it. I’ve just been informed the Anchor Street Bakery got a shipment of superfine manchet flour from Old Troon Mills this morning.”
“Good luck,” said Smith. “They use too much butter-cream, anyway.”
“And the bombe is loaded with aphrodisiacs,” said Mrs. Smith, pulling out her best smoking tube—black jade, a foot long and elaborately carved—and setting it between her teeth. “So we must hope for the best. Be a dear and give us a light?”
Smith gave her a light and a kiss. As he leaned close, Mrs. Smith murmured; “Burnbright’s gone out with young Willowspear.”
“You mean to the Festival?” Smith started.
“They spent ages out there together on the parapet,” she said. “When I went into the bar to get a bottle of passion-fruit liqueur for the serving sauce, they came sneaking through. Thought I didn’t see them. But I saw their faces; I know that look. They ran out through the garden and went over the wall. I don’t expect they’ll be back until morning, but you might leave the side door unlocked.”
Smith was trying to imagine Willowspear doing something as earthly as scrambling over a wall with a girl. “Right,” he said, nodding slowly. “Side door. Well. Return victorious, Mrs. Smith.”
“Death to our enemies,” she replied grimly. Pulling her yards of train over one arm and puffing out clouds of smoke, she strode forth into the night, and Crucible and Pinion followed her with the bombe.
Leaving Bellows on duty in the lobby and the two other Smiths in the bar to deal with any late-night emergencies, Smith hurried upstairs and rapped twice on Lord Ermenwyr’s door. It was immediately flung wide by Lord Ermenwyr, who stood there grinning from ear to ear.
“All clear?”
“All clear.”
“Come on, boys!” He shot out of his room past Smith and went clattering down the stairs, and the four bodyguards thundered after him.
“Er—” Smith waved frantically, attempting to direct attention to the fact that Cutt had his head on backward. Lord Ermenwyr turned, spotted the problem, giggled, and corrected it with a wave of his hand.