The Anvil of the World aotwu-1

by Kage Baker

  His arm felt fine now. Better than fine. Superior to dull flesh and blood. It was the part of him that belonged to the gods, after all.

  Smith heard the sound of footsteps behind him, running, and Willowspear caught up with them.

  “Where are you going?” he gasped. “What is he going to do?”

  Mr. Silverpoint’s voice floated back to them along the tunnel. “Nothing, boy. I’m only here to observe.”

  They emerged into the chamber. Mr. Silverpoint set the torch in a socket by the door. “Here we are,” he said. “What happens now, Smith?”

  Smith blinked at the Keyhole, at the whirling fire before it. He knew that he could raise his cold blue arm and thrust it through that barrier and feel no pain at all. He knew he could grasp the dimly seen objects beyond and draw them out. They were only vials of poisons, and small ingenious devices. Still, once he had them, there would be no stopping him ever again.

  He felt History pulling at him, like a tide sucking sand from beneath his feet. All that he had been, all the mundane details of his life, were about to be jettisoned. Once he reached through the fire, he would be purified, perfect, streamlined down to his essential purpose. He would bring a sinful race to its ordained end. It was the will of the gods.

  Smith, the old Smith that was about to be cast off like a garment, looked away from the whirling fire.

  The others were watching him. Mr. Silverpoint’s gaze was blank, enigmatic. Lady Svnae was biting her nether lip, her dark eyes troubled. Lord Ermenwyr stood with arms folded, doing his best to look nonchalant, but he was trembling. And Willowspear was staring from one to the other, and at the bright fire, and horror was slowly dawning in his face.

  Why was the boy so upset? Ah, because he had a wife, and a mother, and a child on the way. Personal reasons. The concerns of mundane people, not heroes.

  Clear before his eyes came an image of little Burnbright disconsolate on her perch in the kitchen, and of Mrs. Smith singing in her cloud of smoke. Fenallise.

  Smith flexed his hand.

  “I need to borrow your axe,” he said to Mr. Silverpoint. That gentleman nodded solemnly and handed it over.

  Smith knelt.

  He laid his blue arm out along the rock and struck once, severing his hand and arm just below the elbow.

  There was one moment of frozen time in which the arm lay twitching in its pool of black blood, and the severed end reared up like a snake and something looked at him accusingly, with glittering black eyes. It told him he had failed the gods. It told him he was a commonplace and mediocre little man.

  Then time unfroze, and there was a lot of shouting. Lady Svnae had torn the sash from her dressing gown and knelt beside him, binding it on the stump of his arm, pulling tight while Willowspear broke the axe handle and thrust it through the tourniquet’s knot. There was blood everywhere. Smith was staring full at Lady Svnae’s splendid bare bosom, which was no more than a few inches from his face, and only vaguely listening to Lord Ermenwyr, who was on his other side saying, “I’m sorry, Smith, I’m so sorry, you’ll be all right, I’ll make you a magic hand with jewels on it or something and you’ll be better than new! Really! Oh, Smith, please don’t die!”

  Smith was falling backward.

  “You see?” he told no one in particular. “It was just a metaphor.”

  “I’m impressed,” said Mr. Silverpoint, nodding slowly.

  Smith lost consciousness.

  He spent the next few days in a pleasant fog. Willowspear never left him, changed the dressings on his arm at hourly intervals and kept him well drugged. Lord Demaledon came often to advise; he and Willowspear had long sonorous conversations full of medical terms Smith didn’t understand. Smith didn’t mind. He felt buoyant, carefree.

  Lady Svnae brought him delicacies she had prepared for him herself, though she was not actually much of a cook, and she kept apologizing to him in the most abject manner. When he asked her what she was apologizing for, she burst into tears. When he tried to console her, he made an awkward job of it, having forgotten that he no longer had two arms to put around anybody. So then he apologized, and she cried harder. Altogether it was not a successful social moment.

  Lord Ermenwyr came several times to sit beside his bed and talk to him. He chattered nervously for hours, filling the tent with purple fumes as he smoked, and Smith nodded or shook his head in response but couldn’t have got a word in with a shoehorn. Principally the lordling discussed magical prostheses, their care and maintenance, and the advantages of complicated extra features such as corkscrews, paring knives, and concealed flasks.

  And there was an afternoon when Smith lay floating free on a tide of some subtle green elixir that banished all care, and watched through the opened tent-flaps as a drama unfolded, seemingly just for his entertainment. Mr. Silverpoint was seated in a black chair, with a naked blade across his knees. The Yendri war-leader was brought before him in chains.

  A lot of talk followed, in words that Smith couldn’t understand. Most of the Yendri leader’s lines were badly acted, though, he seemed given to melodrama, and Smith would have jeered and thrown nutshells at him but for the fact that he couldn’t spot a snack vendor in the audience, and no longer had an arm to throw with anyway.

  Then there was a thrilling moment when the action came right into his tent, and everyone was staring at him, and Mr. Silverpoint explained gravely that the Yendri had admitted to conspiring to exterminate the Children of the Sun. As the only member of his race present, what was Smith’s judgment? Smith thought about it, while everyone, the Yendri included, watched him.

  Finally he said he thought it was a bad idea.

  But do you condemn him to death? everyone asked.

  Smith knitted his brows and puzzled over the question until he realized that he was free of all that; he’d never kill anybody again. He just lay there laughing, shaking his head No.

  Then the drama retreated to the stage again, and a lot of other accusations were made. The word Hlinjerith was spoken several times, and the Yendri stood tall and said something proudly, and there was a gasp of horror from a lot of people watching. Willowspear, beside Smith, groaned aloud and buried his face in his hands. Smith asked him what was wrong and Willowspear said that the Orphans had done something dreadful. Smith asked what they had done. Willowspear, mastering himself with difficulty, said that they had made certain that Hlinjerith would never be desecrated by the Children of the Sun.

  So the Yendri was condemned to die after all. The three lords stepped forward, Eyrdway, Demaledon, and Ermenwyr. Each one presented some argument, and Mr. Silver-point listened with his head on one side. Then there was a wonderful bit of sleight of hand where he pulled three rods of blue fire from the air and held them out in his fist, and the three brothers each drew one. Lord Demaledon got the one that was longest.

  A circle formed, though people were considerate enough to leave a space so Smith could see. The Yendri’s chains were struck off. He was given a staff. Lord Demaledon stepped into the circle with his staff, too. Smith became terribly excited and struggled to sit up so he could see better, but by the time Willowspear had arranged the pillows behind him it was nearly over. Clack, whack, crash, two stick-insects fighting, and then CRACK and the Yendri was down with his head caved in, and that was all.

  Smith was disappointed, until Willowspear injected him with more of the elixir, and he floated away into happiness again… the body was dragged offstage, the crowd dispersed, the curtain flaps fell, and he tried to applaud. But that was another thing he couldn’t do anymore.

  One morning they told him he was going to be taken back to the boat, and he watched as they bound him into a litter and four of Mr. Silverpoint’s soldiers hoisted him between them. Their mail and livery was identical, but otherwise they were monstrous in exuberant variety: scales, fangs, fur, unlikely appendages. Still they carried him gently through the rock, out the new waterside entrance and so to the landing.

  And there was the Kingfishe
r’s Nest, anchored as safe as though the siege and battle had taken place in another world. Cutt, Crish, and company were lined up ashore like a row of bollard posts, looking proud of themselves insofar as they had expressions. They greeted their master with howls of joy and abased themselves before Mr. Silverpoint when he came down to see them off.

  He loomed over Smith.

  “My son will take you back to Salesh now,” he said.

  “Thank you, my lord,” said Smith.

  Lord Demaledon and Lord Eyrdway loomed too, one on either side of their father.

  “I still can’t believe what you did,” said Lord Eyrdway, a little sulkily. “All that power, and you threw it away! Don’t you know what you could have done?”

  “He knows, son,” said Mr. Silverpoint.

  “I’ve given Willowspear salves for the wound, Smith,” said Demaledon. “Don’t try to seal it with boiling pitch, whatever your physicians tell you. Yours may be a race worthy to live, but your grasp of medicine is … inadequate.”

  “All right,” said Smith vaguely, looking around, blinking in the sunlight. There were others of the demon-host loading chests of something heavy on board the Kingfisher’s Nest. The Master of the Mountain followed his gaze.

  “Gold specie,” he explained. “Readily convertible anywhere. It ought to get you through the next few years.”

  “Oh. You mean … the race war and all that?”

  “No,” said Mr. Silverpoint, scowling briefly. “There will be no race war, now. Not over Hlinjerith of the Misty Branches. Nor will your people be destroyed this time, since you have broken the Key of Unmaking. But you’re owed some compensation, after what my children did to you.”

  “Oh, well…” Smith racked his brains for something polite to say. “I guess I would have come here sooner or later anyway. If it was the will of the gods.”

  Mr. Silverpoint grinned, a flash of white in his black beard.

  “Yes, of course, we must respect the will of the gods.” He leaned close and spoke in a low voice. “You be sure to take my son for the most expensive prosthesis on the market, understand? If he wants to buy you one that tells the time and plays “The Virgins of Karkateen,” you let him. The little devil can’t bear feeling guilty.”

  The journey back was dreamlike and very pleasant for Smith, who had nothing to do but sit under a canopy on deck and watch the scenery flow by. Everyone else was either preoccupied—like Willowspear, who was now obliged to man the helm—or quietly miserable, like Lord Ermenwyr and Lady Svnae. Even the portage descent to the Pool of Reth went smoothly.

  And it was in that place, as Willowspear navigated the clear green water, that they saw the first of the white butterflies.

  “Hey, look, there’s your spirits,” observed Smith, pointing to the two tall stones. White wings fluttered in a long shaft of sunlight, like poppy petals in the wind. Lady Svnae, who was arranging cushions and a lap robe for Smith, looked up and caught her breath.

  “I’ve never seen butterflies like that,” she said.

  “That’s because they’re cabbage moths,” said her brother, pacing. He regarded them sourly, shifting his smoking tube from one corner of his mouth to the other.

  “It is a good sign,” said Willowspear, guiding them into the river.

  “They’re following us, too,” said Smith, and he was right; for as the Pool of Reth fell astern, the butterflies drifted along after them, or settled on the spars and rigging like birds.

  “Get away, you little bastards!” Lord Ermenwyr cried.

  “Oh, leave them alone. They’re pretty,” Lady Svnae told him. “What can I bring you, dear Smith? Ortolans braised in white wine? Sugared pepper tarts? Rose comfits? Tea with Grains of Paradise?”

  “Tea sounds nice,” said Smith. She raised a silver pitcher cunningly wrought with peacocks and adders chased in gold, and with her own fair hands poured the long stream of tea into a cup of eggshell-fine porcelain, costly and rare. Smith watched as she took Grains of Paradise from a tiny golden box with silver tweezers, unable to find a tactful way to tell her he preferred his tea plain.

  Some days later, after a supernaturally quick journey, at the Sign of the Three Hammers…

  Mr. Smallbrass sat at his desk, chewing on the end of his pen as he studied his account books. He wasn’t very good at accounts—he was more of an idea man—but he had had to let his accountant go, along with his personal secretary, his chair-bearers, his masseur, and some of his better furniture.

  He heard a commotion in the courtyard below his office and peered out a window, wondering if he should bolt his door and pretend he wasn’t in. But it wasn’t the collections clerk from Redlead and Sons Contractors, nor was it Mr. Screwbite the architect, also unpaid these six weeks. It was a very large man in very well cut clothing, accompanied by equally large liveried servants who took up posts at the entrance to the courtyard.

  Mr. Smallbrass watched until he was certain the large man was ascending the staircase that led to his particular office, then he became a blur of frenzied motion. Unpaid bills were swept into a drawer. Threatening letters were stuffed under the carpet. Other items that might tend to detract from the impression of success went into a closet. When the knock on the door sounded, Mr. Smallbrass straightened his tunic, took a deep breath, and waited until the second knock before opening the door.

  “I’m sorry,” he said to the man who stood without. “My clerk’s just stepped out to make an immense bank deposit. Your name, sir?”

  “Silverpoint,” said the man, in an oddly smooth bass. “Aden Silverpoint. I have a proposition for Mr. Smallbrass.”

  “Really?” said Mr. Smallbrass. “I am he, sir! Business is brisk at the moment, but I can certainly spare you a moment—or two—” He edged backward into the room, reaching out hastily to shut his accounts book. Mr. Silver-point followed him, and so did two more of the liveried servants, who carried a chest between them.

  “I, er, I’d offer you wine, but we had a board meeting this morning—all our investors, you know—temporarily out of refreshments,” chattered Mr. Smallbrass.

  “I want to buy Smallbrass Estates,” said Mr. Silverpoint.

  “Certainly!” shrieked Mr. Smallbrass. “That is to say—lots are selling rapidly, but I think we can accommodate you—in fact, a prime waterfront parcel became available just this morning, poor arms dealer in Deliantiba had to forfeit his deposit, what with the peace treaty and all—yes, I’m sure we—”

  “You have no investors,” said Mr. Silverpoint. He didn’t say it in a particularly threatening manner, but something in his dark eyes caused the hair to stand on the back of Mr. Smallbrass’s neck. “You haven’t sold one lot, in fact, and you’re heavily in debt.”

  Mr. Smallbrass looked at the window, wondering if he could make it in one leap, then remembered the servants standing guard below. He looked at the servants in the room with him, who had the stolid faces of men who were capable of doing quite unpleasant things in the line of duty and sleeping soundly afterward.

  “Are you from the Bloodfires?” he asked in a little deflated voice.

  “I might be,” said Mr. Silverpoint, with just the suggestion of a purr. He snapped his fingers, and the servants opened the chest. How softly the afternoon light fell on the bars and bars and bars of gold specie ranked within! Mr. Smallbrass gaped at it.

  “Unmarked. Enough to cover your debt and pay for your passage out of town,” said Mr. Silverpoint. “And you’ll transfer the development claim to me, here and now.”

  Mr. Smallbrass rallied slightly.

  “Oh, sir, the claim’s worth more than that!” he protested. “All those waterfront lots! Unspoiled paradise!

  Mr. Silverpoint just looked at him. His stare was fathomless as a night full of jungle predators.

  “I have inside information that the property has recently undergone devaluation,” he stated, quietly, but with a suggestion of reproach.

  Mr. Smallbrass winced, thinking of the desperate message h
e had received from his caretakers the day before. He made his decision.

  “Let’s just step across the street to the claim office, shall we?” he said. “They’ve got a notary and bullion scales on the premises. Most convenient.”

  The journey continued, in its effortless and silent way, flowing with the current. The Kingfisher’s Nest had no need of its mechanical oarsmen yet, nor even of its striped sails, drifting through the blue-and-gold weather. But there came a morning when Smith saw the fog wall rising in the north, pink with sunrise.

  “Hey, look!” He waved his stump at it. “We’ll make Salesh inside of a week. Two weeks at most, if we play it safe and go all the way around the blockade. Do you think you’re a father yet?”

  Willowspear, who had been watching the fog bleakly, smiled.

  “Surely not yet,” he said. “I would know.”

  “Have you settled on a name?”

  “If it’s a little girl, Fenallise,” said Willowspear. “Kalyon, if it’s a boy.”

  Smith nodded slowly. Willowspear looked out at the fog again.

  “I miss her so,” he said.

  Lord Ermenwyr came on deck, saw the fogbank, and groaned. He slumped into a chair next to Smith.

  “I need brandy for breakfast,” he muttered.

  “That had better not be a remark about my cooking,” said Lady Svnae sharply, rising from the companionway with a tray. She set it beside Smith and unfolded a napkin for him with a flourish. “I tried something new this morning, anyway, for our dear Smith. Look!” she whisked the cover off his bowl. “It’s a sort of Potted Seafood Surprise! There’s shrimp relish and fish eggs boiled in straj, and that dark stuff is fish paste swirled through.”

  “Sounds delicious,” said Smith gallantly. “Thank you, my lady.”

  “Can I have brandy in mine?” asked Lord Ermenwyr.

  “Stop it!” She whirled on him. “I told you I was sorry about yesterday, and how was I to know you were allergic to clove honey?”

  “Remember when I went into anaphylactic shock when I was ten?”