by Kage Baker
“Oh, I made a big splash.” Lord Eyrdway’s voice was gleeful. “And I stayed sober, too, nyah nyah! But the most amazing thing happened. Are you going to let me in? I’ve brought you a present.”
Lord Ermenwyr’s eyes narrowed to slits as he shrugged into his jacket.
“Really,” he said noncommittally. In an undertone, he added; “Smith, would you be so kind as to open the door? But do it quickly, and stand well back. He’s up to some ghastly practical joke.”
Smith, who was sitting on the floor having a stiff drink, struggled to his feet and went to the door. He opened it and stood back. There on the threshold was Lord Eyrdway, his formal appearance a little disheveled. Behind him in the hall stood another gentleman, whose evening dress was still perfectly creased and immaculate.
“Hello, Smith,” Lord Eyrdway said. “Look who I met in the Front Street Ballroom, brother!”
Lord Ermenwyr’s eyes went perfectly round with horror. The other gentleman strode past Lord Eyrdway into the room, looking grimly triumphant.
“Glorious Slave of Scharathrion,” he said in the resonant voice of a mage, “I hereby challenge you to thaumaturgical combat.”
“You’ll have to fight him now,” added Lord Eyrdway, shutting and bolting the door behind them. “For the honor of our house.”
“Despicable coward!” said Deviottin Blichbiss. He was a tall portly man, or at least was wearing the shape of one, with neatly parted hair and a sharp-edged mustache. “Did you really think I wouldn’t hunt you down amongst these wretched mundanes? Now you’ll die like a rat in a wall, as you richly deserve.”
“I’m not a well man,” said Lord Ermenwyr in a faint voice. “I’m afraid I’m not up to your challenge.”
“You’re afraid!” gloated Blichbiss. “And whether you’re well, sick, or dead, we’re going to duel in this room tonight. It’s not a customary combat location, but mundane cities are within the permitted areas.”
“Oh, you’re lying,” said Lord Ermenwyr, pulling at his beard in agitation.
“I most certainly am not. And if you were any kind of scholar, instead of the spoiled scion of a jumped-up Black Arts gladiator, you’d know that!”
“Are you going to let him talk about Daddy that way?” demanded Lord Eyrdway.
“I quote as precedent the Codex Smagdaranthine, fourth chapter, line 136: ‘And it came to pass that in the mundane city of Celissa, in the seventh year of Fuskus the Tyrant’s reign, Tloanix Hasherets was done grave insult by Prindo Goff, and therefore challenged him to wizardly battle, whereupon they dueled in the third hour after midnight in the central square of the city, and Hasherets smote Goff down with a bolt of balefire, and scattered his ashes in the fountain there,’” recited Blichbiss in a steely voice.
“But you haven’t got a second,” Lord Ermenwyr pointed out.
“I’ll be his second,” said Lord Eyrdway. “Smith can be yours.”
“You traitor!”
The bodyguards came shuffling into the room and stopped, staring at Blichbiss. A low growl issued from Cutt’s throat. All four of them began to drool. Lord Ermenwyr put his hands in his pockets, smirking.
“And then again, my gentlemen here just might tear you into little pieces,” he said.
“No, they won’t,” Lord Eyrdway assured Blichbiss. “They take orders from my family, and I’ve got precedence over my little brother. You can’t kill this man, boys, do you understand? That’s a direct order. He’s insulted Lord Ermenwyr, and so he’s Lord Ermenwyr’s kill alone.”
The bodyguards drew back, looking at one another in some confusion. There was a taut silence in the room as they worked out the semantics of their terms of bondage, and finally Cutt nodded and bowed deeply, as did the other three.
“We respectfully withdraw, Masters,” he said.
Smith shifted his grip on the bottle he was holding, just the slightest of movements, but Lord Eyrdway turned his head at once.
“Don’t try it, Smith, or I’ll kill you,” he said. “And I’d really be sorry, because I like you, but mortals shouldn’t get mixed up in these things.”
“Thank you for the thought, however, Smith,” said Lord Ermenwyr, with a hint of returning bravado. “Way-way, you are going to be in so much trouble with Mother.”
Lord Eyrdway blanched.
“I’m doing you a favor, you whiner,” he said plaintively. “You can’t always run from everything that scares you. Fight the man!”
“Yes,” said Blichbiss, who had been standing there with his arms folded, looking on in saturnine triumph. “Fight me.”
“Very well.” Lord Ermenwyr shot his cuffs and drew himself up. “I assume I get choice of weapons, as is customary?”
Blichbiss nodded, hard-eyed.
“Then, given the fact that we’re indoors and my second here has personal property at risk, I think we’ll just avoid incendiary spells, if you’ve no objection?”
“None.”
“So, under the circumstances, I think … I choose … Fatally Verbal Abuse!” cried Lord Ermenwyr.
Blichbiss’s eyes flashed. “Typical of you. And I accept!”
Smith racked his brains, trying to remember what he’d ever heard of mages and their preferred means of killing one another. He vaguely recalled that Fatally Verbal Abuse was considered a low-caliber weapon. It had none of the glamour or impact of, say, a Purple Dragon Invocation or a Spell of Gradual Unmaking. In fact, there was some dispute as to whether it constituted an actual magickal weapon at all, given the propensity of people to believe what they are told about themselves anyway, and their tendency to fulfill negative expectations. There were those on the fabled Black Council who held that only the process of accelerated impact qualified it as a valid means of score-settling between arcanes.
This was not to say that Fatally Verbal Abuse could not produce dramatic results, however, or that strategy was not required in its use.
Blichbiss cleared his throat. He stood straight. “The first assault is mine, under the ancient rules of combat. Prepare yourself.”
Lord Ermenwyr stiffened. Blichbiss drew a deep breath.
“You,” he said, “are a twisted, underdeveloped dwarf with a bad tailor!”
Lord Eyrdway chortled. Smith gaped as, before his eyes, Lord Ermenwyr began to warp and shrink, and his suit seemed to become too long in one leg and too short in one arm.
Lord Ermenwyr bared his teeth and replied; “No, I am a handsome and exquisitely dressed fellow of somewhat less than average height while you are a squawking duck with gas!”
Blichbiss shuddered all over and dwindled, farting explosively, as Lord Ermenwyr and his suit returned to their normal proportions. Through the emerging bill that was replacing his teeth, Blichbiss managed to quack out the counterspell; “No, I am a gas-free man with neither wings nor bill who speaks in pure and persuasive tones, whereas you are a streak of black slime in a crack in the floor, soon to be scrubbed into oblivion!”
And like an expanding balloon he resumed his original shape, as Lord Ermenwyr seemed to dissolve, to darken, to sink down toward a crack in the floor…
“No!” he gurgled desperately. “I am a straight sound mage, mildew-resistant and clean in all my parts, but you are a one-legged castrated blind dog with mange!”
Whereupon he became the upright mage he said he was, and the black fungus that had begun to cover his face vanished; but Blichbiss toppled to the floor, clutching at his groin with swiftly withering arms, and turning his blind scabrous furry face he howled; “No! I am a man, full and complete and strong upon both my legs, clearly seeing that you are a toad whose teeth have grown together, preventing your speech!”
“Whoops,” said Lord Eyrdway gleefully, for both he and Smith had caught the fallacy: Toads have no teeth. “Tried too hard to be clever!”
Lord Ermenwyr jerked back, an agonized look on his face as his teeth snapped shut. He struggled to get out words as he began to shrink and change color; as his mouth widened, the rest of
the incantation cycled through and the teeth vanished. He made a horrible noise, just perceptible as words, “No! I am no toad but a man, with perfect and flawless dentition, clearly capable of stating that you are a mere giant mayfly with no mouth at all!”
“No!” gasped Blichbiss, as gauzy wings burst from the back of his dinner jacket. “I am a"—her reached up and tore at his elongating face to prevent his mouth from sealing before he could finish the counterspell—"a man with a mouth such as all men have, and no wings nor any brief life span, whereas you are a cheap tallow taper, your mouth wide with molten wax, your tongue the black wick, awrithe with living flame!”
“No!” Lord Ermenwyr screamed, spitting fire. “I am a man, and my tongue is supple, alive and flameless, no tallow to block my loud pronouncement that you are no man at all but a hanging effigy of old clothes stuffed with paper, your face a painted sack, your mouth a mere painted line, incapable of utterance!”
“Gurk!” exclaimed Blichbiss, as a noose appeared from nowhere and hoisted him up by the neck. “No! I am not hanging and—” He ripped his sealing mouth open again. “I am a mage whose curses are swift and always deadly, with a quick mouth to pronounce that you,"—and a terrible gleam came into his eyes—"are a pusillanimous little half-breed nouveau-arcane psychopath who richly deserves the inescapable blast of witchfire that is about to electrocute him where he stands!”
“Hey!” said Smith in dismay, and Lord Eyrdway looked confused as he played the spell back in his head; but Lord Ermenwyr, his eyes bugging from their sockets, stared up at the crackling circle of white-hot energy that had just begun to circle his head. He shrieked the first thing that came to mind: “I know you are, but what am I?”
With his last syllable the witchfire reached critical mass and shot out a ravening tongue of lightning, hitting Blichbiss square in the middle of his waistcoat. That gentleman had just time to look outraged before he made a sizzling noise, his sinuses discharged copiously, and the fire engulfed him in a crackling blaze for the space of three seconds before vanishing with a loud popping sound.
Blichbiss fell backward with a crash, smoke and steam rising from his slightly charred mustache. He had been felled by the deadliest of counterspells, the one against which there is no appeal. So simple is its operative principle, even little children grasp it instinctively; so puissant is it in its demoralizing effect, grown men have been driven to inadvertent self-destruction, as Blichbiss now was evidence. Oddly enough, his clothes were almost untouched.
“That was cheating, that last one,” said Lord Eyrdway. “Wasn’t it? I thought you said no incendiary spells.”
Lord Ermenwyr turned on him in fury. “Of course he cheated, you dunce! But it wouldn’t have mattered if he’d managed to kill me.”
“Of course it would have,” Lord Eyrdway said reasonably. “Then Smith could have appealed his victory to the Black Council, as your second.”
“A lot of good that would have done me, wouldn’t it?” Lord Ermenwyr said, trembling in every limb as the reaction set in. He staggered backward and, like a landslide, his bodyguards surrounded him and caught him before he fell. Cutt set him gently into an armchair.
“Master is drained,” he said solicitously. “Master is exhausted. What Master needs now, to restore his strength, is to eat his enemy’s liver fresh-torn from his miserably defeated body, while it’s still warm. Shall I tear out the liver for you, Master?”
“Gods, no!” cried Lord Ermenwyr in disgust.
“But it’s good for you,” said Cutt gently, “and you need it. It’s full of arcane energies. It will replenish you with the life force of your enemy. Your lord father—” pause for group genuflection—"always consumes the livers of those so rash as to assail him. If they have been particularly offensive, he eats their hearts as well. Come now, little Master, won’t you even try it?”
“He’s right, you know,” Lord Eyrdway said. “And think of the publicity! Nobody’s ever going to challenge your right to be guild treasurer again. I wouldn’t mind a bit of the bastard’s heart, myself.”
“Can I get it cooked?” asked Lord Ermenwyr.
“No!” said all the guards and Lord Eyrdway together.
“That would destroy much of its arcane wholesomeness,” Cutt explained.
“Then I’m damned well having condiments,” Lord Ermenwyr decided. “Smith, can you get me pepper and salt and a lemon?”
“Right,” said Smith, and fled.
At least the sorcerous duel seemed to have passed unnoticed by anyone else, though Bellows gave him an inquiring look as he raced back from the kitchen with the condiments Lord Ermenwyr had requested. He just rolled his eyes in reply and hurried back upstairs.
When he reentered the suite, Blichbiss’s body had been laid out on the dissecting table, and Lord Ermenwyr was attempting to wrench open the waistcoat and dress shirt.
“He shouldn’t be exhibiting rigor mortis this early,” he was complaining. “Unless that’s the effect of the spell. Hello, Smith, just set those down anywhere. Damn him, these buttons have melted!”
“Rip it open,” Lord Eyrdway suggested.
“Tear apart your vanquished enemy,” Cutt counseled. “Slash into his flesh and seize the smoking liver in your mighty teeth! Wrest it forth and devour it, as his soul wails and wrings its hands, and let his blood run from your beard!”
“I don’t think I’m quite up to that, actually,” said Lord Ermenwyr, sweating. He cut the garments apart, laid open Blichbiss with a quick swipe of a knife, and peered at the liver in question. “Oh, gods, it looks vile.”
“You didn’t mind slicing up Coppercut,” Smith remarked.
“Autopsying people is one thing. Eating them’s quite another,” said Lord Ermenwyr, gingerly cutting the liver out. “Eek, damn—look, now it’s got on my shirt, that stain’ll never come out. Hand me that plate, Smith.”
Smith, deciding he would never understand demons, obliged. Lord Ermenwyr laid Blichbiss’s liver out on the plate and began cutting it up, turning his face away. “Oh, the smell—Did you bring a juicer with that lemon, Smith? I’ll never be able to keep this down—”
“What are you doing?” said Lord Eyrdway, looking on scandalized.
“I’m fixing Liver Tartare, or I’m not eating this thing at all,” his brother snarled. “And the rest of you can just get those offended looks off your faces. Smith, you’d better go before you pass out.”
Smith left gratefully.
He went downstairs, where Old Smith and New Smith were dozing in a booth, and woke them and sent them off to bed. Then he fixed himself a drink and sat alone in the darkened bar, sipping his drink slowly, reviewing the events of the last two days.
When he heard Mrs. Smith returning with Crucible and Pinion, he emerged from the bar. “How did it go?” he inquired.
Crucible and Pinion, who were staggering slightly, threw their fists into the air and gave warrior grunts of victory. Mrs. Smith held up her gold medal.
“A triumph,” she said quietly. She looked into Smith’s eyes. “Boys, I think you’d best go to bed.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Pinion thickly, and he and Crucible staggered away.
“Why don’t we go talk in the kitchen?” Mrs. Smith suggested. She started down the passageway, and Smith followed, carrying his drink.
In the kitchen, Mrs. Smith removed her medal and hung it above the stove. She considered it a moment before turning and drawing out a chair. She draped her gown’s train over one arm and sat down; and, with leisurely movements, took out and filled her smoking tube.
“A light, please, Smith,” she requested.
He lit a straw at the stove, digging in the banked coals, and held it out for her. She puffed until the amberleaf lit and sat back.
“Well?” she said.
“How would I get hold of a bloatfish liver, if I wanted one?” Smith asked her.
“Simple,” said Mrs. Smith. “You’d just walk down to the waterfront when the fishermen were sortin
g through their catches, before the fish-market dealers got there. You’d find a fisherman and ask if he had any nice live bloatfish. You might play the foolish old woman, a bit. And you’d listen very carefully when the fisherman told you how to filet the fish once you’d got it home, and thank him for his warning about the nasty liver. Then you’d carry the bloatfish home in a pail.
“And,” she went on composedly, “if there was a particularly wicked man asking for an early dinner … and if you knew he’d ruined a few innocent people in his time and even driven a couple of them to suicide … and if you knew a little girl was crying her eyes out because he’d threatened her with what amounts to a death sentence unless she slept with him, even though she’d just fallen in love with someone else… and moreover this wicked man wanted her to give him information that would betray certain other persons … Well, then, Smith, I expect something rather dreadful might find its way into the appetizer he’d ordered.
“Mind you, I admit to nothing,” she added. “But I have absolutely no regrets.”
Smith sat in silence a moment, turning his drink in his hands, watching the ice melt. “Information that would betray certain other persons,” he echoed. “He wasn’t sure about you yet, but if he’d scared Burnbright badly enough, he’d have had you; and you’ve got a restaurant and a reputation to lose. Much better prospect for blackmail.
“You sneaked up there in the dark and burned most of his notes, but someone—probably Burnbright—interrupted you before you finished. You had the feast to get on the table, and Burnbright to calm down, so you never got back in there to burn the rest of the papers before Pinion discovered the murder.”
Mrs. Smith exhaled smoke and watched him, silent. At last he said, “Tell me how you got mixed up in the Spellmetal massacre.”
She sighed.