by Kage Baker
Burnbright thought about that a moment before her lip began to tremble afresh.
“You mean they could do that?” she said. “With our baby coming and all?”
“Of course they couldn’t, child,” said Mrs. Smith, looking daggers at Smith and reaching for the Calming Syrup again. “We just told you so. Besides, he’s my son, isn’t he? And it’s my little grandbaby’s future at stake, isn’t it? And I’d like to see the City Factor foolhardy enough to throw miscegenation in my face.”
I wouldn’t, thought Smith, and exited quietly.
He heard the bell in the lobby summoning him. Someone was hammering away at it imperiously. He swore under his breath, wondering what else could go wrong with his day, or his week, or his life…
“Here he is! Oh, dear, doesn’t he look cross?” said Lord Ermenwyr brightly. “Ow! What was that for?”
“Because you’re an unsympathetic little beast, Master,” Balnshik told him, and held out her hand. “Smith, darling! How have you been these last few months?”
Smith gulped. His brain ground to a halt, his senses shifted gears.
He knew she was an ageless, deathless, deadly thing; but there she stood in a white beaded gown that glittered like frost, with a stole of white fox furs, and she was elegant and desirable beyond reason.
Beside her stood Lord Ermenwyr, looking sleek and healthy for a change, loudly dressed in the latest fashion. How anyone could wear black and still be loudly dressed was a mystery to Smith. The lordling’s hat bore some of the responsibility: it was a high sugar-loaf copatain, cockaded with a plume that swept the lobby’s chandelier. Beyond him were Cutt, Crish, Stabb, and Strangel, heavily laden with luggage.
“Uh—I’ve been fine,” Smith replied.
“Well, you look like you’ve been through a wringer,” Lord Ermenwyr said. “Never mind! Now I’m here, all will be joy and merriment. Boys, take the trunks up to my customary suite and unpack.”
They instantly obeyed, shuffling up the stairs like a city block on the move. Lord Ermenwyr looked Smith up and down.
“Business has been off a bit, has it? I shouldn’t be at all surprised. But you needn’t worry about me, at least! I’m simply here to relax and have a lovely time in dear old Salesh-by-the-Sea. Go to the theaters with Nursie dearest, visit the baths, sample the latest prostitutes—”
There was a rending crash from somewhere upstairs.
“Oh, bugger,” said Lord Ermenwyr, glancing upward. “We forgot to give them a room key, didn’t we?”
“I think poor Smith needs a cool drink on the terrace,” said Balnshik, running one hand through his hair. “Let’s all go. Fetch a bottle from the bar, Master.”
He had to admit he felt better, sitting out at one of the tables while Balnshik poured the wine. All his other problems shrank in comparison to the prospect of a few weeks’ visit by demons, even if they were pleasantly civilized ones. And Balnshik’s physical attentions were pleasant indeed, though they stopped abruptly when Burnbright and Mrs. Smith joined them on the terrace. Instantly, the ladies formed a tight huddle and locked into a private conversation whose subject was exclusively pregnancy.
Lord Ermenwyr regarded them narrowly, shrugged, and lit his smoking tube with a fireball.
“Tsk; they won’t even notice us for the next three hours, now, Smith. I suppose we’ll have to sit here and find manly things to talk about. I detest sports of any kind, and your politics don’t even remotely interest me, and the weather isn’t really a gender-specific topic, is it? How about business? Yes, do tell me how your business is going.”
Smith told him. He listened thoughtfully, exhaling smoke from time to time.
“…And then there’s the trouble in, in the quarter where the Yendri businesses are,” Smith continued. “I can’t understand it; everyone’s always gotten along here, but now… they’re all resentful and we’re all on edge. The bathhouse keepers are up in arms, by all the gods! Rioting herbalists! I don’t know where it will end, but it certainly isn’t good for keeping hotel rooms occupied.”
“Oh, I’ll book the whole damn place for the summer, if that’ll help,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “That’s the least of your worries. You know what’s behind all this, of course.”
“No,” said Smith, with a familiar sense of impending doom. “What’s behind it?”
“This stupid man Smallbrass and his Planned Community, naturally,” Lord Ermenwyr replied. “Don’t tell me you haven’t seen the signs! Or perhaps you haven’t. They’re being defaced as soon as they go up.”
“Oh. That place being built down the coast?” Smith blinked. “What about it? The Yendri always complain when we build another city, but it’s not as though we were hurting anybody. We’ve got to have someplace to live, haven’t we?”
“I don’t know that the other races sharing the world with you would necessarily agree,” said Lord Ermenwyr delicately.
“Well, all right. But why should they be so especially bothered now?”
Lord Ermenwyr looked at Smith from a certain distance, all the clever nastiness gone from his face. It was far more disconcerting than his usual repertory of unpleasant expressions.
“Perhaps I ought to explain something—” he began, and then both he and Smith were on their feet and staring across the garden at the hotel. There was shouting coming from the lobby, followed by the shatter of glass. Burnbright gave a little shriek that dopplered away from them as they ran, along with Mrs. Smith’s cry of, “Stay here and keep down, for gods’ sake!”
Smith, though older and heavier, got there first, for halfway through the garden Balnshik materialized in front of Lord Ermenwyr and arrested his progress with her formidable bosom. He hit it and bounced back, slightly stunned, and so Smith was the one to catch Willowspear as he staggered out into the garden. The Yendri was bleeding from a cut above one eye.
“It’s all right,” he gasped. “They ran away. But the front window is smashed—”
They haven’t been here two hours, and I’m already down a door and a window, said an exasperated little voice in the back of Smith’s head. Out loud he said, “Damn ’em anyway. Look, I’m sorry—”
“Oh, they weren’t your people,” Willowspear told him, pressing his palm to the cut to stop the bleeding. “They were Yendri, I’m afraid.”
“What in the Nine Hells did you do that for?” Lord Ermenwyr demanded of Balnshik. “I think I’ve got a rhinestone in my eye!”
“I’m under geas to protect you, Master,” she reminded him.
“Well, I’m supposed to protect anyone ever sworn to my service, and an oath is just as good as a geas any day—”
“Bloody greenies!” snarled Crucible, emerging from the lobby. “Are you all right, son?”
“Don’t call him a greenie!” cried Burnbright, who had finally struggled across the yard. “Oh, oh, he’s hurt!”
“Well, but he’s our greenie, and anyway it was the other damn greenies—”
“I’m fine,” Willowspear assured her, attempting to bow to Lord Ermenwyr. “It’s a scratch. My gracious lord, I trust you’re well? We were coming back up Front Street and we were accosted by three, er—”
“Members of the Yendri race,” supplied Smith helpfully.
“—who demanded to know what I was doing in the company of two, er—Children of the Sun, and wanted me to go with them to—I think it was to attend a protest meeting or something, and when I tried to explain—”
“They started chucking rocks at our heads,” said Pinion, dusting his hands as he stepped out to join them. “But halfway down the block the City Wardens caught sight of them and they took off, and the Wardens went after ’em like a gree—like something really fast. You want us to board up the window, boss?”
Fifteen minutes later they were back at their places on the terrace, somewhat shaken but not much the worse for wear. Balnshik had deftly salved and bandaged Willowspear’s cut, and he sat with a drink in one hand. Burnbright perched in his lap, clinging to hi
m. Mrs. Smith had been puffing so furiously on her jade tube that she was veiled in smoke, like a mountain obscured by mist.
“But you’d be safe up there, you young fool,” she was telling Willowspear. She turned in appeal to Lord Ermenwyr. “You’re his liege lord or something, aren’t you? Can’t you tell him to go, for his own good?”
“Alas, I released him from his vows,” said Lord Ermenwyr solemnly. “Far be it from me to tell him that considerations of duty outweighed the vague promptings of a vision quest. Bet you’re sorry now, eh? Ow,” he added, almost absentmindedly, as Balnshik boxed his ear. “Besides, if a boy won’t listen to his own dear mother, whomever else will he heed?”
“I can’t go back to the Greenlands,” said Willowspear. “I’ve planted a garden here. I have students. I have patients. My child will be born a citizen of this city. I’m doing no one any harm; why shouldn’t I be safe?”
Mrs. Smith groaned and vanished in a fogbank of fume.
“And how would my love travel, so heavy laden?” Willowspear continued, looking down at Burnbright. “You can’t have our baby in the wilderness; not a little city girl like you. You’d be so frightened, my heart.”
“I’d go anywhere you wanted, if we had to,” she said, knuckling away her tears. “I was born in the wilderness, wasn’t I? And I wouldn’t be scared of the Master of the Mountain or anybody.”
“He doesn’t really eat babies,” Lord Ermenwyr told her. “Very often, anyway. Ow.”
“And maybe everyone will come to their senses, and this whole thing will blow over when the weather turns cooler,” said Smith.
“Ah—not likely,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “Things are going to get rather nasty, I’m afraid.”
“That’s right; you were saying that when all hell broke loose.” Smith got up and opened another bottle. “If my business is going to be wrecked, I’d at least like to know why.”
Lord Ermenwyr shook his head. He tugged at his beard a moment, and said finally, “How much do you know about the Yendri faith?”
“I know they worship your mother,” said Smith.
“Not exactly,” said Lord Ermenwyr.
“Yes, we do,” said Willowspear.
Lord Ermenwyr squirmed slightly in his chair. “Well, you don’t think she’s a—a goddess or anything like that. She’s just a prophetess. Sort of.”
“She is the treva of the whole world, She is the living Truth, She is the Incarnation of divine Love in its active aspect,” said Willowspear with perfect assurance. “The Redeemer, the Breaker of Chains, the Subduer of Demons,”
“Amen,” said Balnshik, just a trace grudgingly.
“Yes, well, I suppose she is.” Lord Ermenwyr scowled. “All the Yendri pray to Mother, but she has someone she prays to in her turn, you know. You have to understand Yendri history. They used to be slaves.”
“The Time of Bondage,” sang Willowspear. “In the long-dark-sorrow in the Valley of Walls, in the black-filth-chains of the slave pens they prayed for a Deliverer! But till She came, there moved among the beaten-sorrowing-tearful the Comforter, the Star-Cloaked Man, the Lover of Widows.”
“Some sort of holy man anyway,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “Resistance leader, apparently. Foretold the coming of a Holy Child, then conveniently produced one. Daddy’s always had his private opinion on how that happened.”
Willowspear was shocked into speechlessness for a moment before stammering, “She miraculously appeared in the heart of a great payraja blossom! There were witnesses!”
“Yes, and I saw a man pull three handkerchiefs and a silver coin out of his own ear over on Anchor Street this very afternoon,” Lord Ermenwyr retorted. “Life’s full of miracles, but we all know perfectly well where babies come from. The point is, when she was three days old the Yendri rose in rebellion. The Star-Cloaked Man carried her before them, and she was their—”
“Their Shield, their Inspirer, that day in the wheatfield, that day by the river, when grim was the reckoning—”
“And evidently in all the uproar of overthrowing their masters, the Star-Cloaked Man cut his foot on a scythe or something, and the wound could never heal because he’d broken his vow of nonviolence to finally start the rebellion. So he limped for the rest of the big exodus out of the Valley of Walls, lugging Mother-as-a-baby the whole way.”
“And flowers sprang up in the blood where he walked,” said Willowspear.
“I remember hearing this story,” Mrs. Smith murmured. “Oh, what a long time ago … There was supposed to have been a miracle, with some butterflies.”
“Yes!” cried Willowspear. “The river rose at his bidding, the great-glassy-serpentbodied river, and for the earth’s children it cut the way, the road to liberation! And they left that place and lo, after them came the souls of the dead. They would not stay in chains, in the form of butterflies they came, whitewinged-transparent-singing, so many flower petals drifting on the wind, the broken-despaired-of-lost came too, and floated above their heads to the new country.”
“Which means they followed the annual migration path of some cabbage moths, I suppose. It added a mythic dimension to everything, to be sure, and eventually they got as far as where the river met the sea,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “The ‘sacred grove of Hlinjerith, where mist hung in the branches.’ Just exactly what happened next has always been a matter of some speculation in our family.”
“Everyone knows what happened,” said Willowspear, looking at his liege lord a bit sternly. “The Star-Cloaked Man, the Beloved Imperfect, was sore afflicted of his wound, and his strength was faded, and his heart was faint. His disciples wept. But She in Her mercy forgave his sin of wrath.”
“Oh, -nonsense, she can’t have been more than six months old—”
“She worked a miracle for his sake, and from the foam of the river his deliverance rose—”
“It is made of the crystal foam,
The White Ship,
See it rise, and from every line and spar
Bright water runs; the wild birds scream and sing
To see it rise on the glassy-smooth wave.
And it will bear us over
To where all shame is washed away
It will sail the new moon’s path
And it will bear us over
To the Beloved’s arms…”
The song rose seemingly from nowhere, warbled out in a profound and rather eerie contralto. It was a moment before Smith realized that Mrs. Smith was singing, from within her cloud.
They all sat staring at her a moment before Balnshik pulled a handkerchief from Lord Ermenwyr’s pocket and handed it to her.
“Thank you,” said Mrs. Smith indistinctly. “You could top up my drink, too, if you don’t mind. Your father used to sing that, young Willowspear.” She blew her nose. “When he was stoned. Mind you, we all were, most of the time. But do go on.”
“Daddy thinks that the Star-Cloaked Man died, and was quietly buried on that spot,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “But most Yendri believe some magical craft bore him away across the sea. And all the white butterflies went with him. The Yendri crossed the river with Mother and the rest of the refugees, and they settled in the forests.”
“But each year, in the season of his going, many of our people travel to that grove where the river meets the sea,” said Willowspear. “There they pray, and meditate. In sacred Hlinjerith, it is said, healing dreams come to the afflicted, borne on the wings of white butterflies.”
“And now, just guess, Smith, where your Mr. Smallbrass has decided to build his Planned Community,” said Lord Ermenwyr.
“Oh,” said Smith.
“No wonder the greenies are having fits,” said Mrs. Smith, blowing her nose again.
“That’s awful!” said Burnbright, appalled. She looked up at Willowspear. “We can’t just go building houses all over somebody else’s holy place! Why didn’t you tell me what was going on?”
“My love, what could you do?” Willowspear replied. “You’re not to blame.”
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“But it’s wrong,” she said. “And we’re always doing it, aren’t we? Cutting down your trees and moving in? We don’t know it’s wrong, but no wonder you hate us!”
“How could I ever hate you?” he said, kissing her between the eyes. “You are my jewel-of-fire-and-the-sun. And you are not like the others.”
“I am, though,” Burnbright said. Lord Ermenwyr cleared his throat.
“To interrupt this touching moment of mutual devotion—I haven’t told all yet.”
“It gets worse?” asked Smith.
“Yes, it does,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “As bad luck would have it, there was a prophecy made when Mother and Daddy got married, to the effect that one day the Star-Cloaked Man will return from over the sea, and that he’ll set the world to rights again. Daddy says it was propaganda put about by reactionary elements who disapproved of Mother no longer being quite such a virgin as she used to be.
“Nevertheless—that prophecy’s been dug out and dusted off. The Yendri are saying that the Star-Cloaked Man is coming back any day now. And when the White Ship comes sailing back and ties up at the Smallbrass Estates Marina, formerly Hlinjerith of the Misty Branches—well, the Star-Cloaked’ll be pretty cheesed off to see what’s happened to local property values.”
“But it’s only a legend, right?” said Smith.
“Not to all those denizens of the forest,” said Lord Ermenwyr. “And the first of your people to set an axe to the sacred grove will get his head split open. It’ll be all-out race war.”
“But the Yendri are nice. They don’t do things like that,” said Burnbright miserably.
“Some of them do,” said Balnshik. “Remember Mr. Flowering Reed?”
There was a silence at that.
“Of course,” said Lord Ermenwyr in a terrifically casual voice, “the clever thing to do would be to take a holiday in a happy seaside resort before all hell breaks loose and happy seaside resorts become a thing of the past, then skip out to a nice impenetrable mountain fortress ironclad with unbreakable protective spells.