"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.
"Sorry," he said in a loud stage whisper. "Come on, where's the you-know?"
Smith hurried down to join them and led the party back to the kitchen, where they descended into the cold cellar. Coppercut was gray and stiff as a board, which put smuggling him upstairs in an empty barrel out of the question. At last, after a certain amount of grisly hilarity and impractical, not to say criminal, suggestions, they settled for draping the corpse in sacking and carrying him out. Smith prayed there wouldn't be any guests in the lobby, and there weren't; after Bellows gave them the all clear and waved them through, they took the body up the stairs, tottering under it like a crowd of mismatched ants toting a dead beetle.
Thoroughly unnerved by the time they were back in Lord Ermenwyr's suite, Smith was relieved to see neither black candles nor dark-fumed incense lit, but only bright lamps arranged around a table that had been tidily covered with oilcloth. On a smaller table close at hand were laid out edged tools of distressingly culinary design.
"Let's just plop him down over there," said Lord Ermenwyr, slipping out from under the corpse to shut the door. "Boys, cut his clothes off."
"Don't
cut
them, for gods' sake," said Smith. "I've still got to hand him over to Crossbrace tomorrow. If he's naked with a big hole in him, that'll raise some questions, won't it?"
"Too true," Lord Ermenwyr said. "All right; just get the clothes off him somehow, boys."
The bodyguards set to their task obligingly, and though Coppercut's body went through some maneuvers that could best be described as terribly undignified, his clothes came off at last.
"It's like one of those puzzles," growled Crish happily, holding up Coppercut's tunic. "You can do it; you just have to think really hard."
"Good for you," said Lord Ermenwyr, removing his own jacket and shirt. He stripped a sheet from the bed and tied it around his neck like an immense trailing napkin. Smith paced nervously, watching the proceedings and silently apologizing to Coppercut.
"Now then." Lord Ermenwyr stepped up to the corpse and studied it. "What have we got? A male Child of the Sun, dead roughly a day and a half. Looks to be in the prime of life. No signs of chronic illness present. Well-healed scar on the right side, between the third and fourth ribs. Someone once took a shot at you with, hm, a pistol bolt? Missed anything vital, though. Otherwise unscarred and well nourished. Some evidence of initial processes of putrefaction."
Smith groaned. "Get on with it, please!"
"You want me to find out what killed him, don't you?" Lord Ermenwyr replied. He peered into Coppercut's eyes and ears, felt gingerly all over his skull. "No evidence of head injury. Nobody sneaked up and coshed him from behind. Signs of asphyxia present. Internal suffocation? I'm betting on poison. Let's see the stomach contents."
He selected a small knife from the table at his elbow and made a long incision down Coppercut's front. Smith, watching, felt himself break out in a cold sweat.
"Let's see, where does your race keep their stomachs? I remember now... here we go. Come and help me, Smith. Oh, all right! Strangel, hand him the lamp and
you
come help me. Honestly, Smith, what kind of an assassin were you?"
"A quick one," Smith panted, averting his face. "Even on the battlefield you have to hack off arms and heads and things, but--but it's all in the heat of the moment. It's nothing like this. I guess you learned how from your lord father?"
The bodyguards started to genuflect and narrowly stopped themselves, as lamplight flickered crazily in the room and Crish nearly dropped what Lord Ermenwyr had given him to hold.
"Steady," warned Lord Ermenwyr. "No ... I learned it from Mother, if you want to know the truth. It's her opinion that if you study the processes of death, you can save other lives. Don't imagine she trembles over the dissecting table either, Smith. She has nerves of ice.
Real
Good can be as ruthless as Evil when it wants to accomplish something, let me tell you."
"I guess so." Smith wiped his brow and got control of his nerves.
"He didn't eat much. I'd say his stomach was empty when he got here. Had ... wine, had Mrs. Smith's delightful fried eel... looks like a bit of buttered roll... what's this stuff?"
"He ate his appetizer," Smith stated. "I think it was fish."
"Fish, yes. Those dreadful little raw fish petits fours Salesh is so proud of? That's what these are, then. I can't imagine how you people manage to eat them, especially with all those incendiary sauces ... oh."
"Oh?"
"I think I've found what did for him, Smith," said Lord Ermenwyr in an odd voice. He reached for a pair of tweezers and picked something out of the depths of Coppercut, and held it out into the lamplight, turning it this way and that. Smith peered at it. It was a small gray lump of matter.
"What the hell is that?"
"Unless I'm much mistaken--" Lord Ermenwyr took up a finely ground lens in a frame and screwed it into his eye. He studied the object closely. "And I'm not, this is a bloatfish liver."
"And that would be?"
Lord Ermenwyr removed the lens and regarded him. "You were a weapons man, weren't you? Not a poisons man. I'd bet you've never sold fish, either."
"No, I never did. Bloatfish liver is poisonous?"
"Deadly poisonous." Lord Ermenwyr spoke with an unaccustomed gravity. "The rest of the fish is safe to eat, but the liver is so full of toxin most cities have an ordinance requiring that it be removed before the fish can be sold. Perhaps Salesh isn't as safety-conscious. In any case, this got into his fish appetizer. He had three minutes to live from the moment he swallowed it down."
Smith groaned. "So it was his dinner. Not Scourbrass's Foaming Wonder."
"Yes, but I don't think you have to worry about losing your catering license," said Lord Ermenwyr, setting aside the liver and beginning to replace Coppercut's organs. "This wasn't negligence. It was deliberate murder. The liver was incised laterally to make sure the poison was released. Anyway, you don't just stick a whole bloatfish liver inside a Salesh Roll by mistake!"
Smith bowed his head and swore quietly.
Coppercut had been sutured up and was having his garments wrestled back on when there came a sharp knock at the door.
"What?" demanded Lord Ermenwyr, removing his makeshift apron and reaching for his shirt.
"It's me," said Lord Eyrdway from the hallway.
"Bathroom," hissed Lord Ermenwyr to his bodyguards, gesturing at the corpse. They grabbed it up and carried it off. "He tends to get overexcited if he sees cadavers," he explained to Smith in an undertone, then raised his voice. "You're back early. What's the matter? Wasn't Salesh impressed with your beauty?" he inquired, buttoning up his shirt.
"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...