“How delightful. I, er, don’t suppose you’re serving any meat as well?”
“I could fry up sausages, my lord,” said Mrs. Smith.
“Sausages?… Yes, I’d like that. Lots of them? Blood rare?”
“Sausages only come one way, my lord.”
“Oh. They do? But what about blood sausage?”
“Even blood sausages come well-done,” Mrs. Smith explained. “Not much juice in a sausage.”
“Oh.” For a moment Lord Ermenwyr looked for all the world as though he were going to cry. “Well—have you got any blood sausage anyway?”
“I’ve got some imported duck blood sausage,” said Mrs. Smith.
“Duck blood?” Lord Ermenwyr seemed horrified. “All right, then—I’ll have all the duck blood sausage you’ve got. And one of those flatcakes with lots and lots of syrup, please. And tea.”
Mrs. Smith gave him a sidelong look, but murmured, “Right away, my lord.”
“You didn’t notice anything unusual in the night, did you, my lord?” asked Smith, who had been watching him as he sipped his tea. Lord Ermenwyr turned sharply.
“Who? Me? What? No! Slept like a baby,” he cried. “Why? Did something unusual happen?”
“There was a bit of unpleasantness,” said Smith. “Something came lurking around.”
“Horrors, what an idea! I suppose there’s no way of increasing our speed so we’ll be off this plain any quicker?”
“Not with one of our keymen down, I’m afraid,” Smith replied.
“We’ll just have to be on our guard, then, won’t we?” said Lord Ermenwyr.
“You know, my lord,” said Mrs. Smith as she laid out sausages on the griddle, “you needn’t stand and wait for your breakfast. You can send out your nurse to fetch it for you when it’s ready.”
“Oh, I feel like getting my own breakfast this morning, thank you.” Lord Ermenwyr flinched and bared his teeth as the Smiths’ baby began the morning lamentation.
“I see,” said Mrs. Smith. Smith looked at her.
He watched as, one by one, the keymen and the guests emerged from their tents alive and whole. Parradan Smith sniffed the air suspiciously, then shrugged and went off to wash himself. Burnbright crawled out of her bedroll, yawned, and came over to the kitchen pavilion, where she attempted to drink rose-apricot syrup from the bottle until Mrs. Smith hit her across the knuckles with a wooden spoon. The Smith children straggled forth and went straight to the mess of green slime and strips of fur where the demon’s body had been and proceeded to poke their little fingers in it.
Ronrishim Flowering Reed stepped from his tent, saw the mess, and looked disgusted. He picked his way across the circle to the kitchen pavilion.
“Is it possible to get a cup of clean water?” he inquired. “And have you any rose extract?”
“Burnbright, fetch the nice man his water,” said Mrs. Smith. “Haven’t any rose extract, sir, but we do have rose-apricot syrup.” Burnbright held it up helpfully.
Flowering Reed’s lip curled.
“No, thank you,” he said. “Plain rose extract was all I required. We are a people of simple tastes. We do not find it necessary to cloy our appetites with adulterated and excessive sensation.”
“But it’s so much fun,” Lord Ermenwyr told him. Flowering Reed looked at him with loathing, took his cup of water, and stalked away in silence.
Lord Ermenwyr took his breakfast order, when it was ready, straight off to his palanquin and crawled inside with it. He did not emerge thereafter until it was time to break camp, when he came out himself and took down his pavilion.
“Is Madam Balnshik all right?” Smith inquired, coming to lend a hand, for the lordling was wheezing in an alarming manner.
“Just fine,” Lord Ermenwyr assured him, his eyes bulging. “Be a good fellow and hold the other end of this, will you? Thanks ever so. Nursie’s just got a, er, headache. The change in air pressure as we approach the highlands, no doubt. She’ll be right as rain, later. You’ll see.”
In fact she did not emerge until they made camp that evening, though when she did she looked serene and gorgeous as ever. Mrs. Smith watched her as she dined heartily on that night’s entree, which was baked boar ham with brandied lemon-and-raisin sauce. Lord Ermenwyr, by contrast, took but a cup of consomme in his pavilion.
“That’s two murder attempts,” said Mrs. Smith, as the fire was going down to embers and all the guests had retired.
“You don’t think it’s been robbery either, then,” said Smith. She exhaled a plume of smoke and shook her head.
“Not when a demon’s sent,” she said. “And that was a sending, depend upon it.”
“I didn’t think there were any sorcerers in Troon,”