handling. Not to be added to soups, stews, or casseroles. Smith mixed up the recommended dosage for particularly long-standing clogs and poured it into the drain. He was gratified to see a jet of livid green foam rise at once, as though fighting to escape from the pipe, then sink back, bubbling ominously. He stacked the opened barrel next to the hotel’s toolshed, beside the nine unopened ones, and returned to the kitchen in a happy mood.
“Looks like that stuff’s working,” he said to Mrs. Smith, who was busy jamming a small plucked and boned bird up the gaping nether orifice of a somewhat larger boned bird. “Er—what’s this?”
“Specialty dish of the evening,” she panted. “Hard-boiled egg in a quail in a rock hen in a duck in a goose in a sea dragon, and the whole thing roasted and glazed in fruit syrup and served with a bread sauce. Miserably complicated to make, but it’s expected at Festival time, and besides”— she gave a final shove and the smaller bird vanished at last, “—rumor hath it there’s some sort of journalist has booked a table for this evening, and it always pays to impress the restaurant critics.”
Smith nodded. The Hotel Grandview was an old building with uncertain plumbing in a distinctly unfashionable part of town, but its restaurant had a steadily growing gourmet clientele that was keeping them in business. That was entirely due to Mrs. Smith’s ability to turn a sausage or a handful of cold oatmeal into cuisine fit for anybody’s gods, let alone the gastronomes of a seaside resort.
“So I shall need Burnbright to run down to that Yendri shop for a sack of those funny little yellow plums, because they’ll fit in the sea dragon’s eye sockets after it’s cooked and give it a fearfully lifelike air,” Mrs. Smith added.
“I’ll send her now,” said Smith, filching a piece of crisply fried eel from a tray and wandering out in search of Burnbright.
He was expecting a certain amount of whining. He was right.
“I hate going into Greenietown!” wailed Burnbright. “They always look at me funny! They’re all a bunch of oversexed savages.”
“Look, they’re not going to rape you,” Smith told her. “They have to take a vow they won’t do anything like that before they’re allowed to open shops in our cities.”
“Well, they’re always lying in wait by the mountain roads and raping our long-distance messengers,” claimed Burnbright. “At the Mount Flame Mother House for Runners—”
“Do you know anybody that’s ever actually happened to?”
“No, but everybody knows—”
“You can run all the way back,” Smith told her, slipping a coin into her hand and gently ushering her toward the hotel’s front door.
“Why can’t Smith or Bellows or one of them go?” Burnbright persisted.
“Because they’ve gone up to the caravan depot to pick up Lord Ermenwyr’s trunks,” said Smith.
“Eeew,” said Burnbright, and sped out the door.
She did not particularly care for Lord Ermenwyr either, despite the fact that he was the Hotel Grandview’s patron. Burnbright’s immediate disfavor was due to the fact that Lord Ermenwyr consistently made overtures of an improper nature to her during his frequent visits, and she thought he was a creepy little man, patron or no.
Smith ducked into the bar to see if all was going well, took a brief detour through the indoor section of the restaurant (silent as a temple at that hour, with its folded napkins and crystal set out expectantly) and slipped behind his desk to look over the guestbook. The Grandview was full up with reservations, as he’d hoped it would be for the holiday. His eye fell on the name just below Lord Ermenwyr’s: Sharplin Coppercut.
Smith knit his brows, thinking the name was familiar. Some kind of journalist? Maybe the food critic Mrs. Smith was expecting? As he wondered, a thin shadow moved across the doorway and a thin and elegantly dressed man followed after it. Behind him a city porter struggled with a ponderous trunk.
The elegant man came straight to the desk, moving silent as his shadow, and in a quiet voice said; “Sharplin Coppercut.”
Smith blinked at him a moment, “Oh!” he said belatedly, “You have a reservation. Right, here you are: Room 2. It’s just up those stairs, sir, first door on the left. Come to have fun at the Festival, have you?”
“I do hope so,” said Coppercut, stamping the ledger with his house sign. He replaced his seal in its pendant box and swept the lobby with a penetrating gaze. “Have you a runner on