«Eustace,» I murmured.
«What?» Yasmin asked.
«Never mind,» I said. «You're a priestess, right?»
«My official title is Handmaid of Entropy.»
«You can explain what that means another time,» I told her. «Do you have any power over the undead?»
«Entropy isn't some god who protects you from ghoulies and ghosties,» she replied indignantly. «It's the supreme force of nature. We like to say we're the opposite side of the coin from druids – they hug trees, we chop the sodding things down as a sacrament.»
«Both no doubt annoy the trees,» I told her, «but at the moment, I'm more interested in a cleric who can command wights to… pike it, there they go.»
The three hooded figures had already entered the crowd. Now they threw off their robes, and hissed pure hatred at the mourners around them. As I suspected, the three were barrow wights like our delivery boy Eustace, animated corpses with razor-sharp claws in place of fingernails; and their job must be to cover the escape of the other two thieves.
People screamed at the sight of the undead monsters, then stumbled backward in a rush. One woman tripped over someone behind her, and fell shrieking to the cobblestones. Immediately, the closest wight leapt to the attack, grabbing her wrist with one hand and raking the claws of its other hand down her arm. Where the creature's claws made contact, the woman's flesh withered away, her muscles dissolving to threads as the skin shrank tight to the bone. The wight hissed once in triumph, then let her wrist go; the arm clattered useless to the pavement, reduced to a skeletal husk.
«What are you doing?» shouted a nearby Dustman to the wight. The man was in his forties, with red tattoo spirals inscribed on both cheeks. He walked straight up to the creature and stood in front of it, hands on his hips… like an outraged schoolmaster who's caught a student cheating. «Get back inside at once,» the Dustman said. «This behavior is intolerable.»
The wight cocked its head to one side, and regarded the Dustman with intense interest. Then its hand shot forward, claws outstretched; the nails stabbed through the Dustman's clothes like gauze and buried themselves deep in his chest, five soul-stealing daggers. The Dustman gasped softly. Something creaked inside of him, a long agonized noise like someone bending a stick slowly to the breaking point. One rib cracked, then another, then another, snapping so fiercely the ends of the bones pierced outward through the man's chest and protruded whitely from his robes.
Blood gushed in fountains, spattering the wight's face. It simply licked its lips and waited, waited till its life-draining grip had shriveled the man's chest to a pulp bristling with broken bones. Then it tossed the Dustman's corpse against the Mortuary wall, where it fell to the ground, rattling.
«That's impossible!» Yasmin whispered.
«How long have you lived in Sigil?» I whispered back. «Everything's possible here.»
«But the Dustmen have a pact with the undead – the Dead Truce. Undead creatures like that wight simply won't attack a Dustman unless the Dustman attacks first.»
«I know all about the Dead Truce,» I told her, «but those wights don't.»
«Someone is playing hob with the natural order,» she said, and this time she wasn't whispering. «Someone is trying to disrupt…»
The rest of the sentence was drowned out by the noise of Yasmin shucking off her backpack and drawing her sword.
«I hope that sword is either magic or silver,» I said to her. «You can't hurt wights with just a normal…»
But I didn't finish my sentence either, because Yasmin had already charged into the fray.
Whipping my rapier out of its sheath, I raced after Yasmin. A few mourners were already running in our direction, but they had enough sense to get out of our way; the rest of the crowd was shocked frozen with terror, unable to move as each of the wights chose a new victim to drain. All three victims were Dustmen, and all three Dustmen simply stared in disbelief as their hearts were ripped from their chests.
Yasmin took the nearest wight in the back, a furious thrust that pierced straight through the monster's spine, out the front of its ribcage, and halfway into the Dustman it held in its claws. The wight turned its head to look at Yasmin and hissed, its breath reeking of humid decay. I was close enough to smell the stench; I was also close enough to jam the tip of my rapier into that open mouth, up through the palate, and into its brain. Thanks to the sword's enchantments, the blade punched straight through the wight's skull, scattering gray matter and bone fragments onto the hapless Dustman in the monster's grip.
The Dustman didn't care. If he hadn't been dead already, getting impaled on Yasmin's sword had finished the job.
Our arrival snapped the remaining mourners out of their stupors. Howling with fear, they scattered; one little halfling even ran back into the Mortuary, certainly not the place I'd run for protection. By the time Yasmin and I dislodged our blades from the now-dead wight, we were alone in the street with the two remaining monsters.
«One on one?» I asked her. «Or shall we gang up on the closest of these berks?»
«I'll take the closest,» she replied. «You keep the other off my back.»
«Your wish is my command.»
Giving Yasmin's wight a wide berth, I sped around to face the other one. Once upon a time, this particular wight had been a woman, but that had been years ago. Now her face was ravaged with tomb rot, her skin flaking away to reveal the ligaments beneath.
«Hello,» I said to the monster. «Would you be available to model the next time I teach a figure drawing class? Students always have such a hard time with the anatomy of the face, and here you are, already dissected. You're a walking anatomy text book, my dear.»
The monster hissed and took a tentative swipe at me. I flicked my sword at her hand, just enough to make a small cut on her wrist. No blood dribbled out: nothing but a trickle of reddish dust.
«Some people think the rapier is an ineffectual little weapon,» I told the wight, «but they're only familiar with the blades used in competition fencing.» I stepped in just long enough for a slash that cut several exposed ligaments on her left cheek, then backed quickly away. «A competition rapier is only a thrusting weapon,» I explained, «but as you can see, a real rapier has two perfectly good cutting edges. Are you following all this?»
By the look of it, the wight was only interested in finding a way past my guard. She kept lunging, hissing and missing, as I swirled the blade in a continuously circling parry. The little nicks I gave her did no serious damage, but they kept her at bay; and second by second, her rage grew.
«I don't suppose you'd like to tell me why you broke the Dead Truce,» I asked the wight. «Whom you work for, what their plan is, that sort of thing?»
She hissed.
«So the truth is, you can't talk, right?»
She hissed again.
«That would be a yes,» I said to myself. Not being an expert on the undead, I had no idea whether your average wight was capable of speech; then again, these were obviously not average wights. These were creatures who should be examined by knowledgeable authorities.
Without taking my eyes off the wight in front of me, I called to Yasmin, «Keep dancing with your playmate out here. I need to consult a professional.» Then, with a flurry of sword strokes, I drove my wight back toward the Mortuary steps. (The monster really was a ham-handed fighter… but then, when you can wither opponents with one swipe of your claws, you don't have much incentive to acquire finesse.)
Up the stairs we went, wight hissing, my blade slashing. The huge iron-plated door gaped wide open, and we went inside, the wight still backing away from my attack and spitting with fury.
I had attended my share of funerals in the Mortuary, but had always used the main entrance. This back area was unfamiliar to me, a curving stone corridor with numerous doors – some open, some closed, and a big one leading to the front of the building, blown off its hinges by the exploding Phlegistol. With the exception of the wight's continuing hisses, the place was as quiet as a tomb. Admittedly, that shouldn't have been a surprise.
«Hello!» I shouted. «Anybody home?»
My voice echoed off the stone walls; the sound seemed to last forever. The wight made a half-hearted charge toward me, but backed away as the edge of my rapier sliced a gash across her collarbone. Accepting the inevitable, she began to back down the corridor that led to the front of the building. I could smell things burning ahead of us, and slowed my pace… not from fear of the fire, but from concern about the smoke. Wights are dead, so they don't have to breathe; if I started to get dizzy from smoke inhalation, the monster in front of me would gain a distinct advantage.
«I'd really love to talk to a Dustman,» I yelled, the Mortuary dome echoing dustman, dustman, dustman. «I have a renegade wight here that a Dustman should examine. It broke the Dead Truce. Someone should have a look at it.»
«A renegade wight, you say?»
At the far end of the corridor a gaunt figure appeared, backlit by the flicker of fires ravaging the front part of the Mortuary. For a moment the figure looked like some kind of undead thing itself, a corpse dressed in gray robes; but then my eyes adjusted to the light and recognized the reclusive Factol Skall of the Dustmen.
The wight was sandwiched between Skall and myself. She turned at the sound of his voice, and studied him.
«Be careful, your honor,» I said to Skall. «She killed several Dustmen out in the street. I saw her.»
«She attacked first?»
«Yes, your honor. Without provocation.»
«I find that hard to believe.»
The wight was looking back and forth between Skall and me, hissing more violently than ever. Her eyes burned as bright as the flames at the factol's back. Suddenly, she feinted a lunge at me, then hurtled toward Skall, claws poised for the kill. I raced after her, sprinting as fast as I could while preparing to slash off her head. Much as I had hoped the Dustmen could interrogate her, saving the factol's life had higher priority.
The wight sped toward Skall. I sped after her. Skall stood calmly as the two of us descended upon him; and at the last moment, he simply held up his hands and said, «Stop.»
My legs froze, my brain froze… even my arm, swinging down with the decapitating stroke, simply stopped dead in the air as if trapped in ice. The wight, however, seemed immune to whatever magic Skall used to paralyze me. She closed the remaining gap and seized Skall's arms with the ferocity of a rabid dog that has finally found someone to attack. Hissing gleefully, she dug her claws into his wrists and squeezed.
For several seconds, Skall didn't move a muscle. Then, slowly, he twisted his arms in the wight's grasp, so that he could grasp her wrists as tightly as she held his. The two stood there clutching each other, the crimson light of the wight's eyes flaring brighter and brighter in the dark corridor.
The embrace lasted almost a full minute, while I stood by helpless, unable to move. Slowly, the hatred on the wight's face changed to puzzlement, and she tried to pull away; but Skall held on easily, without a hint of strain. The fire in the wight's eyes continued to grow, casting two blurs of scarlet on the gray stone wall. At the last moment, she turned over her shoulder to look at me, her rotten face grimacing with fear and confusion. Then her entire body burst like a soap bubble, showering the corridor with a spray of cloying red dust.
«Remarkable,» said Skall. His robes were crimson with the dust, his face powdered to the color of blood. With a sudden surge, strength returned to my limbs and I could lower my sword arm. «Remarkable,» Skall said again. Turning his back on me, he walked off into the burning Mortuary, completely ignoring the flames.
«I've just had a chat with Factol Skall,» I told her.
«Did you learn anything?»
«That I never want another chat with Factol Skall.» I poked the pieces of Yasmin's wight with my toe. Red dust spilled from the sword wounds. «Is that dust typical when you kill wights?»
«I don't know,» Yasmin answered. «I've never fought a wight before.»
«Maybe one of our colleagues has.» I looked down the street in the direction Oonah and Kiripao had pursued the thieves.
Yasmin followed my gaze. «Should we go after them?» she asked.
«You go ahead,» I told her. «If our friends chase the enemy into the Hive, you'll have a hard time picking up their trail… but then, Oonah's the sort to leave marks as she goes. Deliberate scuffs in the dirt, arrows drawn on the pavement, that kind of thing.»
«What are you going to do?»
«I want to examine these wights more closely. They've piqued my curiosity.»
«All right.» She looked at me keenly for a few moments, as if trying to put some emotion into words. Finally, she simply said, «Watch your back, Cavendish.»
Before I could reply, she was running down the street, a lean figure in tight black dragon-skin. I tried to burn the image into my memory; it was something I'd want to sketch later on, and who cared if it didn't earn money.
Red dust pouring out of the wounds instead of blood. And underneath the robes that the wights wore as disguise, their ragged clothes were clogged thick with another kind of dust, a fine silt that reminded me of sculptor's clay.
I stroked the silt, then licked a bit off my finger. It had a soft nippy taste, like weak curry powder. Maybe these wights had a hide-out in a spice warehouse. However, the dust wasn't yellow like curry – on first glimpse, it had a light tan color, but on closer inspection I saw it was actually a mix of white and dark brown particles.
Red dust, white dust, brown dust… what I needed was a dwarf, a dwarf of a fanatical dwarvish bent: the kind who studies soil the way a lecher studies women. We had a few such dwarves in the Sensates, forever bringing in new minerals for everyone to sniff, lick, and eventually chew. It was only by the grace of healing spells that I still had a full set of teeth; at that moment, however, I would have welcomed one of those rock-kisser dwarves with open arms, if he could identify all these different types of dust.
Without such knowledge, I could only take samples of the dust and hope to get them identified later. For the brown and white dust, I ripped away a scrap of wight's clothing that was heavily imbued with the stuff; for the red dust, I tore off a page from my sketchbook and held it under one of the wight's wounds, catching the sifting dribble that took the place of blood. Carefully, I folded both samples and tucked them into my pocket.
As I straightened from examining the last wight, Hezekiah galloped around the corner of the Mortuary. «Britlin,» he shouted, «come on, hurry!»
«What is it?»
«Wheezle and me,» he gasped. «We've cornered the shooter.»
5. THREE SWINGS OF THE GATE
6. THREE BLOODS TO RESCUE
«What?» Yasmin asked.
«Never mind,» I said. «You're a priestess, right?»
«My official title is Handmaid of Entropy.»
«You can explain what that means another time,» I told her. «Do you have any power over the undead?»
«Entropy isn't some god who protects you from ghoulies and ghosties,» she replied indignantly. «It's the supreme force of nature. We like to say we're the opposite side of the coin from druids – they hug trees, we chop the sodding things down as a sacrament.»
«Both no doubt annoy the trees,» I told her, «but at the moment, I'm more interested in a cleric who can command wights to… pike it, there they go.»
The three hooded figures had already entered the crowd. Now they threw off their robes, and hissed pure hatred at the mourners around them. As I suspected, the three were barrow wights like our delivery boy Eustace, animated corpses with razor-sharp claws in place of fingernails; and their job must be to cover the escape of the other two thieves.
People screamed at the sight of the undead monsters, then stumbled backward in a rush. One woman tripped over someone behind her, and fell shrieking to the cobblestones. Immediately, the closest wight leapt to the attack, grabbing her wrist with one hand and raking the claws of its other hand down her arm. Where the creature's claws made contact, the woman's flesh withered away, her muscles dissolving to threads as the skin shrank tight to the bone. The wight hissed once in triumph, then let her wrist go; the arm clattered useless to the pavement, reduced to a skeletal husk.
«What are you doing?» shouted a nearby Dustman to the wight. The man was in his forties, with red tattoo spirals inscribed on both cheeks. He walked straight up to the creature and stood in front of it, hands on his hips… like an outraged schoolmaster who's caught a student cheating. «Get back inside at once,» the Dustman said. «This behavior is intolerable.»
The wight cocked its head to one side, and regarded the Dustman with intense interest. Then its hand shot forward, claws outstretched; the nails stabbed through the Dustman's clothes like gauze and buried themselves deep in his chest, five soul-stealing daggers. The Dustman gasped softly. Something creaked inside of him, a long agonized noise like someone bending a stick slowly to the breaking point. One rib cracked, then another, then another, snapping so fiercely the ends of the bones pierced outward through the man's chest and protruded whitely from his robes.
Blood gushed in fountains, spattering the wight's face. It simply licked its lips and waited, waited till its life-draining grip had shriveled the man's chest to a pulp bristling with broken bones. Then it tossed the Dustman's corpse against the Mortuary wall, where it fell to the ground, rattling.
«That's impossible!» Yasmin whispered.
«How long have you lived in Sigil?» I whispered back. «Everything's possible here.»
«But the Dustmen have a pact with the undead – the Dead Truce. Undead creatures like that wight simply won't attack a Dustman unless the Dustman attacks first.»
«I know all about the Dead Truce,» I told her, «but those wights don't.»
«Someone is playing hob with the natural order,» she said, and this time she wasn't whispering. «Someone is trying to disrupt…»
The rest of the sentence was drowned out by the noise of Yasmin shucking off her backpack and drawing her sword.
«I hope that sword is either magic or silver,» I said to her. «You can't hurt wights with just a normal…»
But I didn't finish my sentence either, because Yasmin had already charged into the fray.
* * *
For half a second, I hesitated – after all, our instructions had been to watch the enemy and refrain from direct involvement. However, I couldn't let Yasmin face three wights on her own; and even if Yasmin hadn't been there, it was high time for me to start saving lives. Much as I tried to put it out of my mind, I had allowed the Collectors to carry the exploding giant to their doom, because my orders told me to hold back. My father would have roared, «Pike the orders, people are dying!»Whipping my rapier out of its sheath, I raced after Yasmin. A few mourners were already running in our direction, but they had enough sense to get out of our way; the rest of the crowd was shocked frozen with terror, unable to move as each of the wights chose a new victim to drain. All three victims were Dustmen, and all three Dustmen simply stared in disbelief as their hearts were ripped from their chests.
Yasmin took the nearest wight in the back, a furious thrust that pierced straight through the monster's spine, out the front of its ribcage, and halfway into the Dustman it held in its claws. The wight turned its head to look at Yasmin and hissed, its breath reeking of humid decay. I was close enough to smell the stench; I was also close enough to jam the tip of my rapier into that open mouth, up through the palate, and into its brain. Thanks to the sword's enchantments, the blade punched straight through the wight's skull, scattering gray matter and bone fragments onto the hapless Dustman in the monster's grip.
The Dustman didn't care. If he hadn't been dead already, getting impaled on Yasmin's sword had finished the job.
Our arrival snapped the remaining mourners out of their stupors. Howling with fear, they scattered; one little halfling even ran back into the Mortuary, certainly not the place I'd run for protection. By the time Yasmin and I dislodged our blades from the now-dead wight, we were alone in the street with the two remaining monsters.
«One on one?» I asked her. «Or shall we gang up on the closest of these berks?»
«I'll take the closest,» she replied. «You keep the other off my back.»
«Your wish is my command.»
Giving Yasmin's wight a wide berth, I sped around to face the other one. Once upon a time, this particular wight had been a woman, but that had been years ago. Now her face was ravaged with tomb rot, her skin flaking away to reveal the ligaments beneath.
«Hello,» I said to the monster. «Would you be available to model the next time I teach a figure drawing class? Students always have such a hard time with the anatomy of the face, and here you are, already dissected. You're a walking anatomy text book, my dear.»
The monster hissed and took a tentative swipe at me. I flicked my sword at her hand, just enough to make a small cut on her wrist. No blood dribbled out: nothing but a trickle of reddish dust.
«Some people think the rapier is an ineffectual little weapon,» I told the wight, «but they're only familiar with the blades used in competition fencing.» I stepped in just long enough for a slash that cut several exposed ligaments on her left cheek, then backed quickly away. «A competition rapier is only a thrusting weapon,» I explained, «but as you can see, a real rapier has two perfectly good cutting edges. Are you following all this?»
By the look of it, the wight was only interested in finding a way past my guard. She kept lunging, hissing and missing, as I swirled the blade in a continuously circling parry. The little nicks I gave her did no serious damage, but they kept her at bay; and second by second, her rage grew.
«I don't suppose you'd like to tell me why you broke the Dead Truce,» I asked the wight. «Whom you work for, what their plan is, that sort of thing?»
She hissed.
«So the truth is, you can't talk, right?»
She hissed again.
«That would be a yes,» I said to myself. Not being an expert on the undead, I had no idea whether your average wight was capable of speech; then again, these were obviously not average wights. These were creatures who should be examined by knowledgeable authorities.
Without taking my eyes off the wight in front of me, I called to Yasmin, «Keep dancing with your playmate out here. I need to consult a professional.» Then, with a flurry of sword strokes, I drove my wight back toward the Mortuary steps. (The monster really was a ham-handed fighter… but then, when you can wither opponents with one swipe of your claws, you don't have much incentive to acquire finesse.)
Up the stairs we went, wight hissing, my blade slashing. The huge iron-plated door gaped wide open, and we went inside, the wight still backing away from my attack and spitting with fury.
I had attended my share of funerals in the Mortuary, but had always used the main entrance. This back area was unfamiliar to me, a curving stone corridor with numerous doors – some open, some closed, and a big one leading to the front of the building, blown off its hinges by the exploding Phlegistol. With the exception of the wight's continuing hisses, the place was as quiet as a tomb. Admittedly, that shouldn't have been a surprise.
«Hello!» I shouted. «Anybody home?»
My voice echoed off the stone walls; the sound seemed to last forever. The wight made a half-hearted charge toward me, but backed away as the edge of my rapier sliced a gash across her collarbone. Accepting the inevitable, she began to back down the corridor that led to the front of the building. I could smell things burning ahead of us, and slowed my pace… not from fear of the fire, but from concern about the smoke. Wights are dead, so they don't have to breathe; if I started to get dizzy from smoke inhalation, the monster in front of me would gain a distinct advantage.
«I'd really love to talk to a Dustman,» I yelled, the Mortuary dome echoing dustman, dustman, dustman. «I have a renegade wight here that a Dustman should examine. It broke the Dead Truce. Someone should have a look at it.»
«A renegade wight, you say?»
At the far end of the corridor a gaunt figure appeared, backlit by the flicker of fires ravaging the front part of the Mortuary. For a moment the figure looked like some kind of undead thing itself, a corpse dressed in gray robes; but then my eyes adjusted to the light and recognized the reclusive Factol Skall of the Dustmen.
The wight was sandwiched between Skall and myself. She turned at the sound of his voice, and studied him.
«Be careful, your honor,» I said to Skall. «She killed several Dustmen out in the street. I saw her.»
«She attacked first?»
«Yes, your honor. Without provocation.»
«I find that hard to believe.»
The wight was looking back and forth between Skall and me, hissing more violently than ever. Her eyes burned as bright as the flames at the factol's back. Suddenly, she feinted a lunge at me, then hurtled toward Skall, claws poised for the kill. I raced after her, sprinting as fast as I could while preparing to slash off her head. Much as I had hoped the Dustmen could interrogate her, saving the factol's life had higher priority.
The wight sped toward Skall. I sped after her. Skall stood calmly as the two of us descended upon him; and at the last moment, he simply held up his hands and said, «Stop.»
My legs froze, my brain froze… even my arm, swinging down with the decapitating stroke, simply stopped dead in the air as if trapped in ice. The wight, however, seemed immune to whatever magic Skall used to paralyze me. She closed the remaining gap and seized Skall's arms with the ferocity of a rabid dog that has finally found someone to attack. Hissing gleefully, she dug her claws into his wrists and squeezed.
For several seconds, Skall didn't move a muscle. Then, slowly, he twisted his arms in the wight's grasp, so that he could grasp her wrists as tightly as she held his. The two stood there clutching each other, the crimson light of the wight's eyes flaring brighter and brighter in the dark corridor.
The embrace lasted almost a full minute, while I stood by helpless, unable to move. Slowly, the hatred on the wight's face changed to puzzlement, and she tried to pull away; but Skall held on easily, without a hint of strain. The fire in the wight's eyes continued to grow, casting two blurs of scarlet on the gray stone wall. At the last moment, she turned over her shoulder to look at me, her rotten face grimacing with fear and confusion. Then her entire body burst like a soap bubble, showering the corridor with a spray of cloying red dust.
«Remarkable,» said Skall. His robes were crimson with the dust, his face powdered to the color of blood. With a sudden surge, strength returned to my limbs and I could lower my sword arm. «Remarkable,» Skall said again. Turning his back on me, he walked off into the burning Mortuary, completely ignoring the flames.
* * *
«Where have you been?» Yasmin asked. She had just retrieved her backpack, and was once more holding my charcoal sketch in her hand. The wight she'd been fighting lay chopped into pieces on the pavement.«I've just had a chat with Factol Skall,» I told her.
«Did you learn anything?»
«That I never want another chat with Factol Skall.» I poked the pieces of Yasmin's wight with my toe. Red dust spilled from the sword wounds. «Is that dust typical when you kill wights?»
«I don't know,» Yasmin answered. «I've never fought a wight before.»
«Maybe one of our colleagues has.» I looked down the street in the direction Oonah and Kiripao had pursued the thieves.
Yasmin followed my gaze. «Should we go after them?» she asked.
«You go ahead,» I told her. «If our friends chase the enemy into the Hive, you'll have a hard time picking up their trail… but then, Oonah's the sort to leave marks as she goes. Deliberate scuffs in the dirt, arrows drawn on the pavement, that kind of thing.»
«What are you going to do?»
«I want to examine these wights more closely. They've piqued my curiosity.»
«All right.» She looked at me keenly for a few moments, as if trying to put some emotion into words. Finally, she simply said, «Watch your back, Cavendish.»
Before I could reply, she was running down the street, a lean figure in tight black dragon-skin. I tried to burn the image into my memory; it was something I'd want to sketch later on, and who cared if it didn't earn money.
* * *
Dust.Red dust pouring out of the wounds instead of blood. And underneath the robes that the wights wore as disguise, their ragged clothes were clogged thick with another kind of dust, a fine silt that reminded me of sculptor's clay.
I stroked the silt, then licked a bit off my finger. It had a soft nippy taste, like weak curry powder. Maybe these wights had a hide-out in a spice warehouse. However, the dust wasn't yellow like curry – on first glimpse, it had a light tan color, but on closer inspection I saw it was actually a mix of white and dark brown particles.
Red dust, white dust, brown dust… what I needed was a dwarf, a dwarf of a fanatical dwarvish bent: the kind who studies soil the way a lecher studies women. We had a few such dwarves in the Sensates, forever bringing in new minerals for everyone to sniff, lick, and eventually chew. It was only by the grace of healing spells that I still had a full set of teeth; at that moment, however, I would have welcomed one of those rock-kisser dwarves with open arms, if he could identify all these different types of dust.
Without such knowledge, I could only take samples of the dust and hope to get them identified later. For the brown and white dust, I ripped away a scrap of wight's clothing that was heavily imbued with the stuff; for the red dust, I tore off a page from my sketchbook and held it under one of the wight's wounds, catching the sifting dribble that took the place of blood. Carefully, I folded both samples and tucked them into my pocket.
As I straightened from examining the last wight, Hezekiah galloped around the corner of the Mortuary. «Britlin,» he shouted, «come on, hurry!»
«What is it?»
«Wheezle and me,» he gasped. «We've cornered the shooter.»
5. THREE SWINGS OF THE GATE
I followed Hezekiah, and as we jogged he explained what had happened. He and Wheezle had scoured the area around the front of the Mortuary in search of whoever set off the explosion – not an easy task, given that most of the buildings had burst into flames. The boy and the gnome found several hiding places where someone might have shot a fireball or flame arrow to ignite the oil-soaked giant; but all those spots had been empty. With each passing moment the search for other such locations became more difficult, as people from nearby houses began to fill the streets, screaming at the fires and trying to organize bucket brigades from the closest wells.
In the middle of this growing confusion, Hezekiah had spotted a familiar face in the crowd. Leaning casually against a half-demolished stone wall stood one of the three men who participated in the fireball attack on the City Courts – the heavily-bearded basher with his hair bleached white. Tucked into his belt was a wand Hezekiah immediately recognized: bone-white ivory, speckled with glitters of red.
The man (whom Hezekiah dubbed Bleach-Hair) had stayed for a few minutes to watch the mob's frantic response to the fire, then walked away into the Hive. Hezekiah and Wheezle had followed at a distance, hampered by the growing crowds who had come to gawk at the fires. Once, my teammates actually lost their quarry; but they tracked him down again by running toward the noise of a fight in the next street.
By lucky chance (lucky for us, anyway), Bleach-Hair had turned a corner and run smack into the Parade of Dancing Ecstatics, as it wound its never-ending way through the byways of Sigil. Hezekiah only knew about them thanks to a brief explanation from Wheezle; but I was thoroughly familiar with the Ecstatics, having danced with them for three solid days several years earlier.
The Ecstatic Parade has continued without stop for more than four centuries, a drunkenly riotous assemblage of anyone who wants to join, prancing through the city streets according to the whims of whoever happens to be at the head of the line. A short distance behind the leader is a group of ten people called The Carriers of the Cow. They do not actually carry a cow; all they have is an empty wooden platform which is, I might add from experience, bristling with sodding splinters. Perhaps when the parade started so many years ago, the platform actually sported a cow, whether a living animal or a statue. Sometime over the centuries, however, the cow disappeared, and now only the platform remains.
Not even the Guvners remember what the parade is intended to celebrate, nor how it all started. The people who join it are simply people who want to dance and bub wine till they pass out in the street. Some dancers bring wine of their own to get themselves started, but that's seldom necessary; it's considered enormously good luck to donate drink to the parade if it passes you. When I danced in the parade elderly grandmothers begged me to take their hooch, in the belief that giving such a gift would help their arthritis. Who knows? Maybe it did. The women certainly seemed limber enough as they ran after me with their homemade moonshine.
So Bleach-Hair the fireballer had accidentally run into the parade, jostling several Carriers of the Cow. The drunken revellers had reacted predictably; and after the flailing of many fists, Bleach-Hair was riding naked on the cow's platform, his clothes and other equipment tossed into the street and trampled by dozens of dancing drunks.
«I hope you and Wheezle nabbed the firewand,» I said to Hezekiah.
The boy's answer was yes, but it had been a near thing. All of this happened in the slum streets of the Hive… and nothing but dog dung can lie on the pavement there without someone trying to steal it. Eager hands quickly grabbed for Bleach-Hair's discarded goods; but Wheezle had whipped a little piece of wool from his pocket, gestured and chanted for a moment, and suddenly there was a squad of Harmonium guards coming around the corner with spoiling-for-a-fight looks on their faces. The cross-traders trying to bob Bleach-Hair's wand had vanished in a trice, giving Hezekiah free rein to collect what Bleach-Hair had dropped.
«Did you get his clothes too?» I asked.
«Everything,» Hezekiah laughed, «we got everything. And as soon as I had it in my hands, the guards just melted into the pavement. Wheezle's really very good.»
«Gnomes are renowned as illusionists,» I agreed, then urged Hezekiah to continue his story.
The Ecstatics carried Bleach-Hair on the cow's platform for several blocks before he managed to catch hold of a clothes-line strung across the street and swing into an open window on the second floor of a tenement building. Much cursing ensued; but when Bleach-Hair came running out the building's front door, he was carrying some pants he'd stolen from the clothes-line and wearing most of a bowl of noodles dumped over his head. He had dodged the stragglers of the Ecstatic Parade and run down an alley to put on the pants. Then Hezekiah and Wheezle followed him to, of all places, a dirt-crusted tattoo parlor where he had been ever since.
«You think that's the enemy headquarters?» I asked.
«No,» Hezekiah replied, «I think he's getting a tattoo.»
My skin crinkled into goosebumps. «You're invisible, aren't you, Wheezle?»
«Yes, honored Cavendish.»
I couldn't see it, but I knew he was kowtowing to me.
«So,» I said, «I assume you've been inside the shop for a peek at what's going on.»
«Indeed. Mr. Bleach-Hair is obtaining a self-portrait on his right forearm.»
«How odd.» Tattooing is fashionable with parts of the populace, inside Sigil and all through the Outer Planes; but I'd never seen people display tattooed pictures of themselves. Most folks preferred arcane symbols, or clan markings, or images celebrating things they had killed. Never their own faces. For that matter, I seldom saw any kind of face, since it took an expert tattoo artist to make anything more than a cartoonish likeness.
«Tell me exactly what went on in there,» I said to the invisible Wheezle.
«The man, Mr. Bleach-Hair, entered and spoke some words to the proprietor of the shop. The proprietor is a drow woman, sir – a dark elf. She is probably very good at her trade; elves always excel at crafts.»
«I'm aware of that, Wheezle. Just get on with the story.»
«Of course, honored Cavendish.» This time, I really did catch the faint swishing sound as Wheezle kowtowed. «Alas, I could not get close enough to hear what Mr. Bleach-Hair said to the woman, since I had not yet cast my invisibility spell. However, there seemed to be a great deal of negotiations before the tattooist got down to business.»
«That's because we've got his money,» Hezekiah put in, holding up a bundle of clothing with dusty footprints all over it.
«In the end,» Wheezle continued, «he had to give the woman a gold ring from his finger, a ring the Ecstatics had overlooked while stripping him down. The woman accepted that as payment and has been working on his arm ever since. When it became apparent this would be a lengthy process, Master Hezekiah volunteered to go back to the Mortuary to find whoever was still there.»
Since we had the time, I gave the two of them my own report, telling about Oonah and Kiripao shadowing the two thieves while Yasmin and I dealt with the wights. Wheezle became very silent when I spoke of the undead creatures attacking his fellow Dustmen; I couldn't tell if he was shocked at wights breaking the Dead Truce, or grieving over the deaths of his fellows. Possibly he was rejoicing that his colleagues had finally reached the ultimate purity of death – I've never understood the thought processes of Dustmen.
While Wheezle mourned or celebrated, I looked through Bleach-Hair's discarded belongings. The clothes were plain yet durable, of a cut that would attract no special notice in the Hive. It didn't surprise me they were coated with dust, the same brown and white mixture I'd seen on the wights. Did that mean anything? Probably, but I couldn't guess what.
The objects he carried were of greater interest. First, of course, was the firewand. I decided not to touch it with my bare hand, on the chance that it was booby-trapped. In fact, it seemed easiest to let Hezekiah keep it – perhaps his exalted Uncle Toby had taught him the care and handling of magic wands. Meanwhile, I went back to sorting through the rest of Bleach-Hair's possessions: a dagger with its blade coated in sticky green resin, no doubt some kind of poison; a platinum chain necklace that had been broken in the fight with the Ecstatics; and a stiff piece of card inside his money pouch, showing an ink drawing of Bleach-Hair himself.
«Hmm,» I muttered, «this fellow must love his own face.» Seriously so – as soon as he lost the ink drawing, he went to the tattoo parlor to get a replacement. He was even willing to part with his gold ring to pay for the new picture. To me, this went beyond any conceivable narcissism; if I'd just lost most of my jink, I wouldn't immediately barter away my one remaining chunk of gold on mere vanity. Bleach-Hair must desperately need his own portrait for some reason… and that smacked of magic.
«All right, you two mages,» I said to Hezekiah and Wheezle, «what kind of spell can only be cast if you're carrying a picture of yourself?»
«An interesting question, sir,» Wheezle replied, «but I cannot provide a helpful answer. There are many schools of spellcasting and much variation within schools. Two people casting the same spell may use entirely different components, depending on their personal backgrounds. Sorcerers from Prime Material worlds tend to be particularly idiosyncratic.»
I threw a glance at Hezekiah. «You've certainly got a point,» I told Wheezle.
The tenderness of his new tattoo made it easy for us to follow him through the teeming streets of the Hive. Bleach-Hair just couldn't leave the tattoo alone – constantly staring at it, brushing it timidly with a finger, and rolling his arm so he could see how it looked in various kinds of light. With his thoughts so preoccupied by his new acquisition, he paid no attention to the people around him. We stuck close as he passed all the sights of the slums: the dingy shops, the whiskey-soaked bubbers lying unconscious on the sidewalk, the children pretending to play tag in the streets as an excuse for dodging around people and picking their pockets.
It took almost an hour for Bleach-Hair to weave through the labyrinth of streets to reach his destination, but I could see his goal long before we got there: a towering assemblage of glass vats, arranged in a haphazard corkscrew around a central wooden framework that rose twenty storeys into the sky. Each circular vat measured ten paces in diameter and at least twenty feet high, filled with murky water and stocked with fish that skimmed relentlessly past the glass walls.
This was Sigil's famed Vertical Sea, a fish farm built long ago by a wizard named Churtellius: no doubt a master sorcerer in his day, but now only known for his love of seafood. He had painstakingly constructed each of the vats, strengthening the glass with magic so they could contain the weight of the water; he had personally supervised the raising of the support frame, designing the maze of ramps and trestles and catwalks so that the seemingly random arrangement of vats perfectly counterbalanced each other; and he had even laid out the complicated schedules for changing water in the vats, shoveling in fish food, and harvesting the catch for later sale at the Great Bazaar. Quite possibly, Churtellius had created the Sea in a spirit of purest charity, to ensure that Sigil had an abundant supply of fresh cod and salmon and scallops… but the chant on the street said Churtellius was just another barmy spellchucker who'd do anything to lock down a dependable supply of kippers.
Bleach-Hair went straight to the base of the tower, spoke briefly to the guards who watched the entrance ramp, then began making his way up the tall corkscrew structure. «Stay with him, Wheezle,» I whispered, though I had no idea if our friend gnome was within earshot. Quite possibly, he was already dogging Bleach-Hair's footsteps while Hezekiah and I lingered in the shadows of nearby buildings.
«Should we follow too?» Hezekiah asked.
«We're only here to watch,» I replied. «If we see evidence this really is enemy headquarters, we report back to Lady Erin and let her give these berks the rope. I for one am not spoiling to face a bunch of bashers with firewands.»
«Have you noticed,» the boy said, «when you get excited, you start to use words like berk and basher, the same as other folks in Sigil?»
«Pike it, Clueless,» I told him.
Hezekiah grinned from ear to ear.
The smell was interesting too.
Crouching behind a chicken coop, I stared across the street toward the Vertical Sea. The tower was busy with people tending the vats – workers standing on catwalks above the water, netting up fish and dumping them into wheelbarrows, then trundling their loads down the ramps. Bleach-Hair pushed against the downward flow of wheelbarrows and continued to climb slowly. Since the last time I looked, he'd been joined by two familiar men: the other fireballers from the City Courts. Both of the newcomers held firewands in their hands.
Where were the three of them going? I scanned up the tower looking for anything out of place… and there, just below the level of my rooftop, was Yasmin.
Without the diligently developed eyes of a Sensate, I might not have recognized her. She wore drab work clothes now, and had smudged her face with soot. Nevertheless, her bony arm crests were clearly visible, and she still carried that sodding charcoal sketch I had drawn. In fact, she made a show of unrolling it from time to time, glancing at it, then rolling it up again, as if it was a scroll of instructions she was supposed to follow. The other fish-workers obviously accepted her pretense – they moved to and fro past her without a second glance.
Once I had recognized Yasmin, it was easy to pick out Oonah and Kiripao close by her side. Oonah still had her staff and Brother Cipher his air of serene lethality, but they too were disguised as workers, dawdling about with an empty wheelbarrow. I could only conclude the githyanki and githzerai had led my teammates to the Vertical Sea… and sure enough, as I looked farther up the tower, I saw the two thieves ambling along a ramp almost level with my rooftop.
They still wore their Dustmen robes, with hoods pulled down low. The clothes attracted attention from the regular workers, but probably not as much as the sight of a githyanki and githzerai walking amiably side by side. I watched as the two stepped off their ramp and onto a walkway over a vat of dogfish: scaled-down sharks averaging three feet long, with hungry looks in their eyes as they prowled behind the glass walls of their home.
I could see no immediate reason why the thieves would be strolling along a dead-end catwalk over a vat of fish; but as I strained my eyes, I saw that the struts supporting the next vat above their heads formed a sort of archway… and the arch was glowing.
«Well, I'll be piked,» I whispered. «It's a portal.»
Not that I should have been surprised to see a gateway to another plane halfway up the Vertical Sea. Throughout the multiverse, Sigil is known as the City of Doors; the place probably has more portals than rats, and Sigil has a lot of rats. Walk down any street, and you're likely to see a portal lurking somewhere – in the door to a bakery, along the covered cloisters of a temple, or even in the angle made by a ladder leaning up against a wall. Any sort of arch, no matter how temporary, can suddenly sprout a portal… and who knows if the portal leads to the blissful meadows of Elysium or the 500th level of the Abyss?
Of course, most portals are temperamental things; they refuse to work unless you're carrying the right «key». Suppose, for example, there's a portal anchored in the door of your neighborhood greengrocer: ninety-nine times out of a hundred, you could walk through and simply end up staring at the shop's supply of lettuce. However, if you happened to carry the particular class of object that activated the portal – a silver goblet, a triangular scrap of cloth, a rope with knots at both ends – the portal would magically wink open and deposit you somewhere else, a long way from home. If you passed through the doorway with a group of friends, they'd be sucked in too; open portals tend to be hungry.
Sigil's portals, blossoming by the hundred, formed the heart of the city's economy… especially among the local practitioners of magic. Some wizards, for example, worked on diagnosis; they detected new portals, divined what kind of key would make the portal open, and predicted where you'd end up if you passed through. Other mages specialized in prevention – for a hefty fee, they'd weave spells around your home to make sure the door into Great-Aunt Effy's bedroom didn't suddenly become a gateway to the Elemental Plane of Fire. A third class of sorcerers devoted themselves to understanding the whole portal phenomenon: what created them, why they worked, and how they chose what kind of objects would serve as keys.
That third bunch of sorcerers always went barmy in the end. There's no rational system to explain portals. They just do whatever they want… like anchoring themselves in an arch over a catwalk, ten storeys up the Vertical Sea.
The githyanki and githzerai sauntered along the wooden walkway, glancing casually around to see if anyone was looking their direction. Their gaze brushed past my hiding place, but didn't stop. When they were happy the coast was clear, they simply stepped forward and disappeared. From my position I couldn't see what lay beyond the gate in the brief moment it was active; but a thick sifting of dust puffed out of the opening, slowly settling toward the catwalk and the water surface below.
Moments later, my three teammates came into sight, still pushing their wheelbarrow as if they were genuine fish farmers. Sharp-eyed Oonah immediately noticed the dust cloud, still drifting downward – I could see her point to the dust, then up to the glow around the archway. Without hesitation, Kiripao dashed forward along the catwalk; but when he reached the portal he passed through it without effect, coming to a stop on the planks of the walkway a few paces beyond.
Typical of a Cipher like Kiripao: galloping full speed ahead, without an ounce of caution. Angrily, Oonah and Yasmin stormed onto the catwalk toward Kiripao, both women scolding him for taking such a chance… and that was when Bleach-Hair and friends came up behind them.
I had to give Bleach-Hair credit – he must have been a clever man to recognize Oonah in those dirty work clothes. On the other hand, she still carried her silver staff, which Bleach-Hair had good reason to remember from the rotunda. Whatever the reason, he took one look at Her Honor and I could see his lips mouthing DeVail. He must have realized that a Guvner lurking on the very brink of this portal meant big trouble, so he took immediate action: he seized a firewand from one of his companions and shouted, «Don't move!»
Yasmin and Oonah froze immediately. Kiripao rushed back through the inactive portal, showing every intention of trying to fight the three fireballers by himself; but he had to pass Yasmin and Oonah first, and Yasmin grabbed him, whispering something short and sharp. As quickly as he had begun, the good Brother stopped and simply turned to face Bleach-Hair.
«You would not dare to shoot fire up here,» Kiripao said, his voice loud enough to carry clearly across the street to me. «This structure is wood and we are far above the ground. If you set the tower on fire, you couldn't reach safety before tons of water crashed down around your head.»
«You have no idea what I'd dare to do,» Bleach-Hair snapped. «Drop your weapons and get down on your bellies.»
«Weapons?» Yasmin said innocently, taking a step toward him. «I don't have any weapons. All I have is this.» She waved the rolled-up sketch of herself; but from my vantage point, I could see the bulge of her longsword, slung behind her back and hidden by her work clothes.
«One more step and I fire,» Bleach-Hair told her. «This ain't no bluff. I've been beat up and bobbed and badgered today, and no tiefling is gonna peel me now. Got that?»
Yasmin's jaw tightened; so did the faces of Bleach-Hair's two companions. They didn't seem nearly as eager to start shooting fireballs ten storeys up a wooden tower… but they were obviously too afraid of Bleach-Hair to interfere.
«Come along,» Oonah said to Yasmin, taking her by the shoulder and pulling her back along the catwalk. «We have to be sensible here.»
«The sensible thing is to lie on your bellies,» Bleach-Hair shouted. «Now!»
If only I had a cross-bow, I thought to myself. Or even a good-sized stone I could whip at Bleach-Hair's head. I had a decent chance of hitting him – the street between us was as narrow as every other street in the hive. But the rooftop where I crouched had nothing but the tiniest pebbles… and the pitiful garden, and the chicken coops…
Oh.
As my three teammates continued the standoff with Bleach-Hair, I opened the coop in front of me. «Nice chicken,» I whispered, «friendly chicken, quiet chicken…»
The hen inside glared at me with one furious eye. The other eye was missing, gouged out in some long-ago battle with another chicken or a cat. I hoped that didn't mean she liked to pick fights – she was sitting on an egg that would make a fine distraction when hurled at Bleach-Hair's head.
«Under normal circumstances,» I told the hen in my most soothing whisper, «I would never deprive a lady of her offspring. But this is an emergency, life or death; maybe the fate of the whole city hangs in the balance. Just be quiet and let me —»
The leatherheaded bird pecked my hand: a good solid peck that drew a drop of blood. I bit my lip to avoid crying out, then snatched the sodding egg before the hen could tag me again. She let out a squawk, but only one; no doubt she had long ago resigned herself to the regular abduction of her children.
Bleach-Hair didn't react to the hen's noise: all his attention was focused on my three teammates. They were slowly backing away from him, but showing no sign of surrender. If I threw the egg, if I could hit Bleach-Hair in the face from this distance, and if he didn't immediately fire his wand… then Oonah could attack him with her staff, and both Kiripao and Yasmin would charge forward.
Of course, if everything didn't go perfectly, I'd get them all killed.
Wait, I told myself. Wait for the right moment.
«This is my last warning!» shouted Bleach-Hair. «Lie down or burn.»
«Why don't you speak sense to him?» Oonah called to Bleach-Hair's companions, as she continued to back away on the catwalk.
Bleach-Hair's men looked queasy but said nothing.
«I'm counting to three,» Bleach-Hair said. «One.»
I took a deep breath.
«Two.»
I cocked my arm to hurl the egg.
«Thr —»
Yasmin threw herself backward. She must have intended to pull Oonah and Kiripao with her down into the vat of water, where they'd be safe from the fireball. However, her lunge moved her right under the arch of support struts, the one that glowed with the light of a portal. In an instant, Yasmin and my other two teammates were sucked through the gateway, yanked from this plane of existence.
Another puff of dust billowed out into the air.
Bleach-Hair lowered the wand. I quietly sank back behind the chicken coop, the unthrown egg still in my hand.
«Well, what are you berks waiting for?» Bleach-Hair yelled, turning to his companions and cuffing their heads. «We've got them boxed in now, don't we? Let's get 'em.»
He grabbed each man by the shoulder and dragged them forward. When they reached the portal, all three bashers vanished.
The catwalk was empty, save for falling dust.
In the middle of this growing confusion, Hezekiah had spotted a familiar face in the crowd. Leaning casually against a half-demolished stone wall stood one of the three men who participated in the fireball attack on the City Courts – the heavily-bearded basher with his hair bleached white. Tucked into his belt was a wand Hezekiah immediately recognized: bone-white ivory, speckled with glitters of red.
The man (whom Hezekiah dubbed Bleach-Hair) had stayed for a few minutes to watch the mob's frantic response to the fire, then walked away into the Hive. Hezekiah and Wheezle had followed at a distance, hampered by the growing crowds who had come to gawk at the fires. Once, my teammates actually lost their quarry; but they tracked him down again by running toward the noise of a fight in the next street.
By lucky chance (lucky for us, anyway), Bleach-Hair had turned a corner and run smack into the Parade of Dancing Ecstatics, as it wound its never-ending way through the byways of Sigil. Hezekiah only knew about them thanks to a brief explanation from Wheezle; but I was thoroughly familiar with the Ecstatics, having danced with them for three solid days several years earlier.
The Ecstatic Parade has continued without stop for more than four centuries, a drunkenly riotous assemblage of anyone who wants to join, prancing through the city streets according to the whims of whoever happens to be at the head of the line. A short distance behind the leader is a group of ten people called The Carriers of the Cow. They do not actually carry a cow; all they have is an empty wooden platform which is, I might add from experience, bristling with sodding splinters. Perhaps when the parade started so many years ago, the platform actually sported a cow, whether a living animal or a statue. Sometime over the centuries, however, the cow disappeared, and now only the platform remains.
Not even the Guvners remember what the parade is intended to celebrate, nor how it all started. The people who join it are simply people who want to dance and bub wine till they pass out in the street. Some dancers bring wine of their own to get themselves started, but that's seldom necessary; it's considered enormously good luck to donate drink to the parade if it passes you. When I danced in the parade elderly grandmothers begged me to take their hooch, in the belief that giving such a gift would help their arthritis. Who knows? Maybe it did. The women certainly seemed limber enough as they ran after me with their homemade moonshine.
So Bleach-Hair the fireballer had accidentally run into the parade, jostling several Carriers of the Cow. The drunken revellers had reacted predictably; and after the flailing of many fists, Bleach-Hair was riding naked on the cow's platform, his clothes and other equipment tossed into the street and trampled by dozens of dancing drunks.
«I hope you and Wheezle nabbed the firewand,» I said to Hezekiah.
The boy's answer was yes, but it had been a near thing. All of this happened in the slum streets of the Hive… and nothing but dog dung can lie on the pavement there without someone trying to steal it. Eager hands quickly grabbed for Bleach-Hair's discarded goods; but Wheezle had whipped a little piece of wool from his pocket, gestured and chanted for a moment, and suddenly there was a squad of Harmonium guards coming around the corner with spoiling-for-a-fight looks on their faces. The cross-traders trying to bob Bleach-Hair's wand had vanished in a trice, giving Hezekiah free rein to collect what Bleach-Hair had dropped.
«Did you get his clothes too?» I asked.
«Everything,» Hezekiah laughed, «we got everything. And as soon as I had it in my hands, the guards just melted into the pavement. Wheezle's really very good.»
«Gnomes are renowned as illusionists,» I agreed, then urged Hezekiah to continue his story.
The Ecstatics carried Bleach-Hair on the cow's platform for several blocks before he managed to catch hold of a clothes-line strung across the street and swing into an open window on the second floor of a tenement building. Much cursing ensued; but when Bleach-Hair came running out the building's front door, he was carrying some pants he'd stolen from the clothes-line and wearing most of a bowl of noodles dumped over his head. He had dodged the stragglers of the Ecstatic Parade and run down an alley to put on the pants. Then Hezekiah and Wheezle followed him to, of all places, a dirt-crusted tattoo parlor where he had been ever since.
«You think that's the enemy headquarters?» I asked.
«No,» Hezekiah replied, «I think he's getting a tattoo.»
* * *
When we reached the parlor, our gnome colleague was nowhere in sight. Hezekiah led me to an alleyway which had a clear view of the shop, but also sufficient shadow to hide our presence. The moment we settled down to watch, a voice from thin air said, «He's still getting his tattoo.»My skin crinkled into goosebumps. «You're invisible, aren't you, Wheezle?»
«Yes, honored Cavendish.»
I couldn't see it, but I knew he was kowtowing to me.
«So,» I said, «I assume you've been inside the shop for a peek at what's going on.»
«Indeed. Mr. Bleach-Hair is obtaining a self-portrait on his right forearm.»
«How odd.» Tattooing is fashionable with parts of the populace, inside Sigil and all through the Outer Planes; but I'd never seen people display tattooed pictures of themselves. Most folks preferred arcane symbols, or clan markings, or images celebrating things they had killed. Never their own faces. For that matter, I seldom saw any kind of face, since it took an expert tattoo artist to make anything more than a cartoonish likeness.
«Tell me exactly what went on in there,» I said to the invisible Wheezle.
«The man, Mr. Bleach-Hair, entered and spoke some words to the proprietor of the shop. The proprietor is a drow woman, sir – a dark elf. She is probably very good at her trade; elves always excel at crafts.»
«I'm aware of that, Wheezle. Just get on with the story.»
«Of course, honored Cavendish.» This time, I really did catch the faint swishing sound as Wheezle kowtowed. «Alas, I could not get close enough to hear what Mr. Bleach-Hair said to the woman, since I had not yet cast my invisibility spell. However, there seemed to be a great deal of negotiations before the tattooist got down to business.»
«That's because we've got his money,» Hezekiah put in, holding up a bundle of clothing with dusty footprints all over it.
«In the end,» Wheezle continued, «he had to give the woman a gold ring from his finger, a ring the Ecstatics had overlooked while stripping him down. The woman accepted that as payment and has been working on his arm ever since. When it became apparent this would be a lengthy process, Master Hezekiah volunteered to go back to the Mortuary to find whoever was still there.»
Since we had the time, I gave the two of them my own report, telling about Oonah and Kiripao shadowing the two thieves while Yasmin and I dealt with the wights. Wheezle became very silent when I spoke of the undead creatures attacking his fellow Dustmen; I couldn't tell if he was shocked at wights breaking the Dead Truce, or grieving over the deaths of his fellows. Possibly he was rejoicing that his colleagues had finally reached the ultimate purity of death – I've never understood the thought processes of Dustmen.
While Wheezle mourned or celebrated, I looked through Bleach-Hair's discarded belongings. The clothes were plain yet durable, of a cut that would attract no special notice in the Hive. It didn't surprise me they were coated with dust, the same brown and white mixture I'd seen on the wights. Did that mean anything? Probably, but I couldn't guess what.
The objects he carried were of greater interest. First, of course, was the firewand. I decided not to touch it with my bare hand, on the chance that it was booby-trapped. In fact, it seemed easiest to let Hezekiah keep it – perhaps his exalted Uncle Toby had taught him the care and handling of magic wands. Meanwhile, I went back to sorting through the rest of Bleach-Hair's possessions: a dagger with its blade coated in sticky green resin, no doubt some kind of poison; a platinum chain necklace that had been broken in the fight with the Ecstatics; and a stiff piece of card inside his money pouch, showing an ink drawing of Bleach-Hair himself.
«Hmm,» I muttered, «this fellow must love his own face.» Seriously so – as soon as he lost the ink drawing, he went to the tattoo parlor to get a replacement. He was even willing to part with his gold ring to pay for the new picture. To me, this went beyond any conceivable narcissism; if I'd just lost most of my jink, I wouldn't immediately barter away my one remaining chunk of gold on mere vanity. Bleach-Hair must desperately need his own portrait for some reason… and that smacked of magic.
«All right, you two mages,» I said to Hezekiah and Wheezle, «what kind of spell can only be cast if you're carrying a picture of yourself?»
«An interesting question, sir,» Wheezle replied, «but I cannot provide a helpful answer. There are many schools of spellcasting and much variation within schools. Two people casting the same spell may use entirely different components, depending on their personal backgrounds. Sorcerers from Prime Material worlds tend to be particularly idiosyncratic.»
I threw a glance at Hezekiah. «You've certainly got a point,» I told Wheezle.
* * *
Bleach-Hair left the parlor a few minutes after a nearby clock struck peak: midday. Wheezle had been watching the man invisibly, and had given us plenty of warning before he came out; therefore, Hezekiah and I were hidden well back in shadows when Bleach-Hair passed by on the street, gingerly dabbing a yellowish ointment onto his arm.The tenderness of his new tattoo made it easy for us to follow him through the teeming streets of the Hive. Bleach-Hair just couldn't leave the tattoo alone – constantly staring at it, brushing it timidly with a finger, and rolling his arm so he could see how it looked in various kinds of light. With his thoughts so preoccupied by his new acquisition, he paid no attention to the people around him. We stuck close as he passed all the sights of the slums: the dingy shops, the whiskey-soaked bubbers lying unconscious on the sidewalk, the children pretending to play tag in the streets as an excuse for dodging around people and picking their pockets.
It took almost an hour for Bleach-Hair to weave through the labyrinth of streets to reach his destination, but I could see his goal long before we got there: a towering assemblage of glass vats, arranged in a haphazard corkscrew around a central wooden framework that rose twenty storeys into the sky. Each circular vat measured ten paces in diameter and at least twenty feet high, filled with murky water and stocked with fish that skimmed relentlessly past the glass walls.
This was Sigil's famed Vertical Sea, a fish farm built long ago by a wizard named Churtellius: no doubt a master sorcerer in his day, but now only known for his love of seafood. He had painstakingly constructed each of the vats, strengthening the glass with magic so they could contain the weight of the water; he had personally supervised the raising of the support frame, designing the maze of ramps and trestles and catwalks so that the seemingly random arrangement of vats perfectly counterbalanced each other; and he had even laid out the complicated schedules for changing water in the vats, shoveling in fish food, and harvesting the catch for later sale at the Great Bazaar. Quite possibly, Churtellius had created the Sea in a spirit of purest charity, to ensure that Sigil had an abundant supply of fresh cod and salmon and scallops… but the chant on the street said Churtellius was just another barmy spellchucker who'd do anything to lock down a dependable supply of kippers.
Bleach-Hair went straight to the base of the tower, spoke briefly to the guards who watched the entrance ramp, then began making his way up the tall corkscrew structure. «Stay with him, Wheezle,» I whispered, though I had no idea if our friend gnome was within earshot. Quite possibly, he was already dogging Bleach-Hair's footsteps while Hezekiah and I lingered in the shadows of nearby buildings.
«Should we follow too?» Hezekiah asked.
«We're only here to watch,» I replied. «If we see evidence this really is enemy headquarters, we report back to Lady Erin and let her give these berks the rope. I for one am not spoiling to face a bunch of bashers with firewands.»
«Have you noticed,» the boy said, «when you get excited, you start to use words like berk and basher, the same as other folks in Sigil?»
«Pike it, Clueless,» I told him.
Hezekiah grinned from ear to ear.
* * *
Leaving the boy on watch near the base of the tower, I spent a few minutes roaming the neighborhood in search of a better view of the Vertical Sea. I found it at last in a tenement building across from the tower, much like the one we had used to observe the Mortuary, but with stairs leading up to the roof. Like most roofs in the Hive, it had a pathetically unproductive vegetable garden, several small chicken coops owned by various tenants of the building, and a crusty coat of bird droppings. I walked carefully across the guano, marking what an interesting squishy sound it made.The smell was interesting too.
Crouching behind a chicken coop, I stared across the street toward the Vertical Sea. The tower was busy with people tending the vats – workers standing on catwalks above the water, netting up fish and dumping them into wheelbarrows, then trundling their loads down the ramps. Bleach-Hair pushed against the downward flow of wheelbarrows and continued to climb slowly. Since the last time I looked, he'd been joined by two familiar men: the other fireballers from the City Courts. Both of the newcomers held firewands in their hands.
Where were the three of them going? I scanned up the tower looking for anything out of place… and there, just below the level of my rooftop, was Yasmin.
Without the diligently developed eyes of a Sensate, I might not have recognized her. She wore drab work clothes now, and had smudged her face with soot. Nevertheless, her bony arm crests were clearly visible, and she still carried that sodding charcoal sketch I had drawn. In fact, she made a show of unrolling it from time to time, glancing at it, then rolling it up again, as if it was a scroll of instructions she was supposed to follow. The other fish-workers obviously accepted her pretense – they moved to and fro past her without a second glance.
Once I had recognized Yasmin, it was easy to pick out Oonah and Kiripao close by her side. Oonah still had her staff and Brother Cipher his air of serene lethality, but they too were disguised as workers, dawdling about with an empty wheelbarrow. I could only conclude the githyanki and githzerai had led my teammates to the Vertical Sea… and sure enough, as I looked farther up the tower, I saw the two thieves ambling along a ramp almost level with my rooftop.
They still wore their Dustmen robes, with hoods pulled down low. The clothes attracted attention from the regular workers, but probably not as much as the sight of a githyanki and githzerai walking amiably side by side. I watched as the two stepped off their ramp and onto a walkway over a vat of dogfish: scaled-down sharks averaging three feet long, with hungry looks in their eyes as they prowled behind the glass walls of their home.
I could see no immediate reason why the thieves would be strolling along a dead-end catwalk over a vat of fish; but as I strained my eyes, I saw that the struts supporting the next vat above their heads formed a sort of archway… and the arch was glowing.
«Well, I'll be piked,» I whispered. «It's a portal.»
Not that I should have been surprised to see a gateway to another plane halfway up the Vertical Sea. Throughout the multiverse, Sigil is known as the City of Doors; the place probably has more portals than rats, and Sigil has a lot of rats. Walk down any street, and you're likely to see a portal lurking somewhere – in the door to a bakery, along the covered cloisters of a temple, or even in the angle made by a ladder leaning up against a wall. Any sort of arch, no matter how temporary, can suddenly sprout a portal… and who knows if the portal leads to the blissful meadows of Elysium or the 500th level of the Abyss?
Of course, most portals are temperamental things; they refuse to work unless you're carrying the right «key». Suppose, for example, there's a portal anchored in the door of your neighborhood greengrocer: ninety-nine times out of a hundred, you could walk through and simply end up staring at the shop's supply of lettuce. However, if you happened to carry the particular class of object that activated the portal – a silver goblet, a triangular scrap of cloth, a rope with knots at both ends – the portal would magically wink open and deposit you somewhere else, a long way from home. If you passed through the doorway with a group of friends, they'd be sucked in too; open portals tend to be hungry.
Sigil's portals, blossoming by the hundred, formed the heart of the city's economy… especially among the local practitioners of magic. Some wizards, for example, worked on diagnosis; they detected new portals, divined what kind of key would make the portal open, and predicted where you'd end up if you passed through. Other mages specialized in prevention – for a hefty fee, they'd weave spells around your home to make sure the door into Great-Aunt Effy's bedroom didn't suddenly become a gateway to the Elemental Plane of Fire. A third class of sorcerers devoted themselves to understanding the whole portal phenomenon: what created them, why they worked, and how they chose what kind of objects would serve as keys.
That third bunch of sorcerers always went barmy in the end. There's no rational system to explain portals. They just do whatever they want… like anchoring themselves in an arch over a catwalk, ten storeys up the Vertical Sea.
The githyanki and githzerai sauntered along the wooden walkway, glancing casually around to see if anyone was looking their direction. Their gaze brushed past my hiding place, but didn't stop. When they were happy the coast was clear, they simply stepped forward and disappeared. From my position I couldn't see what lay beyond the gate in the brief moment it was active; but a thick sifting of dust puffed out of the opening, slowly settling toward the catwalk and the water surface below.
Moments later, my three teammates came into sight, still pushing their wheelbarrow as if they were genuine fish farmers. Sharp-eyed Oonah immediately noticed the dust cloud, still drifting downward – I could see her point to the dust, then up to the glow around the archway. Without hesitation, Kiripao dashed forward along the catwalk; but when he reached the portal he passed through it without effect, coming to a stop on the planks of the walkway a few paces beyond.
Typical of a Cipher like Kiripao: galloping full speed ahead, without an ounce of caution. Angrily, Oonah and Yasmin stormed onto the catwalk toward Kiripao, both women scolding him for taking such a chance… and that was when Bleach-Hair and friends came up behind them.
I had to give Bleach-Hair credit – he must have been a clever man to recognize Oonah in those dirty work clothes. On the other hand, she still carried her silver staff, which Bleach-Hair had good reason to remember from the rotunda. Whatever the reason, he took one look at Her Honor and I could see his lips mouthing DeVail. He must have realized that a Guvner lurking on the very brink of this portal meant big trouble, so he took immediate action: he seized a firewand from one of his companions and shouted, «Don't move!»
Yasmin and Oonah froze immediately. Kiripao rushed back through the inactive portal, showing every intention of trying to fight the three fireballers by himself; but he had to pass Yasmin and Oonah first, and Yasmin grabbed him, whispering something short and sharp. As quickly as he had begun, the good Brother stopped and simply turned to face Bleach-Hair.
«You would not dare to shoot fire up here,» Kiripao said, his voice loud enough to carry clearly across the street to me. «This structure is wood and we are far above the ground. If you set the tower on fire, you couldn't reach safety before tons of water crashed down around your head.»
«You have no idea what I'd dare to do,» Bleach-Hair snapped. «Drop your weapons and get down on your bellies.»
«Weapons?» Yasmin said innocently, taking a step toward him. «I don't have any weapons. All I have is this.» She waved the rolled-up sketch of herself; but from my vantage point, I could see the bulge of her longsword, slung behind her back and hidden by her work clothes.
«One more step and I fire,» Bleach-Hair told her. «This ain't no bluff. I've been beat up and bobbed and badgered today, and no tiefling is gonna peel me now. Got that?»
Yasmin's jaw tightened; so did the faces of Bleach-Hair's two companions. They didn't seem nearly as eager to start shooting fireballs ten storeys up a wooden tower… but they were obviously too afraid of Bleach-Hair to interfere.
«Come along,» Oonah said to Yasmin, taking her by the shoulder and pulling her back along the catwalk. «We have to be sensible here.»
«The sensible thing is to lie on your bellies,» Bleach-Hair shouted. «Now!»
If only I had a cross-bow, I thought to myself. Or even a good-sized stone I could whip at Bleach-Hair's head. I had a decent chance of hitting him – the street between us was as narrow as every other street in the hive. But the rooftop where I crouched had nothing but the tiniest pebbles… and the pitiful garden, and the chicken coops…
Oh.
As my three teammates continued the standoff with Bleach-Hair, I opened the coop in front of me. «Nice chicken,» I whispered, «friendly chicken, quiet chicken…»
The hen inside glared at me with one furious eye. The other eye was missing, gouged out in some long-ago battle with another chicken or a cat. I hoped that didn't mean she liked to pick fights – she was sitting on an egg that would make a fine distraction when hurled at Bleach-Hair's head.
«Under normal circumstances,» I told the hen in my most soothing whisper, «I would never deprive a lady of her offspring. But this is an emergency, life or death; maybe the fate of the whole city hangs in the balance. Just be quiet and let me —»
The leatherheaded bird pecked my hand: a good solid peck that drew a drop of blood. I bit my lip to avoid crying out, then snatched the sodding egg before the hen could tag me again. She let out a squawk, but only one; no doubt she had long ago resigned herself to the regular abduction of her children.
Bleach-Hair didn't react to the hen's noise: all his attention was focused on my three teammates. They were slowly backing away from him, but showing no sign of surrender. If I threw the egg, if I could hit Bleach-Hair in the face from this distance, and if he didn't immediately fire his wand… then Oonah could attack him with her staff, and both Kiripao and Yasmin would charge forward.
Of course, if everything didn't go perfectly, I'd get them all killed.
Wait, I told myself. Wait for the right moment.
«This is my last warning!» shouted Bleach-Hair. «Lie down or burn.»
«Why don't you speak sense to him?» Oonah called to Bleach-Hair's companions, as she continued to back away on the catwalk.
Bleach-Hair's men looked queasy but said nothing.
«I'm counting to three,» Bleach-Hair said. «One.»
I took a deep breath.
«Two.»
I cocked my arm to hurl the egg.
«Thr —»
Yasmin threw herself backward. She must have intended to pull Oonah and Kiripao with her down into the vat of water, where they'd be safe from the fireball. However, her lunge moved her right under the arch of support struts, the one that glowed with the light of a portal. In an instant, Yasmin and my other two teammates were sucked through the gateway, yanked from this plane of existence.
Another puff of dust billowed out into the air.
Bleach-Hair lowered the wand. I quietly sank back behind the chicken coop, the unthrown egg still in my hand.
«Well, what are you berks waiting for?» Bleach-Hair yelled, turning to his companions and cuffing their heads. «We've got them boxed in now, don't we? Let's get 'em.»
He grabbed each man by the shoulder and dragged them forward. When they reached the portal, all three bashers vanished.
The catwalk was empty, save for falling dust.
6. THREE BLOODS TO RESCUE
Racing down the stairs from the rooftop, I had only one question: what was the portal's key? The githyanki and githzerai had been carrying packs; no doubt the key was inside one of those packs where I couldn't see it. Kiripao had run through the portal without activating it, so he didn't have the key. Yasmin, however, did – when she dove backward, she had hit the portal first, carrying Oonah and Kiripao with her. Then Bleach-Hair had done the same thing, taking the lead and dragging the other two behind.
But Bleach-Hair had almost nothing on his person: just the pants he'd stolen from the clothes line… the firewand he'd borrowed from his cohort…
…and the tattoo on his arm. A picture of himself, that he'd purchased with his last piece of gold.
Need I repeat, Yasmin had been carrying that piking sketch I'd made of her?
A portrait of yourself – that must be the key that opened the portal. It was the only answer. That's why Bleach-Hair had been so desperate for the tattoo: it was his only way home.
I hit the ground running and sped to where Hezekiah lurked in the alley, still watching the base of the tower. «What's wrong?» he asked as I dashed up to him.
«They have Yasmin and the others trapped,» I answered. «Enemies in front and behind. We have to rescue them.»
«How?»
«Take the bad guys by surprise. Can you cast another teleport spell?»
«It's not exactly a spell,» he said. «I convince myself that here is there, and the world goes along with the idea just to humor me.»
«Explanations later,» I told him. «Can you get us up there?»
«Where?»
I pointed. And I pointed again. And I said a lot of, no, not that catwalk, the other one, just to the right… no, no, up one floor, can you see the dogfish…
You know how it is. When you're in a hurry, the people around you are always impenetrably leatherheaded. And every second counted; I had to save Yasmin. The moment Hezekiah was sure where to go, I grabbed him and shouted, «Now, now, now!»
The world flickered and we were suddenly standing on the edge of the catwalk. The very edge… in fact, we teetered on the verge of falling, with shark-like dogfish circling below us. By myself, I could have caught my balance; but Hezekiah had wrapped his arms around me to make sure we teleported together, and now he was dragging me over the brink.
«Hezekiah!» I had time to say. Then someone grabbed the two of us from behind and pulled us delicately back to safe footing.
I turned to see who had saved us from taking the plunge. There was nobody there.
«Wheezle?» I whispered.
But Bleach-Hair had almost nothing on his person: just the pants he'd stolen from the clothes line… the firewand he'd borrowed from his cohort…
…and the tattoo on his arm. A picture of himself, that he'd purchased with his last piece of gold.
Need I repeat, Yasmin had been carrying that piking sketch I'd made of her?
A portrait of yourself – that must be the key that opened the portal. It was the only answer. That's why Bleach-Hair had been so desperate for the tattoo: it was his only way home.
I hit the ground running and sped to where Hezekiah lurked in the alley, still watching the base of the tower. «What's wrong?» he asked as I dashed up to him.
«They have Yasmin and the others trapped,» I answered. «Enemies in front and behind. We have to rescue them.»
«How?»
«Take the bad guys by surprise. Can you cast another teleport spell?»
«It's not exactly a spell,» he said. «I convince myself that here is there, and the world goes along with the idea just to humor me.»
«Explanations later,» I told him. «Can you get us up there?»
«Where?»
I pointed. And I pointed again. And I said a lot of, no, not that catwalk, the other one, just to the right… no, no, up one floor, can you see the dogfish…
You know how it is. When you're in a hurry, the people around you are always impenetrably leatherheaded. And every second counted; I had to save Yasmin. The moment Hezekiah was sure where to go, I grabbed him and shouted, «Now, now, now!»
The world flickered and we were suddenly standing on the edge of the catwalk. The very edge… in fact, we teetered on the verge of falling, with shark-like dogfish circling below us. By myself, I could have caught my balance; but Hezekiah had wrapped his arms around me to make sure we teleported together, and now he was dragging me over the brink.
«Hezekiah!» I had time to say. Then someone grabbed the two of us from behind and pulled us delicately back to safe footing.
I turned to see who had saved us from taking the plunge. There was nobody there.
«Wheezle?» I whispered.