Fire and Dust
from the memoirs of the right Honorable
Britlin Cavendish, Esquire,
Artist and Gentleman
1. THREE BLAZING FIRES
Mid-Afternoon; Rotunda of the City Courts Building, in Sigil, the City of Doors:
«Ah,» said the centaur, looking over my shoulder «I see that you're painting.»
«Yes,» I replied from behind my easel.
«The hustle and bustle of what this city calls justice,» the centaur continued. «Prisoners hobbling by in chains. Litigants glaring at each other as they await trial. Judges in ermine passing sentence on ragged beggars. Certainly, this is fertile ground for an artist with an eye for irony… or tragedy… or simply the paradoxes of life. What is your theme, young man?»
«My theme?» I asked.
«What artistic statement are you making? How the law oppresses the powerless? Or perhaps, if you are an optimist, how the law, despite its flaws, is a majestic abstraction that reflects the best within us. Is that your statement?»
«My statement is I wish there weren't so many curlicues carved over the entranceway. My hand is falling asleep trying to copy them all.»
The centaur stared at me wordlessly.
«This painting,» I explained, «was commissioned by Guvner Hashkar, Chief Justice of the Courts and Factol for the Fraternity of Order. He said to me, Cavendish, dear fellow, the wife's got a cousin getting married next week. He's a right berk of a boy, but family is family, don't you know. Need to give a present and the wife says a painting would be just the thing. Just the thing, yes. Three feet by five should do admirably, and go easy on the reds, there's a good chap – the boy tends to faint if he gets too excited. Why not take a bash at a picture of the court rotunda? Could be inspiring. Just the thing for the breakfast nook. Just the thing, yes.»
«And you took this commission?» The centaur looked aghast. «You didn't spit in this man's face? You didn't lecture him about artistic integrity?»
«You don't lecture factols,» I replied. «If they ask you to do something annoying, you simply charge more. That's why I have a longer list of wealthy clients than any other painter in Sigil; I talk their language.»
The centaur gaped at me for another few seconds, then stomped away in disgust. I have to admit, if there's one thing centaurs are good at, it's stomping away.
Shrugging, I continued to copy the curlicues, trying to ignore the distractions around me; and let me tell you, the City Courts are full of distractions. For example, lined up in front of a door beside me stood a cornugon – one of those reptilian horrors from the Lower Planes, nine feet tall, insect wings, a prehensile tail like three yards of razorvine… well, you must have seen them around. This one was waiting stoically, reading a scroll that had almost no words but dozens of bright orange ink drawings of humans and demihumans being grilled over pillars of flame. To a cornugon, such a scroll might be anything from a bedtime story to a menu-planner.
In line behind the hell-monster, waiting just as patiently, was a deva from the Upper Planes: a handsome amber-skinned man, two feet taller than me and equipped with wings as big as the cornugon's. The deva's wings, however, were made from feathers of the purest gold. A single one of the feathers could have bought someone a nice night on the town… but as soon as my thoughts drifted to leaving work for the day, I botched one of the curlicues and had to dab away the error with turpentine.
Unlike the cornugon, the deva hadn't brought anything to read, but that didn't leave him bored. He simply fixed his eyes on the sky outside the door of the rotunda, and soon his face settled into an expression of rapturous contemplation of the heavens… which, if you ask me, was a waste of good rapture, since Sigil is shaped like a ring a few miles in diameter, and the only thing you can see in the sky above the court building are the grimy slums of the Hive district. Still, gazing up on those filthy streets didn't bother the deva; and he even managed to maintain his serene expression when the cornugon in front shifted its weight and flicked its scaly wings across the deva's nose.
For a brief moment, something inside me wanted to toss away my bland painting of the architecture and instead, work on capturing this little moment: creatures of heaven and hell, standing side by side and ignoring each other… or perhaps only pretending to. This little scene said something. I wasn't sure what it said, but you can't show an angelic being and a demonic one in the same picture without it being some kind of comment, right?
On the other hand… I hadn't been commissioned to paint a deva and a cornugon. If I suddenly decided to paint something that interested me, who knew where it would all end? Muttering something about gold handcuffs, I went back to work.
«Painting a picture, huh?» said a nasal voice by my elbow. «Do you really have to draw all those curlicues? Couldn't you kind of suggest them?»
I turned to see a gangly boy in his late teens squatting and squinting at my canvas. His skin was caramel brown, but his hair yellow blonde, hanging haphazardly around distinctly pointed ears. One of his parents must have been human, the other an elf; and neither side of the family could take much pride in the result. «Do I know you?» I asked, trying to sound forbidding.
«Hezekiah Virtue,» he replied, holding out a hand that was overly blessed with knuckles. Looking down at my paintbox, he read my name printed there. «Britlin Cavendish… well it's an honor to meet you.»
«You've heard of me?»
«Nope. But it's an honor to meet anyone in Sigil; I've only been here two days. Do you belong to a faction?»
I sighed. My jacket clearly displayed the «five senses» symbol of the Society of Sensation, and the symbol was repeated on my signet ring and the top of my paintbox. However, that obviously didn't mean anything to this Clueless child. «I have the privilege of being a Sensate,» I told him. «Our society is dedicated to savoring all the abundance the multiverse can offer.»
«Oh, my Uncle Toby told me about you guys,» he answered, his eyes growing wide. «You must have a lot of wild parties, right?»
«Wrong. One wild party in a lifetime usually exhausts that field of experience. Then we move on to more refined pursuits.»
«Oh.» Clearly, the boy had no idea what a refined pursuit might be. Then his face brightened, and he reached into a cloth bag he carried in one hand. «Have you ever tried swineberries?»
The name made me wrinkle my nose. «Swineberries?»
He pulled out a handful of greasy brown berries, each about the size of my thumb. They were flat and wrinkled, as if someone had stepped on them with spike-heeled boots. «I brought them with me from home,» the boy said. «My home plane. I'm not from around here. The berries aren't as fresh as they used to be, but they're still pretty good.» He popped one in his mouth and chewed vigorously. «You should try one.»
«Yes,» I admitted, «I should.» A Sensate never says no to a new experience, even if it turns out to be some boring new prune from the Prime Material Plane. I told myself if the taste proved to be as lackluster as I expected – swineberries! – at least I'd have something to joke about the next time I had dinner with my fellow Sensates.
Of course, I couldn't just pop the berry in my mouth and chew, like the boy did. You don't rush such things. You have to hold the berry lightly in your fingertips, testing the weight and texture in the fruit. Then you lift it to your nose and smell its bouquet – a light, sugary fragrance, with a teasing hint of musk. Then, and only then, do you slip it between your teeth and bite down gently… whereupon, you discover the sodding berry tastes like pure rock salt.
I'd eaten pure rock salt before – it was part of the Sensate initiation ceremony. As any Sensate can tell you, once is enough.
Reluctantly, I swallowed.
«What did you think of the berry?» Hezekiah asked.
«I hated it.»
«Oh. But I guess that's all right, isn't it? Because Uncle Toby says Sensates want to experience everything, good and bad.»
«Your Uncle Toby is a font of information,» I replied through clenched teeth.
«Hey,» the boy said, «do you think these berries would go over big with the Sensates? Because I'd like to talk to one of your high-up men, to see what I have to do to join your group.»
I nearly choked. «You want to join the Sensates?»
«Uncle Toby says I should join some faction. A man has to have friends in the Cage, that's what Uncle Toby says. He calls Sigil the Cage, I don't know why. So I'm going around, talking to all the factions, to find out more about them. That's why I'm here in the courts, to talk to a Guvner. I love how Sigil people say Guvner, instead of Governor the way they'd say it back home. I love how people talk here: Stop rattling your bone-box, you Clueless berk, or I'll do you a slice-job. I hear that all the time. By the way, what's a slice-job?»
«You're going to find out any minute,» I muttered.
«On the other hand,» Hezekiah continued unstoppably, «I haven't heard you use any quaint local expressions yet. Are you from out of town too?»
I looked down at the fine-tipped paintbrush in my hand and idly wondered if it would be ruined by plunging it into the boy's eye. Control, Britlin, control. My mother was the daughter of a duke and cozzled me all through childhood not to talk like the leatherheads in the street – to sound cultured and refined so that city aristocrats would admit me to their drawing rooms. She had never been heavy-handed about it («Yes Britlin, little Oswald next door is a berk; now how would we say that in real words?») but it was a matter of family loyalty for me to stay true to her ideals, and I did not need some Prime-world pippin insulting me on that score. I racked my brains, trying to produce some scathing remark that would send this Clueless boy packing; but before I could think of a devastating response, I noticed a trio of Harmonium guards enter in lock-step through the front doors of the rotunda.
Of course, there's nothing unusual about Harmonium members in the courts building – as Sigil's police force, their duties often bring them to the halls of justice. However, this particular group stood out for several disturbing reasons.
First, all three had made a mess of folding their gray neckerchiefs. Harmonium officers are fastidious about their neckerchiefs – when I painted the portrait of Harmonium Factol Sarin, he demanded that I reproduce every little tuck and fold precisely.
Second, the three men in front of me didn't walk like Harmonium guards. Guards spend most of their time patrolling a beat through the city; even raw recruits soon acquire a measured gait that lets them walk all day while keeping alert to possible mischief. The men entering the rotunda had a more military edge to their pace – they didn't stroll, they marched.
Finally, my keen Sensate's eye picked up one more out-of-place detail. In addition to swords, normal Harmonium guards always carry stout black truncheons, reserved for those rare occasions when their commander is struck by the whim to take a wrongdoer alive. The three men in front of me, however, had quite different weapons hanging from their belts; sleek white batons carved from ivory or bone, their surfaces speckled with a red glitter that might be chips of ruby.
«What are you looking at?» Hezekiah asked.
«I was just thinking, maybe I'll pack up now and take another crack at those curlicues tomorrow.»
«Are you trying to avoid those guards?» the boy whispered, as he noticed me eyeing the newcomers. «Maybe you have some dark secret in your past, and those guys are a special elite team who might recognize you from former days?»
«Why do you think those guards are elite?» I asked.
«Because they're the first I've seen carrying firewands instead of truncheons.»
«Those are firewands?»
The boy shrugged. «Uncle Toby taught me all about wands and stuff.»
I groaned.
A rational man might have taken to his heels that very second – three impostor guards walking into the Courts with high-powered magical weapons meant big, big trouble. On the other hand, I had never seen a firewand in action; and if I could find a safe place to hide before anyone started shooting, I might witness something well worth remembering. If this turned into a major incident, maybe I could even paint the scene afterward. Those piking art critics couldn't accuse me of sterility if I made a perfect reproduction of some horrible disaster.
Unfortunately, my first glance around the rotunda didn't reveal any good places to dive for cover. Factol Hashkar may have hired me to do a painting, but his most beloved artform was tapestry; as soon as he became leader of the Guvners, he had covered every inch of City Court wallspace with dusty old banners depicting the many planes of the multiverse. Those acres of cloth would blaze like tinder if the wands started blasting fireballs… and that could happen any minute.
The three guards reached the center of the rotunda floor, and turned inward to face each other in a huddle. They wanted us to believe they were discussing private guard business; but I knew they were concealing their motions as they pulled the wands from their belts. Would they simply start shooting? Or was this a more complicated plan, «Lie down and give us your money!» or a scheme to grab hostages in protest of the latest tax hike? It didn't matter. I was at the rear of the hall, too far from the door to get outside before the pyrotechnics began, so I had to take the only cover available.
«Come on, Hezekiah,» I commanded, grabbing him by the scruff of the neck. Then, crossing my fingers that this would work, I jammed the two of us directly behind the cornugon.
«What are you playing at, berk?» growled the monster, as it whipped around to look at us.
«Sorry,» I said, «but you're from the Nine Hells. You're flameproof.»
Which was the precise moment when the first fireball struck the cornugon's back.
In front of us, the cornugon hadn't suffered a single blister; after all, the creature came from a plane noted for its flaming infernos, so a paltry fireball was no more annoying than a mosquito bite. Still, the fireblast was an attack, and a completely unexpected one, since the cornugon had been glaring at Hezekiah and me when the false guards let fly. Angrily, the reptile-fiend raised a sharp-taloned hand as if it intended to claw off a strip of my flesh… but then second thoughts flashed through its beady black eyes and it swung around to slash the deva instead.
I have no idea if the cornugon actually believed the deva was responsible for the attack, or if the monster simply seized the excuse to swipe at a species he hated. Either way, the cornugon's claws ripped two handfuls of feathers from the deva's wings, and a moment later, the monster's hellishly barbed tail lashed the deva across the chest like a whip. Beads of shining gold blood trickled out where the thorny tail broke the deva's skin.
Until that moment, the deva had scarcely budged from his serene contemplation of the sky. Certainly, the fireball had singed off some wingfeathers, since a life of celestial bliss doesn't flameproof you like crawling through the bowels of hell; but the deva didn't react until the cornugon's attack had drawn blood. Then, with the speed of a whizzing arrow, the deva flashed out his fists, one, two – a jab to the cornugon's snout, and a beautiful palm-heel strike to its scale-covered gut.
The cornugon wheezed once and buckled to its knees.
«Wow,» said Hezekiah. «I always thought angels fought with magic swords.»
«First,» I replied, «he's not an angel, he's a deva. Second, devas don't fight with swords, they use maces. Third, he's not going to whack a cornugon with his mace in the middle of Sigil unless he wants an all-out war that will get both sides ejected from the city. Finally, in case you haven't noticed, the one thing that was shielding us from the flames is now sprawled gasping on the ground.»
Indeed, we were completely exposed to the rest of the rotunda, and a hideous sight it was. The three false guards must have stood back-to-back and loosed their fireballs simultaneously, launching bright orange flames in all directions. I could immediately identify the three points of impact from the bursts: those three areas were littered with dead bodies, the corpses' flesh roasted and split into hard red cracks. Farther out, some people had survived the initial flash… or maybe they were just taking longer to die. Their skin was puckered and oozing out fluid, their eye sockets empty pits running with melted jelly. A few made shrill whistling cries, the only kind of scream possible through a throat ravaged by fire. Most simply lay silent, squeezing themselves into balls of agony and shuddering with misery.
The explosions had focused on the three interior walls of the rotunda. The fourth side of the room, the arch opening into the street, was still untouched, and people who remained on their feet had begun to mob the exit, crushing together in a panic. Shorter beings, gnomes and halflings, would surely be trampled in the stampede down the front steps… not to mention children and the elderly. After the first casualties fell, some of those jamming in behind would trip over the broken bodies, and they too would be battered by the feet of the crowd.
At the center of the rotunda, impassive in the heart of chaos, stood the three false guards – even the most fear-crazed members of the mob gave the guards a wide berth. The impostor facing our direction was a heavily-bearded man with bleached white hair, his eye carefully watching the deva; and when the deva turned away from the cornugon to confront the creators of this destruction, the false guard calmly lifted his wand to shoot again.
The cornugon was on its hands and knees, providing no cover at all. Any fireball aimed at the deva would easily catch Hezekiah and me in the blast radius. I had time to scream, «No!»…
…and then I was standing in a paper-stacked office, facing a young halfling woman in judicial robes. She looked as surprised to see me as I was to see her. «Who are you?» she snapped.
Before I could answer, Hezekiah stepped forward from my side. «Hezekiah Virtue,» he said, holding out his knuckly hand for her to shake. «Sorry to pop in on you, ma'am, but we were in a nasty situation and I had to teleport us out of there.»
I stared at him in disbelief. «You can teleport?»
«Sure,» he answered. «Learned it from Uncle Toby.»
«Of course you did,» I sighed.
«Firewands?» DeVail roared. «In the rotunda?»
«Yes, Your Honor,» I said. «Three men just walked in…»
That was as far as I got. DeVail was a woman in her sixties, but with darting speed, she snatched up a staff bound with gleaming silver wire and used its support to hike herself to her feet.
Hezekiah scampered to open the door for her. «It'd be a mighty big honor to help you to safety, ma'am,» he said.
«Help yourself to safety,» she snapped. With one hand, she swept her staff off the floor and swung it high over her head. An arc of sparkling ice crystals spattered out of its swinging tip. «No flamethrowing berks will give our courts the laugh while I'm around.» With that, she dashed out the door, suddenly as spry as a twelve-year-old. The halfling woman waved at us to stay where we were, then hurried along behind DeVail to a wide-open waiting area some dozen paces down the corridor.
Pausing just a second for the halfling to catch up, DeVail slammed the butt of her staff onto the floor with an echoing whump. Beneath her feet, carpet and floorboards faded to an inky blackness, like a hole filled with deepest midnight. The halfling woman looked at the hole, looked at DeVail, then leaped, grabbing Her Honor around the waist. Together the two of them sank into that hole: the halfling wearing a grim expression, DeVail's lips moving in some kind of silent incantation. The moment their heads disappeared into the hole, the blackness sealed itself shut again with a muffled rumble.
Hezekiah let the door close slowly, his face filled with wonderment. The feeling was mutual – I had no idea what else DeVail's staff could do, but the short ivory firewands used by the false guards now seemed a lot less formidable. The Sensate in me sighed with regret that I'd miss the coming battle in the rotunda. Then I remembered the charred skin of the dead, the horrid moans of the living… and I decided there were some things even a Sensate didn't need to see.
«Shall we try to find a way out?» I said to Hezekiah. «We may be safe from the fire for the moment, but if the whole building starts to burn…»
«In a minute,» he replied. «I want a chance to look at this great stuff.»
And indeed, Guvner DeVail's office was cluttered to the rafters with «great stuff»: delicately painted porcelain, brassbound chests, mummified animals hanging from ropes attached to the ceiling… dozens upon dozens of outlandish curios, and most no doubt reeking of magic.
«Don't touch anything!» I snapped at Hezekiah, who was about to pick up a copper-framed handmirror. «For that matter, don't even look at anything! If you stare into that mirror, you have no idea what might stare back.»
«I wasn't hurting anything,» he answered defensively. He closed his eyes, furrowed his brow for a moment, then opened his eyes again to look at the mirror in his hand. «It doesn't matter anyway,» he said. «The mirror's okay. It's not magic.»
«How do you know?»
«If I concentrate, I can sense a kind of radiation coming off magical things. Uncle Toby taught me that whenever I'm in a strange place, I should —» Hezekiah stopped abruptly and snapped his head around toward the door. In a low whisper, he said, «Something with a lot of magic is coming straight at us.»
«Probably Judge DeVail and that staff of hers.»
He shook his head. «I don't think so.» Once more his brow furrowed in concentration, then he whispered, «Hide!»
Much as I hated taking orders from a Clueless, the worry on Hezekiah's face suggested this was not the time for argument. Beside me stood a coat-tree with several bulky cloaks hanging from its hooks; I nipped behind it and quickly fanned out the cloaks so they'd conceal me without looking too unnatural. Given a little luck, none of the cloaks would turn me into a frog. Given a lot of luck, maybe one of the cloaks would make me invisible.
I left a tiny gap in the arrangement of clothing, just enough to let me peek out with one eye. Hezekiah was nowhere to be seen, but I could hear him shuffling around outside my line of sight, no doubt burrowing into the jumble of souvenirs Guvner DeVail kept from her trips across the planes. After a few seconds, his scurrying stopped… and a good thing too, because half a second later, the door eased open with a creak.
Two shadowed figures stood in the entranceway, both carrying cocked crossbows. They relaxed slowly as they scanned the room. «I told you,» whispered one of them, «I saw the old basher light out with some halfling. Right through the floor, she went.»
The other only grunted. «Where do you think she keeps it?»
«Try the desk first.»
The one who just spoke stepped farther into the room, crossbow still at the ready. In the light from the oil lamp on the Guvner's desk, the intruder was tall and thin, with raggedly pointed ears and cat-like yellow eyes – a githzerai, and one that looked fiercer than usual, if that was possible. Sigil has a sizable population of githzerai, but I didn't know any personally. Their race prides itself on severity, and never spends its gold on indulgences like art; therefore, githzerai and I don't move in the same circles.
As the githzerai moved toward DeVail's desk, the other intruder entered the spill of light from the lamp. I gulped hard to stop myself from gasping. This one had a face much like his githzerai companion, but his skin was as yellow as corn and his eyes like black marbles. Unless I was hallucinating, this was a githyanki: closely related to the githzerai race, but its bitter blood enemy.
A githzerai and githyanki working together? That was like a fire sprite inviting a water elemental to dance the minuet. The two gith races hated each other with the purest of passions, killing one another on sight whenever they happened to meet. The only time the githzerai and githyanki had ever agreed on anything was when they declared genocidal war on each other.
This had to be an illusion – a shapeshifting disguise. For all I knew these two might be gnome sorcerer-thieves, wearing an enchantment so they couldn't be identified as they looted this office. At least that made sense.
The two laid their crossbows on the Guvner's desk and began rummaging through the drawers. From my angle I could only see the githzerai, and his body blocked my view of most of the desk. Still, I caught the occasional glimpse of him lifting up one scroll after another, unrolling a length to skim the contents, then discarding the parchment into a growing pile on the floor. The nonchalance of his actions made me wince – not just because of his disdain for scrolls that might carry priceless ancient knowledge, but at his lack of concern for magical consequences. Some scrolls don't allow themselves to be read and tossed away. They can have curses or booby-traps, even imprisoned monsters who leap forth to shred unwary pilferers. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't care if two thieves got themselves eaten; but I didn't want to be nabbed for dessert.
Finally, the githyanki said, «This looks like it.»
The githzerai dropped the scroll he was holding. «Dust?» he asked.
«Yeah. She's even drawn a map.»
«How convenient. Let's go.»
The githyanki refolded the scroll he had found and tucked it inside his vest. Meanwhile, the githzerai picked up the oil lamp from DeVail's desk and held it above the mound of scrolls they had thrown on the floor. «By the time the old basher returns,» he said, «this place'll be burning as bright as downstairs. They'll think it's all part of the same blaze.»
«Maybe,» his partner replied. «But Her Nibs told me to torch a few more offices so the Guvs aren't suspicious about this one. I've got a list of rooms that're empty.»
The githzerai sniffed the air. «Once people smell smoke, they'll empty the whole building.»
He picked up his crossbow and headed for the exit. In his hand, he still carried the lighted oil lamp. At the door, he waited while his partner peered out to check that the hall was clear. After a moment, the githyanki nodded. «Let's go.»
The one with the lamp turned around in the doorway for one last look at the room. Then, curling his lip with disdain, he threw the lamp onto the stack of scrolls and slammed the door behind him.
Both Hezekiah and I dove instantly from our hiding places to snuff out the flames. It was a close call – the parchments were old and dry, and paraffin oil had splashed about liberally as the lamp struck the floor. Fortunately, the glass lamp cracked but didn't break; and with the help of the cloaks from the coat-tree, we smothered the blaze before it got out of hand.
«Who were those guys?» Hezekiah panted as we eased back from the mound of crispy-edged scrolls.
«How should I know?» I replied. «Do you think I recognize every thug in Sigil?»
«Just asking,» he shrugged. «What do we do now?»
«Well, we could cool our heels chatting and see if the building burns down around us; or we could pike it out of here before we singe off our eyebrows. Do you have a preference?»
Clueless though he was, Hezekiah opted for the sensible choice; and soon, we were blundering our way through the corridors of the court building, trying to find a way out.
This wing was taken up with private offices for high-level Guvners, all of whom appeared to be elsewhere. While I had visited the public areas of the courts a few times, I had never come to this part of the building; and Hezekiah was no help in figuring out where we were, because he admitted he had teleported out of the rotunda, completely blind. It was sheer luck we hadn't materialized inside a solid wall.
In time, we rounded a corner and saw a doorway down the hall, pouring out roils of black smoke. We approached cautiously, worried about bumping into our arsonist thieves, but reluctant to turn tail if someone inside needed our help. The door opened into a large room filled with row upon row of bookracks; and one shelf of the rack closest to us had been pierced by a flaming crossbow bolt.
«Our friends from the office have been here,» I muttered, pointing at the arrow.
«They're setting fire to a library?» Hezekiah cried in outrage. «That's criminal!»
Despite the smoke, he charged forward, shouting, «We can still save most of the books!» Never mind that the rack where the fire-arrow had landed was almost completely ablaze. Never mind the stupidity of running into a room full of paper just before flames make it impossible to get back out the door. Hezekiah ran straight into the library like some duty-brained knight.
«What do you think you're doing?» I yelled at him.
«Only one set of shelves are burning,» he called, stepping into the gap between the blazing rack and the one behind it. «If we can separate these from the rest of the books…» His voice broke off as he inhaled a lungful of smoke and buckled over coughing.
«Damn it, Hezekiah!» I took a step into the room, then stopped to ask myself what I was doing. If a Clueless nobody wanted to die playing hero, why should I risk my own hide to save him? I'd only known him for ten minutes, and they had been ten solid minutes of annoyance and terror. Granted, Hezekiah hadn't been responsible for the terror part; in fact, his teleport spell had saved my life…
«Damn it,» I said again, and ran in after him, keeping low to stay out of the smoke.
When I reached his side, he had struggled to his feet and was pushing weakly against the blazing bookrack. «Shove this rack forward against the wall,» he choked out, «then we shove the other racks back as far away as we can, so they don't catch fire.»
«You're barmy!» I told him. «These shelves are loaded with books. They must weigh tons.» I hiked my hands under his armpits to steady him on his feet – the lungful of smoke had hit him hard. «The only thing we can do,» I said, «is run.»
«No, we can save the books.» He squirmed away from me and planted his palms on one shelf of the bookrack – a strip of wood that had yet to catch fire. «I'm not going till we save the books.»
He shoved the rack feebly, with no discernible effect. «Come on,» he gasped at me. «Help!»
«Sure,» I replied. «Help. Well, I've never set myself on fire before. The other Sensates will be green with envy.»
I could have chosen finesse. I could have chosen to treat the books with delicate reverence. But there was smoke everywhere, the rack and half its books were on fire, and I was past the point of subtlety. Our goal was to separate the blazing rack from the others. Trusting my boots to protect me for a few seconds, I stepped up onto a shelf of the rack that was on fire, planted my hands against the adjacent rack, and thrust with all my strength.
The burning rack yielded first, tipping away under my heels to slam against the front wall of the room. A moment later, the other rack tipped backwards, boom into the rack behind it. That rack tipped too, and a third, and a fourth, boom, boom, boom, like dominoes, a ripple of one crash after another as the whole library toppled gracefully backward. The motion didn't even stop at the rear wall – when the final rack struck the plaster it kept on going, smashing a hole through the wall as big as a haycart.
«We did it!» shouted Hezekiah.
«You piking well did it, all right,» said a new voice. I looked up to see a burly Harmonium guard towering above me. He had his truncheon drawn and seemed aching to use it. «You two berks are under arrest,» he bellowed, grabbing me by the arm and hauling me to my feet. «And I truly hope you resist, because I'm in the mood to break some skulls. Got me?»
«Oh good,» Hezekiah piped up. «I wanted to meet someone in the Harmonium so I could ask about your membership requirements.»
I buried my face in my hands.
«Ah,» said the centaur, looking over my shoulder «I see that you're painting.»
«Yes,» I replied from behind my easel.
«The hustle and bustle of what this city calls justice,» the centaur continued. «Prisoners hobbling by in chains. Litigants glaring at each other as they await trial. Judges in ermine passing sentence on ragged beggars. Certainly, this is fertile ground for an artist with an eye for irony… or tragedy… or simply the paradoxes of life. What is your theme, young man?»
«My theme?» I asked.
«What artistic statement are you making? How the law oppresses the powerless? Or perhaps, if you are an optimist, how the law, despite its flaws, is a majestic abstraction that reflects the best within us. Is that your statement?»
«My statement is I wish there weren't so many curlicues carved over the entranceway. My hand is falling asleep trying to copy them all.»
The centaur stared at me wordlessly.
«This painting,» I explained, «was commissioned by Guvner Hashkar, Chief Justice of the Courts and Factol for the Fraternity of Order. He said to me, Cavendish, dear fellow, the wife's got a cousin getting married next week. He's a right berk of a boy, but family is family, don't you know. Need to give a present and the wife says a painting would be just the thing. Just the thing, yes. Three feet by five should do admirably, and go easy on the reds, there's a good chap – the boy tends to faint if he gets too excited. Why not take a bash at a picture of the court rotunda? Could be inspiring. Just the thing for the breakfast nook. Just the thing, yes.»
«And you took this commission?» The centaur looked aghast. «You didn't spit in this man's face? You didn't lecture him about artistic integrity?»
«You don't lecture factols,» I replied. «If they ask you to do something annoying, you simply charge more. That's why I have a longer list of wealthy clients than any other painter in Sigil; I talk their language.»
The centaur gaped at me for another few seconds, then stomped away in disgust. I have to admit, if there's one thing centaurs are good at, it's stomping away.
Shrugging, I continued to copy the curlicues, trying to ignore the distractions around me; and let me tell you, the City Courts are full of distractions. For example, lined up in front of a door beside me stood a cornugon – one of those reptilian horrors from the Lower Planes, nine feet tall, insect wings, a prehensile tail like three yards of razorvine… well, you must have seen them around. This one was waiting stoically, reading a scroll that had almost no words but dozens of bright orange ink drawings of humans and demihumans being grilled over pillars of flame. To a cornugon, such a scroll might be anything from a bedtime story to a menu-planner.
In line behind the hell-monster, waiting just as patiently, was a deva from the Upper Planes: a handsome amber-skinned man, two feet taller than me and equipped with wings as big as the cornugon's. The deva's wings, however, were made from feathers of the purest gold. A single one of the feathers could have bought someone a nice night on the town… but as soon as my thoughts drifted to leaving work for the day, I botched one of the curlicues and had to dab away the error with turpentine.
Unlike the cornugon, the deva hadn't brought anything to read, but that didn't leave him bored. He simply fixed his eyes on the sky outside the door of the rotunda, and soon his face settled into an expression of rapturous contemplation of the heavens… which, if you ask me, was a waste of good rapture, since Sigil is shaped like a ring a few miles in diameter, and the only thing you can see in the sky above the court building are the grimy slums of the Hive district. Still, gazing up on those filthy streets didn't bother the deva; and he even managed to maintain his serene expression when the cornugon in front shifted its weight and flicked its scaly wings across the deva's nose.
For a brief moment, something inside me wanted to toss away my bland painting of the architecture and instead, work on capturing this little moment: creatures of heaven and hell, standing side by side and ignoring each other… or perhaps only pretending to. This little scene said something. I wasn't sure what it said, but you can't show an angelic being and a demonic one in the same picture without it being some kind of comment, right?
On the other hand… I hadn't been commissioned to paint a deva and a cornugon. If I suddenly decided to paint something that interested me, who knew where it would all end? Muttering something about gold handcuffs, I went back to work.
«Painting a picture, huh?» said a nasal voice by my elbow. «Do you really have to draw all those curlicues? Couldn't you kind of suggest them?»
I turned to see a gangly boy in his late teens squatting and squinting at my canvas. His skin was caramel brown, but his hair yellow blonde, hanging haphazardly around distinctly pointed ears. One of his parents must have been human, the other an elf; and neither side of the family could take much pride in the result. «Do I know you?» I asked, trying to sound forbidding.
«Hezekiah Virtue,» he replied, holding out a hand that was overly blessed with knuckles. Looking down at my paintbox, he read my name printed there. «Britlin Cavendish… well it's an honor to meet you.»
«You've heard of me?»
«Nope. But it's an honor to meet anyone in Sigil; I've only been here two days. Do you belong to a faction?»
I sighed. My jacket clearly displayed the «five senses» symbol of the Society of Sensation, and the symbol was repeated on my signet ring and the top of my paintbox. However, that obviously didn't mean anything to this Clueless child. «I have the privilege of being a Sensate,» I told him. «Our society is dedicated to savoring all the abundance the multiverse can offer.»
«Oh, my Uncle Toby told me about you guys,» he answered, his eyes growing wide. «You must have a lot of wild parties, right?»
«Wrong. One wild party in a lifetime usually exhausts that field of experience. Then we move on to more refined pursuits.»
«Oh.» Clearly, the boy had no idea what a refined pursuit might be. Then his face brightened, and he reached into a cloth bag he carried in one hand. «Have you ever tried swineberries?»
The name made me wrinkle my nose. «Swineberries?»
He pulled out a handful of greasy brown berries, each about the size of my thumb. They were flat and wrinkled, as if someone had stepped on them with spike-heeled boots. «I brought them with me from home,» the boy said. «My home plane. I'm not from around here. The berries aren't as fresh as they used to be, but they're still pretty good.» He popped one in his mouth and chewed vigorously. «You should try one.»
«Yes,» I admitted, «I should.» A Sensate never says no to a new experience, even if it turns out to be some boring new prune from the Prime Material Plane. I told myself if the taste proved to be as lackluster as I expected – swineberries! – at least I'd have something to joke about the next time I had dinner with my fellow Sensates.
Of course, I couldn't just pop the berry in my mouth and chew, like the boy did. You don't rush such things. You have to hold the berry lightly in your fingertips, testing the weight and texture in the fruit. Then you lift it to your nose and smell its bouquet – a light, sugary fragrance, with a teasing hint of musk. Then, and only then, do you slip it between your teeth and bite down gently… whereupon, you discover the sodding berry tastes like pure rock salt.
I'd eaten pure rock salt before – it was part of the Sensate initiation ceremony. As any Sensate can tell you, once is enough.
Reluctantly, I swallowed.
«What did you think of the berry?» Hezekiah asked.
«I hated it.»
«Oh. But I guess that's all right, isn't it? Because Uncle Toby says Sensates want to experience everything, good and bad.»
«Your Uncle Toby is a font of information,» I replied through clenched teeth.
«Hey,» the boy said, «do you think these berries would go over big with the Sensates? Because I'd like to talk to one of your high-up men, to see what I have to do to join your group.»
I nearly choked. «You want to join the Sensates?»
«Uncle Toby says I should join some faction. A man has to have friends in the Cage, that's what Uncle Toby says. He calls Sigil the Cage, I don't know why. So I'm going around, talking to all the factions, to find out more about them. That's why I'm here in the courts, to talk to a Guvner. I love how Sigil people say Guvner, instead of Governor the way they'd say it back home. I love how people talk here: Stop rattling your bone-box, you Clueless berk, or I'll do you a slice-job. I hear that all the time. By the way, what's a slice-job?»
«You're going to find out any minute,» I muttered.
«On the other hand,» Hezekiah continued unstoppably, «I haven't heard you use any quaint local expressions yet. Are you from out of town too?»
I looked down at the fine-tipped paintbrush in my hand and idly wondered if it would be ruined by plunging it into the boy's eye. Control, Britlin, control. My mother was the daughter of a duke and cozzled me all through childhood not to talk like the leatherheads in the street – to sound cultured and refined so that city aristocrats would admit me to their drawing rooms. She had never been heavy-handed about it («Yes Britlin, little Oswald next door is a berk; now how would we say that in real words?») but it was a matter of family loyalty for me to stay true to her ideals, and I did not need some Prime-world pippin insulting me on that score. I racked my brains, trying to produce some scathing remark that would send this Clueless boy packing; but before I could think of a devastating response, I noticed a trio of Harmonium guards enter in lock-step through the front doors of the rotunda.
Of course, there's nothing unusual about Harmonium members in the courts building – as Sigil's police force, their duties often bring them to the halls of justice. However, this particular group stood out for several disturbing reasons.
First, all three had made a mess of folding their gray neckerchiefs. Harmonium officers are fastidious about their neckerchiefs – when I painted the portrait of Harmonium Factol Sarin, he demanded that I reproduce every little tuck and fold precisely.
Second, the three men in front of me didn't walk like Harmonium guards. Guards spend most of their time patrolling a beat through the city; even raw recruits soon acquire a measured gait that lets them walk all day while keeping alert to possible mischief. The men entering the rotunda had a more military edge to their pace – they didn't stroll, they marched.
Finally, my keen Sensate's eye picked up one more out-of-place detail. In addition to swords, normal Harmonium guards always carry stout black truncheons, reserved for those rare occasions when their commander is struck by the whim to take a wrongdoer alive. The three men in front of me, however, had quite different weapons hanging from their belts; sleek white batons carved from ivory or bone, their surfaces speckled with a red glitter that might be chips of ruby.
«What are you looking at?» Hezekiah asked.
«I was just thinking, maybe I'll pack up now and take another crack at those curlicues tomorrow.»
«Are you trying to avoid those guards?» the boy whispered, as he noticed me eyeing the newcomers. «Maybe you have some dark secret in your past, and those guys are a special elite team who might recognize you from former days?»
«Why do you think those guards are elite?» I asked.
«Because they're the first I've seen carrying firewands instead of truncheons.»
«Those are firewands?»
The boy shrugged. «Uncle Toby taught me all about wands and stuff.»
I groaned.
A rational man might have taken to his heels that very second – three impostor guards walking into the Courts with high-powered magical weapons meant big, big trouble. On the other hand, I had never seen a firewand in action; and if I could find a safe place to hide before anyone started shooting, I might witness something well worth remembering. If this turned into a major incident, maybe I could even paint the scene afterward. Those piking art critics couldn't accuse me of sterility if I made a perfect reproduction of some horrible disaster.
Unfortunately, my first glance around the rotunda didn't reveal any good places to dive for cover. Factol Hashkar may have hired me to do a painting, but his most beloved artform was tapestry; as soon as he became leader of the Guvners, he had covered every inch of City Court wallspace with dusty old banners depicting the many planes of the multiverse. Those acres of cloth would blaze like tinder if the wands started blasting fireballs… and that could happen any minute.
The three guards reached the center of the rotunda floor, and turned inward to face each other in a huddle. They wanted us to believe they were discussing private guard business; but I knew they were concealing their motions as they pulled the wands from their belts. Would they simply start shooting? Or was this a more complicated plan, «Lie down and give us your money!» or a scheme to grab hostages in protest of the latest tax hike? It didn't matter. I was at the rear of the hall, too far from the door to get outside before the pyrotechnics began, so I had to take the only cover available.
«Come on, Hezekiah,» I commanded, grabbing him by the scruff of the neck. Then, crossing my fingers that this would work, I jammed the two of us directly behind the cornugon.
«What are you playing at, berk?» growled the monster, as it whipped around to look at us.
«Sorry,» I said, «but you're from the Nine Hells. You're flameproof.»
Which was the precise moment when the first fireball struck the cornugon's back.
* * *
Even with the cornugon taking the brunt of the blast, huge tongues of flame splashed over me for a second, buffeting my face with broiling air. A few paces away, my paints and canvas blossomed with fire, followed a moment later by the turpentine can exploding into a fierce yellow blaze. Smoke was everywhere, people screamed throughout the great hall, and who knew how many other throats were too scorched to make more than a croak?In front of us, the cornugon hadn't suffered a single blister; after all, the creature came from a plane noted for its flaming infernos, so a paltry fireball was no more annoying than a mosquito bite. Still, the fireblast was an attack, and a completely unexpected one, since the cornugon had been glaring at Hezekiah and me when the false guards let fly. Angrily, the reptile-fiend raised a sharp-taloned hand as if it intended to claw off a strip of my flesh… but then second thoughts flashed through its beady black eyes and it swung around to slash the deva instead.
I have no idea if the cornugon actually believed the deva was responsible for the attack, or if the monster simply seized the excuse to swipe at a species he hated. Either way, the cornugon's claws ripped two handfuls of feathers from the deva's wings, and a moment later, the monster's hellishly barbed tail lashed the deva across the chest like a whip. Beads of shining gold blood trickled out where the thorny tail broke the deva's skin.
Until that moment, the deva had scarcely budged from his serene contemplation of the sky. Certainly, the fireball had singed off some wingfeathers, since a life of celestial bliss doesn't flameproof you like crawling through the bowels of hell; but the deva didn't react until the cornugon's attack had drawn blood. Then, with the speed of a whizzing arrow, the deva flashed out his fists, one, two – a jab to the cornugon's snout, and a beautiful palm-heel strike to its scale-covered gut.
The cornugon wheezed once and buckled to its knees.
«Wow,» said Hezekiah. «I always thought angels fought with magic swords.»
«First,» I replied, «he's not an angel, he's a deva. Second, devas don't fight with swords, they use maces. Third, he's not going to whack a cornugon with his mace in the middle of Sigil unless he wants an all-out war that will get both sides ejected from the city. Finally, in case you haven't noticed, the one thing that was shielding us from the flames is now sprawled gasping on the ground.»
Indeed, we were completely exposed to the rest of the rotunda, and a hideous sight it was. The three false guards must have stood back-to-back and loosed their fireballs simultaneously, launching bright orange flames in all directions. I could immediately identify the three points of impact from the bursts: those three areas were littered with dead bodies, the corpses' flesh roasted and split into hard red cracks. Farther out, some people had survived the initial flash… or maybe they were just taking longer to die. Their skin was puckered and oozing out fluid, their eye sockets empty pits running with melted jelly. A few made shrill whistling cries, the only kind of scream possible through a throat ravaged by fire. Most simply lay silent, squeezing themselves into balls of agony and shuddering with misery.
The explosions had focused on the three interior walls of the rotunda. The fourth side of the room, the arch opening into the street, was still untouched, and people who remained on their feet had begun to mob the exit, crushing together in a panic. Shorter beings, gnomes and halflings, would surely be trampled in the stampede down the front steps… not to mention children and the elderly. After the first casualties fell, some of those jamming in behind would trip over the broken bodies, and they too would be battered by the feet of the crowd.
At the center of the rotunda, impassive in the heart of chaos, stood the three false guards – even the most fear-crazed members of the mob gave the guards a wide berth. The impostor facing our direction was a heavily-bearded man with bleached white hair, his eye carefully watching the deva; and when the deva turned away from the cornugon to confront the creators of this destruction, the false guard calmly lifted his wand to shoot again.
The cornugon was on its hands and knees, providing no cover at all. Any fireball aimed at the deva would easily catch Hezekiah and me in the blast radius. I had time to scream, «No!»…
…and then I was standing in a paper-stacked office, facing a young halfling woman in judicial robes. She looked as surprised to see me as I was to see her. «Who are you?» she snapped.
Before I could answer, Hezekiah stepped forward from my side. «Hezekiah Virtue,» he said, holding out his knuckly hand for her to shake. «Sorry to pop in on you, ma'am, but we were in a nasty situation and I had to teleport us out of there.»
I stared at him in disbelief. «You can teleport?»
«Sure,» he answered. «Learned it from Uncle Toby.»
«Of course you did,» I sighed.
* * *
As soon as we began to explain about the fire attack, the halfling hurried us down the hall to the office of Her Honor, Judge Emeritus Oonah DeVail. I had never met DeVail personally, but all of Sigil knew her by reputation – an old bone-rattler, a basher, a woman of action. Unlike the majority of Guvners who prefer the academic approach to knowledge, Oonah DeVail had spent much of her life exploring the planes in person, leading expedition after expedition into the far corners of the multiverse and bringing back a wealth of arcane curiosities. It didn't surprise me that the halfling went running to DeVail when looking for someone to cope with an emergency situation.«Firewands?» DeVail roared. «In the rotunda?»
«Yes, Your Honor,» I said. «Three men just walked in…»
That was as far as I got. DeVail was a woman in her sixties, but with darting speed, she snatched up a staff bound with gleaming silver wire and used its support to hike herself to her feet.
Hezekiah scampered to open the door for her. «It'd be a mighty big honor to help you to safety, ma'am,» he said.
«Help yourself to safety,» she snapped. With one hand, she swept her staff off the floor and swung it high over her head. An arc of sparkling ice crystals spattered out of its swinging tip. «No flamethrowing berks will give our courts the laugh while I'm around.» With that, she dashed out the door, suddenly as spry as a twelve-year-old. The halfling woman waved at us to stay where we were, then hurried along behind DeVail to a wide-open waiting area some dozen paces down the corridor.
Pausing just a second for the halfling to catch up, DeVail slammed the butt of her staff onto the floor with an echoing whump. Beneath her feet, carpet and floorboards faded to an inky blackness, like a hole filled with deepest midnight. The halfling woman looked at the hole, looked at DeVail, then leaped, grabbing Her Honor around the waist. Together the two of them sank into that hole: the halfling wearing a grim expression, DeVail's lips moving in some kind of silent incantation. The moment their heads disappeared into the hole, the blackness sealed itself shut again with a muffled rumble.
Hezekiah let the door close slowly, his face filled with wonderment. The feeling was mutual – I had no idea what else DeVail's staff could do, but the short ivory firewands used by the false guards now seemed a lot less formidable. The Sensate in me sighed with regret that I'd miss the coming battle in the rotunda. Then I remembered the charred skin of the dead, the horrid moans of the living… and I decided there were some things even a Sensate didn't need to see.
«Shall we try to find a way out?» I said to Hezekiah. «We may be safe from the fire for the moment, but if the whole building starts to burn…»
«In a minute,» he replied. «I want a chance to look at this great stuff.»
And indeed, Guvner DeVail's office was cluttered to the rafters with «great stuff»: delicately painted porcelain, brassbound chests, mummified animals hanging from ropes attached to the ceiling… dozens upon dozens of outlandish curios, and most no doubt reeking of magic.
«Don't touch anything!» I snapped at Hezekiah, who was about to pick up a copper-framed handmirror. «For that matter, don't even look at anything! If you stare into that mirror, you have no idea what might stare back.»
«I wasn't hurting anything,» he answered defensively. He closed his eyes, furrowed his brow for a moment, then opened his eyes again to look at the mirror in his hand. «It doesn't matter anyway,» he said. «The mirror's okay. It's not magic.»
«How do you know?»
«If I concentrate, I can sense a kind of radiation coming off magical things. Uncle Toby taught me that whenever I'm in a strange place, I should —» Hezekiah stopped abruptly and snapped his head around toward the door. In a low whisper, he said, «Something with a lot of magic is coming straight at us.»
«Probably Judge DeVail and that staff of hers.»
He shook his head. «I don't think so.» Once more his brow furrowed in concentration, then he whispered, «Hide!»
Much as I hated taking orders from a Clueless, the worry on Hezekiah's face suggested this was not the time for argument. Beside me stood a coat-tree with several bulky cloaks hanging from its hooks; I nipped behind it and quickly fanned out the cloaks so they'd conceal me without looking too unnatural. Given a little luck, none of the cloaks would turn me into a frog. Given a lot of luck, maybe one of the cloaks would make me invisible.
I left a tiny gap in the arrangement of clothing, just enough to let me peek out with one eye. Hezekiah was nowhere to be seen, but I could hear him shuffling around outside my line of sight, no doubt burrowing into the jumble of souvenirs Guvner DeVail kept from her trips across the planes. After a few seconds, his scurrying stopped… and a good thing too, because half a second later, the door eased open with a creak.
Two shadowed figures stood in the entranceway, both carrying cocked crossbows. They relaxed slowly as they scanned the room. «I told you,» whispered one of them, «I saw the old basher light out with some halfling. Right through the floor, she went.»
The other only grunted. «Where do you think she keeps it?»
«Try the desk first.»
The one who just spoke stepped farther into the room, crossbow still at the ready. In the light from the oil lamp on the Guvner's desk, the intruder was tall and thin, with raggedly pointed ears and cat-like yellow eyes – a githzerai, and one that looked fiercer than usual, if that was possible. Sigil has a sizable population of githzerai, but I didn't know any personally. Their race prides itself on severity, and never spends its gold on indulgences like art; therefore, githzerai and I don't move in the same circles.
As the githzerai moved toward DeVail's desk, the other intruder entered the spill of light from the lamp. I gulped hard to stop myself from gasping. This one had a face much like his githzerai companion, but his skin was as yellow as corn and his eyes like black marbles. Unless I was hallucinating, this was a githyanki: closely related to the githzerai race, but its bitter blood enemy.
A githzerai and githyanki working together? That was like a fire sprite inviting a water elemental to dance the minuet. The two gith races hated each other with the purest of passions, killing one another on sight whenever they happened to meet. The only time the githzerai and githyanki had ever agreed on anything was when they declared genocidal war on each other.
This had to be an illusion – a shapeshifting disguise. For all I knew these two might be gnome sorcerer-thieves, wearing an enchantment so they couldn't be identified as they looted this office. At least that made sense.
The two laid their crossbows on the Guvner's desk and began rummaging through the drawers. From my angle I could only see the githzerai, and his body blocked my view of most of the desk. Still, I caught the occasional glimpse of him lifting up one scroll after another, unrolling a length to skim the contents, then discarding the parchment into a growing pile on the floor. The nonchalance of his actions made me wince – not just because of his disdain for scrolls that might carry priceless ancient knowledge, but at his lack of concern for magical consequences. Some scrolls don't allow themselves to be read and tossed away. They can have curses or booby-traps, even imprisoned monsters who leap forth to shred unwary pilferers. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't care if two thieves got themselves eaten; but I didn't want to be nabbed for dessert.
Finally, the githyanki said, «This looks like it.»
The githzerai dropped the scroll he was holding. «Dust?» he asked.
«Yeah. She's even drawn a map.»
«How convenient. Let's go.»
The githyanki refolded the scroll he had found and tucked it inside his vest. Meanwhile, the githzerai picked up the oil lamp from DeVail's desk and held it above the mound of scrolls they had thrown on the floor. «By the time the old basher returns,» he said, «this place'll be burning as bright as downstairs. They'll think it's all part of the same blaze.»
«Maybe,» his partner replied. «But Her Nibs told me to torch a few more offices so the Guvs aren't suspicious about this one. I've got a list of rooms that're empty.»
The githzerai sniffed the air. «Once people smell smoke, they'll empty the whole building.»
He picked up his crossbow and headed for the exit. In his hand, he still carried the lighted oil lamp. At the door, he waited while his partner peered out to check that the hall was clear. After a moment, the githyanki nodded. «Let's go.»
The one with the lamp turned around in the doorway for one last look at the room. Then, curling his lip with disdain, he threw the lamp onto the stack of scrolls and slammed the door behind him.
Both Hezekiah and I dove instantly from our hiding places to snuff out the flames. It was a close call – the parchments were old and dry, and paraffin oil had splashed about liberally as the lamp struck the floor. Fortunately, the glass lamp cracked but didn't break; and with the help of the cloaks from the coat-tree, we smothered the blaze before it got out of hand.
«Who were those guys?» Hezekiah panted as we eased back from the mound of crispy-edged scrolls.
«How should I know?» I replied. «Do you think I recognize every thug in Sigil?»
«Just asking,» he shrugged. «What do we do now?»
«Well, we could cool our heels chatting and see if the building burns down around us; or we could pike it out of here before we singe off our eyebrows. Do you have a preference?»
Clueless though he was, Hezekiah opted for the sensible choice; and soon, we were blundering our way through the corridors of the court building, trying to find a way out.
This wing was taken up with private offices for high-level Guvners, all of whom appeared to be elsewhere. While I had visited the public areas of the courts a few times, I had never come to this part of the building; and Hezekiah was no help in figuring out where we were, because he admitted he had teleported out of the rotunda, completely blind. It was sheer luck we hadn't materialized inside a solid wall.
In time, we rounded a corner and saw a doorway down the hall, pouring out roils of black smoke. We approached cautiously, worried about bumping into our arsonist thieves, but reluctant to turn tail if someone inside needed our help. The door opened into a large room filled with row upon row of bookracks; and one shelf of the rack closest to us had been pierced by a flaming crossbow bolt.
«Our friends from the office have been here,» I muttered, pointing at the arrow.
«They're setting fire to a library?» Hezekiah cried in outrage. «That's criminal!»
Despite the smoke, he charged forward, shouting, «We can still save most of the books!» Never mind that the rack where the fire-arrow had landed was almost completely ablaze. Never mind the stupidity of running into a room full of paper just before flames make it impossible to get back out the door. Hezekiah ran straight into the library like some duty-brained knight.
«What do you think you're doing?» I yelled at him.
«Only one set of shelves are burning,» he called, stepping into the gap between the blazing rack and the one behind it. «If we can separate these from the rest of the books…» His voice broke off as he inhaled a lungful of smoke and buckled over coughing.
«Damn it, Hezekiah!» I took a step into the room, then stopped to ask myself what I was doing. If a Clueless nobody wanted to die playing hero, why should I risk my own hide to save him? I'd only known him for ten minutes, and they had been ten solid minutes of annoyance and terror. Granted, Hezekiah hadn't been responsible for the terror part; in fact, his teleport spell had saved my life…
«Damn it,» I said again, and ran in after him, keeping low to stay out of the smoke.
When I reached his side, he had struggled to his feet and was pushing weakly against the blazing bookrack. «Shove this rack forward against the wall,» he choked out, «then we shove the other racks back as far away as we can, so they don't catch fire.»
«You're barmy!» I told him. «These shelves are loaded with books. They must weigh tons.» I hiked my hands under his armpits to steady him on his feet – the lungful of smoke had hit him hard. «The only thing we can do,» I said, «is run.»
«No, we can save the books.» He squirmed away from me and planted his palms on one shelf of the bookrack – a strip of wood that had yet to catch fire. «I'm not going till we save the books.»
He shoved the rack feebly, with no discernible effect. «Come on,» he gasped at me. «Help!»
«Sure,» I replied. «Help. Well, I've never set myself on fire before. The other Sensates will be green with envy.»
I could have chosen finesse. I could have chosen to treat the books with delicate reverence. But there was smoke everywhere, the rack and half its books were on fire, and I was past the point of subtlety. Our goal was to separate the blazing rack from the others. Trusting my boots to protect me for a few seconds, I stepped up onto a shelf of the rack that was on fire, planted my hands against the adjacent rack, and thrust with all my strength.
The burning rack yielded first, tipping away under my heels to slam against the front wall of the room. A moment later, the other rack tipped backwards, boom into the rack behind it. That rack tipped too, and a third, and a fourth, boom, boom, boom, like dominoes, a ripple of one crash after another as the whole library toppled gracefully backward. The motion didn't even stop at the rear wall – when the final rack struck the plaster it kept on going, smashing a hole through the wall as big as a haycart.
«We did it!» shouted Hezekiah.
«You piking well did it, all right,» said a new voice. I looked up to see a burly Harmonium guard towering above me. He had his truncheon drawn and seemed aching to use it. «You two berks are under arrest,» he bellowed, grabbing me by the arm and hauling me to my feet. «And I truly hope you resist, because I'm in the mood to break some skulls. Got me?»
«Oh good,» Hezekiah piped up. «I wanted to meet someone in the Harmonium so I could ask about your membership requirements.»
I buried my face in my hands.
2. THREE CONCERNED FACTOLS
If you walk (or are dragged) into the main Harmonium guard barracks, the first thing you'll see is a ten-foot tall portrait of their leader, Factol Sarin… and wasn't I glad that I'd gotten on his good side by copying the folds on his neckerchief exactly. Of course, the Harmonium were such a bunch of hardcases, they wouldn't let me go just because I'd painted Factol Sarin from his best profile; but at least when they learned who I was, they stopped swinging their truncheons so recklessly near my skull.
Half a battalion of guards escorted Hezekiah and me to separate interrogation rooms, and that was the last I saw of the boy for many hours. A sharp-eyed sergeant took my statement, seldom letting me say more than a sentence before interrupting with nitpicky questions. Of course, I told the exact truth, holding nothing back – I had no reason to hide anything I'd seen or done. I dearly hoped Hezekiah was doing the same in his interrogation… not that he was likely to lie, but the idiotic Clueless might skip over important details in his hurry to start quizzing the guards about Harmonium philosophy. If he annoyed them too much, they might bash out his brains before he had a chance to corroborate my story.
Even though the interrogation room had thick marble walls, they weren't thick enough to block out all the noise in the barracks that evening. Every minute or so, footsteps would race past the door outside; and several times an hour, I heard distant yelling, not clear enough for me to make out words, but with the tone of someone bellowing orders to subordinates. The sergeant interrogating me refused to share any news about how things had turned out at the courts, but judging by the barracks clamor, I guessed the attackers had escaped. Now the guards were scouring the city in search of the killers.
After several hours, the sergeant exhausted his questions and left me locked in the room with a couple of watchful-eyed corporals. Clearly, the sergeant was not happy with my story – «A githyanki and githzerai working together… how addle-coved do you think I am?» – but he knew the time had come to find his commander and discuss what to do next. It wasn't every day that Sigil suffered a massacre in the Courts, and the investigation would surely fall under scrutiny from high places. The sergeant and everyone else in the Harmonium would move with the utmost caution to avoid legal slip-ups.
Another hour passed… or at least what felt like an hour, cooped up with two Harmonium guards who were built like mountains and just about as talkative. They stood on either side of the door, arms folded across their chests and eyes glued on me, instantly ready to gut me with their swords if it looked like I intended to cast some nefarious spell. «I don't know any spells,» I snapped at them around the half-hour mark, when their rigid gazes had begun to get on my nerves. Of course, that only made them more suspicious.
At long last, the door opened again; but instead of the sergeant, the newcomers were Factol Sarin of the Harmonium, Factol Hashkar of the Guvners, and Factol Erin Darkflame Montgomery of my own Society of Sensation. Even though I knew all three personally, I bowed promptly and respectfully to each – three factols traveling in company are not just plain folks, but an official delegation. Still, Lady Erin made a show of greeting me, as one Sensate to another. «Britlin!» she said, taking my hand firmly in hers. «It seems you've been havin' an adventure.»
«Indeed, my lady.» I had, of course, met her several times at Sensate functions, even sitting at her table once during the Feast of the Wind's Blush. Feast tradition demanded a large table, and my chair had been fourteen places away from hers, sandwiched between a minor baroness from the Outlands and a representative from the Fraternal Order of Ironmongers. Nevertheless, Lady Erin had come around the table to speak with me in her soft Outlands accent, discussing watercolors for several delightful minutes; then, she moved to an equally warm conversation with the fellow on my right, this time about threepenny nails.
The odd thing was, she really did care about watercolors, nails, and all the other topics she discussed at the table that night. Our factol was not just a strikingly beautiful woman on the outside (so splendid I had promised her a ten percent discount if she ever wanted a portrait, just for the delight of having her pose in my studio); but she was also a paragon of loveliness inwardly, in compassion, intelligence, and sheer personal vibrancy.
The congenial way she greeted me in the interrogation room suggested she believed I had acquitted myself well during the mayhem at the City Courts. That counted for a lot; although she was only in her thirties, Lady Erin headed the largest voting bloc in Sigil's Hall of Speakers – many other cities would grant her the title of Mayor. If she vouched for me, I had little to fear in the short term.
Besides, Guvner Hashkar and Captain Sarin both wore benign expressions as well… somber, yes, and tense with the strain of handling what must be a difficult night on the streets, but with no animosity toward me. Indeed, Guvner Hashkar came forward to shake my hand, saying, «Hear you saved a library, dear boy. Most of it, anyway. Good work, excellent work. Well worth a medal or citation, something like that. Our chief of protocol will decide what's appropriate, once she calms down. Might be a few weeks. She's the one who has to put the books back on those racks. Still, she's grateful, very grateful. We all are.»
I bowed once more – quite a low bow, since Hashkar was an elderly dwarf: only four foot two to begin with, and now stooped with age. The biggest thing about him was his extravagant white moustaches, dangling like string mops nearly all the way to the floor. Some claimed he grew them to draw attention away from the aggressively red bulbousness of his nose. On the other hand, maybe he liked those moustaches because they made him look doddering and senile; in debates at the Hall of Speakers, Hashkar liked being dismissed as a dithering old fool until he suddenly swooped in for the kill, destroying his opponents' arguments with a single casual remark.
«Enough gab,» said Captain Sarin, briskly. From what I'd seen, Sarin did everything briskly – rather alarming when he came to my studio to pose for his portrait, because the way he barreled around, I was sure he'd step in a pot of paint. He didn't. Sarin might be equipped with shoulders as wide as a buffalo and muscles to match, but it wasn't strength alone that won him leadership of the Harmonium. «Now,» he went on, «we have a few questions to ask you, Mister Cavendish.»
«Of course, sir.» I bowed once more, because that's what you do when a factol calls you «mister».
«In the statement you gave to my sergeant, you simply stated the facts. Now we'd like your opinions. Hunches, suspicions, impressions… you're a blood with a keen eye and your work gives you contact with plenty of folks here in the Cage. What do you make of this all? If you had to guess, would you say the attackers were Anarchists? Or maybe Chaosmen?»
«Neither, sir.»
Captain Sarin raised an eyebrow. I hurried to explain. «The Anarchists have a lot of experience pretending to be Harmonium guards – disguise is part of their basic training. I'd guess there are half a dozen Anarchists in this building right now, eavesdropping on the way you're handling the present situation.»
The captain made a face. «You're probably right.»
«So,» I said, "they aren't going to make an elementary mistake like folding their neckerchiefs wrong. Anarchists are just too good at infiltration to slip up like that.
«As for the Chaosmen,» I continued, «they don't have the discipline for what I saw. The false guards marched like soldiers and fired in unison – Chaosmen simply wouldn't allow themselves to be regimented like that. They might dash wildly into the building, fire about at random, then run away again; but they'd despise the very idea of planning the attack with military precision, and they certainly wouldn't carry it off.»
The captain cast a glance at Guvner Hashkar and Lady Erin. They both nodded. Sarin sighed. «That's pretty much what we concluded too,» he told me. «We hoped you might have noticed something to indicate otherwise. Life would be less complicated if we could blame this mess on the usual pus-kickers.»
«I take it you didn't capture any of the attackers?»
«All three escaped,» Lady Erin answered with a keen edge of anger. «As you say, the massacre was planned with military precision. The moment Judge DeVail showed up with that staff of hers, one of the fireballin' berks shouted, 'Hop it!' and activated some magical boojum. They disappeared in a shimmer of light, and no one knows where. DeVail fired into the shimmer anyway on the off chance they'd just turned invisible; but it didn't do any good.»
«Does Judge DeVail know what the thieves stole from her office?»
«Haven't been able to talk to her yet,» Guvner Hashkar replied. «Soon as the attackers vanished, Oonah started helping the poor sods who got caught in the middle. Tried to calm the mob, bandage the injured… even stopped the deva and cornugon who were still brawling in the middle of the flames. Eventually, the old girl pushed her luck too far – inhaled more smoke than she could handle. Healers got to her in time and she'll be right as rain in the morning; but for now she's sleeping, and they don't want us to wake her.»
«Pity,» I said. «If we knew what those two had stolen, maybe we'd have a clue what was really going on.»
Captain Sarin grunted. «You're certain the theft was connected with the fire attack?»
«Absolutely,» I told him. «First of all, the thieves had been waiting in a position to see Judge DeVail dash to the rescue. Then they went straight to her office and rummaged through her desk for one specific scroll, ignoring dozens of valuable curios in the rest of the room. Once they had the scroll, they systematically torched her office and other rooms to cover their tracks, intending the secondary fires to be dismissed as offshoots of the fire downstairs. They must have known about the fire attack ahead of time, and were poised to move on DeVail's office once the coast was clear. My guess is the fireballs were simply a diversion to make it easier for the thieves to get in and out without being noticed.»
«But a githyanki and githzerai working together,» Sarin shook his head. «That's almost impossible to believe.»
Half a battalion of guards escorted Hezekiah and me to separate interrogation rooms, and that was the last I saw of the boy for many hours. A sharp-eyed sergeant took my statement, seldom letting me say more than a sentence before interrupting with nitpicky questions. Of course, I told the exact truth, holding nothing back – I had no reason to hide anything I'd seen or done. I dearly hoped Hezekiah was doing the same in his interrogation… not that he was likely to lie, but the idiotic Clueless might skip over important details in his hurry to start quizzing the guards about Harmonium philosophy. If he annoyed them too much, they might bash out his brains before he had a chance to corroborate my story.
Even though the interrogation room had thick marble walls, they weren't thick enough to block out all the noise in the barracks that evening. Every minute or so, footsteps would race past the door outside; and several times an hour, I heard distant yelling, not clear enough for me to make out words, but with the tone of someone bellowing orders to subordinates. The sergeant interrogating me refused to share any news about how things had turned out at the courts, but judging by the barracks clamor, I guessed the attackers had escaped. Now the guards were scouring the city in search of the killers.
After several hours, the sergeant exhausted his questions and left me locked in the room with a couple of watchful-eyed corporals. Clearly, the sergeant was not happy with my story – «A githyanki and githzerai working together… how addle-coved do you think I am?» – but he knew the time had come to find his commander and discuss what to do next. It wasn't every day that Sigil suffered a massacre in the Courts, and the investigation would surely fall under scrutiny from high places. The sergeant and everyone else in the Harmonium would move with the utmost caution to avoid legal slip-ups.
Another hour passed… or at least what felt like an hour, cooped up with two Harmonium guards who were built like mountains and just about as talkative. They stood on either side of the door, arms folded across their chests and eyes glued on me, instantly ready to gut me with their swords if it looked like I intended to cast some nefarious spell. «I don't know any spells,» I snapped at them around the half-hour mark, when their rigid gazes had begun to get on my nerves. Of course, that only made them more suspicious.
At long last, the door opened again; but instead of the sergeant, the newcomers were Factol Sarin of the Harmonium, Factol Hashkar of the Guvners, and Factol Erin Darkflame Montgomery of my own Society of Sensation. Even though I knew all three personally, I bowed promptly and respectfully to each – three factols traveling in company are not just plain folks, but an official delegation. Still, Lady Erin made a show of greeting me, as one Sensate to another. «Britlin!» she said, taking my hand firmly in hers. «It seems you've been havin' an adventure.»
«Indeed, my lady.» I had, of course, met her several times at Sensate functions, even sitting at her table once during the Feast of the Wind's Blush. Feast tradition demanded a large table, and my chair had been fourteen places away from hers, sandwiched between a minor baroness from the Outlands and a representative from the Fraternal Order of Ironmongers. Nevertheless, Lady Erin had come around the table to speak with me in her soft Outlands accent, discussing watercolors for several delightful minutes; then, she moved to an equally warm conversation with the fellow on my right, this time about threepenny nails.
The odd thing was, she really did care about watercolors, nails, and all the other topics she discussed at the table that night. Our factol was not just a strikingly beautiful woman on the outside (so splendid I had promised her a ten percent discount if she ever wanted a portrait, just for the delight of having her pose in my studio); but she was also a paragon of loveliness inwardly, in compassion, intelligence, and sheer personal vibrancy.
The congenial way she greeted me in the interrogation room suggested she believed I had acquitted myself well during the mayhem at the City Courts. That counted for a lot; although she was only in her thirties, Lady Erin headed the largest voting bloc in Sigil's Hall of Speakers – many other cities would grant her the title of Mayor. If she vouched for me, I had little to fear in the short term.
Besides, Guvner Hashkar and Captain Sarin both wore benign expressions as well… somber, yes, and tense with the strain of handling what must be a difficult night on the streets, but with no animosity toward me. Indeed, Guvner Hashkar came forward to shake my hand, saying, «Hear you saved a library, dear boy. Most of it, anyway. Good work, excellent work. Well worth a medal or citation, something like that. Our chief of protocol will decide what's appropriate, once she calms down. Might be a few weeks. She's the one who has to put the books back on those racks. Still, she's grateful, very grateful. We all are.»
I bowed once more – quite a low bow, since Hashkar was an elderly dwarf: only four foot two to begin with, and now stooped with age. The biggest thing about him was his extravagant white moustaches, dangling like string mops nearly all the way to the floor. Some claimed he grew them to draw attention away from the aggressively red bulbousness of his nose. On the other hand, maybe he liked those moustaches because they made him look doddering and senile; in debates at the Hall of Speakers, Hashkar liked being dismissed as a dithering old fool until he suddenly swooped in for the kill, destroying his opponents' arguments with a single casual remark.
«Enough gab,» said Captain Sarin, briskly. From what I'd seen, Sarin did everything briskly – rather alarming when he came to my studio to pose for his portrait, because the way he barreled around, I was sure he'd step in a pot of paint. He didn't. Sarin might be equipped with shoulders as wide as a buffalo and muscles to match, but it wasn't strength alone that won him leadership of the Harmonium. «Now,» he went on, «we have a few questions to ask you, Mister Cavendish.»
«Of course, sir.» I bowed once more, because that's what you do when a factol calls you «mister».
«In the statement you gave to my sergeant, you simply stated the facts. Now we'd like your opinions. Hunches, suspicions, impressions… you're a blood with a keen eye and your work gives you contact with plenty of folks here in the Cage. What do you make of this all? If you had to guess, would you say the attackers were Anarchists? Or maybe Chaosmen?»
«Neither, sir.»
Captain Sarin raised an eyebrow. I hurried to explain. «The Anarchists have a lot of experience pretending to be Harmonium guards – disguise is part of their basic training. I'd guess there are half a dozen Anarchists in this building right now, eavesdropping on the way you're handling the present situation.»
The captain made a face. «You're probably right.»
«So,» I said, "they aren't going to make an elementary mistake like folding their neckerchiefs wrong. Anarchists are just too good at infiltration to slip up like that.
«As for the Chaosmen,» I continued, «they don't have the discipline for what I saw. The false guards marched like soldiers and fired in unison – Chaosmen simply wouldn't allow themselves to be regimented like that. They might dash wildly into the building, fire about at random, then run away again; but they'd despise the very idea of planning the attack with military precision, and they certainly wouldn't carry it off.»
The captain cast a glance at Guvner Hashkar and Lady Erin. They both nodded. Sarin sighed. «That's pretty much what we concluded too,» he told me. «We hoped you might have noticed something to indicate otherwise. Life would be less complicated if we could blame this mess on the usual pus-kickers.»
«I take it you didn't capture any of the attackers?»
«All three escaped,» Lady Erin answered with a keen edge of anger. «As you say, the massacre was planned with military precision. The moment Judge DeVail showed up with that staff of hers, one of the fireballin' berks shouted, 'Hop it!' and activated some magical boojum. They disappeared in a shimmer of light, and no one knows where. DeVail fired into the shimmer anyway on the off chance they'd just turned invisible; but it didn't do any good.»
«Does Judge DeVail know what the thieves stole from her office?»
«Haven't been able to talk to her yet,» Guvner Hashkar replied. «Soon as the attackers vanished, Oonah started helping the poor sods who got caught in the middle. Tried to calm the mob, bandage the injured… even stopped the deva and cornugon who were still brawling in the middle of the flames. Eventually, the old girl pushed her luck too far – inhaled more smoke than she could handle. Healers got to her in time and she'll be right as rain in the morning; but for now she's sleeping, and they don't want us to wake her.»
«Pity,» I said. «If we knew what those two had stolen, maybe we'd have a clue what was really going on.»
Captain Sarin grunted. «You're certain the theft was connected with the fire attack?»
«Absolutely,» I told him. «First of all, the thieves had been waiting in a position to see Judge DeVail dash to the rescue. Then they went straight to her office and rummaged through her desk for one specific scroll, ignoring dozens of valuable curios in the rest of the room. Once they had the scroll, they systematically torched her office and other rooms to cover their tracks, intending the secondary fires to be dismissed as offshoots of the fire downstairs. They must have known about the fire attack ahead of time, and were poised to move on DeVail's office once the coast was clear. My guess is the fireballs were simply a diversion to make it easier for the thieves to get in and out without being noticed.»
«But a githyanki and githzerai working together,» Sarin shook his head. «That's almost impossible to believe.»