7. THREE SLABS OF CLAY

   «We have done a great thing this day,» Wheezle said. «The undead gods will not forget us.»
   «Is that a good thing?» Hezekiah whispered to me.
   «Probably not,» I whispered back. «But I'd rather have them pleased with us than angry.» In a louder voice, I said to Wheezle, «Of course you realize you've destroyed… sorry, freed… a lot of corpses who could have been on our side.»
   «They would not truly be our allies, honored Cavendish. You must have observed how quickly the wight killed the drow once I took control of the scepter. Undead animated in this way always despise the persons responsible. The wights cannot resist direct commands from their creators, but they do their best to twist those commands contrary to the original intent. We will do better taking over the wights created by others – those wights will be grateful to us, at least for a time.»
   I had to grant the truth of what he said. Wights would never be trustworthy for long, but the one we freed from the drow had smiled at me in a friendly manner… until Wheezle turned her into brown goop all over my boots.
   «All right,» I said. «Let's find more wights and tear this place apart.»

* * *
   With a swish, the door opened in front of us. Wheezle took the lead; he was no longer invisible, but he carried Unveiler… something we wanted the wandering undead to see as soon as possible. I followed Wheezle and Hezekiah followed me.
   The corridor continued to curve before us, following the building's central ring. This time, however, the inner wall was not opaque metal – it was another triangular patchwork of glass, finally revealing what lay inside the ring.
   The center was simply a bed of dust, light brown in the gray light. Our building surrounded the dust like an arena around a playing field, raised about two storeys above the surface. The enclosed region was enormous, a circle about four hundred yards in diameter – the far side of the ring was only a dim shadow in the grayness.
   For a moment, I thought the dust floor was completely empty. Then I caught some motion a quarter way around the ring. Asking Wheezle to stop for a moment, I pressed my nose against one of the glass triangles and peered out at the unmoving dust.
   Four figures had just emerged from a door at the base of the building, figures who moved with the peculiar arm-swinging gait of wights. Slowly, they waded into the arena, dust up to their thighs: a team of wights walking directly forward, swinging their claws to scoop up handfuls of dust and throw it over their heads.
   The disturbed dust did not drift down slowly as I might have expected – it fell as fast as stones. Was each dust mote as heavy as a boulder? No, the wights showed no strain as they tossed around handfuls of the stuff. After a few moments' thought, the explanation struck me: the arena had no air. The dust didn't drift because there was nothing for it to drift upon; with no air resistance, the dust fell as fast as anything else.
   «No wonder they wanted to manufacture all those wights,» I murmured. «Whatever they're up to down there, they need creatures that don't have to breathe.»
   As we continued along the corridor, I glanced out the window from time to time. More and more wights were wading into the dust – all the four-monster teams that had been assembled while Hezekiah and I hid in the corpse-heap. They soon spread around the whole circle, simply walking and throwing dust in the air.
   «They're searching for something,» Hezekiah said in a low voice.
   «You think so?» I asked.
   The boy nodded. «There must be something buried in the dust and they're trying to find it.»
   For once, Hezekiah appeared to be right. The wights slowly worked their way across the surface, sweeping through the dust with their hands. I wouldn't call it a methodical search; but perhaps this random wandering was one way the wights could do a bad job for their masters without actually disobeying orders.
   In time, we heard the sound of shuffling feet directly ahead of us – four wights with a hobgoblin guide. Before I could stop him, Wheezle simply called, «Hello!» and waved the scepter. The instant the wights saw that someone new held Unveiler, they turned on the hobgoblin and ripped him to gobbets of bloody meat.
   «Wheezle,» I said, «next time, let's try to take one of these berks alive. If we can interrogate a prisoner, we might learn useful things.»
   «A hundred apologies, honored Cavendish.»
   Since the phrase was usually «a thousand apologies», I don't think Wheezle was particularly contrite.

* * *
   We continued on our way with the four liberated wights trundling amiably behind us. Wheezle had chatted with them briefly, offering them a choice of being «freed» immediately or accompanying us on our hunting mission. All four were hissingly eager to slice into more of their former masters… which should be a warning to all you readers who want to create wights of your own.
   The wights trotted along at a healthy speed, far faster than the sullen shuffle they had shown previously. In minutes, we had caught up with the next team of four, this group led by a human woman. «Take her alive!» Wheezle shouted as soon as her party came into view; and a heartbeat later, the woman was pinned against the glass wall by her former followers.
   With four pointy-toothed wights grinning malevolently in her face, the woman opened her mouth to scream. Immediately, one of the wights stuffed its hand between her lips, pressing her head back hard against the glass panes. She still screamed, as any sensible person might with a corpse's hand thrust into her mouth; but the muffled sound went nowhere.
   As I trotted up to her, I told the wights, «Don't hurt her… for the moment.» I said it only for the woman's benefit – as long as Wheezle held Unveiler, the wights didn't care a pin about orders from me.
   The woman's eyes were wide and watery, glaring at me with vicious fury. She was in her early thirties, of middling height but very wiry. Up where the wights held her hands, her knuckles each sported a thick knot of callus, as if she liked to use her fists on passers-by; Brother Kiripao's knuckles had an identical set of calluses.
   «Hello,» I said to her. «I'm going to ask this nice wight to take his hand out of your mouth… and if you behave, he won't have to put it back in. All right?»
   Grudgingly, she nodded. «Do what he says,» Wheezle murmured to the wights, tapping Unveiler lightly against his thigh.
   The wight slowly removed its hand, watching for any sign the woman might try to scream again. However, the hard-edged expression on her face showed that her initial outburst had been a one-time reaction; now she wanted to show how tough she was. «Who are you?» she growled.
   «We don't have time to exchange life stories,» I said. «You're going to tell us everything we want to know, and you're going to keep answering our questions until we say otherwise.»
   «If I don't, you're going to feed me to the wights?»
   The wights all leered with their pointed teeth, but I shook my head. «That would be too easy. If you won't talk, I'll turn you over to… The Kid.»
   Dramatically, I spun around and pointed at Hezekiah.
   «Me?» he gulped.
   «Him!» I said, turning back to the woman. «Looks like a gawky little Clueless, doesn't he? Too stupid to live. I wish I had a ducat for every person who's thought that… every corpse left festering in an alley, the body mutilated and the face frozen in agony. Look at him again. Can anyone really be that much of a leatherhead? Or is it just an act to make you think he's harmless?»
   «Britlin…» Hezekiah began, but I stopped him quickly.
   «No!» I cried, cringing in front of him. «Don't be angry with me for giving away your secret. Please, master, don't… don't…» I stumbled against him, and in reflex, the boy reached out to steady me. The moment his hand touched my shoulder, I gasped, «Oh saints, the pain!» and collapsed, whimpering.
   «Please,» Wheezle said to the woman, «please, honored lady, you see I am a Dustman and no stranger to death. Yet even I cannot bear the hideous atrocities which this youth might visit upon your person. They claim he learned the arts of torture from the Lords of the Abyss. Surely you have heard of him? Surely you have heard of… The Kid.»
   A pity I was down on the ground, moaning like a barmy – I would have given a pound of gold to see the expression on the woman's face. Or on Hezekiah's face, for that matter. Still, I hoped the boy would have the wit to play along with the act; if we didn't scare this woman with cheap theatrics, we'd have to use real torture to get information out of her. That would mean noise and delay and a burden of guilt I preferred to avoid.
   Carefully, Hezekiah stepped over me and approached the woman. I groaned louder and wondered if the boy was about to mess up my plan. «Don't let these berks peel you,» he said in a passable imitation of a Sigil accent. «I'm really quite harmless.»
   And then, suddenly, Hezekiah was terrifying. From my position on the floor, all I could see was his boots; and they were the most frightening boots I had ever seen in my life. Terrible visions erupted in my mind, showing those boots kicking me mercilessly, breaking bones, crushing the skulls of children and grinding eyeballs under their heels.
   Boots marching over the stubble of scorched fields.
   Boots stamping face after face, annihilating every flicker of life.
   Then, just as suddenly, Hezekiah was once more just a Clueless youth, innocent and ungainly. «You see?» he said in his normal voice. «I'm harmless.»
   I moaned, and this time the moan was no act. It took all my strength to stop myself from shivering in the afterchill of terror. My sudden unreasoning fear must have come from magic, of course – some spell cast by Wheezle or Hezekiah himself, to make the little leatherhead seem monstrous; but my usual composure was shattered by the experience. I found myself asking which was the illusion: the suddenly horrendous aura surrounding the boy, or perhaps his usual bumbling persona. What did I really know about him? A Clueless hick who just happened to know high-powered magic… did that make sense?
   «Keep him away from me!» the woman shouted.
   «I do not have authority over The Kid,» Wheezle answered. «But if you tell what you know, perhaps he will not trouble himself to make an example of you.»
   «All right, I'll talk,» she said. And she did.

* * *
   Her name was Miriam and she didn't know much. Ten days ago, she'd been a streetcorner thug in Sigil, playing the protection peel over a few blocks of dingy shops: «Cross my palm with silver, or I'll burn your place down.» When some basher in a tavern offered her a heavy purse in exchange for three weeks of strong-arm work, she'd said yes. That's how she'd come here to the Plane of Dust.
   Yes, this really was the Plane of Dust that Oonah had mentioned a few days earlier. The plane was nothing but an infinite ocean of dust – no water, no air, just dust untouched by the slightest wind. I'd heard a rumor that the Doomguard maintained a citadel somewhere on this plane, because it was the sort of lifeless place that appealed to their sensibilities; but this building didn't belong to the Doomguard. Miriam told us we were standing inside the Glass Spider… «Glass» because of its see-through walls, even though they were constructed from something much more indestructible than ordinary window panes. The «Spider» part of the name came from the building's shape: a circular central body almost half a mile in diameter, with eight arms radiating outward around the circumference. Each arm was a long sloping corridor like the one where we'd come in, and the outer end of each housed a portal to some other part of the multiverse.
   The most surprising aspect of the Glass Spider was that it could move. Miriam claimed the Spider's legs could crawl through the dust faster than an eagle could fly, stirring up silt in mammoth plumes that streamed away for miles behind the speeding bug. It had been racing through the dust for most of the past week, covering a hundred leagues every hour; but a short while ago it had finally stopped, apparently at its journey's end.
   What was the Spider's purpose? Who built it? Miriam didn't know, but at least she could list the people who had arrived with her ten days ago.
   Her immediate superior had been the drow back at the corpse-heap; since the wights had torn him to bloody confetti, we didn't bother asking his name.
   The drow's boss was our old friend Bleach-Hair, his real name Petrov. Petrov hailed from some Prime Material world whose predominant landscape was ice; Miriam didn't remember the world's name, and none of us cared. (I might comment, by the way, that so-called ice worlds usually have their share of green fields, lakes, and even jungles; when someone like Petrov says he comes from an ice world, he almost always comes from a perfectly normal world and just lived in an icy part of it. Folk of the Prime Material plane are so parochial they seldom know much about their own homes, let alone the multiverse at large.)
   Petrov occupied the second highest rung on the ladder of command. Above him were two powerful figures who shared control of everything that happened in the Glass Spider. One was a human mage who called himself «The Fox»… although Miriam contended «The Loon» was a more appropriate title. The Fox loved fire the way another man might love women; he could gaze at flames for hours, talking to the blaze and showing every sign of listening to it talk back. Thanks to various magic spells, he could even caress fire, bathe in it, wear it like a cloak. Needless to say, the Fox manufactured the firewands used at the courts, and masterminded all the other fiery accidents that had struck faction headquarters in Sigil. The very first incident – the riot at the Gatehouse asylum – had started when the Fox broke out of a padded cell where he had been confined for years.
   The Fox had managed his escape with the help of the other leader of this group, a human woman named Rivi. She was not a sorcerer – Miriam claimed that Rivi hated sorcerers, although she got along well with a barmy like the Fox – but Rivi could still do things that struck Miriam as magic: reading minds, for example, or projecting her thoughts through the building to give orders to underlings.
   «Oh,» said Hezekiah. «Rivi must be psionic.»
   «What do you know about psionics?» I asked him.
   «How do you think I teleport?» he replied. «I'm not a magician.»
   «I thought you were.»
   «Nope. It's all mind over matter.»
   Hmm. If Hezekiah's mind could win that kind of contest, it substantially lowered my opinion of matter.

* * *
   Miriam didn't know exactly what Rivi and the Fox were up to, but they wanted to find something that was buried in the dust a long time ago. The mysterious object had been unearthed once before, by an expedition under the leadership of Felice DeVail, Guvner Oonah's mother. The Fox had belonged to that expedition, along with members of many other Sigil factions; they had toured several planes including Dust, eventually jumping by accident into the middle of the Gray Wastes and finding themselves trapped between hostile armies in the Blood Wars raging there.
   Most of the party had died in short order; the Fox had been battered by evil magics, and driven insane; but a few, including Felice, had escaped unscathed, dragging the Fox with them and eventually making their way back to Sigil. Naturally, the survivors had all reported these events to their factions, depositing personal accounts of the expedition in the various faction archives. Just as naturally, the Fox had set about stealing those accounts from faction headquarters the moment Rivi freed him. His eagerness to return here suggested that the long-ago expedition had found some kind of treasure in the Plane of Dust but hadn't taken it with them. Now, the Fox had come back to collect that treasure, using the information he had stolen from the factions.
   Miriam's story introduced a dozen new puzzles about what was going on, but such questions could wait. At least we knew something about our opposition now: fire-wizard Fox, psionic Rivi, and an assortment of bashers from Sigil. There was only one other question in my mind, and I asked it. «If Petrov and his cronies captured some prisoners, where would he take them?»
   «To Rivi,» Miriam answered immediately. «She can do things to people's minds. She can… change you. Back when she and the Fox were recruiting people, they hired two first-rate knights of the post: sneak thieves. Only problem was, the thieves wouldn't work together – one was githyanki, the other githzerai. Hated each other like poison. So Rivi took them away for a few hours, and next thing you know, they're bosom buddies. Lifelong friends. She did something spooky to their brains.»
   «Is that really possible?» I whispered to Hezekiah. It irked me to turn to a Clueless for information, but he was the only authority we had on psionic powers.
   «Rearranging a person's thoughts can be tricky,» he whispered back. «Making it permanent is even harder. It once took Uncle Toby a whole day to stop two kings from declaring war with each other. Of course, he had to fix up their generals too, so that's what dragged out the time.»
   «Your Uncle… painted over their minds?» I pictured how easily I could change a frown to a smile with just a few strokes of the brush. Was it that easy for Uncle Toby? Was it equally easy for Rivi? If this brainpainter had enough time to work on Yasmin, to rape her mind…
   «We have to save the others,» I said. «We have to save them now.»
   «Where can we find this Rivi?» Wheezle asked quietly.
   «Her quarters are on the lower level,» Miriam replied. «I can show you.»
   I glanced at Wheezle, raising my eyebrows. «We cannot trust her,» Wheezle said, answering my unasked question. «On the other hand, it is safer to take her with us than leave her or kill her. As long as she remains in our hands, she has an incentive to cooperate.» The little gnome turned to her. «You understand what these wights will do if you betray us?»
   The wights leered in her face, but she just jutted out her chin. «I know the game,» she answered. «I'll play.»
   «And I'll make sure she does,» Hezekiah said. «I'll take her under my wing.»
   He moved to her side and smiled. Suddenly, he was terrifying again – his face didn't change a muscle, but his smile took on the unnatural brightness of a killer, the placid tranquility of a child who could slay its mother without conscience. In that face was all the cruelty of childhood, the taunts, the bullying, the inventive tortures of insects and younger siblings.
   «You'll be good, won't you?» Hezekiah told Miriam. Then he was simply a Clueless boy again, his smile only a smile, his face only an eighteen-year-old face.
   I couldn't stand to look at it.
   «Don't worry about me,» Miriam mumbled. «You're my high-up man, you are.» She edged away from him but kept her head lowered, like a dog showing submission to a wolf.
   «Then we're all set,» the boy said. «Let's get going.»

* * *
   With a pair of wights taking the lead, we proceeded down the corridor. Below us, in the circular arena surrounded by the ring of the Glass Spider, other wights continued to wade through the dust, searching for who-knew-what. I wondered how big their target was. Something the size of a needle would take days to find, but something substantial, like a spellbook or a magic sword, would surely turn up soon; there was a lot of ground to cover out there, but there were a lot of wights searching.
   If we didn't rescue Yasmin and the others before the wights found their objective, I knew we'd all be in big trouble. No one went to all this bother for something innocuous.
   Soon, we were approaching the next intersection of a radial arm with the Spider's central ring. As before, a furniture-filled lounge occupied the area where the arm connected with the body; but in the center of the room was a spiral wrought-iron staircase leading down to a lower level. The iron was bare and unpainted, yet I couldn't see the slightest fleck of rust – either these steps were scoured daily by a platoon of wights with sandpaper, or there was some kind of magic at work, maintaining this place in pristine condition. I put my money on the magic: the whole Glass Spider was in good upkeep, but it had an air of antiquity about it, as if it had endured for eons, impervious to decay.
   Miriam gestured that we should go down the stairs. Wheezle stopped her and sent two wights ahead to see if the way was clear. They came back smiling their pointy grins and hissing in a relaxed fashion that suggested no one was lurking in ambush. We formed up our company again, wights at the head and rear, more wights tightly surrounding Miriam; then we began our descent.
   As we climbed downward, my ears picked up a rumbling in the distance. It took me a few seconds to identify the sound; but then I remembered a tour I had taken of The Lady's Chime, that huge clock tower just down the street from Sigil's Hall of Speakers. The upper floors of the tower had echoed with the clicking of gears, the whirr of flywheels, and the ratcheting of counterweights pulling time forward. The rumble I heard now had the same sort of mechanical edge to it – a giant clockworks muttering to itself. We must be approaching the machinery that allowed the Glass Spider to move.
   A long arcing corridor led us away from the stairs, and soon the air filled with the smell of metal: bare metal, oiled metal, hot metal. The corridor was lit by glass globes suspended from the ceiling; each globe burned bright and white from some inner fire. Their light revealed that Hezekiah had linked his arm with Miriam's as soon as we reached this lower floor. Clearly, he didn't want to risk her running away while he'd been appointed to watch her.
   The mechanical rumble grew louder as we continued forward. Ahead lay an open doorway, and beyond that was a room full of metal machinery: I recognized gears, chain-belts, cables, and other simple trappings, but the great bulk of equipment was beyond my comprehension. How could one understand a bank of square crystals glowing with hieroglyphs of light, or huge metal drums that occasionally hissed steam through red-hot stopcocks? What was the purpose of a dozen metal pistons pounding in and out of smoking cylinders, or a gold stalactite mounted above a copper stalagmite with squirts of lightning leaping between their points? All I knew was that the air burned and reeked with oil, like the vestibule of some fiery hell.
   Wheezle stopped us once more and turned a questioning gaze toward Miriam. «It's always like this,» the woman shrugged. «You're a gnome – you should know about machines.»
   «I specialize in death, not devices,» Wheezle replied. «Are we close to where this Rivi would be?»
   «Her quarters are in this machine room,» Miriam said. «She likes it here.»
   «How can she sleep with all this noise?»
   «She says it just takes discipline. Rivi is hot blazing barmy about discipline.»
   «Why doesn't that surprise me?» I muttered. But Wheezle was already leading us forward.

* * *
   A machine room full of moving parts is no place to go when your nerves are on edge. Gears clank; you whirl, expecting an attack. Steam erupts from a release valve; it leaves cloudy films on nearby surfaces, looking like ghosts out the corner of your eye. Pistons bang and conveyor belts flap; so much motion, so many nooks for enemies to hide. Every second, there was something new to jump at.
   «There's a control room over in the corner,» Miriam said above the clatter of machinery. «That's where Rivi spends most of her time.»
   «Then you stay here with Hezekiah,» I told her. «Wheezle and I will see if Rivi's home.»
   «Whack her the second you see her,» Miriam advised. «She'll addle your chops if you don't.»
   «No loyalty toward your former boss?» I asked.
   «None,» Miriam replied. «If you don't put Rivi down, she'll turn my brains to cheese for helping you.»
   «We shall try to avoid that eventuality,» Wheezle said. Kowtowing briefly to those who were staying behind, he gathered a selection of wights and gestured for me to take the lead.
   The control room in the corner had thick concrete walls without a single window. An odd design – if you were a worker controlling the machinery, wouldn't it be nice to see what the equipment was doing? On the other hand, perhaps the room was not a command post where you calmly watched gauges so much as a bunker to take cover when you pushed the wrong button.
   The door to the control room was closed. I took one side of it, Wheezle took the other, and the wights stood directly back from the opening, ready to charge in as soon as I turned the knob. Holding up his fingers, Wheezle counted off Three, Two, One. Flick, I threw open the door, and with a clatter of toe-claws across cement, the wights leapt forward. I jumped in right behind them, my rapier drawn and ready to impale anyone who could paint obscenities over other people's brains.
   There was nobody home.
   Undoubtedly, however, someone did live in this room. In the back corner was a small cot, its crisp sheets tucked and folded with a precision that would satisfy the most fastidious member of the Harmonium. Around the walls, wooden tables held neat stacks of paper, numerous books alphabetized by title, and a few scrolls hung on pine dowels. The whole place had an air of obsessive organization.
   I turned my back on it. «Rivi's not here.»
   «True,» Wheezle nodded. «But her library is. It could teach us a great deal about her intentions.»
   «It would take days to read all this, and that's assuming it's written in a language we understand. Let's keep moving.»
   «Surely we can spare a minute to glance at a page or two,» Wheezle said.
   I waved my arm at the collection. «Which page?»
   «The oldest.» He shuffled to the closest table and peered at the stacks – paper, parchment, vellum, papyrus. «The oldest,» he went on, «is most likely to tell of the beginning of things. Obscure secrets. Forgotten wisdom.» He moved to another table. «I have studied a number of ancient languages and am quite fluent in… ah, this looks interesting.»
   Standing on tiptoe, he pushed away a stack of papers to reveal something underneath: a clay tablet, covered with scratchy marks like the footprints of a mouse. At some point in the past, the tablet had broken into three flat pieces; later on, Rivi or someone else had reassembled the pieces like parts of a puzzle, imbedding them in newer clay to hold them together. I had to admit, it certainly looked like the oldest document in the room.
   «Can you read it?» I asked.
   «I have seen the script before,» Wheezle replied. «The language is called Urqlish – extremely old. Some say it predates the eldest gods. No one knows how to pronounce its words, but my mentors taught me how to decipher such writings. The Urqs, whoever they were, left massive volumes of text to posterity. Much of it deals with incomprehensible facets of their culture, but this… this is something different.»
   «What does it say?»
   «Let me see. The Words of Savant… I can't make out the savant's name, but it doesn't matter. The Words of Savant whoever to his liege lord: Know, O Queen…»


   Know, O Queen, that in the mists of the past, things were not as they are today. There was a time when the secrets of magic were hidden from the seven races; indeed, some scholars say there was a time before magic was born, when humans alone lived in a fresh and simple world.
   But the flower of magic blossomed in its time, and the simple world yielded to a more complicated age. Wizards seized great power for themselves; and in the way of all souls, some used their power for good while others used it for evil. Often, rival sorcerers waged terrible war on each other, devastating the land and slaughtering innocents by the thousands.
   At that time, our gods were not yet born. Some sages claim that the beings who walked the hidden places of the land were not true gods at all: they were mere mortals, but able to command engines of such puissance that our ancestors mistook them for gods. I do not know the truth of it, O Queen; but I can tell you there were celestial powers of one type or another who watched the havoc wrought by magicians and shook their heads in sorrow.
   Some of these powers sought to curb the destruction by creating sorcerers of their own: priests who would shape the forces of magic in obedience to their patron's will. Thus began the practice of gods granting spells to the most devout of their followers.
   But some celestial powers believed that fighting magic with magic was purest folly. «Surely,» these powers said, «the best way to stop this madness is to stop magic itself.» For many days, they debated how they could do this. The flux of magic had come to fill the multiverse, and no one was strong enough to exhaust the supply. At last, however, one group of powers, the most exalted among their colleagues, devised a plan: if they could not shut off the flux itself, they could at least prevent lesser beings from sculpting the flux, so that humans and others could no longer wield the stuff of sorcery.
   Then gathered the greatest of those powers. Their names are forgotten; we know them only as the Warrior, the Poet, the Witch, the Prayer, the Healer, the Scholar, and Death. Using all the knowledge at their command, they constructed a laughably simple device – a grinder, such as a peasant might use to grind out pepper or salt. This grinder, however, ground out a never-ending supply of sticky white dust.
   Such a simple thing; and yet, the dust was not simple. In the presence of a concentration of magic, the dust fed on that magic and grew as hot as molten steel – a magical heat so pure and piercing it could burn the very fiends of the pit. Now imagine, O Queen, what might happen to your court mage if he had particles of such dust on his clothes or skin. As he began to cast a spell, he would draw into himself the flux of magical energies, concentrating it within his being… when suddenly, his skin would sear with agony, his clothes catch fire! Wracked with pain, he could not complete the spell; or if he pressed on by sheer force of will, he would continue to burn until he turned to ash.
   This was the plan of the celestial powers – to grind out such dust and spread it throughout the world… indeed, through all the realms of the multiverse. In every place, the dust would disperse, settling on people, on plants and animals, on houses and seas; and how could mages escape that dust? It would settle on their bodies, their clothes, their food, their drink… no amount of washing could get every particle.
   Armed with the grinder, its creators began to tour the Ten Thousand Worlds. Wherever they spread their dust, magicians quickly ended their sorceries. Of course, some sought to develop spells to protect themselves from the dust; but how could they cast such enchantments? Even those who thought themselves flameproof, who danced with fire and drank molten rock, found themselves ravaged by the dust's awful heat. Thus all sorcery was suspended, and for a time, the Ten Thousand Worlds returned to the simplicity of life without magic. Most people, I believe, breathed a sigh of relief.
   But what of the other celestial powers… the ones who had armed their priests with magicks of their own? Those powers raged in fury at the anti-magic dust; for the deities with magic-wielding followers revelled in the influence exerted by their priests, and without magic, the priests were mortals like anyone else. Congregations began to ask uncomfortable questions, the most important being, «Do I truly want to worship this god?» People may bow their heads to any deity if there are sufficient rewards for devotion, or punishments for disobedience; but if the rewards and punishments stop, congregations soon realize some deities are less worthy of worship than others.
   Great were the howls of wrath from celestial powers snubbed by their flocks. They raged against the creators of the grinder, and banded together to declare a war of vengeance. Long did the battle thunder through the heavens. The seven creators were the greatest of the powers, but arrayed against them were so many angered deities that at last the seven were defeated. I cannot tell you their fates, O Queen; some scholars say the creators were obliterated, while others say they were torn apart but soon re-formed to become the gods we revere today.
   As for the grinder, the other celestial powers found they did not have the strength to unmake it, or even to stop the continuing flow of magic-killing dust. Their solution was to create a second grinder and a second type of dust: a brown dust that draws and channels the magical flux away from the white dust. I have told you, O Queen, what would happen if your court mage attempted to cast a spell with the white dust on his skin; but if he also had brown dust it would act as a funnel, drawing magic away from the white dust and directing it into your mage's soul. The white dust would not burn, and the magical flux would be even more focussed than usual.
   In fact, O Queen, your court mage and all things in all places contain a few motes of both the white and brown dust. The creators of the first grinder spread its dust to all worlds; and after those creators were defeated, the other powers spread equal quantities of their own dust to counteract the first. Once the different dusts had come to balance, the two grinders were bound together, like mundane salt and pepper shakers, and thrown into an empty plane of existence. There they have continued to grind, even to this very day. They have filled that plane with their dust, from one horizon to the other, and they will persist in their grinding to the end of time.
   Or so the ancient tales say.


   When Wheezle finished reading, neither of us spoke for several seconds. Even the wights were silent, their burning gaze lost in some unknown distance.
   «Miriam told us Rivi hated magic,» I said at last.
   «Indeed,» Wheezle nodded. «And if she finds the two grinders… one grinder makes it impossible for people to cast magic, and the other is essentially the antidote. An exceedingly powerful pair of weapons.»
   «What would happen,» I asked, «if she spread the white dust over a battlefield? While she and her allies were safely covered in the brown.»
   «Magic decides many battles,» Wheezle replied, «especially when your opponents have none. With proper tactics, Rivi could become a fearsome conqueror.»
   «Of course,» I said, «some god would eventually stop her. Step in and seize the grinders.»
   Wheezle shook his head. «I think if one god tried to possess such powerful artifacts, other gods would prevent that from happening. Suppose, for example, that a good god claimed the grinders; evil gods would fear such weapons wielded in the cause of virtue, and would try to take the grinders for themselves. The struggle might precipitate Ragnarok itself – the final battle of god against god, wherein the cosmos is destroyed. No,» Wheezle said, «the gods will be extremely wary of intervening… and if any god does, Rivi will be the least of the multiverse's problems.»
   «But suppose Rivi tries to conquer Sigil!» I protested. «Suppose she spreads her dust, then leads in an army equipped with magic. Surely The Lady of Pain would take direct action then – it's her job to protect Sigil.»
   «The Lady of Pain may or may not be a god,» Wheezle replied. «She is Sigil's legendary protector, but she is also a great mystery. Perhaps she is only a sorcerer herself; in that case, she will be as helpless as any streetcorner conjuror. If by chance she is a god… well, as I say, gods of all persuasions would band together to prevent any other deity from claiming the grinders. Who knows the outcome?»
   I shuddered. Scant minutes ago, our party had just come to rescue Yasmin and the others; now, it looked like the fate of whole worlds was on the line. Truth to tell, I still cared about Yasmin more than some abstract threat toward Sigil or any other realm… but the added pressure didn't help.

8. THREE SCORCHED PRISONERS

   Somberly, Wheezle and I left the control bunker, emerging once more into the full din of the machinery room. My Dustman colleague had stuffed his pockets with scrolls and documents, including the diary of Felice DeVail. Perhaps we didn't have time to read any more right now, but he fully intended to check through everything when he got the chance.
   The wights greeted us with spike-toothed smiles, but Hezekiah and Miriam didn't notice us at first – they were too busy talking, or rather yelling into each other's ears so they could be heard above the clang of pistons. Even with them shouting, I couldn't make out what they were saying from any distance away; and as we approached, Hezekiah saw us and guiltily broke off his conversation.
   I didn't like the look of that. Miriam was scarcely an irresistible seductress, but how much voluptuous charm would it take to turn the Clueless boy's head? She could never talk him into knifing Wheezle or me in the back – he was too naively virtuous for that – yet I worried he might help her «just a little» and get us into trouble just a lot.
   «Remember she's the enemy,» I told him, shouting loudly myself. «She's untrustworthy and dangerous.»
   «She says I'm dangerous too,» he replied. «The way I scared her makes her want to… she says she'd like to serve me.»
   That made me blink in surprise – I hadn't expected her taking the submissive approach. When Hezekiah made himself the embodiment of terror, did he touch a responsive chord in Miriam's heart? Some people love to be overwhelmed, I knew that… and when I glanced at Miriam, I saw her gazing at the boy with an expression that was almost worshipful. Of course, it was quite probably a sham: just a different sham than I'd anticipated. «Be careful,» I muttered to the boy, then turned away, embarrassed.

* * *
   Within a minute, we had left behind the clamor of ratchets and throttles and gears. It hadn't been an interesting noise anyway – lots of volume but no finesse.
   «Where are you leading us now?» I asked Miriam.
   «Petrov's quarters are just up ahead,» she answered. «You said he might have helped capture your friends. If he's in his room, you can ask him yourself.»
   «Looking forward to it,» I assured her as I drew my rapier from its sheath. Even if she was leading us into a trap, I'd be happy to face Petrov with sword in hand.
   The corridor opened into a sizable chamber with at least twenty bunk beds set into the walls, like the recessed niches of a mausoleum. In the middle of the room stood a few metal tables bolted to the floor, the sort of tables you might see in an army barracks, where the soldiers sit, play cards, and boast of their sexual exploits. These tables, however, were too brightly polished for a real barracks, with nary a stain from spilled beer, nor scratches from mugs slammed down in anger when someone's poker hand held one ace too many. The rest of the room also lacked any of the normal signs of occupation: the lingering smells of bodies, the scuff marks of boots on the floor.
   «Remarkably tidy for a hide-out,» I said to Miriam. «Is this really where your cronies live?»
   «Don't be a leatherhead,» she growled. «We underlings live farther down the hall. Mr. High-and-Mighty Petrov couldn't bear to tuck down with the likes of us, so he moved into this empty room. He tried to tell us Rivi wanted him close in case she got cold in the night… but that slag has so much ice in her veins, she couldn't warm up if she kissed a red dragon.»
   «Uncle Toby once gave a sponge bath to a dragon,» Hezekiah piped up. «I don't know what color it was.»
   «Hush,» I told him.
   «No, really, this is an interesting story. The dragon had contracted a case of mummy rot from some adventurer she'd eaten, and Uncle Toby —»
   I put a finger to his lips. «Button it,» I whispered. «Someone's coming.»
   Chalk up another for a Sensate's razor-sharp hearing. Some distance ahead of us, a stream of grunts and groans echoed down the corridor, punctuated now and then by a juicy upswell of profanity. Wheezle gestured and immediately one of the wights wrapped its rotting hand over Miriam's mouth, just in case she tried to shout a warning. She tossed Wheezle an aggrieved look, as if the thought would never enter her mind… but even if she yelled her head off, the man approaching us probably wouldn't have heard. He seemed too caught up in venting his piteous moans to notice any of the world around him.
   Thirty seconds later, he walked into what he thought was an empty room. The bleached white hair showed it was our old friend Petrov… but a Petrov who had clearly seen action since the showdown on the Vertical Sea. His head sported a blood-soaked bandage, and his bare chest had turned a bright lobster red. Under other circumstances, I might have believed his skin was sunburned; but I knew this particular damage was frostbite, courtesy of the blistering cold from Oonah DeVail's staff.
   It made me smile that Petrov hadn't walked away from the fight unscathed. Unfortunately, the fact that he was walking at all suggested his side had won in the end. If Yasmin had come out on top, Petrov would even now be dining on dust outside the Spider.
   Like a mountain of misery, the big basher shuffled to one of the tables and sat down with a heavy thud, letting his head slump forward into his hands. In all the time it took for him to get into the room, he had never spared a glance into any of the recessed bunks… which means he didn't notice eight wights and assorted breathers lying there in wait. His first clue that he wasn't alone must have been the tip of my rapier pricking the back of his neck.
   «Greetings, honored hoodlum,» Wheezle whispered in Petrov's ear. «We would not hurt you for the world, but you have accidentally sat where Mr. Cavendish is about to thrust his sword. I suggest you keep very, very still.»

* * *
   Wheezle assigned four wights to hold Petrov down, a number which struck me as excessive. True, old Bleach-Hair was a bulky brawler of a berk, and on a good night he could sling a pair of tavern wenches under each arm; but at the moment, a five-year-old with sharp fingernails could drop Petrov to his knees by poking the man's frostbitten tum-tum.
   «Should he really be moaning like that?» Hezekiah asked. «I think he's hurt.»
   «He wants us to let down our guard,» I said, as the wights slammed our captive onto the hard metal table. The jarring sound of impact was quickly replaced by a wail of agony from Petrov. «He's such a big baby,» I muttered.
   Wheezle clambered up on a chair so he could lift himself to eye level with the man. «Now, honored hoodlum,» he said, «we would like to know what happened to our colleagues: the ones you confronted back at the Vertical Sea.»
   «The sodding berks froze my hide off!» he growled. «But I got my revenge – showed them what a haunch of beef feels like inside the oven.»
   I let the tip of my rapier nestle down against his Adam's apple. «Did you kill them?»
   «I piking well wanted to… but Qi and Chi said no, Rivi would want to question them.»
   «So all three are alive?»
   «They were the last time I saw them. Not pretty,» he added with a leer, «but alive.»
   With miniscule effort, I could have leaned forward and sent the bladepoint through his windpipe. Not pretty, but alive… the words flooded like poison into my heart. Petrov and his cronies had been carrying firewands as they fought our friends. I thought of Yasmin looking as savagely burnt as the victims in the court rotunda; and I had to walk away quickly before I forgot myself.
   «Who are Qi and Chi?» I heard Hezekiah asking.
   «Thieves. A githzerai and githyanki – they helped bring down your pus-swilling friends. While the boys and I made things toasty up front, Qi and Chi snuck up from behind and tickled some spines with steel. Your group surrendered nice and quiet once they'd been ventilated a bit.»
   «Where are our teammates now?» Wheezle asked.
   «Go pike yourself.» Petrov aimed some spittle in Wheezle's general direction. He got more on himself than he did on the gnome, but it was the thought that counted. «I've said enough already,» Petrov snarled, «and I'm not rattling my bone-box no more.»
   «Dear, oh dear,» I tsked from the corner of the room, «torture time again. Hezekiah,» I raised my voice, «what faction do you think boasts the most fearsome torturers?»
   «Ummm… the Mercykillers?»
   «Not a bad guess,» I told him. «The Mercykillers like torturing people and they put a lot of effort into it… but alas, they're overly crude. They're too fond of breaking bones and spilling blood; they haven't devoted themselves to discovering what genuinely causes the maximum amount of pain. The true students of excruciation are… well, I blush to admit it, but the most adept torturers in the multiverse belong to my own faction, the Sensates.»
   «You're a Sensate?» Petrov asked uneasily.
   «That's right,» I answered, stepping up to the table. «We've spent centuries documenting every possible sensation the human body can experience. Many people think we only pursue pleasure, but that's wrong. We devote equal time to the study of pain. To the science of pain. For example, let me try to remember the location of the capitus nerve.»
   I leaned over Petrov's body and drew out my tweak-knife. It was not an imposing blade, just a tiny thing I kept for whittling pen nibs when I wanted to sketch in ink; but it had a good sharp edge that I'd whetted less than a week earlier. In a pinch, it could double as a razor.
   «The capitus nerve,» I said, making up the story as I went along, «runs all the way from the ball of the right foot to the left lobe of the brain.» I drew the unsharpened side of the blade up the length of Petrov's body. «Did you know that the longer the nerve is, the more pain it can experience? And the capitus nerve is the longest nerve in the body.»
   «Who the sod cares?» Petrov snapped.
   «I, for one, find it most stimulating,» Wheezle replied. «Please continue, honored Cavendish.»
   «The capitus nerve runs through the most pain-sensitive areas of the anatomy. The knee. The inside of the thigh. The groin, of course.» I tapped each of these lightly with the flat of the blade. «Then there's the chest, which I notice is already in a tender condition. There's a great deal of individual variation in the route of the capitus through the chest, but you can usually find it by cross-correlating with a few other key meridians. First you find the small intestine…»
   I jabbed my thumb deep into the pit of Petrov's stomach. He shrieked, probably thinking I was using the knife; or maybe he was reacting to true agony, from the frostbitten skin of his gut. «Ohh,» I said with great sympathy, «if you think that hurt, you're in trouble. The nerve I just hit was an itty-bitty one… scarcely able to feel pain at all. About the same size as this one.»
   Extending a knuckle, I rubbed briskly along the man's sternum, raking back and forth across a knot of nerves I happened to know lurked there just under the skin. Petrov howled again. I wiped off my knuckle; flakes of chapped skin had stuck to it when it pulled away from Petrov's breastbone.
   «Well, those two points of reference have given me a bearing on where the capitus nerve should be,» I told him. Lifting my knife, I added, «It may take some digging to hit the nerve bang-on, but I guarantee it will be worth the wait.» I leaned in toward one of the wights who was holding Petrov down. «Could you tilt his head so it's pointing away from me? They always vomit when I do this, and I don't have a change of clothes.»
   «All right!» Petrov yelled. «Who the pike cares? I'll take you where the rotten sods are locked up.»
   A few seconds ticked away in silence; then Wheezle touched my sleeve. «Could you show me where the capitus nerve is anyway? I would be most interested in learning.»
   Wordlessly, I shook my head.

* * *
   More corridors to slog through, and time was ticking by. I wondered how long it would be till Rivi's wights found the grinders out in the arena of dust. There was no way to guess. If I were a true hero like my father, maybe I'd be racing after Rivi and the Fox instead of Yasmin: putting the fate of the multiverse ahead of a few individuals. We had Unveiler and could command the wights to attack our enemies. Unfortunately, the wights would all be wandering in the airless arena, where they couldn't hear us calling orders; meanwhile, we'd face a fire-mage and a mind-raper, plus their band of bully-bashers armed with flame-wands.
   No, I decided, my father might have succeeded against such a mass of enemies, but I couldn't handle the odds. Saving Yasmin and the others was at least manageable. Once we rescued our friends, we could hightail it back to Sigil and fetch reinforcements. It wasn't a heroic plan, but it was something we might survive.
   In time, I heard telltale sounds of clanking up ahead and Petrov led us into another machinery room, twin to the previous one. Obviously, the Glass Spider had several independent drive mechanisms, each with its own engine room; a separate motor for each of the Spider's legs. This machine room had the same number of pistons chugging away, the same layout, the same noise… but the control bunker in the corner had a huge wooden beam blocking the door shut.
   «They're in there,» Petrov pointed to the door. «Gods rot you all.»
   «Amen,» Wheezle agreed earnestly.
   Three wights held Petrov, one held Miriam, and the other four went to work moving the beam. Judging from the way they strained, I estimated the timber weighed close to a ton. It took the wights a full minute to get the beam clear of the door, and in that time Hezekiah made a discovery: Oonah's ice-staff, tucked in under a desk whose surface glowed with incomprehensible runes of light.
   «Rivi threw it there,» Petrov said grudgingly, as Hezekiah dragged the staff out. «Wouldn't let anyone else touch it because it was magic. She hates magic and every damned sorcerer in creation.»
   «Doesn't that make the Fox nervous?» I asked.
   «The Fox hasn't got enough brains to be nervous,» Petrov answered. «He's too sodding barmy to see Rivi's just using him.»
   «Using him for what?»
   But Petrov clamped his jaw tight and wouldn't say another word. I didn't press the issue – once we got old Bleach-Hair back to Sigil, the Harmonium could sweat everything out of him.
   The wights dragged away the beam at last, and Hezekiah leapt forward to open the door. I dashed after him, grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, and barely managed to drag him back in time… because the second the blockage was gone, the door burst open with the force of a cannonball and Kiripao hit the floor in a diving roll. His momentum carried him up to his feet in one fluid motion, and he had embedded his fist through the ribcage of the nearest wight before he realized we were the good guys.
   The wight, in life a female elf, glared pointedly down at Kiripao's hand plunged wrist-deep into her chest. Kiripao blinked for a few moments, then got the message. «Sorry,» he muttered, and levered the hand out of her thoracic cavity, dragging with it some stray bone fragments and a spill of the red powder that seemed to serve these wights as blood.
   «Could I smell your hand?» I whispered to him.
   «No.»

* * *
   Kiripao's robes had been reduced to charred rags during the fire-fight. He'd rearranged the remaining scraps into a passable loincloth, leaving his chest and legs bare. The flesh thus revealed was a three-colored patchwork: the angry red of burns, the pale pink of an elf's normal skin, and a milky white as unblemished as a freshly gessoed canvas. I'd seen that white before, and not just on blank canvases – it was new skin, recently regenerated by a powerful influx of healing magic. Over the next few hours, it would gradually adjust itself to match the rest of Kiripao's body; in the meantime however, it showed that the pious brother had taken quite a beating, and someone had patched him up afterward.
   Of course, I told myself, Kiripao must be in good standing with his god. If he prayed for his injuries to heal, the deity would answer his prayers. And he could have patched up Yasmin and Oonah too in the same way… at least to the point where they were out of immediate danger.
   Oonah hobbled from the control room a moment later, working up a warm smile when she saw this was a rescue party. Whatever healing she had received, it wasn't enough – her legs moved stiffly, as if each step brought her fierce pain. Her arms had the same stiffness as she reached to take back her ice-staff from Hezekiah; but once she grasped the staff in her hands, some of her constriction appeared to ease. I wondered if the staff had inherent healing powers, or if she simply felt better holding it. With reverent care, she set the butt of the staff onto the ground, then leaned her weight wearily upon it.
   Several more seconds passed; I held my breath, waiting for Yasmin to emerge from the control room. Kiripao and Oonah said nothing. When I could bear it no longer, I rushed to the doorway and plunged inside.
   When you're a Handmaid of Entropy, it seems you don't respond well to healing.
   Yasmin sat propped against the far wall of the control room, her head sagging, her hands lying limply in her lap. For a moment, I didn't know if she was even alive; but then her chest lifted with a soft and shallow breath.
   In a heartbeat I was crouching by her side, but reluctant to touch her for fear of causing pain. Her dragon-skin sheath had not been damaged by the firewands, but where the sheath hadn't offered any defense – her arms, her bare shoulders – Yasmin's flesh was deeply singed. Her hair had burned down to the scalp. Even worse, there was a patch of wet stickiness on her back, just below one shoulder blade. I guessed that Qi or Chi must have dirked her with a magic dagger, strong enough to pierce the tough dragon hide that was supposed to protect her.
   With a tortured moan, Yasmin lifted her head to look at me. Her cheeks glistened with tears, squeezed out by the pain against her will. In a sighing whisper, she said, «You'll have to… draw another sketch of me, Britlin. The other one…»
   She looked down at her hand and moved the fingers slightly. Flakes of burnt paper fluttered into her lap.
   «What can I do to help?» I asked.
   «Not much,» Oonah said from behind my back. «She's resistant to healing magic – all the Doomguard are.»
   «I tried my best,» Kiripao added, «but her will fought back too strongly.»
   «Entropy… must not be cheated,» Yasmin whispered. «A Handmaid… must stay… loyal…»
   Her voice drifted off. At first, I thought she was simply too tired to continue speech; but her eyes had focused on something at the far end of the room, and I turned to see the others entering the control room in the company of the wights.
   «Wights…» she murmured.
   «Don't worry,» I assured her, «they're on our side.»
   «But they are… they have…»
   A flicker of life pierced through her dull resignation; I had no idea why. «Yasmin, don't get yourself excited – save your strength.»
   «But the wights,» she forced herself to speak. «They could… contribute…»
   She was too weak to finish her sentence, but Wheezle hurried forward. «As a Dustman, I am familiar with the devotions of Entropy, though I am not a follower myself. Handmaids disapprove of conventional curative magics, but they practice a different form of healing that adheres to the precepts of their faith. I believe they can simply… withdraw health from one body and transfer it to someone else.»
   «Not all of the health is transferred,» Yasmin whispered. «Some life energy is simply… dissipated… in the process. Praise Entropy.»
   Immediately, I offered, «If she wants a life infusion, she can have some from me.»
   «No,» Yasmin said, putting great force into that single word. «The wights…»
   «She is correct,» Wheezle nodded. «Once health begins to drain from one body to another, the flow is next to impossible to stop. Better to take the energy from the wights, honored Cavendish. It will lay them cleanly to rest, just as Unveiler would; and it is an obviously noble cause.»
   «Noble!» Petrov snorted. «Pardon me while I puke.»
   Hezekiah calmly threw a backfist into Petrov's gut. The man doubled over, stopped from falling only by the wights who held his arms.
   «Not bad,» said Kiripao, «but try for more snap in your wrist.»

* * *
   Wheezle asked for four volunteers from the wights. All of them stepped forward, including the ones holding Petrov and Miriam. I wondered if they were simply eager to please the person who held the scepter, or if some measure of generosity still lurked behind those flaming eyes. Perhaps all undead possessed a degree of good will as well as bad; they merely walked down wicked paths because their creators were almost always evil.
   For the sake of simplicity, Wheezle chose the four wights who didn't have their hands full with our prisoners. The first was an orc woman with greasy black hair and a more than usually greenish complexion. She settled gently onto her knees beside Yasmin and actually managed a smile (despite her boar-like tusks). Then the wight hissed softly and held out her hand for Yasmin to take.
   Yasmin's lips moved in silent invocation. I found it difficult to picture an impersonal force like Entropy being able to confer favors on its faithful… but how different was this from the practices of druids? Druids didn't worship any particular deity, they attuned themselves to Nature itself; in time, that attunement let them draw upon the power of Nature to perform magical deeds. Thinking about it, I had to admit the downhill force of Entropy was just as strong, if not stronger, than the vitality surging through plants and animals. If you attuned yourself to Entropy, why couldn't you learn to channel that strength?
   Even as I watched, the channeling began. Yasmin used her last reserves of willpower to reach out and take the wight's offered hand. Weakly, she pulled it in toward her body, pressing it against her stomach. «Do you give willingly?» she asked the wight.
   It nodded.
   For a long moment, nothing discernible happened. Then the wight's lips pursed into a tiny O, and its eyes opened wide. It let out a tiny trickle of sound, a small astonished breath; the noise made me think of a woman in passion, touched by her lover and finding herself swept with a deep surprising heat. The wight reached out with its other hand, taking Yasmin by the arm and holding tight, its talons digging into Yasmin's flesh. I shuddered for a moment as I remembered the wight behind the Mortuary, clawing its victim and withering her arm… but in the blink of an eye, it was the wight who began to wither.
   The orc woman's hair went first. It fell, strand by strand, onto the rotting garment that covered the wight's shoulders. Then her skin puckered, wrinkling, cracking, flaking away. Underneath, her muscles were taut bands of filaments stretched over bone; but as the seconds ticked by, the tautness eased and the filaments separated from one another, like threads slipped off a loom, one by one.
   Layer by layer, the wight's body fell away, sloughed off like unneeded clothes. Nothing decayed entirely – all the pieces remained. It was only the life energy that seeped off, drained from each fiber of flesh… and once the life was gone, the stray bits of anatomy had no remaining cohesion. The pieces separated quietly, like strangers who had no reason to stay together.
   Despite the power flooding out of the wight, I could see little improvement in Yasmin. Perhaps the worst of her burns looked a little glossier, covered with an almost invisible veneer of regenerated skin; and perhaps the blood had stopped welling quite so quickly from the knife wound in her back. Even so, her eyes retained a deathly dullness and her hands showed only fatigue as they clung to the crumbling wight. Entropy might be allotting Yasmin a tiny portion of the wight's lifeforce… but it was keeping the lion's share for itself.
   Soon, the wight had devolved to nothing but a meatless skeleton. One hand still pressed against Yasmin's stomach, and the other held her arm in its claws; but with a click of bones, it released its taloned grip and lifted its fingers to cup Yasmin under the chin. The gesture was exquisitely tender, like a mother reassuring her child… and then the skeleton peacefully relaxed into a litter of unconnected bones, their fall to the floor muffled by the dry pillow of tissues that had slumped off first.
   «More,» Yasmin whispered hungrily. And the next wight stepped up, its face composed in total serenity.

* * *
   Three more wights. Three more subdued collapses. I think Yasmin could have absorbed the energy of a dozen such donors and still longed for more; but the four who sacrificed themselves were enough to repair the most grievous damage. The stab wound under her shoulder blade was closed and clean. The patches of charred flesh on her arms and shoulders had now coated over with milk white, as smooth as the cataract in an old dwarf's eye. There was even a dark fuzz of hair covering her scalp, like red-brown lichen on a stone – not a fashionable coiffure, but my fingers longed to touch that close-shaven beauty.
   «Hello,» she said, a sparkle in her eyes at last. «Hello,» she said again, looking directly at me. «Hello. Hello. Hello.»
   «Can I help you up?» I asked.
   «Please.»
   She reached out both arms, like a child eager for her father to lift her. I had to use one foot to sweep away the remains of wights surrounding her; then I raised her gently, wrapping my arms around her as delicately as I could, no matter how fiercely I longed to enfold her with my full strength. Yasmin had no such reserve – as she rose to her feet, her arms encircled me and pulled me close, squeezing as if she wanted to completely embed her face in my chest. I returned the embrace, clasping her as tightly as I dared and aware of nothing else in the world but the woman I held.
   «Honored Cavendish, Honored Handmaid,» murmured Wheezle as he plucked at the hem of my jacket. «We must go now. There is so little time.»
   «There is no time,» said a new voice. And suddenly the room was filled with a blinding cloud of fine white dust.

9. THREE DUSTY COMBUSTIONS

   Blinded by the dust, I couldn't see for the next few seconds. Kiripao must have tried something, because I heard him utter a cry of attack; but he was answered with a thunderous boom, and he made no other sound.
   Yasmin, still in my arms, whispered, «Didn't you have someone watching our backs?»
   «Hezekiah was out there,» I replied. «The Clueless little berk…»
   «He's hurt,» said Oonah, somewhere in the cloud.
   Gradually, the dust settled around us. Every face around me was powdered white; every stick of furniture, every scrap of clothing was clotted with the same white silt. The door to the control room had shut tight – the boom I heard must have been the door slamming. Kiripao was straining to push it open, but without success.
   Oonah knelt a short distance from the door, bending over the motionless body of Hezekiah. I could see no wounds on the boy; and as Oonah gave his shoulder a shake, he groaned and rolled over on his back.
   «What happened, Kid?» Miriam asked. Her voice was surprisingly full of concern.
   «Someone blanked me,» the boy muttered. «Shut me down.» He slammed his fist against the floor. «I hate that.»
   «But you're all right now?» Miriam insisted.
   «I'll live,» he said. «But… I'm a bit scrambled at the moment. I won't be able to teleport for hours.»
   «Don't trouble yourself,» Oonah told him. She raised her staff and pointed its silver-wire tip toward the door. «Now that I'm properly armed, this little cage won't hold us for…»
   «Don't!» Wheezle and I shouted in unison.
   «Why not?» she snapped.
   Wheezle shuffled forward, dust dribbling off his ears like flour. «Alas, honored Guvner, this dust is dangerous… at least if you invoke magic. We must exercise extreme caution.»
   «What a shame,» echoed an unfamiliar female voice. «I hoped you wouldn't know what the dust did. It would have been ever so interesting to see what happened.»
   The walls of the control room looked like concrete, coated with the chalky powder that covered us all; suddenly, however, the cement-like material turned as clear as glass, offering us a dust-smeared view of the machine room outside. No wonder this control room didn't have any windows: the walls themselves could become windows, and obviously someone outside knew the secret of making that happen. Quickly, I swept a hand across the wall closest to me, cleaning away enough of the dust to see through clearly.
   A gang of eight wights stood back five paces from the wall, their faces nearly as dusty as mine and ten times as ugly. All of them were huge bashers, their shoulders wide, their claws the size of pine cones. I saw no hint of friendliness in the expressions of these undead; hate blazed in their eyes. Perhaps the hate was inspired by the people who stood in front of the monsters – two humans who could only be Rivi and the Fox.
   I'd seen men like the Fox many times before: grizzled old sods with streaky gray hair and five days of stubble on their faces. This particular example wore an ecstatic leer of madness, and his gaze never stopped swooping about the room, as if he were surrounded by wonders mere mortals could not see. Poor old barmy: his type wandered the streets of Sigil daily, begging for handouts or talking wildly to themselves until they were taken in by the Bleak Cabal and given a bed in the Gatehouse asylum.
   Rivi was much more extraordinary. To say she was an albino would not do justice, either to Rivi or to albinos in general. She had the telltale white hair and eyebrows, the unpigmented skin and the pale pink eyes; but she had decided to paint herself, to apply make-up and dyes in a controlled chaos that only emphasized her pallor. Red eyeshadow made her eyes look like blood-filled sinkholes in her face. The merest touch of blue on her cheeks gave her the icy look of a corpse who has lain overnight in the snow. Her long white hair was streaked with bands of red and green, which would look cheerfully festive on some women; on Rivi, however, the effect was harshly lunatic, as if nightmares had bled from her skull and contaminated her scalp.
   She wore a gown of clinging black silk, sheer enough to betray the stark whiteness of her body beneath; and like many venomous women, Rivi had the body of a goddess, maintained as carefully as a champion fencer might hone her sword. I could scarcely take my eyes off the play of black silk over white flesh, taut fabric stretching over tauter curves. Some sages claim that the powers of evil take delight in bestowing such visceral allure on the most corrupt of souls… and although I have known many beauties with no great darkness in their hearts, I have met a handful like Rivi, demons sporting the voluptuousness of an angel.
   Rivi smiled at me now with the triumph of a viper watching its victim die. «Hello, darlings!» she cooed. «What lovely subjects for my experiments! No sooner do I find my wee trinket than you give me a chance to use it.»
   She held up the «wee trinket»… an artifact of terrifying power disguised as a harmless salt grinder, a small white container with a winding arm on top. Trickles of pale dust spilled out the bottom. «The crank controls the flow,» Rivi said, holding the grinder up higher. «Anything from a light shower like this to that cloud that coated you all. Think what it can do against those precious wee schemers who use magic in Sigil.»
   «The Lady of Pain will stop you,» Oonah snapped. «She'll seal every portal against you.»
   «Perhaps,» Rivi admitted. «But a little bird told me there are some things too powerful for The Lady to stop. This coy wee grinder is one of the most potent relics in the multiverse; it will be such lovely fun to compare its strength to hers. And even if I'm barred from Sigil… oh, the planes offer a world of opportunities for a woman who can stop magic in its self-important wee tracks.»
   «Who can stop enemy magic,» the Fox put in, speaking for the first time. «The people on our side don't have to worry.»
   He lifted a trinket of his own, a twin to the grinder Rivi held, except this one was tan in color. Holding it over his head, he flicked the crank with one finger, and a deluge of brown dust cascaded down on top of him. «See?» he asked, his gleeful eyes blinking under a cake of dust, «I'm magic and you're not. Hah!»
   «Don't play, darling,» Rivi said, taking the brown grinder from him. «It'll make the other children jealous.»
   «I'll show you jealous,» Oonah muttered, raising her staff.
   Wheezle put a gentle hand on her arm. «Let me try first, honored Guvner.» He moved to the patch of wall I had wiped free of dust and pressed his face to its glass-like surface. His gaze slipped slyly toward the Fox and Rivi, then fixed on the gang of wights. Suddenly he snapped Unveiler up into sight and shouted, «I command you —»
   He never finished his sentence. The dust-covered scepter erupted with searing incandescence, so hot that a blast of scorching air hit my face like an invisible punch. Wheezle, much closer to the expulsion of energy, was thrown off his feet and propelled shrieking backward toward the opposite side of the room. He smashed against the wall and slid downward, coils of smoke curling from the hand that had held the scepter.
   Unveiler itself, still blazing white-hot, tumbled to the floor. Normal metal would have melted to lava… but then, the Dustmen had done their best to destroy the scepter without noticeable success, so why should a little heat make a difference?
   «I don't understand,» Hezekiah cried. «What happened?»
   «The white dust burns if you try to focus magical energy,» I replied.
   «But Wheezle didn't use any magic,» the boy protested. «He was only talking to the wights.»
   «Unveiler uses magic to control the undead,» I told him. «As soon as Wheezle tried to issue a command….»
   «Wights!» Wheezle groaned, not trying to get up. «Listen to me, honored wights… I am still your master.»
   He was answered with an agitated shuffling of feet. Both inside and outside our room, the wights seemed confused and anxious. Perhaps they wanted to obey Wheezle, but he was no longer holding the scepter; that left them leaderless and adrift. Would they attack us indiscriminately now, filled with the customary hatred of the undead for the living? Or would they simply wander away like disoriented children, eventually stumbling out into the infinite dust?
   «I can't tell you how this irks me,» Rivi murmured, glaring hungrily at the fallen scepter. «Petrov… dear Petrov… pick up that wee bauble, please, before it gets dirty.»
   Petrov, on our side of the transparent wall, stared at Rivi in disbelief. «You're barmy!» he told her. «It'd burn my sodding hand off.»
   Rivi's eyes narrowed. «Darling – I said, pick it up!»
   For several long moments, nothing happened. Petrov wasn't held tightly by wights anymore; they were blinking stupidly, trying to decide what to do. Our friend Bleach-Hair struggled free of their limp grasp and looked desperately around the room… maybe searching for a hiding place, hoping he could escape Rivi's reach.
   Her eyes continued to bore into him, as sharp as stilettos; and at last, as if an invisible giant had him in its grip, Petrov turned to face the woman. Immediately, he tried to look away again. He couldn't. I don't think he could even close his eyes – as he shuddered under her gaze, flecks of dust shook free from his hair, wafted downward, and settled on his bare eyeball. Petrov didn't react… but prickles of sweat beaded up on his face as Rivi's eyes continued to pierce his mind.
   «Please,» he whispered. «Please don't.»
   Rivi answered with a calm smile. «Pick up the wee scepter, darling. You've been a bad boy, leading these people around our stronghold… but I'll forgive you with my soft girlish heart if you do me this kind wee favor.»
   Petrov took a jerky step toward Unveiler. At the top of his lungs, he screamed, «No!»
   «We all love the sound of your voice, darling; but bring me the pretty wee thing.»
   Petrov jerked forward another two paces. The veins on his neck bulged with strain, resisting the flood of power from Rivi's mind; but mere flesh couldn't oppose the woman's dominating will. Roaring and weeping, Petrov was forced across the room like a convulsive marionette, his strings pulled by the cool albino.
   At last, the scepter lay at his feet. One arm reached downward; the rest of his body fought back, tendons standing out like cables. Something burst with a loud crack – his collarbone, I think, snapped in the tug-of-war between different groups of muscles. It didn't matter. Slowly, agonizingly, Petrov picked up the scepter.
   It blazed white-hot again. I had to avert my eyes to avoid being blinded.
   «Tell the wights to obey me, darling,» Rivi said. Her voice had turned thick and throaty, aroused. «Order them to obey me, and perhaps I'll let you set that bauble down.»
   «Obey her!» Petrov shouted to the wights. «Do whatever she tells you to. I command it!»
   «Very good, darling. But I don't think you should let go of the scepter yet. Bring it to me.»
   Squinting, I looked back at Petrov. His entire arm was sheathed in flame, from the blazing sun of Unveiler to the smoking flesh of his shoulder. The air around him wrinkled with the heat, burning so fiercely I had step back. Still, I considered leaping forward with my rapier, plunging one clean thrust into Petrov's heart, just to put him out of his misery; but what good would that do? Rivi wanted someone to bring her the scepter. If Petrov were killed, she'd turn on the rest of us. Did I want to see one of my friends mind-raped and set on fire?
   «Open the door,» Rivi commanded the wights. «And don't let the breathers escape.»
   The wights bowed to her, their eyes blazing.

* * *
   Twelve wights stood against us, with the Fox also stationed at the ready, his hands fluttering in mystic gestures – probably preparing a fireball in case any of us tried to escape the control room when the door opened. Not even Kiripao made the attempt; we were hopelessly outnumbered. As soon as Petrov staggered out of the room, the wights closed the door again and barred it shut with the heavy wood beam they'd used before.
   «Well, darlings, that was fun,» Rivi said, as the still-flaming Petrov dragged himself to her side. «However, all good things must come to an end…»
   «What are you going to do with us?» Hezekiah demanded.
   «I haven't decided,» she answered. «I don't know any of you… except for Judge DeVail, of course, whose mother was a helpful dear to keep such a detailed diary. No doubt, you all have your wee talents or you wouldn't have got this far. Perhaps I'll let you live and work for my noble cause… after a wee adjustment in your attitudes, of course.»
   «What is your noble cause?» Oonah asked. Trust a Guvner to seek as much information as possible.
   «My noble cause,» Rivi repeated. "My noble wee cause. Well, darlings, let me tell you a story of a regal family: rulers of all they surveyed on a lovely Prime world planet… not a backwater either, because they had a stable wee portal to Sigil, which let them keep in touch with multiversal affairs.
   «The royal family,» she continued, «had three daughters, all charming wee girls. It was the tradition to teach such princesses useful arts – skills that would help them become wise and magnanimous rulers when they ascended the throne. Daughter One, whom we'll call Fatuous Smug Pig…» Rivi paused and gave us a coquettish smile «…was educated in the arts of white wizardry. Daughter Two, who'll be known as Loathsomely Drippy Cow…» another smile, "was raised as high priestess of an appallingly goody-goody power whose name can only be pronounced by his faithful. I usually called him Bunghole the Simpleton, but that's not what he wrote on his smarmy wee tabernacles.
   "Anyway, Pig became a wizard and Cow a priestess. That only left the third and youngest daughter, whom we'll call Fabulously Beautiful and Shrewd Beyond Her Years… or Rivi, for short. When it came to Rivi's education, the king and queen chose the path of the mind, arranging for the ravishing princess to study under the greatest psionic masters of Sigil and the Outer Planes. It was hard work for the poor wee girl, but she devoted herself to it with a passion; because she dreamed of the day when she could tear her sisters' minds to confetti. When she could force them to draggle their tails in the filthiest streets of the Hive. When she could seize their pure wee brains and turn their thoughts into cesspools.
   «And why was Princess Rivi so angry with Pig and Cow? Because they were generous to her. Because they were nauseatingly kind. Because they wanted to protect their poor wee sister who was all white like a maggot. Can you imagine? They pitied me. They actually pitied me! Pig would come into my room at night to amuse me with vapid tricks of sorcery, like making my dolls stand up and say, 'Rivi, Rivi, we wuv you!' And Cow was forever dragging me along on her holy rounds, curing the sick, comforting the wretched, bringing the word of Bunghole into filthy peasant huts… all in the hope of rallying my spirits to cope with my 'condition'. My condition! My pale wee condition… as if I were some repugnant cripple and soft in the head.»
   She stopped to glare venomously at each of us, daring us to speak. No one rose to the challenge. We all knew Rivi's big problem wasn't being an albino; it was being a total barmy. The lilting speech patterns, the fierce glitter of her eyes, the rationalizations for hating her sisters… the woman was mad as May-butter, and howling at the moon.
   «Well,» she continued, "despite what Pig and Cow thought, I wasn't soft in the head – I was very, very hard, and I made myself harder by the day. It took me almost no time to outgrow the limp-wristed berks hired to teach me the Will and the Way. Without my parents' knowledge, I arranged for more suitable tutelage: a renegade Dustman mind-flayer. He taught me interesting wee secrets about raising the undead, but more importantly, he nurtured the full power of my mind. Sorcery and priestly magic were feeble things, sucking on the multiverse's dugs for a few drops of power. With psionics, the energy comes from within; from your soul, from your hate.
   «So… when I learned about these darling wee grinders, I just had to have them. If I could bury a city – Sigil, for instance – in the white anti-magic dust, wizards and priests would be helpless: as they gather their power around them, it sets the dust on fire. Psionics, on the other hand… it's a completely different form of energy. Internal – it doesn't react with the dust. These grinders let me shut down spellcasters of every type, without the slightest effect on my own power. Delightful! I only wish I'd had them with me when I finally took on Pig and Cow…»
   Her voice trailed off, but a dreamy smile remained on her face. I could imagine what happened to Rivi's poor sisters… or perhaps I couldn't. Some things go beyond a sane man's imagination.
   «Well,» said Rivi, suddenly snapping out of her reverie, "that's all bodies under the bridge now. You wanted me to explain my noble wee cause, and I believe I've done so. I want to make every wizard and priest in the multiverse suffer the torments of the damned… and then become my slave. Whoosh, I hit a victim with the white dust so she can't protect herself. Zap, I spend a few hours raking through her mind, until she loves me with eternal devotion. Whoosh again, I use the brown dust to give my new ally back her magic; but now she casts her spells in my service.
   «I already have a list of targets in Sigil – deputies in all the major factions. Not people at the very top, but ones with influential positions: clever wee dears who can arrange for me to have private interviews with folks higher up the ladder. Once I've had time alone with a few factols…»
   She laughed. From anyone else, the laugh might have been charming: totally open and honest. It chilled me to the bone.
   «Let me get this straight,» Hezekiah said. «You're doing all this – killing all those people at the courts, manufacturing wights, torching poor Petrov here – all because you didn't like your sisters?»
   «Oh, darling,» Rivi answered, «I don't like any spellcasters. Sorcerers and priests are all annoying sods…»
   «I know I am,» the Fox piped up cheerfully.
   «So,» Rivi continued, «consider it a public service when I serve the wee darlings their own entrails in a bowl.» She took a deep breath. «Starting with the magic-users in your wee group. I intend to rip out your brains and stuff in thoughts of my own. By tomorrow, you'll kill your own mothers for the privilege of kissing my toenail.»
   «I know I would,» the Fox piped up again.
   «Watch them,» Rivi commanded the old barmy. «I have to set up a suitable place to work – somewhere I won't have distractions. Somewhere soundproof, somewhere with clamps. I've been meaning to redecorate one of the lounges anyway. Give me an hour.»
   «But what if these berks get boisterous?» the Fox asked. «Can I burn them… please?»
   «No, darling, they'll be more useful to us in one piece. But just in case…» She handed him the white grinder. «Take this. It's just barely possible they might scrape away their dust and try something foolish. If so, give them another blast.»
   «Yay!»
   Cackling with delight, the Fox spun the crank of the grinder, loosing a flurry of white that sifted down over Rivi herself. Where it touched her skin, it was almost invisible; but her gown's black silk was completely frosted over, making her white from head to toe.
   «Dear, dear, Fox,» she chided as she waggled a finger in his face. «Try to be careful.» Taking his wrist lightly between her thumb and forefinger, Rivi moved his hand so the grinder pointed its stream toward the floor. «As I said,» she smiled, glancing back at us, «the dust doesn't affect me. My wee tricks aren't magic – psionic powers use a different type of energy.»
   «Fire is energy too,» the Fox announced.
   Rivi patted his arm. «Keep an eye on our guests, darling. I'll be back in a while.»
   She turned away and began to walk in the direction of her own quarters. Dust spilled from her clothes with every step. Part way across the machine room, she looked back and called, «Heel!» Obediently, the squad of wights lined up and traipsed after her. Petrov, too, followed along; the flesh of his arm had burned away, but the blazing scepter remained in his hand, fused solidly with the bone. Any normal man would have passed out long ago from the pain. I could only assume Rivi was keeping him conscious with the power of her mind.
   She waited for Petrov to catch up, then wafted a caress under his chin. «You'll be ever so handy come nightfall, darling – I'll use you as a lamp.» Laughing, she strode from the room, with the wights and the fire-ravaged Petrov shuffling along behind her.

* * *
   «Well,» said Yasmin to the Fox, «time for you to let us out.»
   «Can't,» he replied. «Not supposed to.»
   «But it's fun to be bad,» Kiripao told him. «Don't you like being naughty?»
   The Fox smiled and nodded.
   «Then let us out,» Kiripao said.
   «Can't,» the Fox replied. «Not supposed to.»
   «If I were Rivi,» I murmured to the others, «I'd dance all over the old barmy's brain to make sure he always follows orders. He's too unreliable to trust otherwise.»
   «Agreed,» Oonah nodded. «I doubt if he's capable of disobeying her directly. We'll have to try something more subtle.»
   I bowed slightly to her and leaned back against a dust-covered control console. Watching a Guvner be subtle could prove immensely educational.
   «Fox,» Oonah called, «talk to me. You've got us at your mercy, right? This is the time when it's traditional to gloat about all your plans.»
   «Hah!» he replied. «Shows how much you know. Rivi never tells me her plans.»
   «But you must have a little information… like why you were attacking the various faction headquarters in Sigil.»
   «Oh that.» The Fox stuck out his tongue in distaste. «Rivi just wanted to bob all the records from the last expedition to come here. How to reach the Glass Spider, how to steer it, where the grinders were… boring stuff. If it weren't for me setting fire to things, we wouldn't have fun at all.»
   «And how do you like to have fun?» Oonah asked.
   «Burning things, of course. This white dust is supreme. Setting all the magicians and priests on fire… isn't that a laugh?»
   «I certainly would like to see you set something on fire,» Oonah said. «What do we have handy that would burn well?»
   «That gnome of yours looks pretty flammable…»
   «No, no,» Oonah shook her head, casting a quick glance back at Wheezle. Our Dustman friend had made no effort to get to his feet since the blast from Unveiler had blown him against the wall; I hoped he was simply conserving his strength. «Let's see what else there is,» Oonah continued. «I'm sure you shouldn't damage any machinery… or any of us… so we're really just left with that useless chunk of wood right there.»
   Of course, she pointed to the heavy beam blocking the door.
   The Fox stared at it suspiciously. «I don't know…»
   «Oh, you don't think you could burn it?»
   «Of course I can burn it!» he snapped. «But…»
   His brow furrowed, as he struggled to understand whatever misgivings he had. In a way, I felt sorry for the old barmy: his mind must be fragmented beyond recovery, broken by whatever hell he had experienced long ago. Once, he must have been a formidable man – Oonah's mother wouldn't have adventured through the planes with a weakling – but now he was simply a mad old twitch, falling for a trick that wouldn't fool a child.
   «I don't think you can burn it at all,» Oonah said sharply, not giving him time to recognize the trick. «I think your flame has gone out.»
   «Gone out!» he roared. «I've got a flame the size of a bread loaf!»
   And with a bellow of arcane syllables, the Fox loosed a fireball at the beam.

* * *
   Shooting a fireball precisely is like throwing an elephant from a catapult – you've got plenty of margin for error, but there's going to be a splash. In this case, the splash hit the outer wall of the control room, giving those of us inside a view of angry red brilliance; then it bounced back into the machine room proper, washing gouts of flame across the collection of pistons, gears, and camshafts gallumphing through their regular paces.
   Sturdy though the mechanisms were, they weren't designed to withstand a sudden fiery blast. A cog blew off a spindle; the spindle sagged into the path of a flywheel; the flywheel flew off its mount, and churned whackety-whack through the outer plate of a boiler; and then there was steam everywhere, spurting from the boiler in scalding high pressure clouds.
   «Oopsy,» said the Fox. He threw himself under the control desk where Hezekiah had found Oonah's staff.
   It was high time we vacated the premises; yet despite the pyrotechnics, Fox's fireball hadn't completely scragged the wooden beam. Yes, its exterior was charred and crumbly, but the flash-fire hadn't penetrated the heart of the wood. Kiripao threw himself at the door with all his strength… and he bounced back with a bruised shoulder. Perhaps if we all put our backs to it, the obstruction might yield eventually; but before we could try, Oonah waved us away.
   «We can't waste time,» she shouted. «Stand back.»
   As she raised her ice-staff, I shouted, «Don't do it!» She did it anyway.
   A split-second before the staff fired, it blazed as bright as the sun. Oonah's clothes instantly burst into flame; but her hands didn't waver an inch as she trained the tip of the staff at the door in front of her. A solid battering ram of ice shot from the staff, hissing as it contacted the fires around Oonah's body. Hot melt-water spattered us all; yet the flames only thawed the outer layer of ice, leaving the ram with enough mass to smack against the door with the sound of thunder.
   The wooden beam shifted a scant two inches.
   Screaming defiance, Oonah fired again. Another burst of magic-fueled heat exploded around the ice-staff, far too much to withstand so soon after the first flames. The staff vaporized in her hands, blazing so blindingly bright I couldn't see the result of Oonah's shot – my vision washed out in a blur of searing brilliance. Still, I heard the boom of impact, then the crunch of timber breaking to flinders. The door slammed open, letting in a rush of steam from the broken boiler.
   Oonah took one step toward the doorway, then dropped to her knees. The white dust fire had taken a terrible toll – none of the victims I'd seen at the courts had been so viciously burnt. Her clothes were gone, her skin now as black as charred wood. Kiripao leapt forward to hold her up… and as he grasped her hand, it broke off at the wrist, like a twig reduced to ash.
   «Go,» Oonah said, her voice nothing but a whisper. «Stop Rivi. Preserve justice.»
   And she toppled forward, a dead and crumbling thing.

10. THREE TOOTS OF A WHISTLE

   Hezekiah screamed in horror at Oonah's death. I wished I could find my voice to join him; but there was more pressing business, so I drew my rapier and headed for the door.
   Kiripao beat me outside, of course… and before I reached the doorway, he dove back into the room, shouting, «Down!»
   I had time to throw myself against the wall before a fireball burst at Kiripao's heels. A gout of flame poured in through the doorway, lighting our faces with hellish scarlet; but no one was in direct line with the blast, and a quick glance around showed only minor scorching.
   Yasmin grimaced. «I take it the Fox has us bottled up.»
   «Hey,» I shouted out to the old barmy, «Rivi said you couldn't burn us.»
   «Oh, yeah,» he called back. «Sorry.»
   The next second, a storm of white dust came through the doorway with the force of a hurricane. Wheezle, just getting to his feet, was blown backward by the wind and smashed against the wall a second time. Kiripao gagged on silt rammed down his throat, then curled into a ball, racked with coughing. The rest of us did some coughing of our own, then took cover under whatever desks and tables were available.
   Looking through the transparent wall of the room, I saw the source of the new onslaught – Foxy had cranked up his dust grinder to full power and trained its punishing gush on the doorway. He didn't have a straight line of fire into the room, but it was good enough to get about half the grinder's output inside the door. Half was plenty. Already our exit was partly blocked by a mound of white, and the pressure of the spray was driving more dust inside. Within minutes, we'd all be neckdeep in that fine white silt; if we tried to escape in the meantime, we'd have to fight against the powerful jet of dust, then face the Fox's fireballs.
   I looked across the room at Yasmin. Her cheeks and forehead had accumulated a layer of dust sticking to sweat. «We have to make a run for it,» she shouted. «I'll carry Wheezle. When we get out the door, we scatter.»
   She had to know how desperate the plan was: no matter how fast we scattered, a single wide-diameter fireball could incinerate us all. On the other hand, did I want to stay in the control room and wait for it to fill with dust? Even if Foxy stopped the spray before we suffocated, we'd be trapped in grit until Rivi returned to rape our minds.
   I nodded to Yasmin. «Let's do it.»

* * *
   Kiripao exploded out of the doorway in a frenzied scattering of dust. Perhaps he intended to charge the Fox, because he took a step in that direction; but Kiripao was an elf, fine-boned and light. The continuing torrent of dust pouring from the grinder smashed him off balance, spun him around, and battered him back against the outside wall of the control room.
   I didn't see any more than that… because I was next behind him.
   The dust buffeted me with the force of an ocean wave, threatening to sweep me backward like Kiripao. I leaned into it, hoping my feet wouldn't slip on the silken mound of silt piled on the floor. My eyes were closed against the dust stream, but I could tell the moment I cleared the doorway by the sudden change of sound – the tightly enclosed control chamber opening into the wide and echoing machine room. Grappling for the edge of the door, I propelled myself forward, cutting directly across the brutal flood of dust.
   My ear, the one facing toward the flow, filled immediately with the hammer-driven particles, clogging up so densely all sound from that direction was cut off. I wondered if this deafness just came from blockage, or if the pressure of the spray had ruptured my eardrum. For a moment, I panicked – loss of hearing or any other sense terrifies a Sensate. Fear spurred me on with desperate energy and I drove myself forward, harder, harder… until suddenly I escaped from the pounding barrage of dust, into the relative peace of the machine room.
   Peace: deaf in one ear, and now assailed by sickening humid heat, as the broken boiler continued to spew steam into the air. I took a moment to wipe a clot of dust from my eyes, then ducked behind a screeching fan-belt and turned back to see how my comrades fared.
   Kiripao had been beaten back into a corner of the room, unable to fight the unstoppable deluge of dust. As I watched, Yasmin joined him – she had been right behind me as I battled my way out the door, but had not been able to keep her balance with Wheezle in her arms. Woman and gnome had fallen together, and the cascade of silt had knocked them backward across the floor, both of them sputtering as the flood jammed dust up their nose. They struck Kiripao hard, all three pinned in the corner by the pummeling stream.
   «Got you!» the Fox squealed in delight. His voice was barely audible over the hiss of fast-flowing grit. I saw him raise his hands, heard him begin the chanting invocation to shoot a fireball that would bake my friends.
   «Stop!» I shouted, surging to my feet. But my voice was hoarse and I could never fight my way upstream against the dust spray in time to reach the Fox. Roaring, I threw myself into the storm anyway, hoping the old barmy might aim at me instead of Yasmin.
   Dust slashed deafeningly around me. When the fireball went off, I wouldn't see or hear it; I would only feel the passing of its heat, either striking me down or exploding around my three allies still pressed back into the corner. Exploding around Yasmin.
   Then, suddenly, the dust cut off like a blown-out candle. I had been leaning so heavily into it, I staggered and fell face down, landing on clotted dust as soft as a pillow. Immediately I lifted my head and saw the Fox a few paces away, his eyes closed in bliss, his lips still chanting the spell. Hezekiah stood beside him, the Clueless boy holding the grinder in his hands. He had cranked its output down to a fraction of the former flood… and he had aimed the resulting spray to sift lightly down over the Fox, coating him with the purest white.
   I opened my mouth, then closed it again. Let fate take its course.
   The Fox still wore a foundation layer of the brown dust, counteracting the anti-magic influence of the white. However, as the new shower of white dust rained over the brown, the balance of energies began to shift. Did the Fox notice? To my eyes, the effect was subtle at first: a gentle glow, a soft nimbus surrounding the old man as the white dust began to fluoresce. Miriam had told us the sorcerer was at home with fire – maybe he didn't feel the initial heat. But as the peak of the conjuration approached, I could almost feel magical energy ballooning around the Fox… and the white dust could feel it too.
   With a soft puff, every dust particle blossomed with the heat of a tiny sun.
   Hezekiah threw himself backward; or perhaps he was knocked away by the heat of a million dust motes blazing like molten steel. The Fox's voice choked in his throat, and his mad old eyes opened wide. White-hot flames sizzled around him; his face transformed to an expression of wonderment.
   Embracing the ultimate fire.
   Then the energies around him shredded his body to powder, and he exploded like the giant on the Mortuary steps.

* * *
   The force of the Fox's explosion blew out the closest three pistons, blasting them into pieces of metal shrapnel that sliced through other parts of the massive engine. Immediately, the floor beneath me lurched like a wagon upturned on a stone in the roadway; and I wondered what the Glass Spider would do with one of its drive-legs put into the dead-book.
   I didn't intend to stay around and find out.
   Time for the eternal chorus of anyone venturing onto the planes, more universal than any prayer or chant or battle-cry; and all of us yelled it in unison.
   «LET'S GET OUT OF HERE!»
   Miriam added, «I know the closest exit.» I'd forgotten she was still with us, but thanked the gods of luck we had someone to show us an escape route. Without waiting for discussion, she took to her heels out of the machine room, leaving a trail of dusty footprints on the floor. Hezekiah followed, not even sparing a glance for the rest of us… not that we were dallying ourselves. As I staggered to my feet, I saw that Yasmin and Kiripao were already moving, Yasmin cradling Wheezle's small body in her arms. I didn't like the look of that – Wheezle hadn't moved under his own power for quite some time.
   Still, only an addle-cove would mull that over in a room that was ripping itself apart… which was precisely what the machinery was doing. Steam roiled all around us, clouding the farthest reaches of the chamber; and every few seconds, a chunk of hardware would rocket out of the mists with the speed of a sling bullet. Gears… ball bearings… thick swatches of conveyor belt… lumps of debris, some smouldering, some crackling with sparks of blue lightning.
   In its way, the destruction ripping through the room had an admirable kind of vitality. An elegant thoroughness. An unrestrained energy that didn't care a whit for any flesh and blood that happened to stand in its way…
   «Get moving, you Sensate leatherhead!» Yasmin shouted from the doorway. «You want a slice-job from some flying camshaft?»
   At that very moment a tiny cog whizzed past my ear, whirling as fast as a buzz-saw; and I acknowledged that some experiences are best postponed for one's golden years.