Fire and Dust

James Gardner

1. THREE BLAZING FIRES
2. THREE CONCERNED FACTOLS
3. THREE DAYS WITH THE DEAD
4. THREE DUSTY KILLERS
5. THREE SWINGS OF THE GATE
6. THREE BLOODS TO RESCUE
7. THREE SLABS OF CLAY
8. THREE SCORCHED PRISONERS
9. THREE DUSTY COMBUSTIONS
10. THREE TOOTS OF A WHISTLE
11. THREE WELL-FERTILIZED SHRUBBERIES
12. THREE BLOSSOMING RAPPORTS
13. THREE MINUTES OF DEPARTURE
14. THREE PLANES TO PLAGUE-MORT
15. THREE HOURS OF AUTUMN NIGHT
16. THREE SOUND SLEEPERS
17. THREE MILES THROUGH THE OUTLANDS
18. THREE TESTS, COME WINTER
19. THREE FOPS IN THE FOREST
20. THREE FLOORS OF MADNESS
21. THREE DOWN, ONE TO GO
22. THREE TIMES THE BANG FOR THE BERK

Fire and Dust

from the memoirs of the right Honorable
Britlin Cavendish, Esquire,
Artist and Gentleman
1. THREE BLAZING FIRES

   Mid-Afternoon; Rotunda of the City Courts Building, in Sigil, the City of Doors:
   «Ah,» said the centaur, looking over my shoulder «I see that you're painting.»
   «Yes,» I replied from behind my easel.
   «The hustle and bustle of what this city calls justice,» the centaur continued. «Prisoners hobbling by in chains. Litigants glaring at each other as they await trial. Judges in ermine passing sentence on ragged beggars. Certainly, this is fertile ground for an artist with an eye for irony… or tragedy… or simply the paradoxes of life. What is your theme, young man?»
   «My theme?» I asked.
   «What artistic statement are you making? How the law oppresses the powerless? Or perhaps, if you are an optimist, how the law, despite its flaws, is a majestic abstraction that reflects the best within us. Is that your statement?»
   «My statement is I wish there weren't so many curlicues carved over the entranceway. My hand is falling asleep trying to copy them all.»
   The centaur stared at me wordlessly.
   «This painting,» I explained, «was commissioned by Guvner Hashkar, Chief Justice of the Courts and Factol for the Fraternity of Order. He said to me, Cavendish, dear fellow, the wife's got a cousin getting married next week. He's a right berk of a boy, but family is family, don't you know. Need to give a present and the wife says a painting would be just the thing. Just the thing, yes. Three feet by five should do admirably, and go easy on the reds, there's a good chap – the boy tends to faint if he gets too excited. Why not take a bash at a picture of the court rotunda? Could be inspiring. Just the thing for the breakfast nook. Just the thing, yes.»
   «And you took this commission?» The centaur looked aghast. «You didn't spit in this man's face? You didn't lecture him about artistic integrity?»
   «You don't lecture factols,» I replied. «If they ask you to do something annoying, you simply charge more. That's why I have a longer list of wealthy clients than any other painter in Sigil; I talk their language.»
   The centaur gaped at me for another few seconds, then stomped away in disgust. I have to admit, if there's one thing centaurs are good at, it's stomping away.
   Shrugging, I continued to copy the curlicues, trying to ignore the distractions around me; and let me tell you, the City Courts are full of distractions. For example, lined up in front of a door beside me stood a cornugon – one of those reptilian horrors from the Lower Planes, nine feet tall, insect wings, a prehensile tail like three yards of razorvine… well, you must have seen them around. This one was waiting stoically, reading a scroll that had almost no words but dozens of bright orange ink drawings of humans and demihumans being grilled over pillars of flame. To a cornugon, such a scroll might be anything from a bedtime story to a menu-planner.
   In line behind the hell-monster, waiting just as patiently, was a deva from the Upper Planes: a handsome amber-skinned man, two feet taller than me and equipped with wings as big as the cornugon's. The deva's wings, however, were made from feathers of the purest gold. A single one of the feathers could have bought someone a nice night on the town… but as soon as my thoughts drifted to leaving work for the day, I botched one of the curlicues and had to dab away the error with turpentine.
   Unlike the cornugon, the deva hadn't brought anything to read, but that didn't leave him bored. He simply fixed his eyes on the sky outside the door of the rotunda, and soon his face settled into an expression of rapturous contemplation of the heavens… which, if you ask me, was a waste of good rapture, since Sigil is shaped like a ring a few miles in diameter, and the only thing you can see in the sky above the court building are the grimy slums of the Hive district. Still, gazing up on those filthy streets didn't bother the deva; and he even managed to maintain his serene expression when the cornugon in front shifted its weight and flicked its scaly wings across the deva's nose.
   For a brief moment, something inside me wanted to toss away my bland painting of the architecture and instead, work on capturing this little moment: creatures of heaven and hell, standing side by side and ignoring each other… or perhaps only pretending to. This little scene said something. I wasn't sure what it said, but you can't show an angelic being and a demonic one in the same picture without it being some kind of comment, right?
   On the other hand… I hadn't been commissioned to paint a deva and a cornugon. If I suddenly decided to paint something that interested me, who knew where it would all end? Muttering something about gold handcuffs, I went back to work.
   «Painting a picture, huh?» said a nasal voice by my elbow. «Do you really have to draw all those curlicues? Couldn't you kind of suggest them?»
   I turned to see a gangly boy in his late teens squatting and squinting at my canvas. His skin was caramel brown, but his hair yellow blonde, hanging haphazardly around distinctly pointed ears. One of his parents must have been human, the other an elf; and neither side of the family could take much pride in the result. «Do I know you?» I asked, trying to sound forbidding.
   «Hezekiah Virtue,» he replied, holding out a hand that was overly blessed with knuckles. Looking down at my paintbox, he read my name printed there. «Britlin Cavendish… well it's an honor to meet you.»
   «You've heard of me?»
   «Nope. But it's an honor to meet anyone in Sigil; I've only been here two days. Do you belong to a faction?»
   I sighed. My jacket clearly displayed the «five senses» symbol of the Society of Sensation, and the symbol was repeated on my signet ring and the top of my paintbox. However, that obviously didn't mean anything to this Clueless child. «I have the privilege of being a Sensate,» I told him. «Our society is dedicated to savoring all the abundance the multiverse can offer.»
   «Oh, my Uncle Toby told me about you guys,» he answered, his eyes growing wide. «You must have a lot of wild parties, right?»
   «Wrong. One wild party in a lifetime usually exhausts that field of experience. Then we move on to more refined pursuits.»
   «Oh.» Clearly, the boy had no idea what a refined pursuit might be. Then his face brightened, and he reached into a cloth bag he carried in one hand. «Have you ever tried swineberries?»
   The name made me wrinkle my nose. «Swineberries?»
   He pulled out a handful of greasy brown berries, each about the size of my thumb. They were flat and wrinkled, as if someone had stepped on them with spike-heeled boots. «I brought them with me from home,» the boy said. «My home plane. I'm not from around here. The berries aren't as fresh as they used to be, but they're still pretty good.» He popped one in his mouth and chewed vigorously. «You should try one.»
   «Yes,» I admitted, «I should.» A Sensate never says no to a new experience, even if it turns out to be some boring new prune from the Prime Material Plane. I told myself if the taste proved to be as lackluster as I expected – swineberries! – at least I'd have something to joke about the next time I had dinner with my fellow Sensates.
   Of course, I couldn't just pop the berry in my mouth and chew, like the boy did. You don't rush such things. You have to hold the berry lightly in your fingertips, testing the weight and texture in the fruit. Then you lift it to your nose and smell its bouquet – a light, sugary fragrance, with a teasing hint of musk. Then, and only then, do you slip it between your teeth and bite down gently… whereupon, you discover the sodding berry tastes like pure rock salt.
   I'd eaten pure rock salt before – it was part of the Sensate initiation ceremony. As any Sensate can tell you, once is enough.
   Reluctantly, I swallowed.
   «What did you think of the berry?» Hezekiah asked.
   «I hated it.»
   «Oh. But I guess that's all right, isn't it? Because Uncle Toby says Sensates want to experience everything, good and bad.»
   «Your Uncle Toby is a font of information,» I replied through clenched teeth.
   «Hey,» the boy said, «do you think these berries would go over big with the Sensates? Because I'd like to talk to one of your high-up men, to see what I have to do to join your group.»
   I nearly choked. «You want to join the Sensates?»
   «Uncle Toby says I should join some faction. A man has to have friends in the Cage, that's what Uncle Toby says. He calls Sigil the Cage, I don't know why. So I'm going around, talking to all the factions, to find out more about them. That's why I'm here in the courts, to talk to a Guvner. I love how Sigil people say Guvner, instead of Governor the way they'd say it back home. I love how people talk here: Stop rattling your bone-box, you Clueless berk, or I'll do you a slice-job. I hear that all the time. By the way, what's a slice-job?»
   «You're going to find out any minute,» I muttered.
   «On the other hand,» Hezekiah continued unstoppably, «I haven't heard you use any quaint local expressions yet. Are you from out of town too?»
   I looked down at the fine-tipped paintbrush in my hand and idly wondered if it would be ruined by plunging it into the boy's eye. Control, Britlin, control. My mother was the daughter of a duke and cozzled me all through childhood not to talk like the leatherheads in the street – to sound cultured and refined so that city aristocrats would admit me to their drawing rooms. She had never been heavy-handed about it («Yes Britlin, little Oswald next door is a berk; now how would we say that in real words?») but it was a matter of family loyalty for me to stay true to her ideals, and I did not need some Prime-world pippin insulting me on that score. I racked my brains, trying to produce some scathing remark that would send this Clueless boy packing; but before I could think of a devastating response, I noticed a trio of Harmonium guards enter in lock-step through the front doors of the rotunda.
   Of course, there's nothing unusual about Harmonium members in the courts building – as Sigil's police force, their duties often bring them to the halls of justice. However, this particular group stood out for several disturbing reasons.
   First, all three had made a mess of folding their gray neckerchiefs. Harmonium officers are fastidious about their neckerchiefs – when I painted the portrait of Harmonium Factol Sarin, he demanded that I reproduce every little tuck and fold precisely.
   Second, the three men in front of me didn't walk like Harmonium guards. Guards spend most of their time patrolling a beat through the city; even raw recruits soon acquire a measured gait that lets them walk all day while keeping alert to possible mischief. The men entering the rotunda had a more military edge to their pace – they didn't stroll, they marched.
   Finally, my keen Sensate's eye picked up one more out-of-place detail. In addition to swords, normal Harmonium guards always carry stout black truncheons, reserved for those rare occasions when their commander is struck by the whim to take a wrongdoer alive. The three men in front of me, however, had quite different weapons hanging from their belts; sleek white batons carved from ivory or bone, their surfaces speckled with a red glitter that might be chips of ruby.
   «What are you looking at?» Hezekiah asked.
   «I was just thinking, maybe I'll pack up now and take another crack at those curlicues tomorrow.»
   «Are you trying to avoid those guards?» the boy whispered, as he noticed me eyeing the newcomers. «Maybe you have some dark secret in your past, and those guys are a special elite team who might recognize you from former days?»
   «Why do you think those guards are elite?» I asked.
   «Because they're the first I've seen carrying firewands instead of truncheons.»
   «Those are firewands?»
   The boy shrugged. «Uncle Toby taught me all about wands and stuff.»
   I groaned.
   A rational man might have taken to his heels that very second – three impostor guards walking into the Courts with high-powered magical weapons meant big, big trouble. On the other hand, I had never seen a firewand in action; and if I could find a safe place to hide before anyone started shooting, I might witness something well worth remembering. If this turned into a major incident, maybe I could even paint the scene afterward. Those piking art critics couldn't accuse me of sterility if I made a perfect reproduction of some horrible disaster.
   Unfortunately, my first glance around the rotunda didn't reveal any good places to dive for cover. Factol Hashkar may have hired me to do a painting, but his most beloved artform was tapestry; as soon as he became leader of the Guvners, he had covered every inch of City Court wallspace with dusty old banners depicting the many planes of the multiverse. Those acres of cloth would blaze like tinder if the wands started blasting fireballs… and that could happen any minute.
   The three guards reached the center of the rotunda floor, and turned inward to face each other in a huddle. They wanted us to believe they were discussing private guard business; but I knew they were concealing their motions as they pulled the wands from their belts. Would they simply start shooting? Or was this a more complicated plan, «Lie down and give us your money!» or a scheme to grab hostages in protest of the latest tax hike? It didn't matter. I was at the rear of the hall, too far from the door to get outside before the pyrotechnics began, so I had to take the only cover available.
   «Come on, Hezekiah,» I commanded, grabbing him by the scruff of the neck. Then, crossing my fingers that this would work, I jammed the two of us directly behind the cornugon.
   «What are you playing at, berk?» growled the monster, as it whipped around to look at us.
   «Sorry,» I said, «but you're from the Nine Hells. You're flameproof.»
   Which was the precise moment when the first fireball struck the cornugon's back.

* * *
   Even with the cornugon taking the brunt of the blast, huge tongues of flame splashed over me for a second, buffeting my face with broiling air. A few paces away, my paints and canvas blossomed with fire, followed a moment later by the turpentine can exploding into a fierce yellow blaze. Smoke was everywhere, people screamed throughout the great hall, and who knew how many other throats were too scorched to make more than a croak?
   In front of us, the cornugon hadn't suffered a single blister; after all, the creature came from a plane noted for its flaming infernos, so a paltry fireball was no more annoying than a mosquito bite. Still, the fireblast was an attack, and a completely unexpected one, since the cornugon had been glaring at Hezekiah and me when the false guards let fly. Angrily, the reptile-fiend raised a sharp-taloned hand as if it intended to claw off a strip of my flesh… but then second thoughts flashed through its beady black eyes and it swung around to slash the deva instead.
   I have no idea if the cornugon actually believed the deva was responsible for the attack, or if the monster simply seized the excuse to swipe at a species he hated. Either way, the cornugon's claws ripped two handfuls of feathers from the deva's wings, and a moment later, the monster's hellishly barbed tail lashed the deva across the chest like a whip. Beads of shining gold blood trickled out where the thorny tail broke the deva's skin.
   Until that moment, the deva had scarcely budged from his serene contemplation of the sky. Certainly, the fireball had singed off some wingfeathers, since a life of celestial bliss doesn't flameproof you like crawling through the bowels of hell; but the deva didn't react until the cornugon's attack had drawn blood. Then, with the speed of a whizzing arrow, the deva flashed out his fists, one, two – a jab to the cornugon's snout, and a beautiful palm-heel strike to its scale-covered gut.
   The cornugon wheezed once and buckled to its knees.
   «Wow,» said Hezekiah. «I always thought angels fought with magic swords.»
   «First,» I replied, «he's not an angel, he's a deva. Second, devas don't fight with swords, they use maces. Third, he's not going to whack a cornugon with his mace in the middle of Sigil unless he wants an all-out war that will get both sides ejected from the city. Finally, in case you haven't noticed, the one thing that was shielding us from the flames is now sprawled gasping on the ground.»
   Indeed, we were completely exposed to the rest of the rotunda, and a hideous sight it was. The three false guards must have stood back-to-back and loosed their fireballs simultaneously, launching bright orange flames in all directions. I could immediately identify the three points of impact from the bursts: those three areas were littered with dead bodies, the corpses' flesh roasted and split into hard red cracks. Farther out, some people had survived the initial flash… or maybe they were just taking longer to die. Their skin was puckered and oozing out fluid, their eye sockets empty pits running with melted jelly. A few made shrill whistling cries, the only kind of scream possible through a throat ravaged by fire. Most simply lay silent, squeezing themselves into balls of agony and shuddering with misery.
   The explosions had focused on the three interior walls of the rotunda. The fourth side of the room, the arch opening into the street, was still untouched, and people who remained on their feet had begun to mob the exit, crushing together in a panic. Shorter beings, gnomes and halflings, would surely be trampled in the stampede down the front steps… not to mention children and the elderly. After the first casualties fell, some of those jamming in behind would trip over the broken bodies, and they too would be battered by the feet of the crowd.
   At the center of the rotunda, impassive in the heart of chaos, stood the three false guards – even the most fear-crazed members of the mob gave the guards a wide berth. The impostor facing our direction was a heavily-bearded man with bleached white hair, his eye carefully watching the deva; and when the deva turned away from the cornugon to confront the creators of this destruction, the false guard calmly lifted his wand to shoot again.
   The cornugon was on its hands and knees, providing no cover at all. Any fireball aimed at the deva would easily catch Hezekiah and me in the blast radius. I had time to scream, «No!»…
   …and then I was standing in a paper-stacked office, facing a young halfling woman in judicial robes. She looked as surprised to see me as I was to see her. «Who are you?» she snapped.
   Before I could answer, Hezekiah stepped forward from my side. «Hezekiah Virtue,» he said, holding out his knuckly hand for her to shake. «Sorry to pop in on you, ma'am, but we were in a nasty situation and I had to teleport us out of there.»
   I stared at him in disbelief. «You can teleport?»
   «Sure,» he answered. «Learned it from Uncle Toby.»
   «Of course you did,» I sighed.

* * *
   As soon as we began to explain about the fire attack, the halfling hurried us down the hall to the office of Her Honor, Judge Emeritus Oonah DeVail. I had never met DeVail personally, but all of Sigil knew her by reputation – an old bone-rattler, a basher, a woman of action. Unlike the majority of Guvners who prefer the academic approach to knowledge, Oonah DeVail had spent much of her life exploring the planes in person, leading expedition after expedition into the far corners of the multiverse and bringing back a wealth of arcane curiosities. It didn't surprise me that the halfling went running to DeVail when looking for someone to cope with an emergency situation.
   «Firewands?» DeVail roared. «In the rotunda?»
   «Yes, Your Honor,» I said. «Three men just walked in…»
   That was as far as I got. DeVail was a woman in her sixties, but with darting speed, she snatched up a staff bound with gleaming silver wire and used its support to hike herself to her feet.
   Hezekiah scampered to open the door for her. «It'd be a mighty big honor to help you to safety, ma'am,» he said.
   «Help yourself to safety,» she snapped. With one hand, she swept her staff off the floor and swung it high over her head. An arc of sparkling ice crystals spattered out of its swinging tip. «No flamethrowing berks will give our courts the laugh while I'm around.» With that, she dashed out the door, suddenly as spry as a twelve-year-old. The halfling woman waved at us to stay where we were, then hurried along behind DeVail to a wide-open waiting area some dozen paces down the corridor.
   Pausing just a second for the halfling to catch up, DeVail slammed the butt of her staff onto the floor with an echoing whump. Beneath her feet, carpet and floorboards faded to an inky blackness, like a hole filled with deepest midnight. The halfling woman looked at the hole, looked at DeVail, then leaped, grabbing Her Honor around the waist. Together the two of them sank into that hole: the halfling wearing a grim expression, DeVail's lips moving in some kind of silent incantation. The moment their heads disappeared into the hole, the blackness sealed itself shut again with a muffled rumble.
   Hezekiah let the door close slowly, his face filled with wonderment. The feeling was mutual – I had no idea what else DeVail's staff could do, but the short ivory firewands used by the false guards now seemed a lot less formidable. The Sensate in me sighed with regret that I'd miss the coming battle in the rotunda. Then I remembered the charred skin of the dead, the horrid moans of the living… and I decided there were some things even a Sensate didn't need to see.
   «Shall we try to find a way out?» I said to Hezekiah. «We may be safe from the fire for the moment, but if the whole building starts to burn…»
   «In a minute,» he replied. «I want a chance to look at this great stuff.»
   And indeed, Guvner DeVail's office was cluttered to the rafters with «great stuff»: delicately painted porcelain, brassbound chests, mummified animals hanging from ropes attached to the ceiling… dozens upon dozens of outlandish curios, and most no doubt reeking of magic.
   «Don't touch anything!» I snapped at Hezekiah, who was about to pick up a copper-framed handmirror. «For that matter, don't even look at anything! If you stare into that mirror, you have no idea what might stare back.»
   «I wasn't hurting anything,» he answered defensively. He closed his eyes, furrowed his brow for a moment, then opened his eyes again to look at the mirror in his hand. «It doesn't matter anyway,» he said. «The mirror's okay. It's not magic.»
   «How do you know?»
   «If I concentrate, I can sense a kind of radiation coming off magical things. Uncle Toby taught me that whenever I'm in a strange place, I should —» Hezekiah stopped abruptly and snapped his head around toward the door. In a low whisper, he said, «Something with a lot of magic is coming straight at us.»
   «Probably Judge DeVail and that staff of hers.»
   He shook his head. «I don't think so.» Once more his brow furrowed in concentration, then he whispered, «Hide!»
   Much as I hated taking orders from a Clueless, the worry on Hezekiah's face suggested this was not the time for argument. Beside me stood a coat-tree with several bulky cloaks hanging from its hooks; I nipped behind it and quickly fanned out the cloaks so they'd conceal me without looking too unnatural. Given a little luck, none of the cloaks would turn me into a frog. Given a lot of luck, maybe one of the cloaks would make me invisible.
   I left a tiny gap in the arrangement of clothing, just enough to let me peek out with one eye. Hezekiah was nowhere to be seen, but I could hear him shuffling around outside my line of sight, no doubt burrowing into the jumble of souvenirs Guvner DeVail kept from her trips across the planes. After a few seconds, his scurrying stopped… and a good thing too, because half a second later, the door eased open with a creak.
   Two shadowed figures stood in the entranceway, both carrying cocked crossbows. They relaxed slowly as they scanned the room. «I told you,» whispered one of them, «I saw the old basher light out with some halfling. Right through the floor, she went.»
   The other only grunted. «Where do you think she keeps it?»
   «Try the desk first.»
   The one who just spoke stepped farther into the room, crossbow still at the ready. In the light from the oil lamp on the Guvner's desk, the intruder was tall and thin, with raggedly pointed ears and cat-like yellow eyes – a githzerai, and one that looked fiercer than usual, if that was possible. Sigil has a sizable population of githzerai, but I didn't know any personally. Their race prides itself on severity, and never spends its gold on indulgences like art; therefore, githzerai and I don't move in the same circles.
   As the githzerai moved toward DeVail's desk, the other intruder entered the spill of light from the lamp. I gulped hard to stop myself from gasping. This one had a face much like his githzerai companion, but his skin was as yellow as corn and his eyes like black marbles. Unless I was hallucinating, this was a githyanki: closely related to the githzerai race, but its bitter blood enemy.
   A githzerai and githyanki working together? That was like a fire sprite inviting a water elemental to dance the minuet. The two gith races hated each other with the purest of passions, killing one another on sight whenever they happened to meet. The only time the githzerai and githyanki had ever agreed on anything was when they declared genocidal war on each other.
   This had to be an illusion – a shapeshifting disguise. For all I knew these two might be gnome sorcerer-thieves, wearing an enchantment so they couldn't be identified as they looted this office. At least that made sense.
   The two laid their crossbows on the Guvner's desk and began rummaging through the drawers. From my angle I could only see the githzerai, and his body blocked my view of most of the desk. Still, I caught the occasional glimpse of him lifting up one scroll after another, unrolling a length to skim the contents, then discarding the parchment into a growing pile on the floor. The nonchalance of his actions made me wince – not just because of his disdain for scrolls that might carry priceless ancient knowledge, but at his lack of concern for magical consequences. Some scrolls don't allow themselves to be read and tossed away. They can have curses or booby-traps, even imprisoned monsters who leap forth to shred unwary pilferers. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't care if two thieves got themselves eaten; but I didn't want to be nabbed for dessert.
   Finally, the githyanki said, «This looks like it.»
   The githzerai dropped the scroll he was holding. «Dust?» he asked.
   «Yeah. She's even drawn a map.»
   «How convenient. Let's go.»
   The githyanki refolded the scroll he had found and tucked it inside his vest. Meanwhile, the githzerai picked up the oil lamp from DeVail's desk and held it above the mound of scrolls they had thrown on the floor. «By the time the old basher returns,» he said, «this place'll be burning as bright as downstairs. They'll think it's all part of the same blaze.»
   «Maybe,» his partner replied. «But Her Nibs told me to torch a few more offices so the Guvs aren't suspicious about this one. I've got a list of rooms that're empty.»
   The githzerai sniffed the air. «Once people smell smoke, they'll empty the whole building.»
   He picked up his crossbow and headed for the exit. In his hand, he still carried the lighted oil lamp. At the door, he waited while his partner peered out to check that the hall was clear. After a moment, the githyanki nodded. «Let's go.»
   The one with the lamp turned around in the doorway for one last look at the room. Then, curling his lip with disdain, he threw the lamp onto the stack of scrolls and slammed the door behind him.
   Both Hezekiah and I dove instantly from our hiding places to snuff out the flames. It was a close call – the parchments were old and dry, and paraffin oil had splashed about liberally as the lamp struck the floor. Fortunately, the glass lamp cracked but didn't break; and with the help of the cloaks from the coat-tree, we smothered the blaze before it got out of hand.
   «Who were those guys?» Hezekiah panted as we eased back from the mound of crispy-edged scrolls.
   «How should I know?» I replied. «Do you think I recognize every thug in Sigil?»
   «Just asking,» he shrugged. «What do we do now?»
   «Well, we could cool our heels chatting and see if the building burns down around us; or we could pike it out of here before we singe off our eyebrows. Do you have a preference?»
   Clueless though he was, Hezekiah opted for the sensible choice; and soon, we were blundering our way through the corridors of the court building, trying to find a way out.
   This wing was taken up with private offices for high-level Guvners, all of whom appeared to be elsewhere. While I had visited the public areas of the courts a few times, I had never come to this part of the building; and Hezekiah was no help in figuring out where we were, because he admitted he had teleported out of the rotunda, completely blind. It was sheer luck we hadn't materialized inside a solid wall.
   In time, we rounded a corner and saw a doorway down the hall, pouring out roils of black smoke. We approached cautiously, worried about bumping into our arsonist thieves, but reluctant to turn tail if someone inside needed our help. The door opened into a large room filled with row upon row of bookracks; and one shelf of the rack closest to us had been pierced by a flaming crossbow bolt.
   «Our friends from the office have been here,» I muttered, pointing at the arrow.
   «They're setting fire to a library?» Hezekiah cried in outrage. «That's criminal!»
   Despite the smoke, he charged forward, shouting, «We can still save most of the books!» Never mind that the rack where the fire-arrow had landed was almost completely ablaze. Never mind the stupidity of running into a room full of paper just before flames make it impossible to get back out the door. Hezekiah ran straight into the library like some duty-brained knight.
   «What do you think you're doing?» I yelled at him.
   «Only one set of shelves are burning,» he called, stepping into the gap between the blazing rack and the one behind it. «If we can separate these from the rest of the books…» His voice broke off as he inhaled a lungful of smoke and buckled over coughing.
   «Damn it, Hezekiah!» I took a step into the room, then stopped to ask myself what I was doing. If a Clueless nobody wanted to die playing hero, why should I risk my own hide to save him? I'd only known him for ten minutes, and they had been ten solid minutes of annoyance and terror. Granted, Hezekiah hadn't been responsible for the terror part; in fact, his teleport spell had saved my life…
   «Damn it,» I said again, and ran in after him, keeping low to stay out of the smoke.
   When I reached his side, he had struggled to his feet and was pushing weakly against the blazing bookrack. «Shove this rack forward against the wall,» he choked out, «then we shove the other racks back as far away as we can, so they don't catch fire.»
   «You're barmy!» I told him. «These shelves are loaded with books. They must weigh tons.» I hiked my hands under his armpits to steady him on his feet – the lungful of smoke had hit him hard. «The only thing we can do,» I said, «is run.»
   «No, we can save the books.» He squirmed away from me and planted his palms on one shelf of the bookrack – a strip of wood that had yet to catch fire. «I'm not going till we save the books.»
   He shoved the rack feebly, with no discernible effect. «Come on,» he gasped at me. «Help!»
   «Sure,» I replied. «Help. Well, I've never set myself on fire before. The other Sensates will be green with envy.»
   I could have chosen finesse. I could have chosen to treat the books with delicate reverence. But there was smoke everywhere, the rack and half its books were on fire, and I was past the point of subtlety. Our goal was to separate the blazing rack from the others. Trusting my boots to protect me for a few seconds, I stepped up onto a shelf of the rack that was on fire, planted my hands against the adjacent rack, and thrust with all my strength.
   The burning rack yielded first, tipping away under my heels to slam against the front wall of the room. A moment later, the other rack tipped backwards, boom into the rack behind it. That rack tipped too, and a third, and a fourth, boom, boom, boom, like dominoes, a ripple of one crash after another as the whole library toppled gracefully backward. The motion didn't even stop at the rear wall – when the final rack struck the plaster it kept on going, smashing a hole through the wall as big as a haycart.
   «We did it!» shouted Hezekiah.
   «You piking well did it, all right,» said a new voice. I looked up to see a burly Harmonium guard towering above me. He had his truncheon drawn and seemed aching to use it. «You two berks are under arrest,» he bellowed, grabbing me by the arm and hauling me to my feet. «And I truly hope you resist, because I'm in the mood to break some skulls. Got me?»
   «Oh good,» Hezekiah piped up. «I wanted to meet someone in the Harmonium so I could ask about your membership requirements.»
   I buried my face in my hands.

2. THREE CONCERNED FACTOLS

   If you walk (or are dragged) into the main Harmonium guard barracks, the first thing you'll see is a ten-foot tall portrait of their leader, Factol Sarin… and wasn't I glad that I'd gotten on his good side by copying the folds on his neckerchief exactly. Of course, the Harmonium were such a bunch of hardcases, they wouldn't let me go just because I'd painted Factol Sarin from his best profile; but at least when they learned who I was, they stopped swinging their truncheons so recklessly near my skull.
   Half a battalion of guards escorted Hezekiah and me to separate interrogation rooms, and that was the last I saw of the boy for many hours. A sharp-eyed sergeant took my statement, seldom letting me say more than a sentence before interrupting with nitpicky questions. Of course, I told the exact truth, holding nothing back – I had no reason to hide anything I'd seen or done. I dearly hoped Hezekiah was doing the same in his interrogation… not that he was likely to lie, but the idiotic Clueless might skip over important details in his hurry to start quizzing the guards about Harmonium philosophy. If he annoyed them too much, they might bash out his brains before he had a chance to corroborate my story.
   Even though the interrogation room had thick marble walls, they weren't thick enough to block out all the noise in the barracks that evening. Every minute or so, footsteps would race past the door outside; and several times an hour, I heard distant yelling, not clear enough for me to make out words, but with the tone of someone bellowing orders to subordinates. The sergeant interrogating me refused to share any news about how things had turned out at the courts, but judging by the barracks clamor, I guessed the attackers had escaped. Now the guards were scouring the city in search of the killers.
   After several hours, the sergeant exhausted his questions and left me locked in the room with a couple of watchful-eyed corporals. Clearly, the sergeant was not happy with my story – «A githyanki and githzerai working together… how addle-coved do you think I am?» – but he knew the time had come to find his commander and discuss what to do next. It wasn't every day that Sigil suffered a massacre in the Courts, and the investigation would surely fall under scrutiny from high places. The sergeant and everyone else in the Harmonium would move with the utmost caution to avoid legal slip-ups.
   Another hour passed… or at least what felt like an hour, cooped up with two Harmonium guards who were built like mountains and just about as talkative. They stood on either side of the door, arms folded across their chests and eyes glued on me, instantly ready to gut me with their swords if it looked like I intended to cast some nefarious spell. «I don't know any spells,» I snapped at them around the half-hour mark, when their rigid gazes had begun to get on my nerves. Of course, that only made them more suspicious.
   At long last, the door opened again; but instead of the sergeant, the newcomers were Factol Sarin of the Harmonium, Factol Hashkar of the Guvners, and Factol Erin Darkflame Montgomery of my own Society of Sensation. Even though I knew all three personally, I bowed promptly and respectfully to each – three factols traveling in company are not just plain folks, but an official delegation. Still, Lady Erin made a show of greeting me, as one Sensate to another. «Britlin!» she said, taking my hand firmly in hers. «It seems you've been havin' an adventure.»
   «Indeed, my lady.» I had, of course, met her several times at Sensate functions, even sitting at her table once during the Feast of the Wind's Blush. Feast tradition demanded a large table, and my chair had been fourteen places away from hers, sandwiched between a minor baroness from the Outlands and a representative from the Fraternal Order of Ironmongers. Nevertheless, Lady Erin had come around the table to speak with me in her soft Outlands accent, discussing watercolors for several delightful minutes; then, she moved to an equally warm conversation with the fellow on my right, this time about threepenny nails.
   The odd thing was, she really did care about watercolors, nails, and all the other topics she discussed at the table that night. Our factol was not just a strikingly beautiful woman on the outside (so splendid I had promised her a ten percent discount if she ever wanted a portrait, just for the delight of having her pose in my studio); but she was also a paragon of loveliness inwardly, in compassion, intelligence, and sheer personal vibrancy.
   The congenial way she greeted me in the interrogation room suggested she believed I had acquitted myself well during the mayhem at the City Courts. That counted for a lot; although she was only in her thirties, Lady Erin headed the largest voting bloc in Sigil's Hall of Speakers – many other cities would grant her the title of Mayor. If she vouched for me, I had little to fear in the short term.
   Besides, Guvner Hashkar and Captain Sarin both wore benign expressions as well… somber, yes, and tense with the strain of handling what must be a difficult night on the streets, but with no animosity toward me. Indeed, Guvner Hashkar came forward to shake my hand, saying, «Hear you saved a library, dear boy. Most of it, anyway. Good work, excellent work. Well worth a medal or citation, something like that. Our chief of protocol will decide what's appropriate, once she calms down. Might be a few weeks. She's the one who has to put the books back on those racks. Still, she's grateful, very grateful. We all are.»
   I bowed once more – quite a low bow, since Hashkar was an elderly dwarf: only four foot two to begin with, and now stooped with age. The biggest thing about him was his extravagant white moustaches, dangling like string mops nearly all the way to the floor. Some claimed he grew them to draw attention away from the aggressively red bulbousness of his nose. On the other hand, maybe he liked those moustaches because they made him look doddering and senile; in debates at the Hall of Speakers, Hashkar liked being dismissed as a dithering old fool until he suddenly swooped in for the kill, destroying his opponents' arguments with a single casual remark.
   «Enough gab,» said Captain Sarin, briskly. From what I'd seen, Sarin did everything briskly – rather alarming when he came to my studio to pose for his portrait, because the way he barreled around, I was sure he'd step in a pot of paint. He didn't. Sarin might be equipped with shoulders as wide as a buffalo and muscles to match, but it wasn't strength alone that won him leadership of the Harmonium. «Now,» he went on, «we have a few questions to ask you, Mister Cavendish.»
   «Of course, sir.» I bowed once more, because that's what you do when a factol calls you «mister».
   «In the statement you gave to my sergeant, you simply stated the facts. Now we'd like your opinions. Hunches, suspicions, impressions… you're a blood with a keen eye and your work gives you contact with plenty of folks here in the Cage. What do you make of this all? If you had to guess, would you say the attackers were Anarchists? Or maybe Chaosmen?»
   «Neither, sir.»
   Captain Sarin raised an eyebrow. I hurried to explain. «The Anarchists have a lot of experience pretending to be Harmonium guards – disguise is part of their basic training. I'd guess there are half a dozen Anarchists in this building right now, eavesdropping on the way you're handling the present situation.»
   The captain made a face. «You're probably right.»
   «So,» I said, "they aren't going to make an elementary mistake like folding their neckerchiefs wrong. Anarchists are just too good at infiltration to slip up like that.
   «As for the Chaosmen,» I continued, «they don't have the discipline for what I saw. The false guards marched like soldiers and fired in unison – Chaosmen simply wouldn't allow themselves to be regimented like that. They might dash wildly into the building, fire about at random, then run away again; but they'd despise the very idea of planning the attack with military precision, and they certainly wouldn't carry it off.»
   The captain cast a glance at Guvner Hashkar and Lady Erin. They both nodded. Sarin sighed. «That's pretty much what we concluded too,» he told me. «We hoped you might have noticed something to indicate otherwise. Life would be less complicated if we could blame this mess on the usual pus-kickers.»
   «I take it you didn't capture any of the attackers?»
   «All three escaped,» Lady Erin answered with a keen edge of anger. «As you say, the massacre was planned with military precision. The moment Judge DeVail showed up with that staff of hers, one of the fireballin' berks shouted, 'Hop it!' and activated some magical boojum. They disappeared in a shimmer of light, and no one knows where. DeVail fired into the shimmer anyway on the off chance they'd just turned invisible; but it didn't do any good.»
   «Does Judge DeVail know what the thieves stole from her office?»
   «Haven't been able to talk to her yet,» Guvner Hashkar replied. «Soon as the attackers vanished, Oonah started helping the poor sods who got caught in the middle. Tried to calm the mob, bandage the injured… even stopped the deva and cornugon who were still brawling in the middle of the flames. Eventually, the old girl pushed her luck too far – inhaled more smoke than she could handle. Healers got to her in time and she'll be right as rain in the morning; but for now she's sleeping, and they don't want us to wake her.»
   «Pity,» I said. «If we knew what those two had stolen, maybe we'd have a clue what was really going on.»
   Captain Sarin grunted. «You're certain the theft was connected with the fire attack?»
   «Absolutely,» I told him. «First of all, the thieves had been waiting in a position to see Judge DeVail dash to the rescue. Then they went straight to her office and rummaged through her desk for one specific scroll, ignoring dozens of valuable curios in the rest of the room. Once they had the scroll, they systematically torched her office and other rooms to cover their tracks, intending the secondary fires to be dismissed as offshoots of the fire downstairs. They must have known about the fire attack ahead of time, and were poised to move on DeVail's office once the coast was clear. My guess is the fireballs were simply a diversion to make it easier for the thieves to get in and out without being noticed.»
   «But a githyanki and githzerai working together,» Sarin shook his head. «That's almost impossible to believe.»
   «Their appearance could have been an illusion, or some temporary shapeshift. Remember, Hezekiah knew they were coming because they radiated magic.»
   «Maybe,» Lady Erin said, pursing her lips. «Still, if they had the magic to disguise themselves, why become a githyanki and githzerai? It'd make more sense to look like Guvners or Harmonium guards. That way they wouldn't stand out if someone noticed them in the hall.»
   «A good point,» Sarin admitted. «But I still think —»
   There was a sharp knock on the door, and a lieutenant of the guard hurried in without waiting to be invited. She handed the captain a slip of paper which he read in silence. I could tell that Lady Erin and Guvner Hashkar were both aching to read over Sarin's shoulder, but they managed to restrain themselves until the captain looked up grimly.
   «Bad news?» Lady Erin asked.
   «Not exactly news,» Sarin muttered. Glancing in my direction he hesitated a moment, clearly debating whether to say more in front of me. Before I could offer to leave, however, Sarin simply shrugged and continued. «I asked some of the bright bloods in our backroom to propose theories about what in The Lady's name is happening here. They've dug up some troubling connections.»
   «What connections?» Hashkar asked.
   «Ten days ago, there was an ugly little riot in the Gatehouse asylum – the part of the building used as headquarters for the Bleak Cabal. Everyone knows a fair number of barmies in the asylum used to be wizards, till they learned one too many secrets mortals weren't meant to know. Anyway, one of those wizards escaped, got his hands on the ingredients he needed for some fireballs, and freed a whole block of other violent inmates. The wizard vanished and the others demolished a good chunk of Bleaker HQ before they could be stopped.»
   «And what does this have to do with the courts?» Lady Erin asked with some impatience.
   «Keep listening,» Sarin replied. «Six days ago, a furnace in the Great Foundry blew out one of its walls. Flames and molten metal sprayed all over the place – dozens of poor sods killed, heavy property damage, and surprise, surprise: most of the damage was centered in the part of the foundry the Godsmen use as their headquarters.»
   «I read the reports on that,» Lady Erin said. «Everyone agreed it was an accident, pure and simple.»
   «If you like accidents, try this on for size,» Sarin told her. «Two nights ago, we had a serious fire in the Hive… not unusual for slums, but my bloods tell me it took out several buildings the Xaositects used as headquarters.»
   Lady Erin's eyes narrowed. «So you're sayin' there've been three disasters in three faction headquarters…»
   «Four disasters,» Guvner Hashkar corrected. «The City Courts are headquarters to my faction.»
   «And all four involved fire,» the captain added. «How's that for coincidence?»
   «All right,» Lady Erin said. «I'm callin' an emergency session in the Hall of Speakers. One hour from now. Every factol of every faction, if they can make it. Can you send out runners, Captain?»
   «I'll pass the word,» Sarin nodded.
   «And are you finished with Mr. Cavendish?»
   The captain nodded again.
   «Then,» she said, turning to me, «I'd appreciate you waitin' for me at the Festhall. It may be some time before I get back there, but my steward'll see to your needs – food, a place to sleep, don't hesitate to ask. Of course, you realize none of what you've just heard can leave this room?»
   «Of course, my lady.» I bowed very low.
   «Very well then,» she smiled grimly, «let's all get to work. It's promisin' to be a long night.»

* * *
   The three factols hurried out immediately. The rest of us, lieutenant, corporals and I, all kept bowing until the door closed behind them. Who knows if factols really care whether people bow to them or not? But I, for one, didn't want to be the first person to defy the custom to their faces.
   The lieutenant waited for a good count of twenty before opening the door to leave. I suppose she wanted to make sure the factols were well gone before she ventured into the hall – like me, she must have had enough bowing for one day. Trying not to be obvious about it, she looked both ways to check that the corridor was empty; then she instructed the corporals to handle my release, and sped away to other duties.
   Releasing me was simply a matter of returning my money pouch and the other things I'd been carrying when arrested. None of my possessions were particularly ominous: my keys, some peanuts in a small cloth bag, and a chip of quartz which gave off a permanent lantern-like glow, thanks to a fellow Sensate who was now loafing as the Witch-Queen of some scruffy Prime world. Still, the Harmonium had impounded everything in my pockets, just on general principle. If I were some kind of mage (which I'm not), a harmless piece of lint might have been all I needed to turn everyone in the barracks into fruitbats.
   While I was reattaching my money pouch to my belt, the sergeant who interrogated me strode in. His face hardened when he saw me; I assumed he wasn't happy about my being released, perhaps on the theory that everyone must be guilty of something. That's the Harmonium for you.
   «So they're letting you walk,» he said after a long glare in my direction. «Don't get cocky about it, Cavendish. You and that Clueless friend of yours better stay out of trouble – I'm keeping an eye on you both.»
   «I don't suppose you could keep your eye on Hezekiah in the barracks here… just long enough to give me a ten minute headstart?»
   «Trying to give him the slip, eh?» The sergeant stroked his beard thoughtfully. «If you were a crook, Cavendish – and of course I know you're not, you're a gentleman with friends in high places who can spring you from choky even when it makes more sense to keep you locked up – but if you were a crook, I'd think you might be trying to beat your partner-in-crime to something. Maybe race off to a case where you've stashed some jink, and clear it out before the boy can stop you.»
   I stared at him in disbelief. «Sergeant, you've missed your calling. Say the word and I'll put you in touch with some friends of mine in the publishing trade; they're always looking for bloods with a flair for fiction. In the meantime, good night to you.»
   My words were wasted. I intended to turn my back on him with a lofty air and make my way out of the barracks, surrounded by an air of wounded dignity. Unfortunately, the sergeant had scuttled off before I finished speaking, so I was left addressing the end of my speech to an empty doorway.
   I finished arranging my money pouch and started toward the main doors of the building. As I've mentioned, it was a busy night in the barracks, with guards running to and fro, alone or in packs that completely blocked the corridor. They were in a hurry and I was in a hurry; but they had truncheons and swords, so I was the one who flattened against the wall to let them pass.
   Still, I eventually made it to the door and out into the stale midnight air of Sigil. I stopped on the front steps to take a breath, free once more… and at that moment, the sergeant bustled out of the building with Hezekiah in tow.
   «There you are, Cavendish!» the sergeant called. «Aren't you forgetting your friend?»
   «Hi!» the boy chirped, holding out his knuckly hand for me to shake. «Good thing we managed to catch you before you got away.»
   «Oh yes,» I said glumly. «Such a good thing.»

* * *
   At the bottom of the steps, Hezekiah waved a cheery farewell to the sergeant. The sergeant waved back, but his beady little eyes gleamed in my direction, like a whist player who's just produced an unexpected trump.
   «Nice people, these guards,» Hezekiah said, oblivious to the exchange of glances between me and the sergeant. «I offered to buy them a round of drinks at their favorite tavern, but they must be too busy investigating the fire.»
   «If you're interested in nightlife,» the sergeant put in, «stick with Cavendish. I overheard Lady Erin tell him to meet her at the Civic Festhall.»
   «The Civic Festhall?» Hezekiah asked, perky with interest.
   «Thank you very much, sergeant,» I growled. «Isn't it time you served and protected someone else?»
   He bowed smirkingly to me. «Good night, Cavendish. I'm sure you two will enjoy yourselves.» Chuckling to himself, he sauntered back into the barracks.
   «The Civic Festhall?» Hezekiah repeated, grabbing my arm. «Is that some rundown ginmill frequented by rogues and vermin? Because while I'm in Sigil, I'd love to visit a den of iniquity.»
   «The Civic Festhall is not a den of iniquity,» I snapped. «Just because it's run by Sensates, people make up the most ridiculous rumors. Look, I'll show you.»
   I pulled him into the middle of the street where we had a good clear view of the sky. As I've mentioned before, Sigil doesn't have the kind of sky you get in mundane worlds. Sigil is round like a wheel: the inside rim of a wheel roughly twenty miles around. When you look up, you peer through the sooty air to see the opposite side of the city five miles overhead; and from where we stood outside the City Barracks, the brightest light in the night sky was the Civic Festhall. It shone with a welcoming yellow glow, and all around it were hundreds of other lights, beaming from music halls, cafes and, yes, the occasional bordello, all to entertain citizens with more varied tastes than getting bubbed up in some grimy alehouse that waters the beer.
   «That,» I said, pointing, «is the Civic Festhall. That is where you go for opera, or symphony concerts, or performing bears. It has three art galleries, the finest museum of antiquities in the multiverse, and an arena where you can go every night for a year and never see the same sport twice. If you want to drink, the central bistro can sell you a wine so delicate it evaporates before it even touches your tongue; it can also sell you rotgut so potent, not only will you stay drunk for the rest of your life, but so will your children and their children. Does that give you some idea of what the place has to offer?»
   «The Civic Festhall,» Hezekiah murmured in a thoughtful tone of voice. «Uncle Toby says there's a place where women…» He leaned over and whispered in my ear.
   «Oh,» I said, «that's the half-time show in the arena. Why do you think people sit and watch all those sports they've never seen before?»
   «Then let's get a move on!» the boy whooped; and he started off down the street, with the lights of the Festhall sparkling in his eye.

* * *
   On a normal night, I never would have walked the streets of Sigil without my father's rapier hanging at my hip – even the best-lit boulevards have footpads and worse hiding in the side alleys. However, only the Guvners and Harmonium could wear swords into the City Courts, so I had reluctantly left my weapon at home when I headed out to my painting assignment. Now, crossing the city at midnight, I could feel eyes watching me from every shadow.
   Fortunately, the Harmonium was out in force that night: guards standing at every major corner, and others scurrying hither, thither, and yon on unknown errands. Speaking of guards, I noticed a burly dwarf woman (at least I think it was a woman; it's hard to tell with dwarves) dogging our heels about five lampposts back. She wasn't wearing the official neckerchief, but she had the unmistakable trudging walk that marked her as a Harmonium patroller. No doubt this dwarf was a plainclothes gift from my friend, the sergeant – someone to watch in case I gave Hezekiah the slip and ran off on an unbridled crime spree.
   The more I thought about it, however, the wiser it seemed to keep Hezekiah close at hand. He and I had witnessed a theft that might be part of a city-wide conspiracy. If I left him to his own devices, he'd soon find himself one of those «dens of iniquity» where he'd spill everything he knew to the assembled company of cross-traders and bawds. Word would travel through the seedy parts of Sigil, eventually reaching the ears of the thieves we'd seen that afternoon. Maybe they wouldn't care that they'd been spotted; but maybe they'd decide it was prudent to silence those who could identify them.
   Hezekiah would get his throat cut first. Then they'd come for me.
   When I looked at the situation in that light, Hezekiah had to be kept under wraps – for his own safety, as well as mine – and that meant I had to play his minder until I could shuck off the responsibility on someone else. Maybe when I spoke with Lady Erin later in the evening, I could persuade her to find a more willing babysitter.

* * *
   With so many guards roaming the streets, we made it to the Festhall without incident… barring the half dozen times I had to pull Hezekiah away from draggle-tail ladies of the evening. Of course, the little Clueless didn't understand what they meant by, «Hey bloods, want a bit of lather?»; he grew more and more convinced that Sigil was filled with 24-hour public baths.
   Pulling Hezekiah through the outer approaches to the Festhall was even harder. Admittedly, I couldn't hold that against him; from conjurors to lutists to acrobats, the walkways of the Festhall are crammed with charming and talented performers, highly skilled in capturing a newcomer's attention. I noticed my companion dipping frequently into his purse to find coins to drop in the buskers' bowls – so frequently and with so many coins, I began to wonder how much money Hezekiah had. For that matter, I wondered how so much silver managed to come from such a slim little purse. Perhaps that was another bit of magic from the famed Uncle Toby.
   As we continued to pass singers and jugglers and contortionists, I began to feel guilty about hurrying the boy off to Lady Erin's office. This was Hezekiah's first visit to the Festhall; he should have a chance to experience everything he could… provided I found some way to keep him out of real trouble.
   Casting about for a solution to my quandary, I caught sight of a familiar face and waved her over to us. Lillian fa Liranill was thirty-two like me; but since she was an elf, she was still an adolescent and she gloried in it. The two of us had joined the Society of Sensation in the same group ceremony, and we had enjoyed a brother/sister relationship ever since.
   Lillian was more than just lively and delightful; she was infinitely delightable, taking bubbly pleasure even in the plainest, most humdrum aspects of existence. I once watched her write a letter to a friend, pausing every three seconds to ponder what color of ink to use for the next word… and no matter what color she chose, she always giggled at the effect. For a cherubically cheerful guide to the enticements of the Festhall, you couldn't do better than Lillian.
   She wasn't half bad as an artist's model either.
   «Lil,» I said, raising my voice to be heard above a pair of nearby drummers, «this is Hezekiah Virtue. He's just new to Sigil.»
   «Really!» Her eyes opened wide. «You're just new to Sigil?»
   «Yes ma'am,» the boy gulped, «I'm just new.»
   «Glad we've got that clear,» I said. «I was wondering, Lil, if you'd like to show Hezekiah some of the sights of the Festhall.»
   Her eyes opened even wider. «He'd like to see some of the sights?»
   «Yes ma'am,» Hezekiah assured her, «I've been really looking forward to seeing the sights.»
   «Perhaps you could show him around,» I suggested to Lillian.
   Her eyes opened wider still; Lillian's eyes had the gift of being infinitely expandable. «Would you like me to show you around?» she asked Hezekiah.
   «I'd love for you to show me around,» he answered.
   «Then it's settled,» I said. Drawing Lillian aside, I whispered, «Hezekiah went through a terrible ordeal this afternoon, and it would do him good to forget about the experience for a while. Can you make sure he doesn't dwell on what happened? Don't let him start talking about it, to you or anyone else. Keep his mind on other things.»
   «I can keep his mind on other things,» she promised with those wide open eyes of hers. Turning back to Hezekiah, she slipped her arm around his waist and snuggled in close to him. «What do you want to see first?» she asked. «There's so much we can do.»
   Trying not to chuckle, I headed off to Lady Erin's offices. Hezekiah would never know what hit him.

* * *
   The factol's suite was tucked into the most inaccessible part of the Festhall, guarded by one of those irascible old men who never goes anywhere, yet seems to know everything. You know the type: think of that local tavern owner who never strays farther than the wine cellar… but if you witness some duel in the streets and race around to tell the news, he already knows the details, he can explain what started the quarrel in the first place, and he even tells you the prognosis from the surgeon attending the wounded.
   Lady Erin's steward, TeeMorgan, was like that. He was a bariaur – much like a centaur, but from the chest down he looked more like a ram than a horse, and he had curled ram's horns sprouting from his forehead. «So,» he said the moment he caught sight of me, «you were in the middle of that fiasco in the Courts today. You and that Clueless boy. Have you thrown him down a privy or what?»
   «Lillian has taken him under her wing,» I answered. «Do you have any food handy? I haven't eaten since lunch.»
   «Hmph,» he grumped. «Seems to me if a Sensate wants to experience everything in life, starvation is one of the first things on the list.»
   «I fasted for a month and a half the year I turned twenty-five,» I told him.
   «And the paintings you did then were your only ones worth looking at,» he retorted. «All these portraits and landscapes and still-lifes of yours… whatever happened to good old abstraction? Painting what you feel instead of what you see – that's what I call art. Where's the point of painting a bowl of grapes that just looks like a bowl of grapes? But put little screaming faces on each grape, and that's a statement.»
   «I wouldn't mind some grapes right about now,» I said.
   «Yeah, try to change the subject. But take your portrait of Factol Sarin hanging in the City Barracks… my four-year-old could understand it. You call that art?»
   «I call it my job. People pay me to paint pictures that look like pictures, TeeMorgan. They don't come to me for statements, they come for grapes you can recognize as grapes. Judging by the amount of gold they're willing to pay, they're happy with what they get.»
   «Oh yes, gold,» TeeMorgan growled. «You're a Sensate, Cavendish – you should acquire a taste for more than one mineral. What would your father think of a son who was content to be a mediocrity?»
   I caught my breath and bit back true anger. TeeMorgan and I frequently had these jousting matches about art, but mentioning my father was going too far. The look on my face must have told the bariaur he'd entered forbidden territory, because he turned away and made a gruff noise in his throat. «Pike all this arguing,» he said. «I'll check what we've got in the pantry.»
   His hoofs clacked loudly as he cantered into a back room; and I was left alone with thoughts of my father.
   My father, Niles Cavendish, was a hero: a champion swordsman, a dashing adventurer, a savior of the downtrodden. A city like Sigil never lacks for heroes, of course – every night in every tavern, you'll hear some berk boasting how he slew the Five-Headed Monster of Whatsit or retrieved the Gold Talisman of Who-Cares. But Niles Cavendish was a real hero, a hero known for his exploits throughout the multiverse… ready to rush into the Abyss to rescue a kidnapped princess, or dive into the River Styx to save a drowning puppy.
   Twelve years had passed since he disappeared, and I still couldn't think about him without clenching my hands into fists.
   TeeMorgan stuck his head in from the pantry doorway. «We got some cold beef left over from dinner, and a new delicacy called swineberries. I assume you want some?»
   «Beef yes, berries no.»
   «And you call yourself a Sensate,» TeeMorgan muttered. He stomped off to get me a plate.

* * *
   Lady Erin arrived just as a nearby clock chimed six in the morning. I had been dozing lightly on a couch in her office, an exotic piece of furniture upholstered with a hide I suspected had once been attached to a basilisk.
   «Don't be gettin' up,» she said as she bustled in and threw a stack of papers onto her desk. «I've only a few words to say, then I'll let you get back to sleep. You'll need all the rest you can get.»
   «May I ask why, my lady?»
   «Special duty in the service of our faction,» she replied. «I've convinced the other factols someone's systematically attacking all our faction headquarters. Naturally, it's too much to expect that we band together against a common foe…» She threw a rueful glance over her shoulder in the general direction of the Hall of Speakers. "But we've worked out a tiny cooperative effort.
   «Each faction,» she went on, «will protect its headquarters however it sees fit. Here at the Festhall, we'll have to hire mercenaries, and won't that add to the cheery atmosphere? But that's not your problem. The council also agreed to assemble cross-factional teams of observers outside each headquarters – not helpin' with protection but watchin' for suspicious activities. If an attack or disaster takes place, the teams are forbidden to involve themselves; we don't want them gettin' distracted by a showy diversion. Observer teams'll hold back and look smaller things… like a githyanki and githzerai runnin' out the back door of the building.»
   «I assume you want me on one of these teams?» I said.
   «Exactly,» she nodded. «You have a keen eye, and you've seen the thieves. That's an advantage I don't want to waste. Also, I understand you can take care of yourself if it comes to a fight… right?»
   She smiled at me as if that were a joke – as if we both knew that the son of Niles Cavendish had to be a formidable warrior. Surely my father taught me all his fighting tricks.
   No. He taught me nothing.
   For months, sometimes years at a time, the legendary adventurer simply wasn't home: off swashbuckling through the multiverse, leaving my mother and me to struggle through on our own. When he came home his pockets were full of gold; but after a brief splurge of gift-giving, he would spend the rest of his purse on equipment for his next foray, leaving us alone again with nothing. Yes, I did learn to use the rapier, but not from my father. I learned my skills, such as they are, from dearly hired swordmasters – in my youth, because I thought learning the sword would impress my father if he ever took the time to notice, then later because so many brash young bashers believed they could make their reputations by challenging a Cavendish.
   On the eve of my twentieth birthday, the survivors of my father's last expedition brought his rapier back and told us he was «lost»… not killed for certain, just lost. Vanished without a trace, one night in the Outlands. And even though we knew he had to be dead, my mother and I still couldn't shake off the slim hope he might one day show up on the doorstep, smiling, charming, full of stories. Year after year we hoped; until now, after twelve years, hope had become a tired thing that only occasionally returned to torment us, when a stranger's voice or walk suddenly brought to mind the great flamboyant Niles.
   Lost is worse than dead. But I had my father's rapier, and yes, I did know how to fight.
   «I can protect myself,» I told Lady Erin. «If it comes to that.»
   «We hope it doesn't,» she nodded. «If you catch sight of those thieves again, don't go tryin' anything brave; just follow them back to their base of operations. Once we know where they are… well, this group has killed people from four different factions, so we'll have no problem findin' volunteers to rip the berks to pieces.»
   «How much do the other factions know?» I asked. «Did you tell them the attack at the court building was just a diversion for the theft?»
   Lady Erin shook her head. «I didn't want to give away the dark in an open meeting. Not that I think any factol is behind this, but some of those berks have notoriously loose lips. They've agreed the observation teams should track suspicious persons, and that's enough. We'll make sure each team has a Sensate, Guvner, or Harmonium guard who knows the chant and is watchin' for the right things.»
   «So there won't be someone from each faction on every team?»
   «Heaven forbid!» she laughed grimly. «I'm aimin' for five or six people per team. With so much distrust between factions, it'll be hard enough to get a half dozen sods to work together without comin' to blows; representin' all fifteen factions would make the job impossible. I have firsthand experience – I've just come from a meetin' of all fifteen factions.» She gave a rueful grin.
   «So these teams…» I said. «You'll want us watching twenty-four hours a day?»
   She nodded. «Each faction'll set up an observation post for you, somewhere with a good close view of the headquarters building. Runners'll bring you regular meals – on the sly, of course, so the enemy doesn't notice. It'll be up to the teams to decide who sleeps when, but there should be at least two people peelin' an eye for trouble at all times.»
   «And we keep watching until something happens.»
   «You keep watchin' until you have to stop.» Lady Erin walked around to the well-padded chair behind her desk, and slumped into it wearily. «Joint efforts between factions never last long, Britlin. Minor differences become major squabbles, arguments become brawls, and eventually you get duels, fights, puttin' each other in the dead-book… the factols all promise to pick their most 'tolerant' people, but still I'd guess we have three days tops before the operation falls apart. If even one team gets out of hand, it'll spike our try at secrecy and the enemy'll know what we're up to. So,» she said, «you keep watching till you or some other team blows the dark. After that, there's no point.»
   Three days. Three days out of my schedule, with the deadline for Guvner Hashkar's commission coming up. Since the first painting had burned in the fire, I'd have to start again from scratch… but then, if Guvner Hashkar wanted a picture of the rotunda as it looked now, I could just smear black paint all over the canvas. There was a statement for you.
   Anyway, I had no choice – a man doesn't refuse a special assignment from his factol. In the morning, I'd ask Lady Erin to send a note to Hashkar, regretfully stating he'd have to find some other wedding present for his wife's cousin.
   There was, however, one more matter that had to be handled tonight. «What about Hezekiah?» I asked. «We can't let him rattle his bone-box all around the city if we're trying to keep this business dark.»
   «I've been thinkin' about that,» Lady Erin answered, «and it strikes me it's high time Outsiders were allowed to play a more active role in city politics. At the last census, they outnumbered every established faction in Sigil… includin' the Chaosmen who all filled out five census forms apiece. Such a hefty number of folks deserve representation in some way; and postin' Hezekiah to an observation team strikes me as the perfect first step.»
   I winced. «Whose team did you have in mind?»
   The factol just smiled.

3. THREE DAYS WITH THE DEAD

   The sky had begun to brighten when I let myself into Cavendish Case – a two-storey flagstone house only a few blocks from the Festhall. My father had bought this place the day I was born, as he never tired of telling me: one of the few topics of conversation between us that didn't dwindle into awkward silence.
   I had intended to slip inside quietly, pick up some things I would need for the next few days, then slip out again. Of course, I'd leave my mother a note explaining that I'd be gone for a while… and of course, I wouldn't tell her the truth. Something like, «Urgent commission for the Modron Ambassador – must stay at Mechanus embassy till finished.» That would please her and avoid the unpleasantness of lying to her face…
   …except that she was standing in the front hall as I slunk inside.
   «And did we make a special friend last night?» she asked sweetly.
   «No, Mother.»
   «Britlin,» she said, «a gentleman's only civilized excuse for staying out till dawn is if he spent the night with a lady. All other alternatives are dclass.»
   «Yes, Mother.»
   She gave me a winsome smile – Mother had somehow convinced herself I was accumulating a long string of romantic conquests. The truth was much more restrained: yes, there had been a handful of women (and one or two of those had been quite a handful!) but I was no dashing rake with my head on a different pillow every night. Some Sensates strive for quantity and others for quality; I preferred the second approach.
   «And what is the news on the street today?» she asked, a question that came up every morning. I rattled off juicy tidbits of rumor about the high and mighty – who was sleeping with whom, who had gone bankrupt in the latest financial scandal, whose souls had been collected overnight by baatezu calling in contractual obligations – a grab-bag of gossip related to me by TeeMorgan when he brought me breakfast at the Festhall. Mother had never met any of the people I talked about, but she nodded knowingly at each blunder and impropriety. The names were unimportant; she simply loved to hear about folly.
   She loved to sing about it too. My mother Anne wasn't exactly a bard – she never played for anyone outside the family – but she wrote witty little songs that were then bought by practicing bards from every ward of Sigil. Although Mother didn't know it, the performers always presented the songs as «classical tunes, written in days long past»… mostly to explain why the verses were written in such courtly language. My mother, in songs as in life, genteelly avoided the slang of the street.
   It was a strange occupation for a woman born the daughter of a duke; but then, she had long ago abandoned her heritage, and good riddance to it. Her father Urbin, Duke of Aquilune on some petty Prime world, had been a brutal man, a bully who beat his wife to death and then moved on to his daughter. Anne suffered untold agonies at his hands – untold to me, anyway – but tiny hints over the years suggested Urbin had raped her on numerous occasions, loaned her to his friends for sport, and degraded her in every conceivable way… all of this beginning when she was about eight years old and continuing till the time she turned sixteen.
   On the very day of Anne's sixteenth birthday, a young swordsman named Niles Cavendish arrived at Duke Urbin's castle. Bitter though I was at my father for never being home, I could never truly hate him: in the first heroic act of his excessively heroic career, Niles Cavendish had proved himself a saint by saving Anne from her misery. As a child, I believed he had actually killed my wicked grandfather… but the Niles of that day was not such a legendary warrior that he could single-handedly slay a well-guarded duke in the heart of his castle. Niles saved Anne by marrying her, then bringing her back to his hometown of Sigil; and if he won Urbin's permission to wed by holding a rapier to the old berk's throat, neither of my parents would say.
   So how does a woman leave behind such a hellish childhood to become a writer of comic songs? One day at a time. It helped that I was born shortly after she arrived in Sigil – taking care of a baby occupied so much of her attention, she had no time for ugly memories. It helped that my father was constantly away adventuring: she could concentrate entirely on her child, without having to coddle a husband too. Sometimes to quiet me, she played the harpsichord my father gave her as a wedding gift; and in time, she began to write little songs to greet him when he finally came home… songs that my father encouraged her to write down, songs that he showed to his bard friends who said they were worth money…
   A happy ending, some would say. Some who had never seen the scar down my mother's cheek, made by a drunken uncle who wanted to test a new dagger. Some who had never seen the empty eyesocket that she refused to explain. Some who didn't know that in the thirty-two years she'd lived in Sigil, Anne Cavendish had never stepped outside the house or seen another face besides my father and me. Before I was old enough to do the shopping, delivery boys dropped food into a chute out front and Mother shoved their payment through a slot in the door. Even when she began to sell her songs, she couldn't bear to meet customers – one of Father's friends acted as her agent, picking up sheet music left on the front stoop and sliding the proceeds under the door.
   In short, Mother laughed, she told jokes, she was utterly charming… but even I couldn't venture too close without making her flinch.
   We blew each other a lot of kisses.
   «I should tell you,» I said when I finally ran out of gossip, «I won't be around for a few days. Maybe as long as a week.»
   «Good for you, Britlin!» she beamed. «Whoever you met last night must be ravenous for more.»
   «It's not a woman, Mother…»
   «A man then? I'm broadminded. Is he cute?»
   «It's… an assignment. A painting assignment.»
   «I see: painting.» She said it with a sly wink, as if she knew that couldn't possibly be the truth.
   Sometimes, I had to reflect how lucky I was my mother never got out of the house. Otherwise, she'd bring home a different woman to meet me every night, desperately wanting her son to be showered with constant, all-consuming adoration. I was her substitute, a stand-in who might find the kind of passion she dreamed of: not Duke Urbin's bestial lust; not my own father's heroic pity; «a soul-completing love, a mutual cherishment to make weak hearts brave.»
   That last bit was from one of her songs.
   «I have to pack some things,» I told her.
   «By all means,» she replied. «A gentleman always takes appropriate precautions.»
   I laughed and shook my head. Some days, my mother had an unshakably one-track mind. As I began to climb the stairs, she called after me, «Wear the brown jacket, dear, and those nice black pants. They make you look so handsome, your lady will peel off your clothes with her teeth.»

* * *
   When I returned to the Festhall, I was wearing my father's best rapier, and carrying a sketchbook to while away my off-hours for the next few days. Just inside the door, a factotum gave me a note from Lillian (every word a different color), saying I could find Hezekiah in an inn called She Who Sings the Sky. The place was just down Crystal Dew Lane and it had a good reputation – more expensive than most but the price bought you a good night's sleep without interruption by cracksmen or body-baggers. The next time I saw Lillian I'd have to congratulate her for ensuring the boy's safety.
   By the time I got to the inn, Hezekiah was awake and seated at the breakfast table, munching through a stack of Outland pancakes as tall as the Great Foundry's chimney. For a moment I worried he might have spilled some secrets to the other patrons eating there; but the long-suffering woman cooking the pancakes said he had talked about nothing but Lillian and the Festhall.
   Indeed, that's all he spoke of the whole time he was finishing his meal. Lillian did this, Lillian said that; and had I ever gone dancing along the Walk of Worlds? (Hezekiah, I designed one of the chambers along the walk – the room depicting Pelion, a layer of Arborea. To prepare for the commission, I spent three months in Pelion, slogging my way through an infinite expanse of white sand, all the time muttering to myself, «How in The Lady's name can I create a romantic little bower based on nothing but desert?» Still, a sphinx here, a pyramid there, and a few ruins crumbling by candlelight did the trick… not to mention the clever touch of posting signs that said PLEASE REMOVE ALL FOOTWEAR. Few couples can dance barefoot through soft warm sand without longing to disappear together behind the nearest dune.)
   Thus I listened to Hezekiah enthuse about my work as we left the inn and walked out into the street. It was a drizzly day in Sigil, with raindrops so dainty you could ignore them until you were soaked to the bone. On the streets around us, most people carried umbrellas and wore irritable expressions that grew more sullen as the rain continued; but I and the other Sensates we passed had our faces open to the wet, grinning as water streamed down our cheeks. There's an especially delightful moment when a big droplet trickles down the back of your neck, so cold it makes you squirm… yet it seems that Sensates are the only ones who appreciate the experience.
   Although our destination was almost diametrically across the hub from the Festhall, we made the trip in well under an hour thanks to Hezekiah's never-ending supply of gold: he simply hired a hippogriff hansom to fly us straight across the ring. For once, the boy showed some common sense – we both spent the entire trip with our heads stuck out the windows of the cab, lapping at the brownish rainwater and enthusing over how far down it was to the ground. Whenever one of us shouted, «Look at that!» the hippogriffs all gave fierce eagle-like screeches… which either meant, «Yes, isn't it interesting?» or «Pipe down, you sodding berks.»
   You never can tell with hippogriffs.

* * *
   In time, the cab set us down beside Ragpickers Square, in the looming shadow of our destination – Sigil's Mortuary, headquarters to the Dustmen. Historians claim that five hundred years ago, the Mortuary was nothing more than a massive granite dome, shaped like a beehive; but since that time the Dustmen have expanded and embellished, adding side towers and outbuildings, plus a frenzy of ornamentation around the dome itself. Now there are bat-winged gargoyles mounted in a circle around the peak, and trellises of razorvine growing up the walls; now, the front entrance is flanked by giant frescoes depicting all the Death Deities of the multiverse; and now the crowning glory above the entrance is a stained glass window, two storeys tall, fifty feet wide. Every pane of glass in that window is a subtly different shade of black.
   «Wow!» said Hezekiah. «What a great-looking place! I bet it's spooky at night. Do they give tours?»
   «No,» I answered, «they give funerals.»
   Although it was still before peak, several mourning parties stood queued outside the main door, suggesting that the dozen ceremony rooms inside were already occupied. I wondered how many of the corpses lined up for the final send-off were victims of the massacre at the Courts yesterday. No way to tell. Each corpse would be taken inside, prepared according to whatever rituals were desired by the next of kin, and finally launched through portals into other planes of the multiverse – to a heaven or a hell if the deceased had shown a preference during life, or maybe just to the Elemental Plane of Fire for instant cremation.
   «Excuse me, honored sir,» said a voice by my side.
   «Would you have the privilege to be Britlin Cavendish?»
   I turned to see a sallow-faced gnome kowtowing in the vicinity of my ankles. He wore a shapeless gray robe that was much too long for him; probably, it had been tailored for a short human, which meant that fully half of it piled up in folds around his three-foot-tall frame. The collar of his robe bore a tiny embroidered skull in the faded yellow and orange colors of the Dustmen.
   «Yes,» I replied, «I'm Britlin Cavendish. And this is my… this is Hezekiah Virtue.»
   «An honor, an honor,» the gnome said, taking Hezekiah's hand in both of his own and squeezing repeatedly. «You may call me Wheezle – everybody does. If I ever had another name, I've forgotten it by now.»
   He gave a little laugh as if we should take this as a joke. For politeness' sake I smiled, but his attitude didn't fool me. Gnomes in Sigil place great stock on their names, and most of them take pride in introducing themselves at length, complete with genealogies and incomprehensible honorifics: «I have the privilege to be Quando-Master Spurrit Vellosheen Legrunner, eldest son of Jance-Leader Vellosheen Spurrit Legrunner, late of the Order of the Vole, but recently advanced to the House of Frequent Bubbles, twice enwreathed.» If you meet a gnome who only gives a nickname, he's either a criminal concealing his identity or a wizard whose magic would be jeopardized by speaking his name aloud.
   «What can we do for you, Wheezle?» I asked.
   «No, honored Cavendish, it is what I can do for you,» he replied. «My superiors instructed me to watch for you and escort you to… a place nearby.»
   «A place we can keep an eye on the entrance to the Mortuary?»
   «Indeed. If you would walk this way?»
   He gestured toward a tenement building across the street… although calling it a building perhaps too generous. It looked more like a rickety piece of wooden sculpture, constructed by an untalented art student who needed lessons in carpentry. The only things propping it up were a line of equally seedy tenements on either side, leaning inward so the building in the middle had nowhere to fall. Further structural reinforcement was added by ample quantities of razorvine that twined up the front face of the building in a solid sheet of thorns.
   «You want us to go in there?» I asked.
   «It is an excellent location,» Wheezle answered. «As you can see, its height gives it a superlative view; from the seventh floor, you can observe the front entrance of the Mortuary and much of the back. Even better, the building has no tenants right now.»
   «That's because it's going to collapse any second!»
   «Factol Skall guarantees its structure is fundamentally sound,» Wheezle said. «At least for a few days.»
   «It looks fine to me,» Hezekiah chipped in. «Come on, Britlin, this will be fun.»
   Reluctantly, I followed the two of them toward the tenement. Whether or not it was structurally sound, the building was made from very old wood – the kind that would blaze like straw if our flame-happy enemies pluffed it with a fireball. Silently, I whispered a prayer to The Lady of Pain that the drizzle would keep falling until the wood became too wet to burn.

* * *
   The design of the tenement was simple: two single-room apartments on each floor, and a wobbly staircase up the middle. Judging by the smell of the lobby, every apartment had once housed a minimum of five weak-bladdered cats.
   The doors of both ground-floor apartments were missing. So were the windows. Rain pattered in from the outside, and ran across the badly slanted floors to pool up in the corners. In spite of myself, I began to look forward to a few days in the place – I had never stayed in such a decrepit building before. If I was lucky, it would even have rats.
   The stairs creaked loudly as we started up to the higher floors. Wheezle tried to put this in a positive light. «As you can tell, your honors, we need not fear enemies creeping silently up from below.»
   «We?» I asked. «You'll be watching with us?»
   «Factol Skall deemed it helpful for one of our faction to join you,» the gnome answered. «In case you had any questions about our ways.» Which meant that Factol Skall wanted his own man planted in our party, to spy on us and report any undesirable activities. No doubt every other faction in the city was doing the same thing.
   We climbed all the way to the top, constantly brushing away the filmy cling of spider webs. The stairs teetered under our weight and I made a point of staggering my footsteps not to match Hezekiah and Wheezle – if we all walked in pace, we might give the staircase a timed wobble that would bring the whole thing crashing down. It didn't help that the top flight of steps was slick with water, dribbling in through dozens of holes in the roof. Much as the seventh floor afforded the best view of the Mortuary, I suspected the team would prefer to set lookouts on the sixth or even fifth floor… somewhere the rain couldn't penetrate so easily.
   Then again, when we reached the seventh floor, another member of our party was already there, enduring the leaky roof with no noticeable discomfort: Guvner Oonah DeVail, our brief acquaintance from the Courts. She had brought a folding canvas chair with her, and now sat a short distance back from the window, peering out into the street. Her silver-wired staff leaned up against the wall within easy grabbing distance.
   «Fine morning, isn't it?» she asked. She had managed to place her chair out of the direct line of any of the leaks, but her olive green bush-hat was still sodden with rain. «How are you two feeling?»
   «Quite well, your honor,» I bowed.
   «Bar that nonsense!» she snapped. «I'm on official leave from the court bench, so you can skip the flowery titles. My name is Oonah, got it? Oonah.»
   «Hezekiah Virtue,» my companion said, scuttling forward and holding out his hand. Whatever Prime backwater the boy came from, they were certainly big on handshakes. But DeVail was happy to reciprocate, grabbing Hezekiah's hand and pumping it heartily.
   «Heard you two saved a library yesterday,» she said. «Bully for you. Top marks.»
   I tried to look suitably modest; Hezekiah just blushed.
   «A thousand pardons, honored ones,» Wheezle interjected, «but I must return below to meet the other guests. Good deaths to you all.» He kowtowed and slipped away.
   Since this might be our only moment alone with Judge DeVail, I had to ask the vital question. «Guvner,» I said, then corrected myself, «Oonah… have you figured out what the thieves took from your office?»
   «Yes and no,» she replied in a low voice. «I believe they took a scroll written by my mother some forty years ago. People sometimes call me an explorer, but my mother Felice… she was ten times the traveler I ever hoped to be. In her lifetime she touched on all the Outer Planes – all the heavens, all the hells – as well as the Elemental Planes and more than a dozen Prime Material worlds. No one else ever rambled around the multiverse like Felice did.»
   I might have countered that my father had easily matched Felice DeVail's achievements; but I refused to play the pathetic cast-off son, boasting on his dad's behalf. Sometime, I would have to find out if Niles had ever gone a'rambling with Oonah's mother.
   «When she died last year,» DeVail continued, «Felice left me her diaries: a treasure trove of stories and multiverse lore. I was slowly working my way through each scroll, indexing, annotating, getting them ready for more extensive scholarly research… and the sad truth is, I hadn't gotten around to the scroll the thieves took. I have no idea what was in it.»
   «The thieves said something about dust,» Hezekiah said.
   DeVail shrugged. «If you know the right portal, you can get to an entire universe of the stuff – the Quasielemental Plane of Dust. It's a flat sea of grit stretching infinitely in all directions: no water, no truly solid ground… and no air in the atmosphere, so no wind to disturb the dusty surface. On top of that, the dust is hungry; leave your armor unattended for a day, and it'll disintegrate to dust too. I've never been there, but my mother visited once. She hated it.»
   «And she didn't mention anything special about the plane?» I asked. «The thieves said she'd drawn a map. Maybe a treasure map?»
   «I honestly don't know,» Oonah answered. «She was always reluctant to talk about her travels… to talk about anything, really. My mother would much rather ferry down the River Styx than make after-dinner conversation, even with close friends. Self-effacing to a fault when she wasn't roving around the wilds.»
   Maybe Felice DeVail didn't talk to her daughter, I thought, but she must have talked to someone; otherwise, how did the thieves know there'd be something interesting in the scroll? Or perhaps Oonah herself had talked about her mother where the wrong ears could overhear. However, before I could ask Oonah who knew she had the diaries, the stairway shuddered with a flurry of rattles and creaks.
   «More company,» the Guvner said.
   Like a puppy, Hezekiah rushed to see who was coming. A moment later, he ran back to us. «There are two of them with Wheezle,» he whispered. «And one is a tiefling.»
   I looked at Oonah. She gave a noncommittal shrug and turned her eyes toward the stairs. No doubt, both of us knew a few tieflings who weren't antisocial ruffians; but the vast majority of their kind went through life in a state of ill-controlled hostility, believing the world despised them and doing their best to despise it back.
   Why? Just because they looked a bit different from normal humans. Nothing very obvious – maybe slightly feline eyes or a curling prehensile tail, maybe dark greenish hair or a small set of horns. Some blamed these deviations on demon blood in the family tree, but others said it was simply the price of life in the wide open multiverse; once humans left the placid safety of the Prime Material plane, their children occasionally developed unusual traits. I could see no shame in being a plane-touched child… but the tieflings turned their tiny slivers of difference into massive chips on their shoulders.
   The tiefling coming up the stairs, for example – a young woman, and a strikingly attractive one, even if she did have spiky reptilian crests running up the flat of each forearm. They were nothing more than white bony ridges against the taffy brown of her skin, easily mistaken for ornamental bracers if your eyes weren't as sharp as mine; I'd happily hire a woman this lean and lithe to pose in my studio. However, the look on the tiefling's face clearly stated she would never consent to be my model. In fact, she'd probably run me through with her longsword just for suggesting it. She wore a tight-fitting black sheath of genuine dragon skin, and her hand rested lightly on the pommel of her sword, as if she were just waiting for one of us to disparage her race.
   Embossed on the breast of the dragon skin was the horned skull symbol of the Doomguard – just the sort of faction that attracted tieflings. The Doomguard held a «leave things alone» attitude toward life; or more precisely, they had a dizzying passion for entropy and would love nothing more than watching the multiverse slowly grind to a halt. They took offense at any interference with the gradual dissolution of existence, whether you tried to slow the disintegration through gratuitous creativity or speed it up through aggressive destruction. With the Doomguard's «keep your hands off the world» philosophy, was it any wonder tieflings found the faction in tune with their own feelings?
   «Greetings again, honored ones,» said Wheezle as he led the newcomers toward us. «May I introduce Yasmin Asparm of the Doomguard, and Initiate Brother Kiripao of the Transcendent Order?»
   If tiefling Yasmin was a fireball waiting to explode, Brother Kiripao was an icy mountain quivering on the verge of avalanche. He was an elf, his age impossible to guess; and he moved with a graceful serenity unusual even for one of his race. With vibrant green eyes, hair shaved clean off, a composed smile on his face as he bowed to greet us… well, he intimidated me ten times more than Yasmin. There's something about a certain type of monk that promises he can pummel you to pudding with his bare hands, all the while discussing the delicate art of flower arrangement. Not that Brother Kiripao was completely unarmed – I noticed a shiny black set of nunchakus tucked into his belt sash, and that didn't put me at ease either.
   Worst of all was his faction. The Transcendent Order, also called the Ciphers, subscribed to the belief that people thought too much. If we just stopped filling our heads with ideas, the Order preached, we would become attuned to the harmony of the multiverse.
   In the abstract, I could sympathize with such a philosophy; but in the real world, it meant that Ciphers always leaped before they looked. Their training taught that if they could just act without thinking, they'd always do the right thing. It gave them chillingly fast reflexes, which made people like Brother Kiripao invaluable in sudden emergencies when there was no time to debate tactics. However, it also meant they had no faith in measured discussion or advance tactical planning – they believed exclusively in the spur of the moment.
   A hotheaded tiefling and a placid elf monk who could change in a split-second to a fighting dervish… it was going to be a long three days.

* * *
   Throughout the afternoon, funeral processions continued to arrive at the Mortuary. Wheezle and I posted ourselves at a window on the fourth floor to watch them – high enough to give us a good view of the street, low enough that we could still make out faces in the crowd. Brother Kiripao and Hezekiah volunteered for the drizzly watch up on the seventh floor; they were supposed to concentrate their observations on the rear entrance and leave the front to us.
   Our final pair of companions, Yasmin and Oonah, had retired to rest elsewhere in the building… probably in separate rooms. Guvners and the Doomguard tend to view each other with suspicion: Guvners spend their lives discovering new laws of the multiverse, gauging their success in life by the number of laws they can unearth; the Doomguard, on the other hand, only recognize the Law of Entropy, and are quick to label the Guvners misguided fools for believing anything else is important. One law versus an ocean of laws – a dispute that has come to blows on many occasions. It was just one example of the inter-faction tensions that continually plague the city.
   However, inter-faction relations don't always need to be strained, even when the faction philosophies are diametrically opposed. Wheezle and I, Dustman and Sensate, had a splendid time watching funerals pass beneath us. As a Dustman, the little gnome had an encyclopaedic knowledge of burial customs throughout the multiverse, and he happily explained the actions of each group who filed up to the Mortuary. For example…
   «What luck, honored Cavendish! The next group of mourners always brings special delight when one of their fellows dies. They are orcs hailing from a Prime world whose name I am regrettably unable to pronounce, and they have the charming tradition of building their coffins in shapes that have special meaning to the deceased. You will observe that these particular pallbearers carry a casket carved to look like a giant pink trout. Such a mischievous smile on its face… it must be quite a happy fish.»
   «Do the orcs worship trout?» I asked.
   «No,» Wheezle answered, «they simply like bright, eye-catching coffins. Existence is hard for orcs, even in Sigil where The Lady's law of live-and-let-live gives them a degree of protection. Even here, orcs seldom enjoy the smallest luxury during their lifetimes. Therefore they build their own coffins long before death approaches, choosing to make those coffins silly or wanton or extravagant – the embodiment of some personal fantasy that can soothe all grievance when their world is harsh. Perhaps this particular orc once saw a rich man eating trout and dreamed of being able to do the same; or perhaps the orc just longed for the freedom to sit quietly on a river bank and catch fish. Who can say? He chose a trout for his own reasons… and throughout his difficult life, he often must have sat beside his pink fish coffin and taken comfort that his death would wear a cheerful face.»
   Talk like that gave me a greater appreciation of Wheezle, and Dustmen in general. Usually, one only thinks of them as a morbid crew who preach that death is a state of ultimate purity, something we should all work toward. Indeed, they claim that everyone in this world is dead already, that the entire multiverse is the afterlife of some joyous existence elsewhere; all of us must now undergo the agonizing transition from exuberant life to peaceful death, and rejection of death in any form simply makes our path more painful.
   Needless to say, the Dustman philosophy doesn't sit well with Sensates. After all, we pride ourselves on being in love with life, the painful parts as well as the pleasurable ones. Most Sensates kill themselves once or twice just to see what death feels like… but we make piking sure we have a top-rate priest standing by to raise us again once we've reaped all we can from the experience.
   Still, it was educational to hear Wheezle speak of death so affectionately. Much as I couldn't understand the attraction myself, I always think fondly of people who've found their true loves.

* * *
   The rain tapered off toward nightfall. The last of the mourners vanished into the building, then hurried out again a few minutes later – the Mortuary stands just inside the Hive slum district, and it's not a safe place to tarry after dark. When night comes, thieves emerge from the shadows to work the old cross-trade; and things blacker still stalk the thieves, for Sigil is a city with many shades of darkness.
   A figure emerged from the front doors of the Mortuary: humanoid, but with eyes that burned like dull red embers. It carried a heavy burlap sack in one hand, but let its other hand swing free, displaying a set of razor-sharp claws. Even at this distance, I could smell the stench of decaying flesh.
   «Looks like a barrow wight,» I whispered to Wheezle, as I quietly drew my rapier. «Nasty things – they can drain the life right out of you. How much do you want to bet the bad guys carried the wight in earlier, pretending it was a corpse? Then the wight got out of its coffin when no one was looking and filled that sack with treasures from your faction.»
   «It would be unethical to take your bet, honored Cavendish.» Wheezle gently laid his hand on my sword and lowering the blade. «The wight's bag does not hold stolen treasure; it holds our supper.» He went to the window and waved. «Over here, Eustace,» he called softly to the wight. «I trust it is still hot?»
   Eustace the Wight curled his lip and uttered a bone-chilling hiss. Wheezle went down to meet him at the door.

* * *
   The six of us ate our dinner in darkness – lighting the smallest candle might give away our position. Hezekiah and I sat by the window, keeping an eye on the Mortuary throughout the meal.
   «Brother Kiripao has been teaching me how to fight,» Hezekiah whispered to me. He demonstrated a few jerky punches that came perilously close to my nose. «See?»
   «Keep your wrists straight,» I murmured. A friend of my father's had believed every well-bred gentleman needed skill in the «manly» arts, so he'd spent several months training me in sportsman-like boxing… not that Brother Kiripao was apt to fight like a sportsman.
   «And he's also been telling me about the Transcendent Order,» Hezekiah went on. «It's all about emptying your mind.»
   «You must have great potential,» I said.
   «Naw,» the boy replied. «I got all kinds of stuff in my head. Special tricks and all. From Uncle Toby.»
   «Good old Uncle Toby.»
   «You know,» Hezekiah whispered, «until I came to Sigil, I thought maybe Uncle Toby and I were the only people in the world who could do special things. Everybody back home was so boring. But here… well, look at us all. Oonah has her staff, Wheezle's an illusionist, Yasmin and Brother Kiripao both have priestly magic…»
   «How do you know all that?» I interrupted.
   He stared at me as if he didn't understand the question. «I just asked them,» he said.
   Disquieted, I glanced back at the other four in the room, silently eating their suppers. All four had magic at their fingertips? But then, they'd been hand-picked by their factols for an important assignment; of course, they'd be the best their factions had to offer. And why had Lady Erin chosen me? I wasn't a wizard or a priest. Yes, I could use a rapier, but mostly I happened to be a witness, assigned to this team solely because I might recognize the thieves.
   Maybe I should just sketch the faces of the thieves, give the pictures to my fellow team members, then head for home. They didn't need me; even Hezekiah had more tricks up his sleeve than I did. Mind you, I had one advantage the rest of them lacked: I was completely sane. Scowling Yasmin, placid Kiripao, clueless Hezekiah, death-loving little Wheezle… even Guvner Oonah had her barmy side, the way she rushed off for that showdown with three homicidal fireballers. If I left them all alone, who knew what kind of catastrophes they'd cause without my moderating influence?
   Still, the idea of poor mundane Britlin surrounded by five magic-wielding addle-coves… it rattled me. Stepping away from the window, I announced, «It's my turn to sleep. Wake me at the next shift change.» Without waiting for objections, I went down the creaky stairs, laid my bedroll in the back of a fifth floor room, and hoped I wouldn't lie awake too long