Fire and Dust

by James Gardner

  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.

  * * *

  Yasmin woke me as first light was dawning. She loomed above me, prodding my ribs repeatedly with her toe, and she didn't stop until I snapped, «All right, all right. I'm conscious.»

  «You're watching with me on the top floor,» she said. «I'll see you up there.» As she went out the door, she paused and turned back to me. «You look innocent in your sleep. And you make little sounds.»

  Without another word she dashed away, and when she hit the staircase, it clattered into a furore of squeaking. I think she was running up the stairs two at a time.

  * * *

  Needless to say, I wondered what I was getting into as I stepped through the doorway of the upstairs room. Yasmin's face was slightly flushed, but whether that was exertion or a blush, I couldn't tell. She glanced at me only for a second, then turned her eyes to the street outside the window.

  «Anything happening out there?» I asked.

  She shook her head, without shifting her gaze; for a street with nothing going on, it certainly seemed to rivet her attention.

  Shrugging, I went to the corner of the room that held the biggest puddle of rainwater… at least an inch deep in some places, thanks to exaggerated warps in the wood of the floor. Carefully, I wet my hands and patted them on my face for a morning wash. The water smelled of dirt and dust; little fibers floated in it, either threads left behind by some carpet that had once lain on this floor or hairs from rats nesting in the building.

  I crouched down and lapped up a bit of the puddle, just to see if it tasted like rats, carpet, or something else. The flavor was mostly bland dust, with a slightly smoky tang to it. Did that come from Sigil's normal smog of chimney soot? Or was I tasting the residue of the fire that had burned through the Hive earlier in the week?

  «Did you just put your tongue on this filthy floor?» Yasmin asked from her place by the window.

  «Actually I just slurped up some rainwater,» I replied. «However, I'll happily lick the floor if you think the flavor's worth it.»

  «Sensates!» she growled, and went back to looking out the window.

  Since she'd mentioned it, I did try licking the floor but it didn't impress me. Ordinary varnished cedar – I'd tasted much better in my time.

  * * *

  As the day brightened, traffic picked up on the streets below us. Since Yasmin and I were on the top floor, our job was to look beyond the dome of the Mortuary (four storeys shorter than our tenement perch) and scan the rear entrance for signs of mischief. Not that we could actually see the rear entrance – the dome blocked our view – but we had a clear line of sight to the street passing the backdoor. Down there, members of the unclean underclass called the Collectors were bringing in corpses who got themselves put in the dead-book overnight: old bubbers who'd choked on their own vomit, young ones who liked to pick tavern fights, Clueless newcomers who wandered down the wrong alley. Welcome to Sigil, you leatherheads.

  Idly, I picked up my sketchbook, made a few sweeps with my stick of charcoal, then put it down again.

  «What's that you just drew?» Yasmin asked.

  «Nothing,» I answered, holding up the page so she could see. «For a moment I considered drawing a stark little streetscape – the Mortuary, with wretched bands of Collectors sneaking in corpses at the backdoor. But I decided against it.»

  «Why?»

  «Because people don't like depressing pictures.»

  «I do,» Yasmin said.

  «Yes, you probably do,» I admitted. «You and the whole Doomguard. And the Dustmen, and the Bleak Cabal, and maybe some other factions too. But my regular customers don't like depressing pictures. They'd hate seeing such pictures in my studio, and they'd hate hearing that I'd sold such pictures to… people who weren't like themselves.»

  «In other words,» she sneered, «you're not going to draw something that interests you, because some jink-jigging nobs would disapprove.»

  «Disapproval's not the point,» I replied. «It's just that whenever I pick up charcoal or paintbrush, I have two choices: create something that
earns money or waste my time on something that doesn't. A man has to be practical.» For my mother's sake, I might have added – keeping up Cavendish Case was not cheap, but it would kill her if we ever had to move out of the house. Of course, I wasn't prepared to talk about family with a complete stranger like Yasmin; why should I care if she thought I was a greedy self-centered berk?

  Yasmin turned away to glare out the window, then reached into a pocket of her dragon skin leotard and tossed me a worn gold coin. «There,» she said. «Special commission. Draw what you want, any way you want. And I promise I won't tell your precious customers you worked for a Doomguard tiefling.»

  I held the coin in my hand for several seconds, feeling the warmth of the gold – a warmth that had come from Yasmin's body. Then I lifted my sketchbook, flipped to a blank page, and started sketching the clean lines of her face. High forehead, strong jaw, good cheekbones… an excellent artist's model, just as I thought.

  It was about the time I started trying to capture her eyes that she finally recognized the picture on the paper.

  «What do you think you're doing?» she snapped.

  «Drawing something I want. Now stop jerking your head like that, so I can get on with the work. I take commissions seriously.»

  Like many first-time models, she started out self-conscious and artificial, went through an irritable stage when she threatened to quit every other minute, progressed to a state of sullen resignation, and finally came to ignore me when she became tired of forcing her face into «artistic» expressions. That's when I turned to a new page and began the real drawing.

  And so the day passed.

  * * *

  Early on the third morning, an army of Collectors paraded down the street with the stiffening corpse of a giant.

  At the time, Oonah and Wheezle had the fourth floor watch, while Yasmin and Hezekiah took the seventh floor. It was just as well Yasmin and I weren't together again – when she saw my final drawing the day before, it had taken her aback, possibly because it showed how strikingly lovely she was. I had drawn her with her chin resting thoughtfully on her fist, and the bony ridge of her forearm was an integral part of the picture's composition. She had never posed in that position, certainly not during the day we'd been together, and possibly never in her life; but even I was surprised how strongly it captured who she was. For several long minutes after I had finished it, I didn't want to let it out of my hands. I wanted to hold it, memorize what I had done… or maybe throw it in the faces of critics who derided my portraits as shallow.