Fire and Dust

by James Gardner

  Still, a commission was a commission, and Britlin Cavendish never peeled his clients. Carefully, bashfully, I handed it to Yasmin. She never said a word; she simply stared at it a long long time.

  After that, we both shied away from each other's company for a while – it felt too awkward. I decided to ask Hezekiah to take the next day's watch with Yasmin; his Clueless questions would irritate her, but she might be more at ease being annoyed than handling whatever emotions she felt the day before.

  With the other four team members on watch, Brother Kiripao and I had little to do. After two days in the tenement, I had endured enough of its quaking stairs and musty smell; so I found myself on the ground floor, staring out at the street and wondering how risky it would be to go for a walk in Sigil's version of fresh air. Brother Kiripao may have been thinking the same thing, for he wandered down to join me, gazing out the glassless window.

  We could hear the giant's approach several minutes before the corpse actually came into view: the sound of overloaded carts groaning along the cobblestones, mingled with the grunts of people lugging a heavy burden. Then, around the corner came a haycart supporting the giant's head and shoulders, his long wild hair tumbling over the sides of the cart and trailing along the street. The hair was green, and his skin sulphur yellow – a jungle giant, if I correctly remembered Kreepatch's Guide to the Multiverse. Sigil didn't have a large population of giants, but a few happened into the city from time to time, and they naturally stood out in the crowd. Jungle giants were one of the more civilized species, smart and self-disciplined enough to stay out of trouble.

  The giant in front of us, however, had not been quite smart enough. His throat sported a long red gash, still dribbling blood onto the pavement… enough blood to satisfy a string of dogs who trotted along beside the corpse to lick up the spillage. For a moment, I thought the deceased must have been killed by one of his fellow giants – who else is tall enough to slit a giant's throat? But then, a random breeze blew in through the window and filled my nostrils with an overpowering stink of cheap whiskey.

  Whiskey had soaked into the giant's hair… whiskey clung to his beard and his meagre clothing… whiskey formed a visibly sticky coat on his bare skin. The giant must have bathed in the stuff, or poured a dozen bottles over his head. The obvious conclusion was that he'd been celebrating something; a marriage perhaps, or one of his people's religious festivals. I could picture him drenching himself liberally with whiskey, externally and internally, then bumbling off into the city and passing out in some alley. If a robber wandered by, the thief might well do a slice-job on the giant's throat before picking his pockets – you wouldn't want a drunken giant to wake up while you were bobbing his money pouch.

  The breeze blew in at me again. Stale rotgut whiskey: I knew the aroma well, just as I knew the bouquets of the finest wines. And yet, there was something slightly odd…

  «Warn the others to stay on their toes,» I told Brother Kiripao. «I have to check something out.»

  Tossing off my jacket, I rumpled my hair and pulled out my shirt tails to bring my appearance more into line with street fashion in the Hive. Then with a drunken swagger, I stumbled out the door and up to the passing giant. «Sure is a big piking basher!» I called out to the nearest Collector.

  «He's a heavy sod, all right,» the Collector replied. Sweat poured down her face as she helped push her cart, but the woman seemed cheerful enough. «I like the heavy ones,» she went on. «When the Dustmen hand out jink for collecting stiffs, they pay by the pound.»

  «You'll be rich, you rotten berk!» She and I both laughed loudly. I let the laugh break into a cough and staggered up against the corpse to steady myself. With a little squirming, I managed to change position so my nose was flush against the giant's skin. One good whiff, and I backed away a few paces.

  «Where'd you find this big old jumbo?» I asked the Collector.

  «Lying in an alley,» she said. «Where else? He got drunk, he got sliced… simple as that.»

  Yes, someone wants us to believe that story, I thought to myself – someone who hadn't taken into account a Sensate's sensitive nose. On the giant's skin, beneath the stink of cheap whiskey, lurked the more subtle fragrance of Phlegistol: an ultrahigh-grade fuel oil, said to be mined by gray dwarves in the caverns of Carceri. Nobles in The Lady's Ward liked to burn Phlegistol to heat water for baths; they claimed it burned cleaner than coal and very very hot.

  «Sure is a big basher,» I said again and whacked the corpse's side heartily. A load of liquid in the giant's gut sloshed loudly in response to my blow; and I had no doubts what that liquid was. Our fire-loving enemies had somehow killed this giant and used the slit in his throat to top him full of flammable oil. Afterward, they had soaked him in a few gallons of whiskey to hide the Phlegistol smell. Now the corpse was an eighteen-foot-long bomb, left in an alley for unsuspecting Collectors who'd deliver it straight to the Mortuary.

  I wondered how the arsonists intended to set this off. A single fire-arrow would do the trick. You'd want to shoot from a long distance away, but the giant was a huge target. A hit anywhere should be good enough to touch off the payload – whiskey fumes were flammable enough, but the Phlegistol was positively explosive. For maximum effect, the enemy would probably wait till most of the body was inside the doors of the Mortuary; then boom.

  As quickly as I could while maintaining my drunken act, I waved cheery-bye to the Collectors and wobbled my way back to the tenement. Brother Kiripao was waiting inside the door. «The corpse is a bomb,» I said in a low voice, as I slipped back into my jacket.

  «A large bomb?» he asked.

  «I'd guess more than a ton of Phlegistol.»

  He glanced at the giant, now being heaved off the carts and hauled slowly up the Mortuary's front steps. «We must leave this building,» he said. «It cannot withstand a sizable explosion at such close range.»

  «Then you get around to the rear of the dome,» I told him, «and keep an eye on people escaping that way. I'll warn the others.»

  He nodded in agreement and dashed out at once. Three seconds later, it occurred to me that he really didn't know what to look for – only a few of us had the proper dark about the githyanki and githzerai thieves. I should have been the one to watch the back, and let Brother Kiripao clear the building; but something inside of me wanted to save Yasmin personally.

  The moment I finished putting on my jacket, I ran for the stairs. They squealed and wavered under my feet, but I kept my balance and made my way upward as fast as possible. Oonah was looking over the stair railing at the fourth floor level, and called down to me, «What's going on? I saw you in the street.»

  «The giant's filled with Phlegistol,» I gasped, panting from running up the steps. «If it goes boom, this building will too.»

  «Damned right it will,» she nodded. «I've seen Phlegistol explosions before. Gray dwarves love the stuff – they fill up wine bottles, jam in cloth fuses, and toss them at people they don't like. Good way to burn a whole sodding village.»

  «You and Wheezle clear out of here,» I told her. «I'll get the others.»

  «Just shout,» she said. «They'll hear you.»

  «So will the enemy,» I replied. «Best not give ourselves away.» And I hurried up the stairs again before she could argue.

  My heart was pounding loudly in my ears when I finally reached the top. Of course, Hezekiah had heard the racket of the creaking stairs and come to investigate. «We have…» I wheezed, «…we have… to get out. Bomb.»

  «What's a bomb?» he asked, perky as ever.

  Piking stupid Prime-worlders! To them, the height of military ingenuity was sharpening both edges of your sword.

  «What's this about a bomb?» Yasmin said, coming out of the surveillance room.

  «The giant…» I told her. «Phlegistol… we have to…»

  «All right, hold on.»

  She ran back into the room, while I leaned against the bannister and tried to catch my breath. Hezekiah gave my a
rm a genial pat, then said, «I'd better collect our gear.» He too ran off, his boots hitting the floor heavily enough to send tremors through the staircase. I lowered myself to the steps and sat for a moment, listening to my heart thud. Winded as I was, perhaps I should start downstairs immediately; the others were in better shape, and would easily catch up. However, my pride wouldn't let me run off – I had to wait for Yasmin.

  And Hezekiah too, of course.

  Yasmin hurried out of the room, her knapsack on her back and the portrait I'd drawn rolled up in one hand. «Be careful when you roll up a charcoal sketch,» I told her. «They smudge easily.»

  «Pike it, berk,» she snapped, but her face wore the ghost of a smile. «They've already got the giant halfway through the doorway. Perfect time to hit it with a burning —»

  A brilliant burst of light flashed through the window, followed a split-second later by a thunderous roar. The tenement rocked back sharply, sections of its roof blowing away like loose paper; then the full force of the explosion struck home, smashing the front wall of the building with fists of naked fire. Yasmin was thrown off her feet by the blast of hot air, and tossed sprawling across my lap where I sat on the stairs.

  As for the stairs… with a single shriek of rusty nails, the staircase supports ripped out of the surrounding wood. Then we were falling free.

  4. THREE DUSTY KILLERS

  Seven storeys with two flights of stairs per storey – once we started falling, we didn't stop. Bam, our steps smashed down on the steps beneath and banged them free of their supports; then both flights were falling together, down to the next floor, and so on. One floor after another, every jarring crash followed by another one-storey drop, like a house of cards collapsing in on itself. Bam, bam, bam, with flaming boards falling around us and sparks sputtering through the air. During the split-second we stopped at each floor, plaster from that floor's ceiling smacked down on us in brittle sheets. Then the next flight of stairs would give way, and another fall, another jolt, another shower of plaster breaking over my head and Yasmin's back.

  Each time we landed, Yasmin gave a painful whoof of breath. She had fallen with her stomach across my lap, and each impact drove my knees into her diaphragm. Halfway down, her body slumped limply, stunned by having the wind knocked out of her over and over again. Desperately, I held onto her with all my strength so she wouldn't tumble away – riding the stairs like a bucking bronco might bruise us black and blue, but getting thrown off into a burning building would put us in the dead-book for sure.

  At long last we stopped, perched high atop a stack of piled-up stairflights. That put us almost even with the first floor above ground level; so with scant seconds before the tenement came thundering down around our ears, I heaved up Yasmin's body and ran straight for the front of the building. There was a hole in the wall there, a ragged breach where the explosion had punched out a sweep of rotten boards. The boards now littered the floor, too punky to burn, even in the Phlegistol heat; but the sides of the hole had caught and now blazed hungrily with bright fire, sucking in a gale of fresh air from outside. I didn't stop. I simply cradled Yasmin to my chest, and jumped straight through the opening.

  The distance to the ground was only ten feet – a painful drop but scarcely a killer, provided you land properly. Once in the air, however, I realized there was no way to land properly with a full-grown woman in my arms. Protecting her head from the cobblestones was the best I could do… and then we struck down on something much softer than expected, softer than pavement, softer than burning wood.

  It was a hand: the giant's left hand, blown clean off at the wrist. We landed as gently as nestling birds, snuggling down into the palm. Now, however, the giant's skin was not its original sulfur yellow, but an ugly charred black; and the whiskey smell had been replaced by the odor of roast pork.

  Dappling the pavement around us were other hunks of smoking flesh: some from the giant, some from the Collectors who had been carrying the corpse into the Mortuary. Surprisingly, this carnage was easier for me to stomach than the massacre at the City Courts – except for the giant's hand, nothing was intact enough to recognize as fleshly remains.

  Yasmin drew in a ragged breath and rolled back against the giant's scorched thumb. Somehow she had managed to keep hold of my charcoal sketch through everything, though the paper had crumpled where it was squeezed in her fist. She looked down at it and blearily tried to straighten the creases.

  «Never mind that,» I said. «How are you?»

  «Alive, by the grace of Entropy,» she groaned. «Did the others…»

  I turned to look at the tenement. It chose that moment to cave in on itself, the whole structure slumping neatly downward into a smoking pile. The buildings on either side, also battered by the explosion, leaned inward to fill the gap left by the collapse. One by one, they all toppled onto the smoldering heap.

  The whole process took less than five seconds.

  «Britlin…» Yasmin whispered.

  «Oonah and Wheezle had time to get out,» I answered, without looking at her. «But poor Hezekiah was still on the seventh —»

  «Hi,» said Hezekiah, from behind our backs. «What are you doing in that hand?»

  Grimacing, I turned to face him. «You teleported out?»

  «Sure. If you two had just waited, I would have brought you with me.»

  «Too easy,» I muttered. «We preferred taking the more exciting way down.»

  «You Sensates!» He laughed and punched me playfully in the shoulder. «Come on and I'll take you to the others.»

  Yasmin tried to knife him in the back, but I stopped her in time.

  * * *

  Oonah and Wheezle had taken refuge behind one of the Mortuary's most solid outbuildings: the marble sanctuary that housed Sigil's Monument of the Ages. Factol Skall of the Dustmen had created this monument to peel a little more gold from the pockets of rich leatherheads, letting them pay for the privilege of inscribing their names on a great stone obelisk that would «preserve their fame for all time». Looking through an archway into the monument building, I saw that the obelisk had been toppled by the shockwave of the explosion; it now lay on the ground, broken into three pieces.

  «My condolences on all this mess,» I said to Wheezle.

  «Why?» he asked, his small gnome eyes blinking in surprise. «To a Dustman, this is a day of high celebration. So many souls ushered into the Ultimate Peace.»

  «It's a thrill for the Doomguard too,» Yasmin assured him. «Too noisy and presumptuous, of course – we'd rather let things fall down on their own. Still…» She looked around at the fractured monument, the collapsed row of tenements, the scattered gobbets of baked flesh. «It was a really good boom.»

  I too scanned the destruction and devastation. A tragic waste of life… but as a Sensate, I rather enjoyed the boom myself. Who says opposing factions have nothing in common?

  «If we've finished applauding this wholesale slaughter,» Oonah said angrily, «can we remember we have a job to do?»

  «Of course, honored Guvner,» Wheezle replied, kowtowing politely. «What would you like to do?»

  «Did anyone see how the sodding berks set off the bomb?» Oonah asked.

  «The easiest method would be a flame arrow shot from a distance,» I told her, «although these people like fireballs so much, maybe they used one of those wands from the court rotunda.»

  «Some of us should search for the shooter,» Oonah said. «Look anyplace that had a clear line of fire on the Mortuary's front door. Wheezle? Hezekiah?»

  Wheezle kowtowed. Hezekiah tried to kowtow too, but just looked ridiculous. Together, the two of them trotted off toward the front of the building. I was glad to see that even Hezekiah had the sense to stay close to cover and keep his eyes open.

  «The rest of us should head for the back door,» Oonah continued, «and hope the enemy hasn't already escaped.»

  «I sent Brother Kiripao to watch the back before the explosion,» I said.

  «Good,» she nodded
. «Let's find him.»

  We set a quick pace around the perimeter of the Mortuary, keeping to the protection of the outbuildings as much as possible. Yasmin matched stride beside me; she still held the crumpled sketch in her hand. After a while, she asked in a low voice, «Why are we so interested in the rear entrance? I thought we just had to watch for an attack, then trail the culprits.»

  «The attack on the courts was actually a diversion to cover a theft,» I told her. «The factols suspect that all the attacks were diversions; so we're going to check the rear entrance to see if thieves come running out.»

  «How will you tell the thieves from everyone else?» she asked. «At least three funerals have gone into the building already this morning. If those people hear a big sodding explosion at the front door, they're all going to run out the back.»

  «We'll just have to keep our eyes open and hope for the best,» Oonah answered, throwing a pointed glance at me. She obviously wanted to keep the githyanki and githzerai a secret, though I couldn't see why. Maybe Guvners just liked knowing things other people didn't.

  * * *

  Kiripao had positioned himself at the corner of the last outbuilding. He bowed to us as we came up beside him, and whispered, «A great many people have run from the door, but no one out of the ordinary. I have taken the liberty of casting a spell to detect the presence of magic; the escapees possess nothing notable.»