Fire and Dust

by James Gardner

  * * *

  Hezekiah was right. The githzerai thief – let's call him Chi, though I never found out which he really was – had reached a point several storeys below us, climbing one of the Sea's corkscrew stairways. The other thugs gave him plenty of space to move up the steps; even the wights stood clear to let him pass. The look on his face showed they were wise to do so: his expression was gauntly savage, a hailstorm ready to break. I wondered if he'd worn that grimace ever since I killed his partner in Plague-Mort, or if his ferocity had a more recent cause.

  Not that it mattered. The only important thing was to capture the berk and make him tell us which stone Rivi was hiding under. We'd just teleport across, hold a knife to Chi's throat, and take him somewhere for interrogation.

  «Okay, Hezekiah,» I whispered, «we keep this simple. Wait till he's a good distance from anyone else, then take us right in behind him.»

  The boy looked like he was going to object, but I stared him down. In silence, we watched the githzerai glower his way upward… heading for the portal to the Glass Spider, I realized. One level below the portal, he would have to climb a ramp that crossed above a tank of squid – or calamari, if you prefer – and at present the area was clear of wights. «There,» I said to Hezekiah. «That ramp. Ready?»

  He nodded. I got a good grip on the boy's arm, and Wheezle grabbed hold of his belt. «We'll be back soon,» I assured Irene… who waited till the last moment, then laid her hand on Hezekiah's shoulder before I could stop her.

  Together all four of us materialized on the ramp – a dozen paces in front of the githzerai.

  «Sod it all,» I snarled, then charged toward the thief, my rapier glinting in the lantern light.

  «Surrender!» Hezekiah shouted to Chi. «You're outnumbered so just…»

  The githzerai whipped out a firewand.

  «…surrender…» Hezekiah finished lamely.

  * * *

  «It appears we have a standoff,» Chi said.

  I stood, sword ready, three paces away from him, while the others loomed behind my back. He held the firewand casually, but I didn't doubt he could trigger it in a split-second if any of us moved a hair.

  «We wouldn't have a standoff,» I answered through clenched teeth, «if someone had landed us behind you.»

  «I didn't want you to kill him,» Hezekiah pouted.

  «I wasn't going to kill him. I wanted to take him prisoner so we could interrogate him.»

  «You never told me that.»

  «Do I have to explain everything?» I growled at the boy. «You knew he was carrying something magic. The first time we saw him, you sensed magic on him.»

  «I didn't know it was a firewand!»

  «Enough!» Chi roared. «Do you think you can distract me by feigning an argument? I'm not a complete leatherhead, you know.»

  «Feigning an argument,» Hezekiah murmured. «That would have been clever.»

  «Stop rattling your bone-box!» Chi thundered. «I'm trying to decide whether to burn you where you stand.»

  «If you start a fire here,» Wheezle said, «you will burn down the Vertical Sea. Your portal to the Glass Spider will lose its anchor and disappear.»

  «The Spider has other portals,» Chi answered. «It's no great burden to gate into Plague-Mort and head for Sigil from there. You did exactly that, didn't you?»

  «It is possible to find an indirect route,» Wheezle admitted, «but would Rivi approve? She does not seem a woman who tolerates inconvenience.»

  «If I killed you three once and for all, she'd give me a medal,» Chi answered. «The slag in the wedding dress is gravy.»

  «Here's an idea,» Hezekiah piped up. «Why don't I just teleport my friends out of here, and call it a draw? You don't set us on fire, and Britlin won't cut out your heart.»

  «Like he did to my partner?» Chi asked sharply.

  «Actually,» I said, «I didn't cut out your partner's heart, I stabbed through the roof of his mouth and… well, maybe this isn't the right time to split hairs.»

  «Funny man,» Chi glared at me. «A lot of people have told me that, Cavendish – you like to make jokes. Does it surprise you I've talked to your friends? I've made it my business to find out about you, since we met in Plague-Mort. You won't believe the stories I've heard… and not one of your acquaintances doubts you could be a killer. Like father, like son.»

  I sighed. «Is this the part where we both taunt each other into a rage?»

  «No – rage is overrated.» Chi smiled an ugly smile. «This is the part where I kill you in cold blood.»

  I prepared myself to lunge forward: ready for the slightest lapse in his concentration, a laugh, a moment as he savored his triumph. All I needed was the merest instant of distraction; but Chi was an experienced blood who didn't make stupid mistakes. The wand in his hand didn't waver an eyelash. His lips opened to speak the invocation that would fire his weapon…

  …and an egg sailed out of nowhere, smashing his face with yolk.

  I was almost as surprised as Chi. Almost. But while he was still spitting egg-white from his mouth, my rapier punched clean through his ribcage, smashing bone fragments into his heart and lungs. I kept driving forward, hearing the edges of my blade scrape against vertebrae as the tip pierced out his back; and I held him upright on the end of my sword until I could pluck the firewand from his strengthless fingers. Then and only then did I turn across the street to see who threw the egg.

  On top of the tenement across the street stood three women in brilliant white.

  Miriam waved to Hezekiah.

  November leaned coolly against a chimney.

  Yasmin flexed her fingers and scowled. «That sodding chicken pecked my hand.»

  * * *

  «Thanks for the egg,» I shouted to her, then didn't have time for more conversation. Six wights had appeared, trundling up wheelbarrows to harvest squid from the tank below us; but when they noticed our presence, their eyes blazed like volcanos and they hissed with delighted fury.

  «Hezekiah,» I called, «this would be a good time to get us out of here.» No such luck – the leatherhead boy was still a dozen paces behind me, and puppyishly waving back to Miriam; he hadn't even noticed we had undead company. «Hezekiah!» I roared, even as the stench of dead flesh and chemicals filled my nostrils.

  «Hi,» I said to the wights, mere inches from my nose.

  «Hiss,» they replied by way of repartee.

  The first two monsters to reach me had simply abandoned their wheelbarrows and charged, their claws ripping greedily through the air. If one hadn't stumbled over Chi's dead body, I might be writing these memoirs with a fistful of talons embedded in my face; but Chi's body sprawled across a good portion of the ramp, and the wight was too filled with bloodlust to care. It ran forward, tripped, and went down, catching itself from a face-plant only by throwing out its hands. Those nasty claws struck the wooden ramp like fourpenny nails, digging deep into the board… and by the time the creature could pry itself loose, I had dispatched the other wight with a nicely executed decapitation.

  The wight on its knees suffered the same fate, just as it pulled itself free. Its head bounced briefly across the ramp, scattering a trail of red dust; then it toppled over the edge and into the squid tank below.

  «Hezekiah!» I shouted again, but couldn't spare a glance in his direction. Another wight was racing up; and this one, her brain less decayed than her fellows, was still jockeying her wheelbarrow – a big heavy wheelbarrow, wide enough to block much of the ramp, and long enough that my blade couldn't reach over the cart to impale the creature. Not that she gave me time to try such an attack: she simply drove straight at me, the wheelbarrow crunching over assorted corpses on the way, as it hammered forward like a battering ram. The ramp gave me no room to move aside, unless I wanted to swim with the squid… so I took the only choice left and jumped forward into the wheelbarrow itself.

  When I say I jumped, I wish I could claim that I nimbly hopped into the cart and landed on my feet wit
h panther-like grace. The truth was less feline: just as the wheelbarrow was about to bang into me, I rolled over the front lip and landed lumpishly inside.

  My rapier was pointed in the right direction, and I stabbed out with it, just to keep the wight from coming at me with her claws. The tip pierced the rotting meat of her shoulder and sliced off a pound or two. She hissed in pain, and heaved on the wheelbarrow handles with supernatural strength… or more precisely, she heaved on one of the handles – the other arm, injured by my sword thrust, didn't have nearly the same amount of muscle. One side of the wheelbarrow went up, the other scarcely moved at all, and I found myself tipping sideways out of the cart, staring down at a school of eagerly waiting squid.

  «Gack!» I commented; and trying not to drop my sword or gash myself on its blade, I scrambled to grab the edge of the wheelbarrow cart before I plunged straight into the water. My fingers found purchase, splinters found my fingers, and I stopped my immediate fall. The wight kept heaving sideways, however, and my feet slid out of the cart, slipped past the edge of the ramp, and plunked knee deep into the tank.

  So here's the picture – I'm dangling over the side of the ramp, one hand clutching the cart, the other aiming my sword in the wight's direction to discourage the monster from lunging for me… and a crowd of squid are caressing my feet with their suckered tentacles, trying to decide if I'm edible. «You can't eat me raw!» I called down to them. «You have to marinate, then simmer for a few hours or I'll be all rubbery.»

  The wight hissed. «Everyone's a critic,» I muttered. Then I noticed that the wight was hissing because its body had been hacked lengthwise from shoulder to crotch by a familiar-looking longsword. A white-shod foot kicked the bisected wight off the ramp, much to the culinary appreciation of the squid; and moments later, another white-clad woman with ridiculously puny wings tucked her hands under my armpits and flew me up to a solid footing.

  «Thanks,» I said to November, then «Thanks,» again to Yasmin who was dealing with the remaining wights. «I take it you flew across?»

  «Why not?» November answered, folding her wings back flat across her shoulders. «I've never been fond of barrow wights.»

  I buried my face in my hands and groaned.

  * * *

  «More company,» Yasmin called, as a dozen new wights clattered up a spiral staircase from the next floor down.

  «Pike this nonsense,» Miriam growled.

  She bent and picked up Chi's firewand, something I'd dropped in the course of my gymnastics on the wheelbarrow. Before I could guess what she was up to, she shouted «In nomine Vulpes!»

  The wand loosed a crackling fireball straight into the wight's faces.

  «What the sod are you doing?» I cried. To be sure, the wights had abruptly ceased to be a threat – in fact, with all the chemicals used to resurrect them, their bodies burned as if they had been doused with Phlegistol. One fell off the ramp and into a fish-tank two storeys below, releasing a gush of steam as thick as a pea-soup fog. The rest simply blazed down to ash in seconds, oil-soaked torches burning in the night… and all around them, the Vertical Sea burned too, a framework of age-old wood.

  «Honored Miriam,» Wheezle said, «while you should be congratulated for guessing the firewand's invocation —»

  «No trick there,» Miriam interrupted. «The Fox used the same phrase for every wand he made – the old sod had a real bee for mass production.»

  «Still,» Wheezle continued, «one cannot help noticing that your fire has cut off our route to the ground.»

  «It's cut off the wights too,» Miriam answered. «We won't have to worry about those berks anymore. If you're worried about getting away, November can fly some of us out, and the Kid can teleport the rest to safety. What's the problem?»

  «In polite company,» I told her, «we don't use city monuments for kindling. On the other hand, we can discuss that after Hezekiah… Hezekiah?»

  The boy had slumped to his knees and was pressing his hands against his head. «Rivi's trying to blank me again,» he wailed.

  * * *

  «I'll kill that slag!» Miriam roared, flourishing the firewand with homicidal intent. But the nasty wee albino was nowhere in sight… not that we had much of a view of our surroundings. With so many ramps, tanks, and support beams in the way, we had no clear line of sight to any of the other levels in the tower; and to make matters worse, smoke from the burning stairway had drifted in around us, stinging our eyes and reducing visibility to only a few paces.

  «November!» I shouted, «start flying people out of here. Take Irene first…»

  «Who's Irene?» the alu asked.

  «I am Irene,» the old orc answered serenely, «betrothed bride to these three noble princes.»

  «Do tell,» Yasmin said. «You've been a busy boy, Britlin.»

  «Can we start the evacuation?» I snapped. «The Sea's on fire, Hezekiah's in trouble, and…»

  The boy howled with fury and pounded his hands against his temples. «I am not… in… trouble!»

  He threw his head back and screamed, the kind of scream used by martial artists the instant they drive their fist through a brick wall. A moment later, the cry was echoed from somewhere overhead: a woman's shriek, poisoned with outrage.

  «I beat her!» Hezekiah crowed. He threw his head back to stick out his tongue in the direction of the woman's cry. «Three's the charm, Rivi!» he called. «You may think you're tough, but I've been incinerated by a goddess. You'd better not mess with Hezekiah Virtue or I'll… uh-oh.»

  Hurtling down through the smoke came Kiripao, brandishing Unveiler and coated from head to toe in brown dust. «Peel it!» he screamed. «Peel away the shell!»

  * * *

  The elf monk struck Hezekiah feet first in the chest. It was a glancing blow, but still enough to knock the boy backward. Hezekiah wheezed, trying to force his lungs to draw breath, then toppled off the ramp into the tank.

  Miriam shouted a curse and raised the firewand toward Kiripao. She might have blasted him then and there, catching all of us in the radius of the fireball; but the monk sprang forward the moment he struck the ramp, and bolted straight at Miriam before she could speak the invocation. He swung Unveiler at Miriam's head, a whipcrack strike that would have crushed her skull if she hadn't thrown up her arm to block. Bones cracked as the scepter smashed her forearm; and she shied back a step, trying to bring the firewand to bear on her screaming opponent.

  Kiripao didn't give her time – he had been fast before, but the umbral insanity had keyed him to a fever pitch, removing every inhibition and giving him a lust to inflict pain. He followed up the scepter smash with a snap kick that caught Miriam flush on the floating ribs. Breath whoofed out of her and she flew backward off the ramp, moving so fast I feared she might be knocked clear of the squid-tank and fall nine storeys to the ground; but Miriam was a tough old basher, one who could take a few hits without letting it rattle her. Somehow she managed to snag her foot on the rim of the tank as she hurtled by, then gave herself a backward thrust. Instead of going over the side, she splashed into the water, sending dozens of squid into panic. The tank began to fill with their ink, an opaque blackness that hid both Miriam and Hezekiah sinking beneath the waves.

  «Kiripao, you fool!» Rivi shouted from the level above us. I could see her garishly painted face peering over a catwalk – the catwalk leading to the Plane of Dust portal. She and Kiripao must have come from the Glass Spider, possibly to meet with Chi; and when the fighting started, the ever-impulsive elf had decided to break a few heads himself. «Kiripao!» Rivi continued, «I command you to get back up here.»

  Easy for her to say… but our side had recovered from the confusion of Kiripao's sneak attack. Now Yasmin and I stood shoulder to shoulder, our swords ready for blood. Smoke roiled around us. In the tank below, water thrashed and churned, a sound I hoped meant Miriam was swimming to help Hezekiah. Even if the noise was actually my friends being dragged under by squid, I knew what my first duty was. This fiasco had to end no
w.

  «Kiripao,» Yasmin said in a cold voice, «you have one chance: put down Unveiler and surrender. I consider you diseased, not evil… but I would not hesitate to kill a rabid dog. The choice is yours.»

  The monk's eyes glittered, reflecting the fire that crackled behind our backs. I could not read the expression on his face – did he even understand what Yasmin had said?

  «Get up here!» Rivi snarled.

  «You saw what she did to Petrov,» Yasmin told the elf. «You know she'd do the same to you, just for amusement. Put down the scepter.»

  Kiripao's gaze dropped and he looked at Unveiler with surprise… as if he hadn't realized he was carrying anything more than a convenient weapon for clubbing people. He held it up, like a curious object he'd just found lying at his feet; firelight glinted off its surface, throwing beads of ruby illumination across his face.

  «Peel,» he whispered. «Peel it! PEEL IT ALL AWAY!»

  I tensed, waiting for him to charge… but Kiripao's brain brimmed with the pus of umbral thoughts, and forthright attack was not the umbral way. He feinted toward us, then spun off in the opposite direction, up the ramp. Perhaps he was responding to Rivi's summons after all; perhaps he was simply looking for a shadowy spot to lie in ambush. Either way, he never made it – two steps before he reached the stairs to the next level, he ran smack into something invisible.

  Yasmin and I had raced after our quarry as soon as he ran. We had no hope of catching him – the monk moved as fast as a ferret – but we were close enough to see what happened next. Kiripao swung Unveiler at whatever he had bumped into; and two gnarled little hands flickered into visibility as they deflected the strike.

  «Honored Madman,» said the owner of those hands, «this scepter is an abomination. It must return to the keeping of my faction.»

  With a strength I had never suspected, Wheezle yanked down Unveiler, pulling Kiripao's whole upper body with it. The monk's mouth flopped open in surprise; and while Kiripao was gaping, Wheezle jerked the scepter up again, driving it into the underside of Kiripao's jaw. Teeth clacked together hard, and Kiripao's tongue must have got in the way – the monk spat blood, splattering Wheezle's face and dribbling more down his own chin.