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?»