«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.