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 arm 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.