He stared at me as if he didn't understand the question. «I just asked them,» he said.

Disquieted, I glanced back at the other four in the room, silently eating their suppers. All four had magic at their fingertips? But then, they'd been hand-picked by their factols for an important assignment; of course, they'd be the best their factions had to offer. And why had Lady Erin chosen me? I wasn't a wizard or a priest. Yes, I could use a rapier, but mostly I happened to be a witness, assigned to this team solely because I might recognize the thieves.

Maybe I should just sketch the faces of the thieves, give the pictures to my fellow team members, then head for home. They didn't need me; even Hezekiah had more tricks up his sleeve than I did. Mind you, I had one advantage the rest of them lacked: I was completely sane. Scowling Yasmin, placid Kiripao, clueless Hezekiah, death-loving little Wheezle… even Guvner Oonah had her barmy side, the way she rushed off for that showdown with three homicidal fireballers. If I left them all alone, who knew what kind of catastrophes they'd cause without my moderating influence?

Still, the idea of poor mundane Britlin surrounded by five magic-wielding addle-coves… it rattled me. Stepping away from the window, I announced, «It's my turn to sleep. Wake me at the next shift change.» Without waiting for objections, I went down the creaky stairs, laid my bedroll in the back of a fifth floor room, and hoped I wouldn't lie awake too long.

Yasmin woke me as first light was dawning. She loomed above me, prodding my ribs repeatedly with her toe, and she didn't stop until I snapped, «All right, all right. I'm conscious.»

«You're watching with me on the top floor,» she said. «I'll see you up there.» As she went out the door, she paused and turned back to me. «You look innocent in your sleep. And you make little sounds.»

Without another word she dashed away, and when she hit the staircase, it clattered into a furore of squeaking. I think she was running up the stairs two at a time.

Needless to say, I wondered what I was getting into as I stepped through the doorway of the upstairs room. Yasmin's face was slightly flushed, but whether that was exertion or a blush, I couldn't tell. She glanced at me only for a second, then turned her eyes to the street outside the window.

«Anything happening out there?» I asked.

She shook her head, without shifting her gaze; for a street with nothing going on, it certainly seemed to rivet her attention.

Shrugging, I went to the corner of the room that held the biggest puddle of rainwater… at least an inch deep in some places, thanks to exaggerated warps in the wood of the floor. Carefully, I wet my hands and patted them on my face for a morning wash. The water smelled of dirt and dust; little fibers floated in it, either threads left behind by some carpet that had once lain on this floor or hairs from rats nesting in the building.

I crouched down and lapped up a bit of the puddle, just to see if it tasted like rats, carpet, or something else. The flavor was mostly bland dust, with a slightly smoky tang to it. Did that come from Sigil's normal smog of chimney soot? Or was I tasting the residue of the fire that had burned through the Hive earlier in the week?

«Did you just put your tongue on this filthy floor?» Yasmin asked from her place by the window.

«Actually I just slurped up some rainwater,» I replied. «However, I'll happily lick the floor if you think the flavor's worth it.»

«Sensates!» she growled, and went back to looking out the window.

Since she'd mentioned it, I did try licking the floor but it didn't impress me. Ordinary varnished cedar – I'd tasted much better in my time.

As the day brightened, traffic picked up on the streets below us. Since Yasmin and I were on the top floor, our job was to look beyond the dome of the Mortuary (four storeys shorter than our tenement perch) and scan the rear entrance for signs of mischief. Not that we could actually see the rear entrance – the dome blocked our view – but we had a clear line of sight to the street passing the backdoor. Down there, members of the unclean underclass called the Collectors were bringing in corpses who got themselves put in the dead-book overnight: old bubbers who'd choked on their own vomit, young ones who liked to pick tavern fights, Clueless newcomers who wandered down the wrong alley. Welcome to Sigil, you leatherheads.

Idly, I picked up my sketchbook, made a few sweeps with my stick of charcoal, then put it down again.

«What's that you just drew?» Yasmin asked.

«Nothing,» I answered, holding up the page so she could see. «For a moment I considered drawing a stark little streetscape – the Mortuary, with wretched bands of Collectors sneaking in corpses at the backdoor. But I decided against it.»

«Why?»

«Because people don't like depressing pictures.»

«I do,» Yasmin said.

«Yes, you probably do,» I admitted. «You and the whole Doomguard. And the Dustmen, and the Bleak Cabal, and maybe some other factions too. But my regular customers don't like depressing pictures. They'd hate seeing such pictures in my studio, and they'd hate hearing that I'd sold such pictures to… people who weren't like themselves.»

«In other words,» she sneered, «you're not going to draw something that interests you, because some jink-jigging nobs would disapprove.»

«Disapproval's not the point,» I replied. «It's just that whenever I pick up charcoal or paintbrush, I have two choices: create something that earns money or waste my time on something that doesn't. A man has to be practical.» For my mother's sake, I might have added – keeping up Cavendish Case was not cheap, but it would kill her if we ever had to move out of the house. Of course, I wasn't prepared to talk about family with a complete stranger like Yasmin; why should I care if she thought I was a greedy self-centered berk?

Yasmin turned away to glare out the window, then reached into a pocket of her dragon skin leotard and tossed me a worn gold coin. «There,» she said. «Special commission. Draw what you want, any way you want. And I promise I won't tell your precious customers you worked for a Doomguard tiefling.»

I held the coin in my hand for several seconds, feeling the warmth of the gold – a warmth that had come from Yasmin's body. Then I lifted my sketchbook, flipped to a blank page, and started sketching the clean lines of her face. High forehead, strong jaw, good cheekbones… an excellent artist's model, just as I thought.

It was about the time I started trying to capture her eyes that she finally recognized the picture on the paper.

«What do you think you're doing?» she snapped.

«Drawing something I want. Now stop jerking your head like that, so I can get on with the work. I take commissions seriously.»

Like many first-time models, she started out self-conscious and artificial, went through an irritable stage when she threatened to quit every other minute, progressed to a state of sullen resignation, and finally came to ignore me when she became tired of forcing her face into «artistic» expressions. That's when I turned to a new page and began the real drawing.

And so the day passed.

Early on the third morning, an army of Collectors paraded down the street with the stiffening corpse of a giant.

At the time, Oonah and Wheezle had the fourth floor watch, while Yasmin and Hezekiah took the seventh floor. It was just as well Yasmin and I weren't together again – when she saw my final drawing the day before, it had taken her aback, possibly because it showed how strikingly lovely she was. I had drawn her with her chin resting thoughtfully on her fist, and the bony ridge of her forearm was an integral part of the picture's composition. She had never posed in that position, certainly not during the day we'd been together, and possibly never in her life; but even I was surprised how strongly it captured who she was. For several long minutes after I had finished it, I didn't want to let it out of my hands. I wanted to hold it, memorize what I had done… or maybe throw it in the faces of critics who derided my portraits as shallow.