«The easiest method would be a flame arrow shot from a distance,» I told her, «although these people like fireballs so much, maybe they used one of those wands from the court rotunda.»

«Some of us should search for the shooter,» Oonah said. «Look anyplace that had a clear line of fire on the Mortuary's front door. Wheezle? Hezekiah?»

Wheezle kowtowed. Hezekiah tried to kowtow too, but just looked ridiculous. Together, the two of them trotted off toward the front of the building. I was glad to see that even Hezekiah had the sense to stay close to cover and keep his eyes open.

«The rest of us should head for the back door,» Oonah continued, «and hope the enemy hasn't already escaped.»

«I sent Brother Kiripao to watch the back before the explosion,» I said.

«Good,» she nodded. «Let's find him.»

We set a quick pace around the perimeter of the Mortuary, keeping to the protection of the outbuildings as much as possible. Yasmin matched stride beside me; she still held the crumpled sketch in her hand. After a while, she asked in a low voice, «Why are we so interested in the rear entrance? I thought we just had to watch for an attack, then trail the culprits.»

«The attack on the courts was actually a diversion to cover a theft,» I told her. «The factols suspect that all the attacks were diversions; so we're going to check the rear entrance to see if thieves come running out.»

«How will you tell the thieves from everyone else?» she asked. «At least three funerals have gone into the building already this morning. If those people hear a big sodding explosion at the front door, they're all going to run out the back.»

«We'll just have to keep our eyes open and hope for the best,» Oonah answered, throwing a pointed glance at me. She obviously wanted to keep the githyanki and githzerai a secret, though I couldn't see why. Maybe Guvners just liked knowing things other people didn't.

Kiripao had positioned himself at the corner of the last outbuilding. He bowed to us as we came up beside him, and whispered, «A great many people have run from the door, but no one out of the ordinary. I have taken the liberty of casting a spell to detect the presence of magic; the escapees possess nothing notable.»

I wondered what kind of magical radiations he perceived from the rest of us. Oonah's staff must put out a powerful shine, and Yasmin's dragon leotard would give off its own healthy glow. As for me, I had the lantern-stone in my pocket, not to mention my father's rapier; considering the amount of money he paid to have it enchanted, the sword must blaze as bright as a phoenix's fundament.

«Cavendish!» Oonah growled in my ear. «Stop wool-gathering. Check for familiar faces in the crowd.»

I looked around the corner of the building, and saw about twenty people milling in the street. Most had been attending funerals inside the Mortuary, so they wore clothes of whatever color their cultures associated with grief: black and white predominated, with the occasional dash of blood red. In among the mourners, a handful of gray-robed Dustmen tried to calm the crowd. «There's no cause for alarm,» I heard one call, as smoke from burning tenements drifted over the Mortuary dome.

The people in the street were the usual mix of races you find in Sigil: humans, bariaur, tieflings, even one githzerai. The githzerai was a woman, and short for her species – nothing like the male I had seen in the Courts.

«Ahh,» Brother Kiripao murmured. «This is more interesting.» He pointed to a group of five figures, just emerging from the Mortuary. All of them wore Dustman robes, with the hoods pulled down over their faces.

«Magic?» I whispered. Kiripao nodded.

«Five of them, four of us,» Oonah muttered beside my shoulder. «If they split up, we're in trouble. Still… I'll follow the first to leave, Kiripao the second, and Yasmin the third. If the last two go in different directions, Cavendish, use your best judgment.»

The front two paused just before they reached the bottom of the Mortuary steps; warily, they looked both directions along the street. In that moment, I could see their faces clearly, despite the shadows cast by their hoods – they were the same githyanki and githzerai who peeled Oonah's office.

«That's them,» I murmured. As I spoke, the two thieves descended the last step into the street and hurried off in the opposite direction from us.

«Come along, Brother Cipher,» Oonah said to Kiripao. Without waiting, she slipped around the edge of the building and into the street, quickly crossing to the closest clump of mourners and blending in with them. Kiripao trailed behind Oonah, while Yasmin and I kept our eyes on the three figures still on the steps.

The shrouded trio stood where they were for several seconds, watching the githyanki and githzerai head up the street; then they descended to ground level, straight into the crowd. There was something odd about the way they walked, the way they stayed inside the shadows of the Mortuary dome, the aggressive way they swung their arms – like apes, or like…

«Eustace,» I murmured.

«What?» Yasmin asked.

«Never mind,» I said. «You're a priestess, right?»

«My official title is Handmaid of Entropy.»

«You can explain what that means another time,» I told her. «Do you have any power over the undead?»

«Entropy isn't some god who protects you from ghoulies and ghosties,» she replied indignantly. «It's the supreme force of nature. We like to say we're the opposite side of the coin from druids – they hug trees, we chop the sodding things down as a sacrament.»

«Both no doubt annoy the trees,» I told her, «but at the moment, I'm more interested in a cleric who can command wights to… pike it, there they go.»

The three hooded figures had already entered the crowd. Now they threw off their robes, and hissed pure hatred at the mourners around them. As I suspected, the three were barrow wights like our delivery boy Eustace, animated corpses with razor-sharp claws in place of fingernails; and their job must be to cover the escape of the other two thieves.

People screamed at the sight of the undead monsters, then stumbled backward in a rush. One woman tripped over someone behind her, and fell shrieking to the cobblestones. Immediately, the closest wight leapt to the attack, grabbing her wrist with one hand and raking the claws of its other hand down her arm. Where the creature's claws made contact, the woman's flesh withered away, her muscles dissolving to threads as the skin shrank tight to the bone. The wight hissed once in triumph, then let her wrist go; the arm clattered useless to the pavement, reduced to a skeletal husk.

«What are you doing?» shouted a nearby Dustman to the wight. The man was in his forties, with red tattoo spirals inscribed on both cheeks. He walked straight up to the creature and stood in front of it, hands on his hips… like an outraged schoolmaster who's caught a student cheating. «Get back inside at once,» the Dustman said. «This behavior is intolerable.»

The wight cocked its head to one side, and regarded the Dustman with intense interest. Then its hand shot forward, claws outstretched; the nails stabbed through the Dustman's clothes like gauze and buried themselves deep in his chest, five soul-stealing daggers. The Dustman gasped softly. Something creaked inside of him, a long agonized noise like someone bending a stick slowly to the breaking point. One rib cracked, then another, then another, snapping so fiercely the ends of the bones pierced outward through the man's chest and protruded whitely from his robes.

Blood gushed in fountains, spattering the wight's face. It simply licked its lips and waited, waited till its life-draining grip had shriveled the man's chest to a pulp bristling with broken bones. Then it tossed the Dustman's corpse against the Mortuary wall, where it fell to the ground, rattling.