I'd eaten pure rock salt before – it was part of the Sensate initiation ceremony. As any Sensate can tell you, once is enough.
Reluctantly, I swallowed.
«What did you think of the berry?» Hezekiah asked.
«I hated it.»
«Oh. But I guess that's all right, isn't it? Because Uncle Toby says Sensates want to experience everything, good and bad.»
«Your Uncle Toby is a font of information,» I replied through clenched teeth.
«Hey,» the boy said, «do you think these berries would go over big with the Sensates? Because I'd like to talk to one of your high-up men, to see what I have to do to join your group.»
I nearly choked. «You want to join the Sensates?»
«Uncle Toby says I should join some faction. A man has to have friends in the Cage, that's what Uncle Toby says. He calls Sigil the Cage, I don't know why. So I'm going around, talking to all the factions, to find out more about them. That's why I'm here in the courts, to talk to a Guvner. I love how Sigil people say Guvner, instead of Governor the way they'd say it back home. I love how people talk here: Stop rattling your bone-box, you Clueless berk, or I'll do you a slice-job. I hear that all the time. By the way, what's a slice-job?»
«You're going to find out any minute,» I muttered.
«On the other hand,» Hezekiah continued unstoppably, «I haven't heard you use any quaint local expressions yet. Are you from out of town too?»
I looked down at the fine-tipped paintbrush in my hand and idly wondered if it would be ruined by plunging it into the boy's eye. Control, Britlin, control. My mother was the daughter of a duke and cozzled me all through childhood not to talk like the leatherheads in the street – to sound cultured and refined so that city aristocrats would admit me to their drawing rooms. She had never been heavy-handed about it («Yes Britlin, little Oswald next door is a berk; now how would we say that in real words?») but it was a matter of family loyalty for me to stay true to her ideals, and I did not need some Prime-world pippin insulting me on that score. I racked my brains, trying to produce some scathing remark that would send this Clueless boy packing; but before I could think of a devastating response, I noticed a trio of Harmonium guards enter in lock-step through the front doors of the rotunda.
Of course, there's nothing unusual about Harmonium members in the courts building – as Sigil's police force, their duties often bring them to the halls of justice. However, this particular group stood out for several disturbing reasons.
First, all three had made a mess of folding their gray neckerchiefs. Harmonium officers are fastidious about their neckerchiefs – when I painted the portrait of Harmonium Factol Sarin, he demanded that I reproduce every little tuck and fold precisely.
Second, the three men in front of me didn't walk like Harmonium guards. Guards spend most of their time patrolling a beat through the city; even raw recruits soon acquire a measured gait that lets them walk all day while keeping alert to possible mischief. The men entering the rotunda had a more military edge to their pace – they didn't stroll, they marched.
Finally, my keen Sensate's eye picked up one more out-of-place detail. In addition to swords, normal Harmonium guards always carry stout black truncheons, reserved for those rare occasions when their commander is struck by the whim to take a wrongdoer alive. The three men in front of me, however, had quite different weapons hanging from their belts; sleek white batons carved from ivory or bone, their surfaces speckled with a red glitter that might be chips of ruby.
«What are you looking at?» Hezekiah asked.
«I was just thinking, maybe I'll pack up now and take another crack at those curlicues tomorrow.»
«Are you trying to avoid those guards?» the boy whispered, as he noticed me eyeing the newcomers. «Maybe you have some dark secret in your past, and those guys are a special elite team who might recognize you from former days?»
«Why do you think those guards are elite?» I asked.
«Because they're the first I've seen carrying firewands instead of truncheons.»
«Those are firewands?»
The boy shrugged. «Uncle Toby taught me all about wands and stuff.»
I groaned.
A rational man might have taken to his heels that very second – three impostor guards walking into the Courts with high-powered magical weapons meant big, big trouble. On the other hand, I had never seen a firewand in action; and if I could find a safe place to hide before anyone started shooting, I might witness something well worth remembering. If this turned into a major incident, maybe I could even paint the scene afterward. Those piking art critics couldn't accuse me of sterility if I made a perfect reproduction of some horrible disaster.
Unfortunately, my first glance around the rotunda didn't reveal any good places to dive for cover. Factol Hashkar may have hired me to do a painting, but his most beloved artform was tapestry; as soon as he became leader of the Guvners, he had covered every inch of City Court wallspace with dusty old banners depicting the many planes of the multiverse. Those acres of cloth would blaze like tinder if the wands started blasting fireballs… and that could happen any minute.
The three guards reached the center of the rotunda floor, and turned inward to face each other in a huddle. They wanted us to believe they were discussing private guard business; but I knew they were concealing their motions as they pulled the wands from their belts. Would they simply start shooting? Or was this a more complicated plan, «Lie down and give us your money!» or a scheme to grab hostages in protest of the latest tax hike? It didn't matter. I was at the rear of the hall, too far from the door to get outside before the pyrotechnics began, so I had to take the only cover available.
«Come on, Hezekiah,» I commanded, grabbing him by the scruff of the neck. Then, crossing my fingers that this would work, I jammed the two of us directly behind the cornugon.
«What are you playing at, berk?» growled the monster, as it whipped around to look at us.
«Sorry,» I said, «but you're from the Nine Hells. You're flameproof.»
Which was the precise moment when the first fireball struck the cornugon's back.
Even with the cornugon taking the brunt of the blast, huge tongues of flame splashed over me for a second, buffeting my face with broiling air. A few paces away, my paints and canvas blossomed with fire, followed a moment later by the turpentine can exploding into a fierce yellow blaze. Smoke was everywhere, people screamed throughout the great hall, and who knew how many other throats were too scorched to make more than a croak?
In front of us, the cornugon hadn't suffered a single blister; after all, the creature came from a plane noted for its flaming infernos, so a paltry fireball was no more annoying than a mosquito bite. Still, the fireblast was an attack, and a completely unexpected one, since the cornugon had been glaring at Hezekiah and me when the false guards let fly. Angrily, the reptile-fiend raised a sharp-taloned hand as if it intended to claw off a strip of my flesh… but then second thoughts flashed through its beady black eyes and it swung around to slash the deva instead.
I have no idea if the cornugon actually believed the deva was responsible for the attack, or if the monster simply seized the excuse to swipe at a species he hated. Either way, the cornugon's claws ripped two handfuls of feathers from the deva's wings, and a moment later, the monster's hellishly barbed tail lashed the deva across the chest like a whip. Beads of shining gold blood trickled out where the thorny tail broke the deva's skin.
Until that moment, the deva had scarcely budged from his serene contemplation of the sky. Certainly, the fireball had singed off some wingfeathers, since a life of celestial bliss doesn't flameproof you like crawling through the bowels of hell; but the deva didn't react until the cornugon's attack had drawn blood. Then, with the speed of a whizzing arrow, the deva flashed out his fists, one, two – a jab to the cornugon's snout, and a beautiful palm-heel strike to its scale-covered gut.