I did not sleep well that night; and I was grateful when Hezekiah woke me to say it was my watch.

As I stepped out of the hut, I saw Yasmin already standing in the gloomy shadows. The sky was still gray and overcast, unchanged since we had arrived in Othrys; but the village had a brooding silence to it, as if true night had fallen. No umbrals walked the streets or hovered in the doors of their huts, watching us with greedy eyes. Perhaps they had gone to sleep too… if shadows are capable of slumber.

«It's quiet,» Yasmin whispered.

I nodded.

After some time she said, «Sometimes I have this vision of Sigil, completely empty. No one left in the city – no people, no dogs, no rats – everyone gone but me. I have the whole perfect silence to myself.»

«It's a Doomguard kind of dream,» I said. «The twilight at the end of the world.»

«Not the end of the world,» she replied. "The completion of the world. Have you ever been in a tavern when a truly great bard starts to sing? At first, people keep talking to their neighbors, clinking tankards, making noise… but as the bard's voice reaches them, they stop to listen, one by one. The hush spreads over the crowd, until all you can hear is the singing. No one wants to breathe or move, for fear of missing a note of the song.

«That's what Entropy means to me, Britlin: the beautiful song of Time. I dream of the day people stop their desperate jabbering and finally hear the music.»

«A pretty metaphor,» I told her, «but in real life, people don't just fall quiet and listen to the Harmony of the Spheres. In real life, people die – often painfully and pointlessly. Where's the music in that?»

«You're too short-sighted,» Yasmin replied. «Death is merely a transition, like adolescence. It may be easy or hard, but it's not the final word. Your soul moves on to another plane, Upper or Lower, wherever your heart truly belongs. And when your afterlife ends, you move on again, absorbed into the multiverse one way or another. We'll all be present for the final song. We'll all be part of the final song.»

I shrugged. «Pardon me if I want to put off choir membership as long as possible.»

«I'm a Handmaid of Entropy, not a leatherhead. I don't want to die in the near future either – there are still a million things I have to do… and a million others I want to do.»

«Even so, you're devoted to helping Entropy along.»

She shook her head. «Entropy doesn't need help, any more than stars need help to shine. Entropy is always on the job, berk, and whatever pace it wants to move is fine by me. I only get annoyed when someone tries to jig the natural progression faster or slower. Trying to accelerate Entropy is just as bad as trying to stop it: both are presumptuous… tinkering with the great bard's song. The path of wisdom is just to go about your business and try to hear the music.» Her eyes were distant; but suddenly she broke into a chuckle. «By the gods, I sound pompous.»

«Let's be kind and say you're profound.»

«I've never been profound in my life. I've been…» Her voice broke off. «I've been a lot of things, but never profound.»

«Tell me what you've been.»

She bit her lip. «You don't want to know, and I don't want to remember. Life was not good before I became a Handmaid. Life was very bitter and lonely.»

«No friends or family?»

«No friends, bad family. My mother died. My older brother – he died eventually too, but not soon enough.» She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. «Let's talk about something else.»

I looked at her closely. Maybe I was jumping to conclusions, imposing my mother's history on another woman; but the sound of her voice when she mentioned her brother… ugly. So much ugliness in the world. And despite my grousing, I knew I had lived a pampered life, all things considered.

Reaching out, I took Yasmin's hand. «Okay. Let's talk about something else.»

Her mouth curved into the ghost of a smile. «What did you have in mind?»

«Giving this place the laugh. Declaring that this patch of ground is not Carceri at all, but other plane entirely. What would you like it to be?»

«The Plane of Dust,» she answered immediately.

«Dust?» I snorted. «Pardon me, but I was there mere hours ago, and didn't enjoy it at all.»

«The Glass Spider wasn't the real Plane of Dust,» she said. «I visited Dust years ago, while studying to be a Handmaid. It was very soothing. Quiet and healing.»

«But it has no air!»

«They taught us spells that could cope with that.»

«You can't cast spells at the moment,» I reminded her.

«Oh no?» She draped an arm over my shoulder. «Imagine we're on the Plane of Dust,» she said in a low voice. «No umbrals. No swamp. No smell or noise…»

«No air.»

«Shh.» She put a finger to my lips. «We're in the Plane of Dust and I have wrapped us 'round with spells that will keep us very safe. Very private. No one for a million miles around but you… and me…»

For more than an hour after that, we weren't very good watchguards.

Early on our second «day» in Othrys, a boatman from the Styx arrived at the village. At the time, Yasmin and I were sitting on a clump of moss, watching an umbral artist shape a block of shadow into what looked like a headless rhinoceros. The sculpting process appeared no different from molding clay, full of kneading and squeezing and slapping; yet when I tried to touch the lump of darkness, I found it as insubstantial as mist. Maybe the shadow-stuff existed on a shifted plane of reality, one the umbral could contact and I could not… or maybe I was just spouting gibberish because I didn't have any rational explanation.

Yasmin, of course, didn't care about the «how» of shadow-sculpting. Every few minutes, she hiccupped with admiration as the fiend's hands pinched out a blob of blackness or smoothed down a dimple in the rhino's left buttock. No doubt, my tiefling inamorata would have happily explained how the piece symbolized the Voice of Irony, the Cosmic Jest, or some other deep theme; but I refused to ask. In fact, I was delighted when a group of umbrals broke into hysterical gabbling down by the riverside – it gave me an excuse to leave. Leaping to my feet I hurried to the Styx, with Yasmin close behind.

As we came into sight of the river, the boatman's skiff was just drawing up to the shore. A crowd of umbrals stood back a short distance, clacking their teeth together rhythmically. The sound seemed to be their way of offering a cheery hello; and they kept up the noise as the boatman tied his skiff to a tree stump and climbed onto solid ground. Yasmin grabbed my arm and whispered, «Maybe we should get out of here.»

I hesitated. True, this skeletal ferryman gave me more cold chills than a trip to the privy in January; but he hadn't shown any overt hostility. The umbrals seemed delighted to see him… and as for myself, I'd never met such a creature before. Would he let me shake his boney hand, maybe take flaky samples of his skin? No – I wouldn't ask him about that at the moment. But I didn't want to run either. I simply watched as his pale gaze flicked our way then moved on, as if Yasmin and I didn't deserve his attention.

Stepping into the circle of fiends, the boatman bowed once in the direction of the village fire-pit, then a second time toward the Styx. The umbrals bowed back… and I noticed their bows were much deeper than the boatman's, like peasants bowing to their lord. Dapperly waving his hand, the boatman acknowledged the bows; then he cleared his throat with a loud raspy cough, sounding as if he hadn't spoken in weeks. When he finally opened his mouth, his voice resembled the scrape of gravel on sandpaper.

«Greetings,» he said huskily. «I have come to bring light to your dreary circle of hovels… because I find myself in need of an artist.»