I could have chosen finesse. I could have chosen to treat the books with delicate reverence. But there was smoke everywhere, the rack and half its books were on fire, and I was past the point of subtlety. Our goal was to separate the blazing rack from the others. Trusting my boots to protect me for a few seconds, I stepped up onto a shelf of the rack that was on fire, planted my hands against the adjacent rack, and thrust with all my strength.

The burning rack yielded first, tipping away under my heels to slam against the front wall of the room. A moment later, the other rack tipped backwards, boom into the rack behind it. That rack tipped too, and a third, and a fourth, boom, boom, boom, like dominoes, a ripple of one crash after another as the whole library toppled gracefully backward. The motion didn't even stop at the rear wall – when the final rack struck the plaster it kept on going, smashing a hole through the wall as big as a haycart.

«We did it!» shouted Hezekiah.

«You piking well did it, all right,» said a new voice. I looked up to see a burly Harmonium guard towering above me. He had his truncheon drawn and seemed aching to use it. «You two berks are under arrest,» he bellowed, grabbing me by the arm and hauling me to my feet. «And I truly hope you resist, because I'm in the mood to break some skulls. Got me?»

«Oh good,» Hezekiah piped up. «I wanted to meet someone in the Harmonium so I could ask about your membership requirements.»

I buried my face in my hands.

If you walk (or are dragged) into the main Harmonium guard barracks, the first thing you'll see is a ten-foot tall portrait of their leader, Factol Sarin… and wasn't I glad that I'd gotten on his good side by copying the folds on his neckerchief exactly. Of course, the Harmonium were such a bunch of hardcases, they wouldn't let me go just because I'd painted Factol Sarin from his best profile; but at least when they learned who I was, they stopped swinging their truncheons so recklessly near my skull.

Half a battalion of guards escorted Hezekiah and me to separate interrogation rooms, and that was the last I saw of the boy for many hours. A sharp-eyed sergeant took my statement, seldom letting me say more than a sentence before interrupting with nitpicky questions. Of course, I told the exact truth, holding nothing back – I had no reason to hide anything I'd seen or done. I dearly hoped Hezekiah was doing the same in his interrogation… not that he was likely to lie, but the idiotic Clueless might skip over important details in his hurry to start quizzing the guards about Harmonium philosophy. If he annoyed them too much, they might bash out his brains before he had a chance to corroborate my story.

Even though the interrogation room had thick marble walls, they weren't thick enough to block out all the noise in the barracks that evening. Every minute or so, footsteps would race past the door outside; and several times an hour, I heard distant yelling, not clear enough for me to make out words, but with the tone of someone bellowing orders to subordinates. The sergeant interrogating me refused to share any news about how things had turned out at the courts, but judging by the barracks clamor, I guessed the attackers had escaped. Now the guards were scouring the city in search of the killers.

After several hours, the sergeant exhausted his questions and left me locked in the room with a couple of watchful-eyed corporals. Clearly, the sergeant was not happy with my story – «A githyanki and githzerai working together… how addle-coved do you think I am?» – but he knew the time had come to find his commander and discuss what to do next. It wasn't every day that Sigil suffered a massacre in the Courts, and the investigation would surely fall under scrutiny from high places. The sergeant and everyone else in the Harmonium would move with the utmost caution to avoid legal slip-ups.

Another hour passed… or at least what felt like an hour, cooped up with two Harmonium guards who were built like mountains and just about as talkative. They stood on either side of the door, arms folded across their chests and eyes glued on me, instantly ready to gut me with their swords if it looked like I intended to cast some nefarious spell. «I don't know any spells,» I snapped at them around the half-hour mark, when their rigid gazes had begun to get on my nerves. Of course, that only made them more suspicious.

At long last, the door opened again; but instead of the sergeant, the newcomers were Factol Sarin of the Harmonium, Factol Hashkar of the Guvners, and Factol Erin Darkflame Montgomery of my own Society of Sensation. Even though I knew all three personally, I bowed promptly and respectfully to each – three factols traveling in company are not just plain folks, but an official delegation. Still, Lady Erin made a show of greeting me, as one Sensate to another. «Britlin!» she said, taking my hand firmly in hers. «It seems you've been havin' an adventure.»

«Indeed, my lady.» I had, of course, met her several times at Sensate functions, even sitting at her table once during the Feast of the Wind's Blush. Feast tradition demanded a large table, and my chair had been fourteen places away from hers, sandwiched between a minor baroness from the Outlands and a representative from the Fraternal Order of Ironmongers. Nevertheless, Lady Erin had come around the table to speak with me in her soft Outlands accent, discussing watercolors for several delightful minutes; then, she moved to an equally warm conversation with the fellow on my right, this time about threepenny nails.

The odd thing was, she really did care about watercolors, nails, and all the other topics she discussed at the table that night. Our factol was not just a strikingly beautiful woman on the outside (so splendid I had promised her a ten percent discount if she ever wanted a portrait, just for the delight of having her pose in my studio); but she was also a paragon of loveliness inwardly, in compassion, intelligence, and sheer personal vibrancy.

The congenial way she greeted me in the interrogation room suggested she believed I had acquitted myself well during the mayhem at the City Courts. That counted for a lot; although she was only in her thirties, Lady Erin headed the largest voting bloc in Sigil's Hall of Speakers – many other cities would grant her the title of Mayor. If she vouched for me, I had little to fear in the short term.

Besides, Guvner Hashkar and Captain Sarin both wore benign expressions as well… somber, yes, and tense with the strain of handling what must be a difficult night on the streets, but with no animosity toward me. Indeed, Guvner Hashkar came forward to shake my hand, saying, «Hear you saved a library, dear boy. Most of it, anyway. Good work, excellent work. Well worth a medal or citation, something like that. Our chief of protocol will decide what's appropriate, once she calms down. Might be a few weeks. She's the one who has to put the books back on those racks. Still, she's grateful, very grateful. We all are.»

I bowed once more – quite a low bow, since Hashkar was an elderly dwarf: only four foot two to begin with, and now stooped with age. The biggest thing about him was his extravagant white moustaches, dangling like string mops nearly all the way to the floor. Some claimed he grew them to draw attention away from the aggressively red bulbousness of his nose. On the other hand, maybe he liked those moustaches because they made him look doddering and senile; in debates at the Hall of Speakers, Hashkar liked being dismissed as a dithering old fool until he suddenly swooped in for the kill, destroying his opponents' arguments with a single casual remark.

«Enough gab,» said Captain Sarin, briskly. From what I'd seen, Sarin did everything briskly – rather alarming when he came to my studio to pose for his portrait, because the way he barreled around, I was sure he'd step in a pot of paint. He didn't. Sarin might be equipped with shoulders as wide as a buffalo and muscles to match, but it wasn't strength alone that won him leadership of the Harmonium. «Now,» he went on, «we have a few questions to ask you, Mister Cavendish.»