Yasmin and I gladly played their executioners.

I took out two the first time: a pair of quick thrusts, both through rotting faces, the jabs hard enough to drive bone chips liberally through the wights' brains. The first one fell without a sound. The second had enough time to spit a hiss of rage; then my rapier plunged straight between its eyes, pithing whatever last thoughts such a creature might have.

The other wights tore away a few more boards; but the monsters Yasmin and I dispatched only slumped where they were, their claws still deeply imbedded in the wall. I wished I could see them from the street – a group of dead wights dangling from the front of the house by their hands, their heads skewered and spilling out brains.

A nice score, I thought to myself. If Yasmin and I both killed two wights with every assault, we'd soon whittle down the opposition to just Rivi and Kiripao… and Qi and Chi, of course, wherever they were.

Sod it all… where were Qi and Chi?

The wights slammed forward again… and even as I cleaved the heads of two more, my thoughts raced in other directions. Why had Rivi let the wights make another charge? She'd seen how easily we could kill them. No doubt she had more wights back at the Glass Spider, but they weren't here now. And where were Qi and Chi? Two sneak thieves who had robbed faction headquarters in Sigil while the defenders were kept busy with a diversion…

«Sod it, she's peeling us,» I growled. In a low voice, I said, «Yasmin, you deal with the wights. I have to check on the others.»

Still cursing, I dashed toward the kitchen. Breaking into this house would be child's play for experienced thieves: over the back wall into the garden, then a short sneak up to the kitchen door. If the others had their attention focussed on the fight out front, they wouldn't notice Qi and Chi till much too late.

And it was too late. Even before I reached the kitchen I heard the sound of snoring – Hezekiah's snore, something I'd heard often enough since we began keeping vigil outside the Sigil Mortuary. The Clueless boy certainly wouldn't fall asleep in the middle of a battle, even if someone else was doing the fighting; indeed, I should have been suspicious when he didn't come running to gawk at the wights. Slowing down, I walked the last few paces to the kitchen door as quietly as I could, trusting that the banging and hissing from the street would cover whatever little noise my boots made.

My father could probably list all the ways of putting people to sleep against their will – spells, magic powders, potions and vapors – but my only knowledge of the subject came from the penny dreadfuls I read as a teenager. In those stories, both heroes and villains had infallibly effective ways of knocking each other out, ones that never made you vomit afterward, never gave concussions, never killed people with weak hearts. I stopped reading penny dreadfuls when I stopped believing in such wondrous tricks, but clearly I'd done the books an injustice… Qi and Chi had apparently put Hezekiah, Wheezle, and Zeerith to sleep as easily as snuffing out a candle.

Boy, gnome, and naga all lay on the floor, limp and peaceful. Qi and Chi were already inside the room, one of them rummaging through our backpacks while the other stood guard with a crossbow. Luckily for me, the guard had to divide his attention between the front and back doors of the kitchen; and at the moment I peeked around the corner, he was looking out into the garden. I ducked out of sight again immediately.

All right, Britlin, think. Rivi sent the thieves to steal the dust grinder while the wights kept us busy in front. I could simply let the bad guys take the piking grinder and hope Rivi would leave us alone once she got what she wanted; or I could try to stop them, hope I won the fight, and hope we could still get out of Plague-Mort with our skins intact. One hope to two – a gambler would say that letting them walk off with the grinder was the safer bet.

On the other hand, no self-respecting Sensate ever made safety his first priority…

The Hounds had scattered plenty of debris during their raid. Close to hand were numerous pieces of ripped clothing, the smashed remains of a wooden chair, and an oil painting with its canvas slashed. From what I could see, the painting hadn't been much of a treasure – a bad approximation of a woman looking at an even worse version of her face in a mirror – but its gold-leafed frame was sturdy and solid, rendered with admirably detailed curlicues. Flat and heavy, it would fly like a discus, at least over the short distance between me and the thief with the crossbow. If it stopped him from plugging me with that arrow, the painting would have served a more useful purpose than most abstract art.

A deep breath in. A slow breath out. Then I leaned around the corner and whipped the painting at the bowman with all the strength I could muster.

The frame struck him hard, one corner burying its point into his solar plexus. His breath whoofed out and his trigger finger on the bow must have jerked in pained reaction – the arrow snapped away from the bow with a crack, glancing off the closest wall, and digging into one of the cupboards. Even before it had chunked home, I was crossing the gap between me and the bowman, shouting at the top of my lungs in the hope of jolting him. It didn't work; before I got close enough for a slash with my rapier, he had raised the bow to block, knocking my blade away from a killing stroke.

«Qi!» he shouted… or maybe «Chi!», it was hard to tell. Not that he needed to alert his partner to my presence – I'd made enough noise to wake the undead, though my sleeping companions continued to snore placidly. Any moment now, the other thief would enter the fray, probably with a crossbow of his own; and my current target only had to parry my thrusts until I took an arrow through the heart.

You wouldn't think a crossbow made an effective fencing weapon; and in more appropriate conditions, it wouldn't have. However, the kitchen was dark, its floor was littered with easy-to-trip-over rubbish, and I was doing everything I could to keep my target (the githyanki) between me and his fellow thief – the last thing I wanted was to give the githzerai a clear shot at me. All these complications prevented me from delivering any swordplay worth the name… which meant that thrust after thrust got deflected by the crossbow's wooden body. Even worse, it was just a matter of time before my blade bit too deeply into the wood. If my sword got stuck, the githyanki would leap on me instantly, scrabbling to take me apart with his bare hands.

An arrow buzzed past my ear – the thief at the far end of the room had taken a shot at me, despite his partner in the way. I wondered if a fragment of his racial instincts remained, despite Rivi's tinkering with his mind: the githzerai hatred of githyanki, secretly delighted if his bolt went awry and took the githyanki in the back. Perhaps he simply thought he could hit me… and he came piking close, near enough that I felt the arrow's wind. If I gave the berk time to reload, I wouldn't be so lucky the next time.

Still, what could I do? The githyanki in front of me had reflexes like an eel, swiping aside my every strike. He had a smile on his ugly face, almost as if he was playing with me – as if he knew he could hold me off for as long as he needed. Perhaps he could have too, if he hadn't made the mistake of stepping too close to Wheezle's small body.

The gnome wasn't really asleep: he'd just been playing possum, biding his time for the moment when a magicless paraplegic could make a contribution.

Wheezle reached out, grabbed the githyanki's ankle, and bit hard into the thief's fleshy leg.

The githyanki opened his mouth as if to yell from the pain. It looked like a target to me… and I jabbed forward with an all-or-nothing thrust, the tip of the blade punching through the roof of his mouth and straight into the hind-brain. His body jerked in a violent spasm, dancing uncontrollably on the end of my sword as muscles were suddenly freed from the mind's command; then he slumped into dead-weight, dragging my rapier down until he slid slickly off the blade.