«I wasn't going to kill him. I wanted to take him prisoner so we could interrogate him.»

«You never told me that.»

«Do I have to explain everything?» I growled at the boy. «You knew he was carrying something magic. The first time we saw him, you sensed magic on him.»

«I didn't know it was a firewand!»

«Enough!» Chi roared. «Do you think you can distract me by feigning an argument? I'm not a complete leatherhead, you know.»

«Feigning an argument,» Hezekiah murmured. «That would have been clever.»

«Stop rattling your bone-box!» Chi thundered. «I'm trying to decide whether to burn you where you stand.»

«If you start a fire here,» Wheezle said, «you will burn down the Vertical Sea. Your portal to the Glass Spider will lose its anchor and disappear.»

«The Spider has other portals,» Chi answered. «It's no great burden to gate into Plague-Mort and head for Sigil from there. You did exactly that, didn't you?»

«It is possible to find an indirect route,» Wheezle admitted, «but would Rivi approve? She does not seem a woman who tolerates inconvenience.»

«If I killed you three once and for all, she'd give me a medal,» Chi answered. «The slag in the wedding dress is gravy.»

«Here's an idea,» Hezekiah piped up. «Why don't I just teleport my friends out of here, and call it a draw? You don't set us on fire, and Britlin won't cut out your heart.»

«Like he did to my partner?» Chi asked sharply.

«Actually,» I said, «I didn't cut out your partner's heart, I stabbed through the roof of his mouth and… well, maybe this isn't the right time to split hairs.»

«Funny man,» Chi glared at me. «A lot of people have told me that, Cavendish – you like to make jokes. Does it surprise you I've talked to your friends? I've made it my business to find out about you, since we met in Plague-Mort. You won't believe the stories I've heard… and not one of your acquaintances doubts you could be a killer. Like father, like son.»

I sighed. «Is this the part where we both taunt each other into a rage?»

«No – rage is overrated.» Chi smiled an ugly smile. «This is the part where I kill you in cold blood.»

I prepared myself to lunge forward: ready for the slightest lapse in his concentration, a laugh, a moment as he savored his triumph. All I needed was the merest instant of distraction; but Chi was an experienced blood who didn't make stupid mistakes. The wand in his hand didn't waver an eyelash. His lips opened to speak the invocation that would fire his weapon…

…and an egg sailed out of nowhere, smashing his face with yolk.

I was almost as surprised as Chi. Almost. But while he was still spitting egg-white from his mouth, my rapier punched clean through his ribcage, smashing bone fragments into his heart and lungs. I kept driving forward, hearing the edges of my blade scrape against vertebrae as the tip pierced out his back; and I held him upright on the end of my sword until I could pluck the firewand from his strengthless fingers. Then and only then did I turn across the street to see who threw the egg.

On top of the tenement across the street stood three women in brilliant white.

Miriam waved to Hezekiah.

November leaned coolly against a chimney.

Yasmin flexed her fingers and scowled. «That sodding chicken pecked my hand.»

«Thanks for the egg,» I shouted to her, then didn't have time for more conversation. Six wights had appeared, trundling up wheelbarrows to harvest squid from the tank below us; but when they noticed our presence, their eyes blazed like volcanos and they hissed with delighted fury.

«Hezekiah,» I called, «this would be a good time to get us out of here.» No such luck – the leatherhead boy was still a dozen paces behind me, and puppyishly waving back to Miriam; he hadn't even noticed we had undead company. «Hezekiah!» I roared, even as the stench of dead flesh and chemicals filled my nostrils.

«Hi,» I said to the wights, mere inches from my nose.

«Hiss,» they replied by way of repartee.

The first two monsters to reach me had simply abandoned their wheelbarrows and charged, their claws ripping greedily through the air. If one hadn't stumbled over Chi's dead body, I might be writing these memoirs with a fistful of talons embedded in my face; but Chi's body sprawled across a good portion of the ramp, and the wight was too filled with bloodlust to care. It ran forward, tripped, and went down, catching itself from a face-plant only by throwing out its hands. Those nasty claws struck the wooden ramp like fourpenny nails, digging deep into the board… and by the time the creature could pry itself loose, I had dispatched the other wight with a nicely executed decapitation.

The wight on its knees suffered the same fate, just as it pulled itself free. Its head bounced briefly across the ramp, scattering a trail of red dust; then it toppled over the edge and into the squid tank below.

«Hezekiah!» I shouted again, but couldn't spare a glance in his direction. Another wight was racing up; and this one, her brain less decayed than her fellows, was still jockeying her wheelbarrow – a big heavy wheelbarrow, wide enough to block much of the ramp, and long enough that my blade couldn't reach over the cart to impale the creature. Not that she gave me time to try such an attack: she simply drove straight at me, the wheelbarrow crunching over assorted corpses on the way, as it hammered forward like a battering ram. The ramp gave me no room to move aside, unless I wanted to swim with the squid… so I took the only choice left and jumped forward into the wheelbarrow itself.

When I say I jumped, I wish I could claim that I nimbly hopped into the cart and landed on my feet with panther-like grace. The truth was less feline: just as the wheelbarrow was about to bang into me, I rolled over the front lip and landed lumpishly inside.

My rapier was pointed in the right direction, and I stabbed out with it, just to keep the wight from coming at me with her claws. The tip pierced the rotting meat of her shoulder and sliced off a pound or two. She hissed in pain, and heaved on the wheelbarrow handles with supernatural strength… or more precisely, she heaved on one of the handles – the other arm, injured by my sword thrust, didn't have nearly the same amount of muscle. One side of the wheelbarrow went up, the other scarcely moved at all, and I found myself tipping sideways out of the cart, staring down at a school of eagerly waiting squid.

«Gack!» I commented; and trying not to drop my sword or gash myself on its blade, I scrambled to grab the edge of the wheelbarrow cart before I plunged straight into the water. My fingers found purchase, splinters found my fingers, and I stopped my immediate fall. The wight kept heaving sideways, however, and my feet slid out of the cart, slipped past the edge of the ramp, and plunked knee deep into the tank.

So here's the picture – I'm dangling over the side of the ramp, one hand clutching the cart, the other aiming my sword in the wight's direction to discourage the monster from lunging for me… and a crowd of squid are caressing my feet with their suckered tentacles, trying to decide if I'm edible. «You can't eat me raw!» I called down to them. «You have to marinate, then simmer for a few hours or I'll be all rubbery.»

The wight hissed. «Everyone's a critic,» I muttered. Then I noticed that the wight was hissing because its body had been hacked lengthwise from shoulder to crotch by a familiar-looking longsword. A white-shod foot kicked the bisected wight off the ramp, much to the culinary appreciation of the squid; and moments later, another white-clad woman with ridiculously puny wings tucked her hands under my armpits and flew me up to a solid footing.

«Thanks,» I said to November, then «Thanks,» again to Yasmin who was dealing with the remaining wights. «I take it you flew across?»