But I never got the chance to mix it. Leather pants had been gone from Rannit for a good long time, and as far as I know we’d never met. But something in his dark mind clicked.

“You’re no damned doctor,” he said. His sword made a quiet hissing sound as he drew it from its scabbard. “You’re the finder.”

“Ridiculous.”

Upstairs, shouts rang out. I heard the pop-pop-pop of crossbow bolts embedding themselves in timbers, and more shouts, and I wondered whether Lethway or Pratt had decided to start the party a few minutes ahead of midnight.

Stricken cussed and pointed his sword at me. “Keep him alive until I’m done,” he said to the wand-waver.

Then he whirled and charged up the stairs.

The sorcerer lifted his arms and let his sleeves fall down to reveal his hands. Neither was empty. His right held a short plain wand, and in his left was a jawless skull. The skull was human, but too small to be from an adult. A dim green light shone from its childish eye sockets, and I caught a snatch of a high, airy whisper issuing from it.

The wand-waved glared. He didn’t threaten. He didn’t feel that he needed to.

Above, thunder sounded, accompanied by lights so bright they shone through the joining of the floor boards. Bolts continued to strike. I heard steel on steel, as men-dozens of them, from the sound of it-hacked at each other with swords and axes.

The wand-waver grinned a wide nasty grin. He let his hood fall back so that the light touched his face. His eyes were blank pools of silver, lacking white or iris or pupil.

My hand was in the bag already.

“I’m going to mix the cincee,” I said aloud. “Kill me if you wish. But I won’t sit here and watch this lad die.”

I didn’t wait for a reply.

I grasped the thing Victor had given me. I didn’t pull it out of the bag. The green glow in the dead child’s eyes was getting brighter by the second. I pointed the device right at the center of the wand-waver’s slim chest, and I squeezed the trigger slowly, just as the book instructed.

The thing coughed and jumped hard in my hand. The bag fell. Vials flew.

The sorcerer looked at me with blank silver eyes and crumpled in a heap on the cold damp floor.

I cocked the weapon and kept it trained on the wand-waver’s body. He didn’t move.

Blood began to pool beneath him.

His wand burned suddenly, leaving behind nothing but ash and smoke.

The skull he’d dropped began to gibber and wail.

Above, pandemonium took root and bloomed. The flares and blasts of sorcerous traps sounded and shone in rapid succession. Screams rose and fell. Boots thudded and scraped on the floor.

I shoved the weapon in belt and pulled my knife from my boots and cut Carris Lethway free. He tried to help, but kept fumbling and lolling as though fighting off unconsciousness.

I pulled him to his feet. He was wobbly and swaying.

“Try to walk,” I said. “We’ve-”

He kneed me in the groin, the ungrateful little bastard, and simultaneously delivered a solid blow to my nose with his bandaged left hand.

I stumbled away. He managed to land another blow. I went down on one knee.

“Dammit, kid, I’m here to rescue you.”

And that’s all I was able to say before his sturdy oak chair came crashing on me.

I didn’t pass out, although the room did spin. I crawled manfully under the table.

“Hell, son, what is wrong with you?”

He didn’t reply. I heard him race up the stairs, barefoot, and then strike the door at the top.

I cussed. I grabbed my doctor’s bag but left the contents where they lay. The skull I scooped up and shoved in the bag. It saw me kill the sorcerer, and leaving it behind to plot some ghostly vengeance wasn’t a good way to reach ripe old age.

Bag and skull in hand, I gave chase, even though it meant charging headlong into a full-blown melee, which featured dozens of armed combatants and a good dose of arcane traps.

It was bedlam up there. Men hacked and slashed in shouting groups of three or four. Bodies lay everywhere. The floor was slick with blood. Lights flashed and blasts sounded and the Timbers was aflame.

I caught one glimpse of Carris Lethway, and one only, as he wobbled out the door and onto the street.

I tried to follow. A pair of men whirled to face me. They held long bloody swords. I had no idea who’d brought them here-Lethway, Pratt or Stricken.

“I’m on your side,” I said.

“Kill him,” shrieked the skull. “Kill him.”

They both charged me.

I hauled my weapon up out of my belt, aimed it, fired.

One went down. The other wisely turned and ran.

I made for the door. On the way, I saw Pratt, trapped in a corner, trying to hold off three men with a broken longsword.

I fired twice more. Two of his assailants fell. The other beat a hasty retreat right into a deadly rain of falling, flaming debris.

Pratt waved and grinned.

I never saw Lethway. Never saw Stricken. By the time I made it to the doorway, the heat of the fire so intense it nearly burned my back, Carris Lethway was gone.

Carriages streamed away from the Timbers, scattering in all directions as Watch whistles blew and the dark street lit up with the ruddy glow of climbing fires. Men ran past, no longer fighting, intent only on getting the Hell out of there before the Watch and the Fire Brigades arrived.

I cussed and fell right in beside them, not caring who was friend or foe. It was over.

And precious few of us had any damned idea who had lost, or who had won.

Rescued I was, and by a pair of vamps.

They found me ten blocks from the Timbers. The flames leaped so high they cast shadows all that way.

I’d searched high and low for Carris Lethway. I knew he was barefoot. Injured. Running a high fever. Probably dehydrated and weak from blood loss and sudden exertion. I figured he’d spent most of whatever energy he had left clobbering me, and I didn’t figure he’d get far from the Timbers after that.

But I hadn’t found him. I’d poked under trash heaps. Forced my way inside derelict buildings. Dared the thresholds of half a dozen weedhouses.

I’d found any number of disgusting sights and the kind of smells no sane man can describe. Even my mumbling skull fell silent when I threatened to bury it in a trash heap if it spoke again before sunrise.

But I found no trace of Carris Lethway. The hungry shadows had simply swallowed him whole.

I was hiding in these same hungry shadows when a shiny black carriage slowed and then stopped.

I heard the door open. I never heard footsteps. Suddenly, they were just there.

“Well, well,” said one.

“We meet again,” said the other.

They smiled toothy vampire smiles.

I recognized them as the pair who’d slain the fat man at the Docks.

“Good evening, gentlemen. Out for a stroll?”

“We saw the flames.”

“We came to see.”

“Fires send them fleeing.”

“It’s more sporting that way.”

My hand was already on the hilt of the weapon. I’d paused to reload it a few blocks ago. I wasn’t sure it would prove fatal to halfdead.

I was sure I had no interest in finding out.

“Ah, but I’m hardly fleeing.” I pulled the thing out. “I was just heading home, enjoying the fresh night air.”

They locked eyes with me.

One shrugged.

“Ride with us,” he said.

“We’re done hunting.”

“Quite done.”

“Evis will owe us a favor.”

“A very large favor.”

They turned and made for their carriage.

I let out my breath and followed.

I asked if they had seen a barefoot man. They responded in the negative, though they were quick to point out that their tastes were too refined to allow them to dine upon the sick or the injured. I hadn’t liked the way they looked at me, at that moment. I made it a point to force a sudden wet cough.