The Gage was silent.
The Dead Man said, “You said Attar kills artists. Young men.”
The Gage was silent.
“Your beloved? This Abbas, have I guessed correctly?”
“Are you shocked?”
The Dead Man shrugged. “You would burn for it in Asmaracanda.”
“You can burn for crossing the street incorrectly in Asmaracanda.”
“This is truth.” The Dead Man drew his sword, inspected the faintly nicked, razor-stropped edge. “Were you an artist too?”
“I was.”
“Well,” the Dead Man said. “That’s different, then.”
BEFORE THE HOUSE of Attar the Enchanter, the Dead Man paused and tested the door; it was locked and barred so soundly it didn’t rattle. “This is his den.”
“He owns this?” the Gage said.
“Rents it,” the Dead Man answered. He reached up with his off hand and lowered his veil. His sword slid from its scabbard almost noiselessly. “How much magic are you expecting?”
“He’s a ghost-maker,” the Gage said. “He travels from murder to murder. He might not have a full workshop here. He’ll have mechanicals.”
“Mechanicals?”
“Things like me.”
“Wonderful.” He glanced up at the windows of the second and third stories. “Are we climbing in?”
“I don’t climb.” The Gage took hold of the door knob and effortlessly tore it off the door. “Follow me.”
THE GAGE’S FOOTSTEPS were silent, but that couldn’t stop the boards of the joisted floor from creaking under his armored weight. “I hate houses with cellars,” he said. “Always afraid I’m going to fall through.”
“That will only improve once we achieve the second story,” the Dead Man answered. His head turned ceaselessly, scanning every dark corner of what appeared to be a perfectly ordinary, perfectly pleasant reception room—unlighted brass lamps, inlaid cupboards, embroidered cushions, tapestry chairs, and thick rugs stacked several high over the indigo-patterned interlocking star-and-cross tiles of that creaking floor. Being on the ground floor, it was windowless.
“We’re alone down here,” said the Gage.
The staircase ascended at the back of the room, made of palm wood darkened with perfumed oils and dressed with a scarlet runner. The Gage moved toward it like a stalking tiger, weight and fluidity in perfect tension. The Dead Man paced him.
They ascended side by side. Light from the windows above reflected down. It shone on the sweat on the Dead Man’s bared face, on the length of his bared blade, on the bronze of the Gage’s head and the scratched metal that gleamed through the unpatched rent at his shoulder.
The Gage was taller than the Dead Man. His head cleared the landing first. Immediately, he snapped— “Close your eyes!”
The Dead Man obeyed. He cast his off hand across them as well, for extra protection. Still the light that flared was blinding.
The Gage might walk like a cat, but when he ran, the whole house shook. The creak of the floorboards was replaced by thuds and cracks, rising to a crescendo of jangling metal and shattering glass. The light died; a male voice called out an incantation. The Dead Man opened his eyes.
Trying to focus through swimming, rough-bordered blind spots, the Dead Man saw the Gage surrounded by twisted metal and what might be the remains of a series of lenses. Beyond the faceless man and the wreckage, a second man—broad-shouldered, shirtless above the waist of his pantaloons, of middle years by the salt in his beard but still fit—raised a flared tube in his hands and directed it at the Gage.
Wood splintered as the Gage reared back, struggling to move. The wreckage constrained him, though feebly, and his foot had broken through the floor. He was trapped.
With his off hand, the Dead Man snatched up the nearest object—a shelf laden with bric-a-brac—and hurled it at the Wizard’s head. The tube—some sort of blunderbuss—exploded with a roar that added flash-deafness to the flash-blindness that already afflicted the Dead Man. Gouts of smoke and sparks erupted from the flare—
—the wall beside the Gage exploded outward.
“Well,” he said. “That won’t endear us to the neighbors.”
The Dead Man heard nothing but the ringing in his ears. He leaped onto the seat of a Song-style ox-yoke chair, felt the edge of the back beneath his toe and rode it down. His sword descended with the force of his controlled fall, a blow that should have split the Wizard’s collarbone.
His arm stopped in mid-move, as if he had slammed it into the top of a stone wall. He jerked it back, but the pincers of the steam-bubbling crab-creature that grabbed it only tightened, and it was all he could do to hold onto his sword as his fingers numbed.
Wood shattered and metal rent as the Gage freed his foot and shredded the remains of the contraption that had nearly blinded the Dead Man. He swung a massive fist at the Wizard but the Wizard rolled aside and parried with the blunderbuss. Sparks shimmered. Metal crunched.
The Wizard barked something incomprehensible, and a shadow moved from the corner of the room. The Gage spun to engage it.
The Dead Man planted his feet, caught the elbow of his sword hand in his off hand, and lifted hard against the pain. The crab-thing scrabbled at the rug, hooked feet snagging and lifting, but he’d stolen its leverage. Grunting, he twisted from the hips and swung.
Carpet and all, the crab-thing smashed against the Wizard just as he was regaining his feet. There was a whistle of steam escaping and the Wizard shouted, jerking away. The crab-thing’s pincer ripped free of the Dead Man’s arm, taking cloth and a measure of flesh along with it.
The thing from the corner was obviously half-completed. Bits of bear- and cow-hide had been stitched together patchwork fashion over its armature. Claws as long as the Dead Man’s sword protruded from the shaggy paw on its right side; on the left they gleamed on bare armature. Its head turned, tracking. A hairy foot shuffled forward.
The Gage went to meet it, and there was a sound like mountains taking a sharp dislike to one another. Dust rattled from the walls. More bric-a-brac tumbled from the shelf-lined walls. In the street or in a neighboring house, someone screamed.
The Dead Man stepped over the hissing, clicking remains of the crab-thing and leveled his sword at the throat of the Wizard Attar.
“Stop that thing.”
The Wizard, his face boiled red along one cheek, one eye closed and weeping, laughed out loud. “Because I fear your sword?”
He grabbed the blade right-handed, across the top, and pushed it down as he lunged onto the blade, ramming the sword through his chest. Blood and air bubbled around the blade. The Wizard did not stop laughing, though his laughter took on a... simmering quality.
Recoiling, the Dead Man let go of his sword.
Meanwhile, the wheezing armature lifted the Gage into the air and slammed him against the ceiling. Plaster and stucco-dust reinforced the smoky air.
“You call yourself a Dead Man!” Attar ripped the sword from his breast and hurled it aside. “This is what a dead man looks like.” He thumped his chest, then reached behind himself to an undestroyed rack and lifted another metal object, long and thin.
The Dead Man swung an arc before him, probing carefully for footing amid the rubble on the floor. Attar sidled and sidestepped, giving no advantage. And Attar had his back to the wall.
The Gage and the half-made thing slammed to the floor, rolling in a bear hug. Joists cracked again and the floor settled, canting crazily. Neither the Gage nor the half-made thing made any sound but the thud of metal on metal, like smith’s hammerblows, and the creak of straining gears and springs.
“I have no soul,” said Attar. “I am a ghost-maker. Can your blade hurt me? All the lives I have taken, all the art I have claimed—all reside in me!”
Already, the burns on his face were smoothing. The bubbles of blood no longer rose from the cut in his chest. The Dead Man let his knees bend, his weight ground. Attar’s groping left hand found and raised a mallet. His right hand aimed the slender rod.