“Alias, please, don’t—” Dragonbait called. Now he wished he had not teased her. When her memory betrayed her like this, it often ended in pain for her.
But Alias was now in another world, one of nostalgia for a past she didn’t really own. “Come on,” she called back over her shoulder. “It shouldn’t take us too far off our route.”
“Boogers,” Dragonbait muttered. It was one of the foulest curses Olive Ruskettle had ever taught him. He shouldered the ashen staff and loped after his companion.
“Around the corner” turned out to be one corner, three blocks, a second corner, an alley, and another corner. The part of the city they traveled through had seen better days. The cobblestones were intermixed with potholes and bald patches where locals had quarried the street to patch up their chimneys and walls. The paint on every door was peeling. Trees and shrubs in the gardens were all overgrown. Still, there was the occasional streetlamp made of a utilitarian post of iron with dimly glowing, smoking oil in a small bowl at the top.
All of the shops on the ground floor were shuttered and locked tight, but there were a number of small lights in the upper stories—constellations of candles, lanterns, and the occasional magical light stone.
“There,” Alias announced in an awestruck tone, as if she had discovered the lost city of Shandaular.
She pointed to a small, two-story building sandwiched between a stable and a dressmaker’s establishment. According to a weathered old sign over the door, the shop on the first floor specialized in second-hand clothing. The original proprietor’s name had been painted over, but no new moniker had been posted to take its place.
“Very nice,” Dragonbait said, as gently as he could muster, “We’d better be going, though.”
Alias scowled, “You don’t understand. I was born here. I grew up here. I have memories of this place.”
Dragonbait sighed, “I know, but they’re memories sung into you by Finder. You were never here, really here, before tonight. If you’d like, we can come back tomorrow when its light and ask if anyone here knew Finder. I think for now, though, we’d better—”
Dragonbait’s words were cut short as the front door of the shop smashed open and three humans barged out of the building—a man and a woman both with slight frames and close-cropped hair and a second man large enough to be a bouncer at a very rough bar. All three wore domino masks and were dressed in velvet dyed a black so deep that it absorbed light, as if they were chunks of the Abyss loose in the Realms. The big man carried a blazing torch. The smaller man banged a nail into the doorjamb. The woman hung a black domino mask on the nail, then nodded curtly at the big man. The big man flung his torch through the doorway, back into the building.
The black-garbed woman shouted up at the houses all around, “Jamal is marked!” then all three figures dashed down the street.
Alias raced forward and started to shout, “Fire! Bring water!” but her words were lost to the boom of a great explosion. The entire front of the store bulged outward, then tore loose in a gout of flame, knocking Alias and Dragonbait to the ground and covering them with burning rags.
Two
Victims of the Fire
Alias staggered to her feet. The smell of burning cloth, mingled with a complicated mixture of odors from Dragonbait, stung her nostrils. The saurial stood beside her, apparently unscathed, emitting the scents of brimstone and violets, then baked bread and ham, as his confusion and fear gave way to anger and worry. He stood before her, holding his hands on her shoulders, but it was several moments before she realized by the occasional clicking of his tongue that he was speaking to her. She’d been partially deafened by the blast.
Uncertain whether the saurial’s hearing was any better than her own, the swordswoman signed with her hands, I’ll be all right. We have to help the people inside.
She lurched toward the flame, then took a second step. By the third stride she had shaken off most of the bone-jarring effects of the blast, and by the fourth she was running into the blazing shop, Dragonbait hot on her heels.
Most of the planking that made up the front wall of the shop and the shutter that had covered the shop’s front window lay smoldering in the street, while the frame that remained standing blazed ferociously. Alias plunged though the wreath of flame about the doorway and paused a moment in the foyer. The entrance matched her “memory.” The door on the right led to the clothing shop, now an inferno of burning cloth. A few feet beyond the shop door was the staircase to the apartments above; the staircase handrail was draped with fiery clothing, and the steps gleamed with burning oil.
Dragonbait stood in the doorway on the right, peering into the shop. Alias signed, Don’t go in there, it’s too dangerous, but the paladin signed back, Someone’s in there.
Alias grabbed her friend’s arm to hold him back. She remembered Old Mendle, who ran the shop long ago, when she was a child. He used to let her play dress-up among the bins of garments he had gathered from the better homes, and which Mrs. Mendle had then sewn or knitted back into serviceable shape. He lived in the back of the shop now, alone since Mrs. Mendle had died. Alias released her hold on the saurial warrior and gave him a nod to proceed.
As she hurried up the stairs, using her cloak as a shield against the smoke and heat, she realized there probably was no Old Mendle. He was an invention Finder had put in her memory—unless he had drawn the indulgent clothier from some other, real, little girl’s life.
Whether the fire’s victims were those she remembered or not made no difference to the swordswoman. She was angry that her remembered home was burning. The stairway rail, from which she remembered having led imaginary attacks on invisible dragons, collapsed into the hallway below, and her craw knotted in fury. She paused on the landing where she had—no, where she remembered having had scribbled pictures with a charcoal stick. By the light of the fire, she could see there were scrawls on the wall still, but she hadn’t time to examine them.
She turned on the landing and dashed up the second flight of stairs; the steps had begun to list inward from structural damage. The smoke was thicker up here, and she bent down to stay beneath its lethal embrace. She turned again and peered down the hall at the doors leading to the three apartments. The arsonists had piled rags before each door and lit them.
Alias pulled her sword and used it to thrust aside the pile of burning cloth in front of the door nearest to her. The door led to the apartment overlooking the streets, the apartment Old Mendle used to rent to transients with money to waste on the view. The Company of the Swanmays, an all-female band of adventurers, had once rented it, or so she remembered. Alias put her hands against the door. It was cool to the touch. She touched the knob. It, too, was cool, but it would not turn. The swordswoman stepped back, drew a lungful of smoky air, and gave the door a hard, sharp kick.
The doorjamb, already weakened by the fire, splintered, and the door swung inward. Alias peered into the darkness. She grabbed up a burning rag on the end of her sword to use as a torch. The room held four beds with straw tick mattresses, all empty. As she stood there, reassuring herself that the room was vacant, Alias heard a grumbling noise, and a section of the room’s floor near the front wall collapsed into the shop below.