Author's note: I wrote this about a year ago but put it away because I lacked the time. It's by far and away the longest, most complicated thing I've written in years. I don't know that it's really ready for prime-time yet so we'll call this version 1.0 and I reserve the right to modify it on a whim 
I'll split it into parts to make it easier to post and read.
Additional warning: the file got a little corrupted transferring from different systems. I think I caught all the weirdnesses, but there might still be some strange punctuation -- or worse, strange prepositions (?!) -- floating around.
In the Beginning was the Word.
The Word was a howl of pain. The Word was stained with heart's blood betrayed. The Word was a cry for vengeance.
We are the Answer.
- Ashkeban, heretic Red Priest
He ran as fast as he could on a broken ankle, pain lancing through his foot with every step. Cursing uncontrollably, sobbing with fear and pain, he ran through the building as if the Devil himself were after him. Because, as far as he could tell, He was.
He was born Gavin Hollowscomb in the small village of Raven's Bluff on some Yesi-forsaken Prime whose grandiloquent moniker belied the fact that it was a shithole. He drifted through his early life with a disquietened ease, coasting on his roguish charm and roguish ways. By day he guided the minor nobility travelling to and from the capital; by evening he pressed his charms to service by seducing the various tavern wenches and driver's daughters; by night he set to work liberating those same nobles and wenches from their wealth and valuables. All in all, a safe, pleasant existence.
But boring.
Or maybe, small. Yes, that was it: small and boring.
Gavin knew he was destined for bigger and better things, you see.
The doxies were good for a quick tumble but nothing more. The nobles were so minor that their wealth barely kept Gavin in spirits -- which, given what a Yesi-forsaken backwater the Bluff was, were invariably harsh bottles of pisswater that made his necessary charm annoyingly hard to maintain.
The truth was that he was better than this place, and he knew it.
So when a portal opened and a group of adventurers stumbled out -- it had something to do with a greybeard, a ghaele, and a magic carrot, though Gavin never figured out exactly what -- he knew his destiny had been found. Offering to guide the party, saturated in charm, he made himself so useful that they felt compelled to offer him a wish, if they could but grant it.
And indeed they could.
One step through the portal and Gavin had left that wretched backwater for good. One step through the portal and he had entered the most cacophonic, catastrophic, cataclysmically wonderful city in all the multiverse, the City of Doors itself. A single glance brought more wonders than a thousand lifetimes in Raven's Bluff: bariaur merchants haggling with three-eyed insects large as ponies; a squad of Hardheads lazily taunting a wild-eyed prophetess from Bedlam; einheriar glorious in the smoky light of peak striding with dire purpose towards a tiefling brothel; a radiant deva and smoky nabassu exchanging murderous glances as they sought the judgement of a metal-skinned man holding a small child... a thousand and one sights, smells, sounds, a feast of the senses so great that the Clueless Prime fell to his knees and wept for joy.
Gavin had come home.
A few hours later, accepting the party's heartfelt goodbyes -- and, when they weren't looking, their purses -- Gavin walked off to revel in his new, real life.
That night he had a dream.
He was in one of the fancier Wards, Clerk's or Lady's, he couldn't tell. The world around him was insubstantial, wispy shadows of buildings leeched of all color and substance. No sound broke the silence. There was no life here. Above, bulging with lazy malevolence, a red orb glowered down like a Carcerian pearl. It cast no warmth, only a hellish light that made the world look bruised and sore, as if he had taken a blow to the face. In some strange way he was sure that he was seeing the true face of Sigil, and he quailed at the infinities revealed therein. Here in this shadow world, nothing was real save the two figures in front of him.
One was a man, ordinary at first glance. But the eye was soon stopped by the smoothness of his stance and the emptiness of his face. Not a single emotion registered in all his body, not a flicker perturbed his face, yet this man was no statute. Alive and vital, the man stood in preternatural stillness, staring with the cold, dispassionate eyes of a predator at his opposite.
She was instantly recognizable to any Cager. Blades glinting crimson, the Lady of Pain floated high above. Her hands were crossed in her usual enigmatic pose; her face was a study in exquisite mystery. She was Her Serenity, in all her glory, and Gavin could not help but worship her.
For a timeless instant the pair faced each other, perfectly alike in their asymmetry. Then, both sudden and slow, the man spoke. His voice was even, measured; neutral, uninflected; the calm that only those saturated in perfect fury can attain.
In both supplication and command, he said:
"Great Lady,
"I am come here to Your Door Which Is Also A Cage to request a boon. For aeons have we respected your will; now, perforce, must I ask you to respect ours.
"I do not come to cause you harm. I do not come to shatter your City. I will do all of that and more. I am as much a servant as you in this, and will do what I must."
"I am come to Your Cage Which Is Also A Door to fulfill my duty. I am a vessel; and when the universe speaks, I answer."
"Blood has been spilled. Betrayal has riven the heart. The cry is pure.
"There must be a reckoning.
"Great Lady, will you open yourself to me?"
The man stopped speaking. The pair resumed their frozen tableau under the bloated moon. Then, exquisitely slowly and yet with incredible speed, like a glacier viewed with the eyes of a mountain, movement. A simple gesture that caused Gavin to wake screaming.
The Lady Of Pain spread her arms in welcome.
He knew he was in trouble when the lynch mob showed up at his door.
It wasn't a real lynch mob, of course. The Triad of Law frowned on such vigilante justice, the Hardheads especially. Old traditions die hard, though, and the mobs still gathered on the general principle that the next best thing to killing the sod yourself was to jeer while someone else did it.
The confusing thing, he thought, was that he hadn't actually done anything.
Well, yes, of course, there was that. And that. But those were private, and besides, no-one knew about them. What by Baator's benighted bastions -- he was particularly proud of that one -- were they doing here?
It didn't matter, of course. The mob was here, that meant the Hardheads (or the Red Death!) couldn't be far behind, and that was all that mattered. Time for questions later; right now was time to leave.
A quick sweep around the room for essentials. A quick check to make sure nothing identifying or incriminating had been left behind. A quick hop out the supposedly blocked-up window.
A quick leap into the arms of the waiting Mercykiller.
Damnation.
No time for pride. Scrunching up his face in something approximating gormless innocence, he wheedled "How's this then? A law-abiding citizen being manhandled by armored thugs..."
"Shaddup", quoth the Mercykiller with his order's customary eloquence.
He did so. He'd seen Phraban (no, don't think about it!) tangle with the Red Death a few years back, remembered the limp. A few moments later, two more Mercykillers strode up with a Guvner in tow.
"That him?" one asked the clerk.
The clerk gave both Gavin and the documents equal scrutiny. He felt slightly miffed at being rendered little more than a piece of paper. "Yes", sniffed the Guvner. “Criminal NGC14628. The description fits perfectly.”
"Gavin of Prime!" barked the lead Mercykiller.
"Sir, if you'll but..."
A sharp elbow to the ribs drove Gavin to the ground.
"Let's try that again, shall we? Gavin of Prime!"
"It's got a name, you know," said Gavin sullenly. "Wait! Sorry!" he said quickly as the Mercykiller raised his hand. "Yeah, that's me."
"Former associate of Rhaegar, Donnath, Phraban Delindrasar and," he consulted a scroll, "Gaienya Jilina?"
Gavin felt his gut grow cold. "Sure," he said.
The Red Death leaned in, menacing. Gavin pondered the merits of fight, then of flight, then of faint, then futility; then was stopped short by the most unexpected sound he'd ever heard.
The Mercykillers were laughing.
Deep, full belly laughs, too, the laughter of someone who has well and truly seen the joke. Gavin's gut grew tighter, colder, contemplating what might cheer the Red Death.
The lead Mercykiller leaned in close enough so Gavin could smell the stink of sweat and iron, reached down to him with a mail-clad fist and... tousled his head affectionately. "You're free."
Gavin blinked. "What?"
"You're free, berk. We're done with you. Forever."
Swallowing, he repeated, "What?"
Sighing good-naturedly, the Mercykiller smiled behind the fangs of his mask. "You're a criminal and a louse, Gavin of Prime, and everyone who knows you ends up dead. You deserve to be feedin' the Dragon right about now, that's fer damn sure. But lucky you, you've gone too far even for that. Orders from the top, lad: we're leavin' you alone."
His insides roiled. "Wait... wait..."
"I don't know either, berk," the Red Death grinned, "All's I know is, it's somethin'... special. Can't wait to find out what it is; I'll be buyin' the broadsheets every day to find out."
And with that, and a farewell tousle, the Mercykillers left.
Gavin stared after them in silent thought. The lynch mob, denied its spectacle, dispersed. Amid the good-natured jeers and boos, Gavin tried to make sense of what had just happened.
OK, so he'd been wrong. Now he knew he was in trouble.
He was walking along Strumpet Lane when he found love. Not the reasonably-priced love common to the area; something that, sort of, maybe, kind of was the love of which poets spoke and at which fashionable ladies swooned. The last place one would expect to find such a rare and precious thing, but -- as Sigilians are wont to say -- you takes your life where you finds it.
If you could avoid the succubi and other sundry soul-suckers -- he'd remember that for later, that was a good one -- a modest piece of jink could buy you a rough'n'tumble with a modestly attractive wench. About the only thing modest in the whole damn Hive, truth be told, but it was late and he had needs. Phraban disapproved, of course, but Phraban was always dismissive in public. In private, though, Phraban supposedly had one of the best collection of erotic woodcarvings in Sigil and Gavin could never tell whether it was a cultural thing or just rank hypocrisy. Didn't care to tell, really; a berk's got enough trouble finding a blood to watch his back without bringing "moral" troubles into it.
Gavin had stopped outside Madam Bawdlerina's, famed as much for its flexible madam as for the appetites of those who supped therein, when he heard a small whimpering noise in a nearby alley. Ordinarily he'd have just ignored it. Curiosity didn't just kill the cat in Sigil, it knifed it, nicked its wallet and dumped the corpse down the nearest Ooze hole. There was something in the air, though, beyond the reek of rutting and lust. Maybe it was the forlorn little Arborean who had whimpered for home as he mounted her; maybe Madam Bawdlerina's contortions, visible through the gauzy door, emboldened him; or maybe bards weren't all liars and thieves, and Love truly does shack up with Destiny. Whatever the cause, Gavin went to look.
One step around the corner and he rather wished he hadn't.
She was a tiny slip of a thing, frail and fragile. Her clothes were filthy and torn, much like her body. Her only clean places were the tracks of her tears which, on cutting through the grime, showed her to be young, pretty and, above all, foreign. A real Cager's dirt took more than tears to undo.
He -- it? -- on the other hand, was a horned monstrosity fully half again as tall as Gavin. Midnight black, caustic steam hissing off his scales, the cornugon's red eyes narrowed as it whipped around to face the interloper.
They stood that way for a moment, the two males sizing each other up, the girl whimpering below. The cornugon narrowed its eyes, clearly trying to decide whether Gavin was worth corrupting.
"Piss off", it hissed. Apparently not.
"What? No deal I'm not going to live to regret?" Gavin stalled.
The cornugon took two pavement-crushing steps towards him. "Piss. Off." it articulated as clearly as possible through a huge fang-lined maw. "This doesn't concern you, mortal."
Gavin felt his back stiffen. No way was some jumpstart fiend going to mess with him on his home turf, even if that fiend was twice his size and four times his weight.
"The girl's mine," he said shortly.
The cornugon leaned down, laughing. "Piss. Off. Mortal." it choked in fiendish good humor. "I'm busy right now, but there's always time to teach wretches like you the virtues of obedience."
"If this were Baator, sure. But you're in Sigil now, berk, and the land lies different."
"Oh? How so?"
"The girl's mine because I work for Shemeska the Marauder."
Inasmuch as a baatezu could blanch, it blanched. "Prove it", the cornugon snarled. "Prove it or I'll gut you where you stand."
"I don't have to," Gavin gritted through the cornugon's reek. "I don't have to prove a damn thing. What you need to ask yourself is, what's going to happen to you if I'm telling the truth?"
There was a long pause while the cornugon eyed Gavin speculatively. "You're bluffing," it said at last.
Gavin gave the cornugon his best crooked smile. "You honestly expect someone working for a 'loth to answer that?"
The cornugon began to pace slightly, the pavement buckling under its weight. It continued eying Gavin, who did his damnedest -- ok, bad choice of word -- to stay calm. Then it pounced. Gripping him by the threat, the baatezu hauled up him close to its face. Too close. Gavin could literally inhale the carrion on its teeth, see every scale and droplet of blood on its hide.
"Tell me the truth, soul-bag," it rasped coldly. "For whom do you really work? What game are you playing? What game is Shemeska playing?"
Gavin looked the monster in the eyes and spat. "Pike off, berk."
For one terrible moment Gavin thought he'd gone too far. The huge maw steamed in the chill of anti-peak. The great eyes glared down, filled with ageless malignancy, looking for any weakness, the slightest twitch, any hint that this might be a peel. They promised that if he were bluffing, the cornugon would rip him apart where he stood. They promised that if he showed fear, he was dead.
But Gavin was home. And in one's home, one knows no fear.
Even in the hands of a devil.
The baatezu suddenly hurled him to the pavement. "Fine," it fumed. "Take the bitch. She's Shemeska's. And as you're only following orders, I'll spare your miserable life."
Thanks seemed imprudent, so Gavin merely mumbled an assent. He picked himself off the pavement and tended to the girl. She wasn't as badly injured as he'd thought -- in body, at least -- just dirty and miserable. He helped her to her feet, began to walk her out of the alley.
The cornugon interposed. "Of course," it mused, "You could still be lying."
Gavin suppressed an involuntary shudder. Tanar'ri were at their most dangerous in their fury; baatezu, in their calm.
"Your name, mortal. Give it to me."
He looked up at the beast, knew he'd been beaten. "Rhaegar," said Gavin, rubbing his cheek.
"Good. I shall commend your courage to your employer." The cornugon hulked off, pavement screaming in protest. Gavin pitied the poor fool who crossed paths with it that night.
As they left, the girl raised her head. "How do you know Shemeska?" she whispered like spun glass. It was the only thing she said that night.
"I don't", he said shortly. And, chuckling, he led her home.
Two days later, Rhaegar and Donnath disappeared. That's life in the Cage for you.
She was tawny, like a cat. Big amber eyes, pouty lips, sharp even teeth. Her every move was feline and there was the slightest twitch in her behind when she walked, a behind he mysteriously felt compelled to observe whenever it was present. Either her mother had been knocked up by a Beastlord or she was aasimar. And she was here to kill him.
He didn't know how he knew that. It couldn't have been his loins, they ached every time she strode by. It was just some base animal instinct yammering in his gut: this sinuous goddess was out to get him. And he was afraid.
Crazily, he thought of asking her about the hunt, whether the prey ever fell in love with its predator. He'd recovered a moment later, though. It was going to be bad enough being killed; being castrated first would simply be too much.
She gave her name as Tawny, that's what got him started on this line of thought. It was a fake, of course -- like anyone's real name was actually Tawny! -- but that was nothing unusual in this line of work. The job was a good one: the perfect mixture of subtle scam and outright larceny. It was sure to net them copious jink but he couldn't concentrate. At first he chalked it up to Tawny's scent, a feminine musk that bored straight to the pit of his manhood, and the fact that he hadn't had a woman since Jilina had died. Now, he knew it was because she was trying to kill him. Or maybe they all were.
"Gavin!" Phraban snapped. "Quit staring at Tawny's bosom and pay attention!"
Well, at least Phraban wasn't trying to kill him. He had too much fun being irritated at Gavin.
A good job, sure, but a complicated one. They'd had to bring five new people into the group as well as recruiting another dozen or so on a need-to-know basis. Assume the 'loths had at least two of them tapped, the baatezu and tanar'ri at least one, Yesi knows how many the celestials knew... never mind the potential cut into the profit margin, the security prospects alone were a nightmare. Background checks, loyalty oaths, counter-magics, it was enough to give any berk a headache. And Tawny was out to kill him.
Damnation! He swore silently. He'd lost track of what Phraban was saying, so gave him a firm nod off his glance and continued swearing silently. Greenling! What was the plan again? He should know, he'd helped design it. It was good, he remembered that much. Damn good. Something to do with laundering Sigilian jink through celestial irregulars fighting the 'loths in Gehenna, but his mind was too skittish to pull up the details. Damn the details, damn the plan, and damn that woman who was trying to kill him!
Phraban made that peculiar clucking sound he made when his friend was being uncivilized. Gavin jolted guiltily. "Ok, that's enough for the moment," said Phraban. "Everyone, get a breath of fresh air. Gavin, you stay."
The others left amid dour jokes about the freshness of said Lower Ward air, Tawny's behind twitching fetchingly as she walked. He wanted to grab it and put a stake through her eyes at the same time.
"So, old friend. What's on your mind?"
"Nothing. I'm just trying to lann the angles here. It's hard work, you of all people should know!"
"Hardly nothing." The long delicate fingers steepled in thought. "It's Tawny, yes? She's attractive; I tried to get her to pose for me, but alas she was uninterested. Perhaps she could be persuaded to your bed instead?"
"No more women," said Gavin with more feeling than he intended. "They ain't nothing but trouble."
Phraban looked at him gingerly in the sudden silence. "You know I haven't asked you about..."
"No," Gavin spat. "And don't."
"Nevertheless, I feel I must. You haven't been the same since then."
He could feel the fury rising. "I haven't been the same? Haven't been the same?! Of course I haven't been the same you sodding 'leth-piker! She's gone and she's never coming back! I've lost the woman I loved and you finally decided to notice?"
"I'm sorry, my friend. I had no idea..."
"You had no idea? You told me to take care of it!" Phraban tried to interject but Gavin would have none of it. "You said it was none of your concern! So I went there alone and I took care of it, and now she's gone!"
Gavin's voice rose and broke, much like he himself. His body wracked with sobs as Phraban looked on disconcertedly. But his heart had already been broken; it could break no further and he soon stopped . Breathing raggedly, he composed himself.
"Never mind. What's past is past. Let's concentrate on the future."
Phraban eyed him skeptically. Shrugging, he said, "You'll be OK?"
"I'll live."
"Very well, I'll call them back in. Do try to keep yourself under control. Tawny's shirt is liable to combust."
The tension released. Gavin snickered and the details came flooding back. "Fair enough. She's got her role to play, same as all of us. And if we do this right, this time next year we'll be rolling in jink enough to hire dozens just like her, and we'll have our fill."
It was a very good plan.
He ran as fast as he could, trying to outrun the memory of the pit fiend's face. Trying to outrun the memory of those eyes.
"Look, I don't see why..."
He hit the pavement painfully. Greenling! he swore, a trace of the old vernacular creeping through. Picking himself up, he nursed his sore elbow. "Guys! We're supposed to be friends!"
Rhaegar glared at Gavin. "We were supposed to be, aye. That's why I be givin' you a chance to explain why you knobbed me woman."
"I done what?" Gavin stared incredulously. "I pay for my women, you know that!"
The tiefling moved in close. "That's not what Donnath done chant. Are you callin' 'im a liar?"
Gavin turned to look at the dwarf, who grinned back tonguelessly. How Rhaegar and Donnath communicated had always been something of a mystery. He bitterly regretted not having explored it more thoroughly.
"I've done no such thing. He must be mistaken," he said cautiously.
"Nah, that ain't right. You be callin' a poor mute a liar, 'ow's 'e gonna defend 'imself from a charge like that?" The writhing of Donnath's facial runes suggested the former Blood War jinkbasher had thought of a way, and it involved very sharp pieces of metal at very high speeds.
"I'm tellin' you, Rhaegar, as the Lady is my witness! I don't even know your woman!"
A fist like a catapult drove into his ribs, doubling him over. Gavin hauled himself upright and stared at Donnath with undisguised loathing. The dwarf maintained his grin, the runes twisting like dabus-droppings. Rhaegar leaned in, real close, smiling his most friendly smile. "Last night, Gavin. You and she. The Golden Paw."
"The whore?"
His cheek rocked from the forced of the blow. "Me woman," Rhaegar corrected. "Illythria. You knobbed 'er. 'Ow could you do that to me and me sweet Illythria?"
His whole body ached but his mind was sharp enough. He wasn't much for talking with the whores of the Hive -- it was generally depressing and their lingual talents were better spent elsewhere -- but he was generally careful to get a name. Hadn't it been "Caitry"? He was sure of it, he'd heard the other whores talking to her. Illythria could be Rhaegar's pet name for her, sure, or her official name, or maybe her real name... but no. There it was. Too soddin' typical. He should have damn well seen this coming.
"Since when have you been a doxylord?" he said heavily.
"Since mind yer own business, berk." Rhaegar's grin matched Donnath's so closely that, save for the height, the tattoos and Rhaegar's slightly batrachian features, they could have been twins.
"Does she know yet?"
"She will once she finds the body of 'er previous lord," Rhaegar replied equably. "Donnath here done find 'im all alone in some alleyway last night. Chopped into pieces with some nasty sharp steel, 'e was. And then some soddin' fiendlin' chewed up what hadn't been cut up, dontcha know?"
Gavin eyed Donnath's axe warily. The facial runes flickered into a fantastic scene of slaughter, but that could just have been his imagination.
"Anyways," Rhaegar continued, "You done despoil me woman, and now you must pay."
"How much?" He hoped he had enough jink on him to avoid another beating. Donnath's grin only seemed to grow sharper, and he was worried that soon not even Rhaegar would be able to keep him under control.
The big tiefling put his arm around Gavin. "Were you a normal fairy, I'd just charge you and let you fly away." He made some obscure hand-gestures that were probably supposed to be funny and utterly failed. Gavin chuckled anyway. "But we was mates, Gavin, we was friends! And friends don't take to friends turnin' on them so." His voice sharpened. "You'll 'ave to make plenty o' recompense to me for this treachery. And trust me, lad, I knows from treachery and I knows from recompense."
"Rhaegar, please, I wasn't to know..."
Sudden pain exploded in his groin. After a brief bout of retching he looked up to see Donnath grinning like a whetstone. He'd never noticed before, but the dwarf's teeth had been filed down to make way for some kind of green metal implants. He thought about last night's victim and shuddered.
Rhaegar hauled him upright with his gehreleth-spawned strength. "I think it's time for a new arrangement, lad. Out with the old, in with the new, eh? From now on, we're not mates. I ain't mates with no soddin' traitors. From now on, you dance when I says to dance, you chant when I says to chant, you pike it when I says to pike it... and from now on, Gav, you pays me a piece of all yer jobs, up front and regular as Mechanus, until I says your debt is cleared. From now on, you work for me."
Later that evening, he commiserated with Phraban who was nursing a broken arm and a nasty bite on his leg. It was cruel, brutal and unfair, of course, but they'd pay. That's life in the Cage for you.
Something was wrong.
Something was very wrong.
All the more so because everything had gone so right.
It hadn't been a very good plan. It had been a rorty beautiful plan, and it had worked like a soddin' charm. Sixty grand in merts from various Lady's Ward toffs funneled through a tso backhander to a lupinal Bloodhound in Eronia, then siphoned off in garnishes and grifts while pretending to fund a squadron of Prime adventurers "cleaning out" a yugoloth strongpoint on Mungoth. A carefully timed avalanche to wipe out all traces of the poor Cluelesses' misadventure and a carefully arranged accident in Torch to seal the deal. Beautiful.
Net result: sixty thousand merts, clear profit, between the four survivors. Enough to retire on. Enough to go straight. Enough to finally exorcise his demons.
Which is why he was so damn sure something was wrong.
He went over the plan again, looking for any loose ends. The toffs would blame the tso, the tso were convinced they'd been working for Shemeska, and the lupinal was sure the Primes had simply fallen to the rigors of the Fourfold Furnace. The baatezu and the tanar'ri spies had been convinced this was some intricate 'loth plot, while the 'loths had been carefully arrayed against one another with (he was particularly proud of this touch) the final evidence pointing to an unsuspecting eladrin noble wandering the Beastlands. Everyone who'd been involved in the setup had been bubbing in Torch when a rough'n'tumble between the Severed Hand and the Kindred of Yoj turned ugly, thus conveniently penning them all in the dead-book.
Not just beautiful: rorty beautiful. He'd be long dead by the time anyone figured all that out, if indeed they ever did. The survivors -- Phraban, himself, and the two Argyle brothers -- had profited too much to talk. It was perfect. So why was he sure something had gone wrong?
It was the Torch clean-up, he thought, as he wended his way through the reek of the Lower Ward. He hated killing, hated it with a fiery passion. Plus, he hadn't been there himself, hadn't personally verified that there had been no survivors. Sure, crystalline xeg-yi essence was notoriously unstable, especially near Gehennan fire-magics, but no plan was perfect. Was he sure that everyone was dead? Was he sure that all the evidence had been destroyed?
Then there was that bitch Tawny. He'd really wanted to drive the knife in himself. Pity. Well, at least she was dead now. Her bottom would only be twitching in his dreams.
He turned into the alleyway containing their rendezvous. He hadn't been followed, everyone had died in Torch, sixty grand was theirs for the keeping. Everything was as it should be. With a quick sigh of relief, he opened the door.
The antechamber was darker than it should have been. Phraban and the Argyles clearly hadn't lit the candles for fear of discovery. That made sense. It'd be a right mess if they'd peeled sixty thousand merts out of the Lady's Ward only to lose it all to some itinerant knight of the post. Fortunately, the inner room appeared well lit, so he went on in.
The third thing he noticed in the room was that all the furniture was intact. Whatever had happened here -- whoever had happened here -- had carefully put everything back in its place.
The second thing he noticed was that all the money was there. Sixty thousand merts lay in neat piles on a counting table, ready to be split four ways.
But the first thing he noticed was the blood.
Lots and lots and lots of blood.
Smears, stains, splashes everywhere. The walls were covered in it. The money glistened with it. The couch was drenched in it. Worse, he realized with a sickening jolt, it was covered with what were probably viscera. It wasn't like someone had butchered a fhorge in here, it was like someone had slaughtered a goristro. A whole soddin' army of them.
Gagging, he lurched forward, trying to find something to hold on to that wasn't covered in blood. He failed and slipped in a pile of intestines, fell down hard. Under the couch, the eyes of one of the Argyles stared back at him; his skull leered from a bookshelf ten feet away. He knew that those eyes belonged in that head because the other Argyle's head had been split in halves, one decorating each side of the room.
Still, he stayed somewhat calm. He'd been through the Meat Market of Jangling Hiter, he'd haggled with night hags on the Waste. Fear and panic could come later; for right now, it was important to take stock and to assess the danger he was in. Wrenching himself upright, he barely even flinched when he saw Phraban's tortured form crucified to the door. Time to grab the money and run. The Hardheads could be called later.
She walked out of the shadows.
He realized he'd been assuming that a fiend had scanned the peel. There were ways of dealing with them, ways you could survive just a little longer, ways you could remain intact. Even 'loths had their price. But this... Tawny? Sweet soddin' Styxwater, how was he supposed to deal with her? He didn't even know where to begin!
He relaxed with a sudden giggle. She really had been trying to kill him. Sorry, Phraban! he snickered silently. Looks like I was right after all!
She looked at him calmly, her beautiful features only enhanced by the wicked burn on her right cheek. "I don't blame you for trying to kill us," she said. "They'd've done the same to you."
He raked her body with his eyes. There was nothing lustful about it despite the smirk. He wanted to know what she was packing.
"But that's not why I'm here."
"Oh? Sixty thousand merts say you're a liar."
She insinuated herself forward, hips swaying in what he used to think was sexy. Without warning she smashed her hand on the table. The beautiful platinum coins flew everywhere. They sparkled like bloody stars; they jingled like sodden bells; they stilled like broken corpses. He wanted to fall to his knees in tears. So much money. So much blood.
Then he saw her eyes.
He remembered that trip to Jangling Hiter with a rush, how he'd tried to hold himself upright against the swaying of the city. How he'd shivered in the greasy dank of Minauros' drizzle, and how seasick he felt looking at the kytons, wafting easily amongst the chains, looking down on him. Once, just once, he'd caught a glimpse of a kyton's face -- its real face, he was sure of it, not the usual glamour -- and for a brief moment his blood had chilled still further at the gleam in its eyes. "You are meat," it seemed to whisper to him, "And I am hunger."
That look was in Tawny's eyes.
He'd survived Jangling Hiter because, deep down, he was convinced that it wasn't really real and that meant he hadn't truly been afraid. He was utterly convinced of Tawny's reality, but Sigil was his home and he'd be damned if some tarted up beast-trollop was going to push him around.
"Well, I guess I won't be bribing you," he babbled in a fear he didn't feel, edging his way backwards towards Phraban's excruciated corpse.
"No."
"Don't suppose I could maybe talk you out of this?"
"No."
"Not even a quickie round the bend?" Stupid, stupid, but it didn't matter, anything to mask his motions. She smiled, feral glints in her teeth, didn't deign to respond. He slammed down his irrational masculine anger; not yet.
"What about the Argyles? What about Phraban?" A careless gesture that was anything but. It had to be here somewhere...
"The Argyles were in the way. They didn't suffer much." He briefly wondered how she measured that, then went back to searching. "As for Phraban... he was complicit, but not guilty. He was punished accordingly."
Not there. She'd advanced almost to within reach. He had to take a risk. "Complicit? Guilty? I don't know what you're talking about..."
"Of course you do, sangtodt." He didn't recognize the word, didn't care. "You know exactly why I'm here." She stopped, stared at him, the angry twitching of her face not belying the calm madness of her eyes. "You brought this on yourself." Wait for it. "Jilina..."
He slumped in a despair he didn't allow himself to feel. "Of course..." ...he knew the answer already. What else could it have been? But the slumping allowed him one desperate lunge into the back of Phraban's sticky pockets and there! There! There it was!
He drew himself upright. "I guess I'm going to die then. Might as well die with dignity."
"There's a first time for everything," she growled.
"Let me offer you a bribe first, though. Here!" He tossed the black crystal high over her shoulder to the other side of the room.
She turned reflexively, the fire in her body not allowing her to think. Her brow furrowed. "What the..."
He yanked the door open, dropped the ring he'd been holding, and ran like hell. The lights went out briefly, and a gaping silence behind him told him all he needed to know: the ring of dust reacted as catastrophically with the crystalline xag-ya essence as he had planned.
Being caught in an explosion of negative energy must have been a horrible way to die. But the bitch had been trying to kill him, and he spared her no tears.
The words echoed in his head.
You brought this upon yourself.
Liar. Murderer. Traitor.
You brought this upon yourself, and now you will pay the price.
"The problem, see, the problem... the problem is that how do you know what you're doing is evil? I mean, sure, someone else might think what you're doing is wrong, see, but maybe you think it's right. Maybe it's justified by the situation. Maybe in your world it ain't evil. In fact," slurred Gavin as he waved the bottle, "this whole notion of absolute good and evil has to be screed, right? Since the Wheel is what we believe, and what we believe ain't solid, right..."
Phraban gave the slight smile Gavin was learning to recognize as cultured-acceptance-of-barbarian-ways. "It is given that there is much we do not understand. Perhaps the gods decide what is Good and what is Evil. Perhaps we are not as free in our beliefs as we wish to believe. Perhaps absolute is relative. Who are we, mere mortals that we are, to say?"
"Bollocks!" snarled Rhaegar with his usual cheery belligerence. "Bollocks to all that. Who gives a toss about all tha' philosophicious mumbledy-jumbledy, huh? We be here, the Wheel be what it be, and there be opportunities aplenty for men like us what see the 'verse for what it be. Another pint, bub's yer uncle, and up the nancy with a pike, hey!"
It was amazing, thought Gavin blearily, how much condescension Phraban could display simply by fingering the stem of his wineglass. It was equally amazing how much scorn Rhaegar could display by smashing his flagon against his head. Well, scorn or near-fatal amounts of bub; with Rhaegar it was sometimes hard to tell. Their choice of drinks spoke volumes: Phraban with his intensely spiced bitter Arborean bloodwine, Rhaegar with whatever beverage he could find, provided it could be used to strip the paint off the walls.
Gavin himself was drinking a delightful little Ysgardian vintage that went down like water and came back up like dragon's breath. He leaned back in bubbed-up bliss and watched the two of them fence over the more obscure (and obscene) portions of Sigil's rhyming slang. Gavin wasn't very good at it, though he tried damn hard. Too hard, Rhaegar said, cant had to be natural or it sounded daft. His linguistic skills lay with concocting alliterative expostulations and then passing them off as native speak. By now, he could fool most any tourist as good as any tout, and some of Sigil's upper crust had even been heard using his phrases when they wanted to "speak like the common folk". There'd be some way to profit off that, he was sure, but for right now he enjoyed the delicious irony and the status it gave him, a real Sigilian at last.
"Concocting alliterative expostulations"? Damnation, he was drunk. No-one talked like that sober, leastaways not in the Hive.
Sigil's a huge place, see, and many a berk has been lost in its vastness. Not Gavin, though: for the first time in his twenty-three years, he was home. Trouble was, just because he was home didn't mean other people saw it that way. No matter how well you fit, you have to pay your dues. First thing he'd done was to use the party's purse to secure himself a room in the Hive, no questions asked. The second and far harder thing to do was to find himself a few mates, cutters to watch his back when the laugh needed to be given.
It would have been fairly easy to pair up with some other tourist yobbo but that would have marked Gavin himself as a tourist and that was strictly unacceptable. He might have been born on a Prime backwater but, by Glorium's godbothering gargoyles, he was a native of Sigil at heart, and a native of Sigil would be how he'd live.
Rhaegar and Phraban raised their voices a tad.
"A fairy, see? It's a man what avails himself of a skirt. A female. For jingle-jingle-jink!"
"I see. And from whence does this particular gem come?"
"It's cant, berk! It's rhymin'! Every plane's got somethin' like it!"
"So I gathered." Phraban quirked his lip. Gavin was beginning to realize that Phraban might be the laziest sod in the 'verse; he never moved a muscle when half-moving one would do. "Mine doesn't."
"Yeah, well you clearly don't come from a civilized plane, ha!" Rhaegar bellowed with jovially bellicose laughter, clearly feeling that he had proven a point. Phraban half-smiled, clearly agreeing, just not on what point had been proven.
It was amazing how easy it had been, making mates in this strange City At The Center Of Everything. Well, maybe not that amazing: everyone here was looking for something, and sometimes someone would do. Phraban was renting a room opposite him in the Lower Ward. Recognizing the Clueless for what he was, Phraban had taken Gavin on a quick trip around the Cage. They'd stopped in some Yesi-forsaken -- no, no, that was the old way talking, try "Powers-be-damned" instead -- tavern as the glare of peak faded into dusk, where they'd literally run into Rhaegar. Gavin gaped in awe at the huge tiefling, the first Carcerian he'd ever seen, then guiltily down at the bub spilled over his front. He was a deader for sure.
But Rhaegar, bless his mercurial ways, started laughing, that same jovially bellicose laughter he'd just used, and invited Phraban and Gavin over for a drink. It had been the look on Gavin's face, he said a few rounds later; this "poor lil' lemon, all innocence and Cluelesslike, wif da look on his face like he's just seen a pit fiend wif his skivvies down!" had so amused him that he just knew they were going to be "the best o' mates!" And here they were, a month later, best mates indeed.
A sudden bump on his leg made Gavin look down. Donnath's pointed grin smiled back up at him. He shuddered; the dwarf was just downright creepy. Those facial tattoos? Even creepier. Rhaegar he could get along with, he knew the type. Keep them smiling, keep them happy, wrap your smarts around their stupidity until they dance to your tune. A mute dwarven mercenary chewed up and spat out by the Blood War? That was a whole different matter.
Still, you didn't often get a chance to choose your mates and here in the Cage, a berk to watch your back was worth more than your weight in merts. A month ago he'd been a Clueless Prime fresh off the lemon tree, with nothing to his name but the jink he'd nicked off the party and a fire in his breast; now here he was with three good friends, one happy family. The night was young, the doxies were ample, and he had a purse of stingers burning a hole in his breeches. He leaned back in drunken satisfaction, listened to Phraban and Rhaegar exchange barbs, and smiled.
You're never down but you're up. That's life in the Cage for you.
"The problem," Gavin groused, "is that I am not, by nature, faithful."
Phraban raised a delicate eyebrow. "You've been with other women? I thought you and Jilina..."
"Oh no, no! Physically we're fine." He ignored Phraban's none-too-subtle flash of amusement. "I mean, faithful to her way of life."
Sipping his wine thoughtfully, Phraban stated, "My friend, I do not understand."
"Well... Lina thinks I'm good, right? That deep down, I'm some kind of hero."
"I must confess, I do not understand that either."
Gavin shot a dirty look at Phraban's suddenly inscrutable face. For a man who never moved a muscle unless he had to, Phraban could emote loudly enough to satiate a salon of Sensates. He took a bite of the tavern's tapas and swirled it down with a gulp of wine. For some reason, as often happened when he talked about Jilina in her absence, he felt compelled to be honest.
"I do."
Phraban raised a delicate eyebrow again. Gavin resisted the urge to rip it off his head.
"OK, fine, not completely. But I sorta get it, y'know? I mean, I dunno what the baatezu did to her, or were going to do to her, but it piked her up but good. A lesser sod would've had her brainbox shattered, ended up a barmy addle-cove all loopy-loony-like. But Jilina, she's strong. Hende strong, though she don't look it. Not in a spellslingin' swordswingin' kinda way, the real deal: strength in spirit.
"So she didn't go barmy, but that don't mean she didn't break. It's just that the breaks ain't obvious. She's convinced herself that since there are devils, there must be heroes. Real heroes. Like in the stories. It's enough to drive you mad."
"You do not agree?"
Gavin picked at his food moodily. "I'm there are heroes somewhere. But this is Sigil. The only heroes here are the ones what died before the fiends could peel'em proper. We're surrounded by Blood War effluvium, and you can't swim in a river of shit without getting dirty."
"And yet, you stay." Phraban's lip quirked ever-so-slightly.
"Hells yeah! It's the best damn city in the 'verse, no two ways about it!" said Gavin with the intense pride of someone who'd never been anywhere else he chose to recall. Sobering quickly, he continued, "But, see, I don't mind it. The Cage's dirty and so am I. So are we," he added, daring Phraban to disagree. He didn't. "We peel and bob without remorse 'cause we know that no-one in the Cage is innocent. If nothing else, they're guilty of being Cagers, and any Cager gets peeled deserves what he gets! Truth is, though, everyone's guilty of something else, something real, so what does it matter if we get our hands dirty too? We're all covered in shit, let's at least live well off it."
"An excellent rationalization," said Phraban. He was serious.
"But Lina, see, she don't see it that way. She seems to think there's a difference between choosing to dive in and just getting doused by accident. As if you smell any better. It ain't just the Blood War, neither. Every exemplar is out to prove a point, and prove it in blood. What in the name of Hades' hallowed hells are we supposed to do? We're pawns in sixty billion games at once! We can't be clean!"
"Jilina?" prompted Phraban.
"Jilina, right." Gavin sighed. "She believes in heroes, which is bad enough, but she believes I'm a hero, which is worse. Me! A hero! I come back from a hard day's grift and she just looks at me with those big brown eyes and believes in me!"
"Which are you more afraid of, friend: that she proves wrong, or that she proves right?" said Phraban, almost casually.
Gavin stopped as if struck. Phraban got out his long silver chopsticks and toyed with the food. Finally, Gavin admitted, "I don't know. But it doesn't matter, 'cause I'm not a hero, nor will I ever be. I'll never be worthy."
"The foundation of a long-term relationship."
"Yeah. That's what I keep telling myself. Truth is, though, that she's good in bed and I like how she thinks I can do no wrong, and neither of those can last."
In silence, Phraban snagged and ate a fried sweetmeat. Gavin poked something with too many tentacles. It was good they were friends, this would be soddin' embarrassing otherwise.
"Talking about her, it makes you... uncomfortable?" Phraban asked.
"Yeah," Gavin replied shortly.
"The purpose of your relationship... it is...?" Phraban stopped as Gavin colored. "Hmmm... most odd. Relationships should be to fulfill your need for pleasure; why don't you..."
"I don't know, dammit!"
"Ah." Phraban gave Gavin his full, disconcerting gaze. "I suspected as much. My congratulations, and my pity."
Gavin tried to stare back, but failed. He prodded the tentacles instead. "To think, she was supposed to be cheaper than a doxy..." He suddenly remembered why he'd called Phraban here, pulled out the sheet of paper. It smoked in the light. "She thinks I'm a soddin' hero," he chuckled, more in hysteria than humor.
"Then we shall not talk of it further," Phraban said with finality. Looking down, he pursed his lips slightly. Gavin recognized this as his putting-aside-frivolities-and-getting-down-to-business expression and relaxed. This he could deal with...
"So, my friend. Tell me about this 'gambling problem'."
He woke screaming. Something to do with a man, a greeting, the Lady of Pain... thank Stygia's sweet sirens, the nightmare was loosing its grip. Once he'd bathed and washed the sweat from his sheets it'd be like it never happened.
And if he said that often enough, he might begin to believe it.
Lurching out of bed, Gavin blearily put the kettle on. While it was coming to a boil he glanced at himself in the mirror, grabbed a piece of bread from the basket he'd "liberated" last night and tried to slather it with enough jam to make it palatable. He sat at the table, choking down moldy bread and bitter tea, trying to marshal his thoughts, trying to calm himself down, trying to prepare himself for the day ahead. Naught to worry 'bout, nothing to see, the Red Death's just playing tricks on me, so ran the old rhyme. How apt it was. He began to relax, muscles easing ever so slightly. Then it hit him:
He didn't own a mirror.
He whipped around, spewing tea and bread everywhere. It was an ordinary-enough mirror, utterly unremarkable in its way, which meant it was horribly out of place in this blexty little kip.
What in the name of Baalzebul's burning bollocks was it doing here?
He was reaching out to touch it when he noticed something... odd. Something not quite right. Something wrong with his reflection. Flinching, he remembered too late that mirrors could be magic: they could twist your body into strange and unnatural shapes or even steal your soul. But nothing happened. Gritting his teeth, he looked at himself head-on.
He winced immediately, covering his eyes in agony. He should have seen himself, his slightly roguish good looks now strained by stress and fear; instead, looking at the mirror was like being hammered in the face. Peeking through his fingers, he managed to see a bloody smear where his body should have been before the pain forced him to shut his eyes again. It was getting a little easier to bear, though. That boded well for the future if he survived the present.
He ran his hands over his body, keeping his eyes closed tight, trying to discern whether he'd actually changed form or not. Everything seemed to be in its usual place -- still sweat-soaked from the dream, but otherwise intact -- and he relaxed marginally. Whatever this thing was, it didn't appear to be real. That was something at least. He peeked at his reflection again and, as he suspected, the pain was manageable this time, a dull throb in his head like a bruise behind his eyeballs that had never healed. Within a few more minutes, his reflection had cleared somewhat, enough to confirm that he was still who he thought he was.
Except that he appeared to be covered with some kind of weird red miasma, weeping over him like blood. Only over him, though; the rest of the reflection was perfectly normal.
He looked down at himself. As far as he could tell he looked exactly the same as he had last night: no bruise, no pain, no miasma, no blood. He looked in the mirror again: the room crystal-clear, his body blurred and indistinct beneath the crimson haze. He looked down again, then at the reflection again, then took a seat. Whatever was going on, it didn't seem to be affecting him directly, and that meant he'd have time to think. Time to figure out what in the Abyss was going on here, time to figure out when he'd be able to see a wizard or a miracle-worker to analyze and maybe fix the problem. It wasn't like he lacked for jink nowadays and it would be no use to him if he were cursed or dead. Enough people had died, it was time to live.
The mirror shattered.
His heart slammed into his chest. His throat constricted. He couldn't breathe. Slowly, he turned to face the mirror. It hadn't shattered randomly. The jagged breaks formed three neat words.
You Are Mine.
The dream had been real. He was out of time. He was a marked man.
She was still shaken from her ordeal with the fiend, so Gavin was especially solicitous. He gave her soup, privacy and a bed, with no apparent desire for anything in return. She accepted obediently, gratitude being too much for right now. There would be time for that later.
The next morning she woke to find him boiling a kettle and breaking bread. He looked at her once, smiled at her to make sure she had recovered, then sipped his tea while appearing lost in thought. Emboldened by the space, she crept forward and took some food. He smiled at her again, pleased; she tentatively smiled back.
When the meal was finished, she looked directly at him and said, "Who are you?"
It was only the second time she had spoken.
"Gavin," he replied. "Gavin Hollowscomb."
She looked at him gravely. "And who is that?"
He told her. Told her how he'd come to Sigil, how he'd met Phraban and Rhaegar and Donnath. He told her about his doggerel writing and his occasional foray into the seamier sides of information gathering. He told her everything.
It was a pack of lies, of course, but it was also the truth. Just... edited somewhat. A girl like this, she was too fragile to hear the truth. She'd probably always be too fragile.
She seemed intoxicated by his tales so he kept going. He told her about the first time he'd come across the name Shemeska. He told her about the trips he'd made to Jangling Hiter, haggling for special chains amidst the reek of the Meat Market, reveling in her appreciative gasps of horror.
Still, he edited. He didn't tell her about Donnath's penchant for castration, or what they'd actually done with those chains. He neglected to mention the various peels and bobs he'd committed along the way, about that time he'd sent an entire Arborean legation on its way to Acheron without their peace offerings. The only story he'd told her that was fundamentally honest was about the time he'd been procuring the souls of the damned from a grizzled night hag in Oinos; the memory of his spirit spilling out onto the ground so unnerved him that he couldn't muster a lie. Fortunately, the shining in his eyes told him he didn't have to.
"You are very brave," she said.
"No, I'm not," he demurred. That was also the truth: he'd never really believed in anything but himself. And the jink had been too good to pass up.
When he finally came to a close, she smiled shyly and said, "You've forgotten something."
"Oh?"
"One ordinary day in Sigil, you rescued a woman. Her name was Jilina of the clan Gaienya, and she owed you everything."
"What did that fiend want with you, anyway?"
Jilina paled slightly. "My family made a promise. I was the one who was chosen."
Gavin nodded. He'd heard that story, or one like it, a dozen times over. There was no need to press the issue; a Cager's past was sacrosanct as long as it stayed there. He started to clean away the meal -- a bit of a lost cause in the Lower Ward -- and let Jilina regain her composure. When he judged she was ready, he dropped a small pouch in front of her.
"A little something to help you get on your feet," he said. Had he misjudged her?
She looked at the pouch, brow furrowing. There was plenty of jink in there, perhaps more than he could really afford. She looked up at his studiously neutral face.
Swallowing, Jilina said, "I was wondering... could I maybe stay here for a while?"
Jackpot.
He came in quietly. He could barely recognize their kip any more, she'd fixed it up so much. The walls were smooth and painted. Strategically located curtains gave the illusion of space and privacy. A few pieces of art and some robust plants made the place not just livable but actually pleasant -- and in the Lower Ward, no less! For Gavin, who understood neither paint, nor fabric, nor flowers, nor art, this was a minor miracle.
From the sounds of it, Jilina was washing the dishes. Not like Gavin, who'd simply scrubbed the worst of the muck off dented pewter blackened by the coarse Sigilian air, no, she'd scrimped and saved and bought real dishes made of finest Belieran clay as well as a special soap to go with them. Amazing, given that they hadn't been able to afford them. But that was Jilina through and through. She cast a spell on everyone that had nothing to do with magic.
The curtain to the kitchen had slipped. He'd fix it in a bit; for now, he just watched her. She lacked in places where he liked them ample, even as she had excesses where he preferred them discreet. She was harsh, too, the softness of her youth burned away by Sigil's indifference. Yet as she hummed aimlessly, up to her arms in soapy water, his heart constricted.
"Lina..."
She turned, beaming. "Hey," she said.
"Lina..." His throat was dry.
Concern shrouded her smile. "Gavin? What's wrong?"
"We need to talk."
"Sure. I'll be with you in a moment."
He sat on the couch -- furniture! they had furniture now! -- while she dried up. It wasn't meant to be like this, he said to himself silently. It was supposed to be easy. A garnish given for jink repaid. Why did it end up being so complicated? Why had she ended up being so complicated?
She came out, sat facing him. Her face was calm. He hated that. "What's wrong?" she asked.
"Lina... do you know what a 'gambling problem' is?"
She pursed her lips in an unconscious imitation of Phraban. "You don't do that any more, you told me," she said briskly. "You've changed."
"Jilina," he rarely used her full name any more, "do you know what it is?"
She paused. She'd never really scanned the cant. Nor had he, for that matter, but at least he could fake it. Eyes clouded, she shook her head. "If it doesn't have to do with dice or cards..."
"No. The Blood War."
That stopped her cold. He watched her closely, tried to figure out what she was thinking. No luck. "You'd better tell me, then," she said.
Swallowing hard, he said, "A lot of sods refer to the politics around the Wheel as The Game. Fiends picked up on it, and some of 'em were amused enough to apply it to the Blood War."
"That's plausible."
"So, see, 'gambling' refers to make wagers on The Game."
"Yes, it would. And a 'gambling problem'?"
"That would be when you pick the wrong side."
She stared off into space. "And what would you be doing picking sides?"
Sweating with unfeigned nervousness, he tried to explain. About how one of his investments had fallen through. About how his creditors had gotten anxious, gotten dangerous. About how he had needed a large amount of jink, no questions asked, by sundown. About how he and Phraban, drunk and disconsolate, had happened to overhead a bubbed-up abishai boasting about a baatific strike force aimed at the tanar'ri flank. About how they'd run off to the nearest wagger, selling the information at an exorbitant price, only to find out that the abishai had been stone-cold sober. About how furious Oblixtchzyk had been...
Throughout the litany of hard luck and bad choices -- "Very bad. Very stupid. I see that now. Hells, I knew that then, but I thought, just once more, and I'm done." -- Jilina had not looked at him once. Sometimes the flowers were intensely interesting. Sometimes it was the curtains. Once, she had furrowed her brow at a crack in the wall. Anywhere but him.
She continued her inspection of their kip long after he'd finished talking. He waited and waited. Finally, she said, "I see."
She knows! he thought in a sudden flash of horror. He squelched that thought, hard. When they had first met, he could read and write her like a book. Now she was as much a mystery to him as Her Serenity, and he suspected he'd become the mark.
He waited for the inevitable, "So, what are you going to do now?"
"I need you to come with me."
"To see this Obichip..."
"Oblixtchzyk. He's very particular."
"Whatever-his-name-is, to see him. Why?"
He swallowed again. Phraban had been unusually blunt.
"Because I'm going to need a witness. In case I don't come back."
"This Oblicky... what's his connection to all this?"
"Oblixtchzyk. We sold him the information. Hundreds died. His reputation's shot. He's foaming."
He didn't say anything more. Neither did she. Her silence was deafening. It demanded an answer. "Listen, I told you, we went to him. It was a baatezu peel."
"And I'm a witness because...?"
"I told you. This is between Oblixtchzyk, Phraban and me. No-one else. If you come along as a witness, the Guvners will protect you; not even the tanar'ri will try to bob the Triad of Law on a matter this trivial. It's the only way to be safe."
"I thought you said hundreds died."
"They did. But they're tanar'ri. They don't care."
Once again, he had the terrifying feeling that she knew he was lying and she knew he knew she knew. Once again, he squelched it. He was in enough trouble already without worrying about more.
"This is not my problem," Phraban had said. "Make it go away."
Bastard. They were supposed to be partners. Of course, that's what Phraban had said to him.
"We're here," Gavin said, stopping at a nondescript door in the Clerk's Ward.
"Doesn't look like much," she observed.
"It's not supposed to. Come on."
They stepped inside a dingy room where a paunchy man stood waiting. "Friend!" he cried in the dulcet tones of a catamite locked in a barracks bath-house. "I'm so delighted you've returned! I was getting worried!"
Gavin glared at him. He might have been vulnerable in his kip, but no-one threatened him like that on the streets of Sigil. Not even the one who...
"Change," said Gavin shortly. "I'll see who I'm dealing with."
"Of course," simpered the man, rolls of fat bouncing merrily. "I won't be a moment!"
"You sound just like you did with the cornugon," said Jilina in a low voice after the man had traipsed off. Gavin didn't know how to take that. He was spared answering by the fat man's return.
"You look just the same," said Jilina accusingly.
The man's grin was suddenly fierce, brutal. "Do I?" he leered. "Dearie me. I should do something about that."
Without warning, he began to stretch upwards. The rolls of fat tautened, became muscle, then something beyond muscle. His arms lengthened, the fingers elongated, the nails hooked out into claws. In one horrid motion, his body spurted up still higher leaving his shoulders behind; they sank, quivering, into the front of his chest. His face rippled outwards, becoming vulpine, lupine, canine all at once. Two huge pincer-tipped arms ripped from his sides, clacking with blood-filled lunacy. Half again as tall as a man, the glabrezu snarl-howled above them in greeting.
Throughout all these transformations two things remained constant: Oblixtchzyk's eyes and his smile.
Bad enough that you were a murderer and a thief, he had said, but I do not punish moral failings. That is for the Planes. I answer to a higher power.
It was inevitable, he mused, that Tawny would have survived the explosion. Some things can't be stopped by normal means.
He'd gone back to the ill-fated rendezvous to collect the money. The room itself was like something out of a nightmare; enough residual negative energy remained to make the horrors more vivid, the reek of spoiled mortality more pronounced. Most of the coins were intact, though, if horribly warped, and it would do his soul good to give Phraban a proper farewell.
No trace of Tawny, though.
True, there was a gaping hole where the xag-ya distillate had exploded, but she hadn't been anywhere near that. Therefore, she'd survived. Therefore, she'd be coming to kill him.
Therefore, he'd have to take steps.
He hated killing, hated it more than ever. Even when the victims were truly deserving -- and their team had been carefully selected to ensure that that criterion was met in blades -- it sickened him. Tawny was insane, of that he had no doubt, but he had to admit that she had a pretty good reason to want him dead. Could he do it? Could he kill her in cold blood? Could he bring himself to do what must be done?
He'd have to. There was no other way.
It cost him a lot of jink to arrange things. In days gone by he'd've wet himself dreaming about that kind of money. Now he spent it like water, and with as much care. And then he waited.
She came for him, as he knew she would.
It had taken him some time to find this building. In days gone by, the Godsmen had used it to conduct metallurgic experiments. After a brief time as a warehouse, it had been reduced to another cavity buried under dabus debris. The perfect place for this to end.
He knew she'd arrived when the stale air suddenly thickened and his lungs felt that old familiar burn. Trying not to gag on the Lower Ward air, he turned and prepared himself for the inevitable.
"I've been waiting," he said.
Did this bode well or ill? He couldn't say. The beauty of this forgotten place was that that corridor was the only way in or out. Once Tawny entered, only one of them would leave.
She walked forward slowly, her features obscured by the inadvertently dramatic backlighting. The familiar sway was gone. In its place was a dull stride that looked like every muscle in her body ached. His loins ached for her in return. That wouldn't be a problem now, though; his blood ached stronger still.
"Gavin," she said. "It's been too long."
He said nothing, let her take stock of his newfound calm. The tables were turning, he could feel it. Where she had once been in control, he would be the master.
She stepped forward, revealing a face drained of its luster. Mottled discolorations -- no, not discolorations, absence-of-colorations -- wracked her once-beautiful features. Her hair was grey and lank. Her skin was cracked like a statue that had been broken and too-hastily reassembled. His loins jolted, confused. To think he had once desired her! He stifled a hysterical giggle; now was not the time to laugh.
The burning in her eyes brought Gavin back to sanity. "Yes," he replied. "This has been too long. It ends tonight." This clearly caught her by surprise: it was her line, not his. "But not, alas, for you or I. For her." He gestured to the other room.
Tawny's eyes widened as she saw the child.
"It's a bluff," she said. "An illusion."
He smiled sadly. "No. It had to be real." And they both knew this was true.
"It took a long time to find her," he said. "I had to scour the Outlands. But it helped that I knew where to look."
"You bastard," she breathed. "How?"
"There was a horrible raid about thirty years ago," he said conversationally. "A baatezu strike force, aiming at the eladrin they hate so dear, got lost on the Great Road and took out their frustrations on the village of Gambol, near Faunel and the Beastlands. Legendary massacre; find the right ratatosk and they'll talk about all day.
"So anyways, two hundred people all slaughtered. Most of'em killed in the first hour, but some were slowly tortured to death in the finest baatific tradition. And that was it. No-one mourned their passing 'cause no-one knew save those that didn't care. But here's the rub. Every last member of that strike force wound up penned in the dead-book. Every last one of them! Not that unusual for Baator, of course, but that got me thinking.
"What if not everyone had been killed? What if the baatezu left a survivor? Maybe someone they thought was dead? Or at least, too insignificant to care about?
"Maybe... a child?
"We'll never know, 'course, 'cause the baatezu scoured all traces of the village. Clean as a kocrachon's whistle, it is. But still... it's intriguing. And what's more intriguing still is that all those little villages -- Gambol, Frolix, Larking -- they're all related. I could say something about the morality of it all, couldn't I, but I ain't a priest and this ain't about morals.
"It cost me a small fortune, but I've jink to melt nowadays. D'you know, some fiends actually value entropic platinum more than normal merts? Dearie me, what money can buy.
Like this girl."
He paused, let it sink in.
"She's a darling child, Tawny, so lithe and bonny and gay. Well, she was until that abishai got to her; I'm simply not good enough at wordplay to cover all the loopholes. Still, behind the muck and grime and that crippled arm, she looks... familiar, wouldn't you say? I can only imagine what a beauty she'd be if she had a chance to grow up."
The rage boiling off her ravaged features told him everything he needed to know.
"I'll tell you this much, Tawny: I don't know who this brat is and I don't care. But you do. And so I offer you a choice: Take your best shot at me. Or save the girl."
There was a long pause while Tawny inspected the trap. It was too obvious, he saw her reason: the girl, suspended by fraying ropes, over a pit filled with fuming liquid. If it were any more hackneyed the Sensates would include it at next year's Clichéfest.
"What's the catch?" she said at last.
He smiled, shrugged. "You'd better hurry," he said noncommittally, "I don't think they'll hold for much longer."
The lunatic serenity of her eyes shuddered, then cracked into a thousand white-hot fragments. Anger. Good old-fashioned, all-too-human anger. "I have you now," he exulted silently, delighting in her fall from unreachable heights. None of that showed, though; instead, he smiled gently and said, "Would you have done to her what was done to you?"
Her hand whipped around like a scorpion's sting, rocking him back on his heels. Her mouth chewed words she was unable to speak. She gathered herself enough to spit in his face and slapped him once again. As her incoherent cursing filled the air, he laughed and laughed and laughed: he'd won, and they both knew it.
She couldn't bring herself to call his bluff.
Still raging, she raced into the chamber to rescue the girl, never realizing that the terror in child's eyes was not for herself but for Tawny. She hacked at the ropes with a desperation she probably hadn't felt since she was a girl. For a moment it looked like she'd succeed.
He sprang the trap.
The iron door slammed down. He heard the hissing of vitriol. The screams were terrible. The little child's wails melded and clashed with Tawny's bestial howls. He did not move. The door thundered as Tawny struck it with all her might. The girlish cries abruptly deliquesced into faint bubbling. He did not move. Tawny's voice rose, wracked with pain, and hurled blood-curses into the void. He did not move.
Her voice stopped.
He did not move.
The hissing finally ceased. The door opened. The reek hit him like a physical blow. Acid spilled out in rivulets tainted with bloody gobs of flesh. Two meaty skeletons grinned at him in agony.
He walked away.
It was over. It was finally over.
No. Please, no. Not this. Anything but this.
It had been seven long days since the mirror had broken and Gavin was running scared. Everywhere he went, everywhere he ran, he was a marked man and people were whispering. The little girl whose coat he stole, the old man he'd given it to when his conscience got the better of him... all gone. Devas made holy signs at his passing. Yugoloths blanched at his shadow. Even dabuses, the Lady's Fingers themselves, stopped working whenever he came near, staring at him with alien regret.
He couldn't take it any more so he'd done something extraordinarily stupid: he'd made a deal with the devil. This particular devil was a grossly obese pit fiend called Orotoros who was well known around Sigil for appetites that could not be sated back in the orderly domains of Baator. If a blood could peel a pit fiend, the chant went, Orotoros'd be the one it happened to, but pity the poor berk who failed. Truth was, he'd never heard of anyone actually outwitting a pit fiend. He didn't care. The torments of Baator could wait for a few years; for right now, he was marked and he needed the kind of protection only a princeling fiend could give.
He'd signed the contract that morning. Orotoros had been his usual bloated self, all public decadence and private, well, decadence too. The pit fiend was playing with a courre, tormenting the tiny celestial by making her pin her melody to a page then correct it until it adhered to proper Baatific standards, but he looked up quickly enough from his pleasures when Gavin walked in.
“You're the bugger what's been causing all this ruckus,” the fiend had smiled amiably.
“Yeah.”
“And blimey, don't you look cursed!” Orotoros cuffed the courre, who flapped off as well as she could under the weight of the wing-braces, and reached into a desk drawer to pull out a pair of spectacles. They looked incongruously frail on the pit fiend's robust features and incongruously civilized for someone with foot-long fangs. Grumbling softly to himself, Orotoros eyed Gavin for a few minutes.
“Open your mouth,” the fiend instructed. He did.
“Say aaaaaargh.” He did that too, feeling somewhat stupid.
“Well, whatever it is, it's not contagious. Strange, though. Haven't seen its like before. Still, I'm sure Baator will be happy to welcome you to its glorious fold. Here's the contract we were discussing.”
Gavin signed it without even looking at the paper. Orotoros raised what passed for eyebrows. “It's traditional for you to at least pretend to understand the subtleties of Baatific contract law,” he chided.
“Do I stand a chance?”
“Not really, no,” the pit fiend admitted.
“Then why bother?” he shrugged.
Orotoros stared at Gavin. Had Gavin been Clueless once more, he would have been disturbed by the sudden intelligence that flashed across those grotesque features. As it was he simply stared back and after a short moment Orotoros returned the shrug.
“As you wish.” The pit fiend had named a time and a location for the “finalizing”, and that was that.
So here he was. This was the place, all right, but something was off. Where were the baroque demonstrations of power? Where was the subtle malevolence of Baator? Where was the overly-done nonchalance that signified a place of power? This looked like any other dilapidated flophouse anywhere in Sigil.
Then again, Orotoros was known for his whimsy.
Gavin opened the door and nothing was there. Sweet Yesi Viridus, he thought, not again. These blasted fiends, they're all alike. Scare the mortal, hurt him, make him cry. It's only a matter of time. Blah blah blah. Let's get it over with.
It was only after he had paused there for several minutes that he realized that he was, irrationally, afraid. Not the entirely rational fear of the fiend and his plots: that was absent. No, he was afraid of something else that rose unbidden from the depths of his heart.
"You Are Mine," the message had said. And Gavin, for the first time, viscerally knew that this was true.
He walked down the hallway, sure now that something was going to jump out of the shadows, something dark and horrible from the worst pit of Hell, something he could honestly fear and understand and accept. But there was nothing. No chains, no scaly hides, no acidic sputum, no being at all. And still the fear grew in him.
There was something, though, he realized with a start. A smell. Ever so faint, like a woman's perfume that danced and frolicked on the nose. This was no lady though; there was a rot in her that wormed snakelike into his mouth and lay its brood within his tongue. The subtle reek gibbered and mocked him for the coward he was and still nothing came forth to frighten him. And still his terror grew.
At the end of the hallway was a door. It went to his doom. So he opened it, hoping to be free.
He was acquainted -- usually from a great distance -- with the darkest heart of Baator, of the darkness so deep and vibrant it was alive and of the terrors that dwelled within, but this was not that darkness. It was simply the absence of light. He automatically reached for an ensorcelled candle near the door, waved it on, watched a dozen wicks burst into flame, before he began to choke on the asphyxiating reek. No woman now, she was a leprous hag throttling the life from his lungs and he fell to a knee before he saw the source.
Looking at it, he rose. Looking at it, he saw his doom. And Orotoros looked back.
A pit fiend is a huge creature of muscle and bone, of sinew and ichor, bound together by malice and hate. Subtle, immensely intelligent, gifted with magics that can devastate a legion in the blink of an eye, even a weak pit fiend is a terror to behold and Baator does not accept weakness. Part of what makes them so terrifying is that no-one knows what makes them tick, no-one can figure out what they're planning, no-one can predict how their secret plans will suddenly uncoil and strike.
It had never occurred to him to take one apart to find out.
Orotoros' corpulent body lay spread-eagled on a slab in front of him, naked beyond absence of clothes. Silver spikes the length of a man's arm were hammered through his limbs to keep the pit fiend in place. Subtle gashes ran the length of the pit fiend's body, the skin pulled back and held in place with silver pins, exposing the innermost secrets of his being. His viscera had been removed and unwound in a garish display. His mouth was propped open by a vice and his tongue wriggled limply in a glass jar. Gavin could even see that Orotoros' skull had been peeled back and silver pins inserted into particular lobes of the brain: the speech center, the psionic center, the magic center, the center of self.
It was a perfectly precise anatomy lesson from hell.
And yet, for all the seeming care with which the incisions were made, it was clear that their precision was a facade. Some of the cuts went too deep. Some of the flesh was too mangled. Some of the viscera were too damaged. Orotoros had tried to fight and the victor had not been content to merely vanquish him: Orotoros had been humiliated. The marks of chaos were upon him as carelessly as the marks of order, from a power so great it had made the pit fiend less than a child.
Worst of all, though, were the eyes. Dark, maleficent eyes of infernal cunning now moist with mortal tears. And though Orotoros could not speak and though he could not touch Gavin's mind, still the pit fiend's gaze spoke as eloquently now as he had ever spoken before.
"Help me."
Gavin had no idea how long he stood there staring at Orotoros. It might have been a minute. It might have been a day. But a slight movement broke the stillness like a thunderclap and announced the presence of another. He saw the eyes first, flat mirrors of dispassionate madness glinting in the candlelight, then the body moved into view.
The last time Gavin had seen this man he had been praying to the Lady of Pain. Now he was here, in the flesh, and he looked exactly like he had in the dream. For a brief moment Gavin tried to connect dreams and reality but his thoughts fell to pieces. The man was too real to allow such follies.
A silence.
Gavin waited, and waited, and waited for the man to say something, to do something, for anything to happen, but nothing did. His nerves were stretched raw. Finally, he blurted out, "Well?"
"Well what?" The man didn't really have a voice. That was too human for the sound. It was more like the words were simply made present in the air.
"Aren't you going to... I mean... you must..." He could find no words.
"No." Short, clipped, final.
"But why not? You're the Big Bad, you should be making speeches! You should be telling me how wicked I was, trying to terrify me, to gloat, to hurt me, to...!"
The man raised an elegant eyebrow. "Why? Bad enough that you were a murderer and a thief but I do not punish moral failings. That is for the Planes. I answer to a higher power."
Gavin gawked. The man continued, "I am not an arbiter of morality, Gavin Hollowscomb. I do not care of right or wrong. I am here because you betrayed the woman you loved and who loved you in turn. I am here because you used a child's life to slay the one who sought to rectify the balance. I am here because the universe has spoken and I must answer."
The candles sizzled. Orotoros convulsed. Gavin couldn't tell if he was trying to escape or merely having a seizure but it made no difference; the pit fiend wasn't going anywhere. Without the slightest expression the man reached out and slowly twisted one of the silver pins in Orotoros' brain. The fiend's body went limp.
"And you seem sufficiently terrified to me, Gavin Hollowscomb", continued the man as if there had been no interruption.
He tried to pull himself together but the man's utter lack of expression was gnawing at his innards. The vivisection was monstrous, of course, but he was starting to deal with it -- as long as he didn't actually look at Orotoros. Served the pit fiend right anyway. The man, though... he was the archetype from which the imperfect Tawny had sprung. "What now?"
There was a shadow of a shrug. "Now, you die."
Had he really loved her? He could be honest now, so close to the end. Yes, he had. But he had loved himself more.
There was no room for argument but Gavin tried anyway. He babbled senselessly trying something, anything to crack the facade. Give me something, dammit! he swore silently. Give me something I can use! But there was nothing. The man stopped him with a simple sentence.
"You brought this upon yourself."
"No," he managed to squeak out, "It wasn't my fault!" but the man would not be stopped.
"Liar.
"Murderer.
"Traitor."
Each word was a death-knell.
"You brought this upon yourself, and now you will pay the price."
"I can't... I won't... I..."
"Then run."
So he did.
Or at least, he tried.
Turning as fast as he could, Gavin tripped. It might have been the loose flagstone, it might have been the door, greenling, it might've been his own feet. Whatever the reason, he fell badly. Pain shot through his ankle and he howled like a child. Orotoros joined in, brute wails shaking the walls. Gavin flailed, spilling candles everywhere, sudden shadows leaping everywhere, then scrabble-clawed his way out the door.
The man followed easily.
Gavin ran whimpering, a terrified animal. No victory, no grace, no winning, no payback, just running, harsh breathing, pain lancing through his foot. All comparisons to his earlier life fell away. He forgot his name, his home, his life. He rounded a corner, turned, fell, screamed and picked himself up again all quicker than thought. He couldn't see the man any more but he knew the bastard was still there.
Greenling! He swore again. His mind was coming back to him slowly in the pain and exertion. He was no fool. Blind panic would get him nowhere. He was being toyed with. The least he could do was strangle the bastard on his arrogance.
He raced through Sigilian streets suddenly dark and empty. Cagers aren't fools either, they knew something wicked was in the air. He cut down an alleyway, wincing every step of the way, dodged piles of refuse, cut back down another alleyway then out into the open, those damnable footsteps ringing softly in his ears.
“Liar, Murderer, Traitor,” my aunt the bariaur. Big words. I hope you choke on them.
He whipped around a corner too fast. The bones ground in his foot and he let out a choking scream. The pain was like a silver spike but there was no stopping. He could hear those footsteps almost beside him now and ran on.
And on he ran and on and on. There was nothing but the running, the pain and the soft sounds of pursuit. Keep coming, he thought grimly. I've one more trick left up my sleeve.
He might've been running for a second, or maybe all day. He couldn't tell. It didn't matter. Panting, screaming, he staggered towards his old apartment. He neither knew nor cared whether anyone else had made it their kip. It hadn't been long, there was no way they'd've found the secret compartment. The remainder of the xag-ya and xeg-yi essences lay within. It'd take a spark, he was sure, and he'd die in the blast, but that sodding lothfucker would die with him.
He tore at the door, almost ripping it off its hinges. The footsteps were louder now, almost close enough to touch. That made no sense. He didn't care. The pain was manageable. He began to laugh. Got you, you bastard. He staggered through their old home. He pushed aside the curtain. You're dead. He ran on through.
Into Jilina's arms.
She had wasted away. Corrupt, deformed, barely recognizable as human, let alone female, she looked like putty sculpted by a blind tiefling. Her eyes, though, were still human, wracked with a madness he dared not comprehend.
The man laughed gently from the shadows behind her. "I said that you would pay the price. I never said who would exact it. Fitting, don't you think?"
It held him tightly, a mockery of all the times they'd made love. Her skin was rubbery, loose, making his writhe in horrible sympathy. He struggled, pushed himself away. It tenderly gripped his neck and began to squeeze. Gasping for breath, he choked, "Lina..."
The bodak gurgled, tried to speak. Eventually a recognizable sound emerged.
"My love," it said.
It was so very simple.
Jilina gawked at him. Oblixtchzyk smiled genially. "You'll pay what you owe, little man," he growled.
"Five hundred merts..." she moaned. "How could you? How could you?"
He tried to explain but it was no use: Jilina wouldn't hear him and Oblixtchzyk didn't care. He tried anyway. "It was an honest mistake... I swear, I didn't know the abishai was working for Shemeska... it was a sure thing! I only did it for us, for you!"
"But you don't have that much money! No-one we know does!"
"I know, baby. I know... That's why I needed the loan..."
"What does Phraban think?"
His skin crawled with cold. "Phraban doesn't... uh..."
"He doesn't what?" Her eyes narrowed, then widened. "You took his money too?"
"Phraban didn't know about this. But, um, I had to put both our names on the loan..."
Oblixtchzyk yawned capaciously. "I'm sorry, my sweet little soul-bags," he said. "But I have places to be and people to hurt. Can we hurry this along?"
Gavin stared up at Oblixtchzyk. "Please," he said, "I'll pay you back in installments, I can make it up to you I swear..."
All four of the demon's arms danced and a swirling portal to the Abyss opened up behind him. "I really don't think so."
"You can't do this! I have rights! The Triad of Law says so! I have a witness!"
Oblixtchzyk shrugged. "Pike'em. I'm bored."
Gavin turned from the portal, stared at the demon, and slumped. It was over. That was it. It had been a good run. Twenty-eight years was good, right? In Yesi sanktu pase requieskat. The end.
"Of course," grinned the glabrezu, "If you had something to trade..."
There was a long, thoughtful pause while Gavin considered his options.
There was really only one.
His heart broke, but it was better than having it eviscerated.
He shoved Jilina through the portal.
Slowly, very slowly, he slumped to the ground beneath the everchanging Abyssal sky. His memories spilled out of him like viscera, taunting him with the past. The bodak-Jilina gurgled in contentment as it played with his guts. The light was very bright. He shaded his eyes. The blood was pouring freely now. The ground beneath him slithered, formed into snakes, scurried away. The light was dimmer now. The blood and the memories dried up. He was empty. The light was gone. In the horror and the night, he breathed his last.
And soon it would begin all over again. As it had, every day since eternity.
For one brief moment, though, he was at peace. He relished the oblivion. The pain was gone. He was safe. Until he remembered. Remembered his stupid, wasted life. Remembered the warmth of Jilina's embrace. Remembered the Red Priest's empty eyes. Remembered it all, rising into memory's warm embrace, remembering the pain, remembering was pain, the bodak's eyes whirled and he was no longer safe, secure –
He was born Gavin Hollowscomb in the small village of Raven's Bluff on some Yesi-forsaken Prime whose grandiloquent moniker belied the fact that it was a shithole. He drifted through his early life with a disquietened ease, coasting on his roguish charm and roguish ways.
What a boring life.
But he knew that, one day, he would lead an interesting one.
Gavin knew he was destined for bigger and better things, you see.