Alias leaped backward just as a serpent of flame swept up the wall and kissed the room’s ceiling. The swordswoman thought of Dragonbait. His scales gave him some protection from the fire, but not from a floor falling on him. Hopefully, with the aid of his shen sight, he’d already found his quarry and had pulled him out.
She could hear shouts below—the locals had not been so far gone in their sleep that they could ignore the explosion. If they started a bucket brigade to the nearest water trough quickly, they might keep the structure from collapsing, though their main concern would be to keep the fire from spreading to their own homes.
The sound of something heavy falling farther down the hall brought Alias’s attention back to her task. The door to the second apartment was opened, and someone had unfurled a rolled-up carpet over the pile of burning rags. A human shape, dressed in a flowing house robe, lurched out of the apartment, clutching a box the size of a wizard’s tome. A woman, Alias guessed, as the figure collapsed over the carpet, seized by a racking cough.
Alias rushed forward and bent over the woman, noting the gray and red curly locks that escaped from beneath her garish silk head scarf. There was something familiar about that scarf, those curls. Alias pulled on the woman’s arms until she had risen. The swordswoman was just about to ask if there was anyone else in the building, when the robed woman turned around. The words caught in Alias’s throat as she caught sight of the face of the other woman.
“Mama?” Alias gasped. Immediately she realized how foolish she was to think such a thing, yet she could not stop the squeezing ache in her heart caused by all the false memories Finder had given her of this stranger.
The stranger’s eyes widened, and she gasped, “Gods!” as if she recognized Alias in return. Her reaction, though, took Alias completely by surprise. With a sudden, panic-induced energy, the older woman slammed the heavy wooden box she carried into Alias’s chin, smashing the swordswoman’s jaw back and sending her sprawling down the hall.
Alias could taste blood in her mouth and realized that the floor was uncomfortably warm. It took her several moments to shake off the stunning effect of the blow. As her attacker dashed past her, the swordswoman grabbed at the other woman’s leg, but came away with nothing but a leather slipper. She pulled herself back up to her feet and caught a last glimpse of the woman crashing down the charred and broken staircase. Her hand flung upward to toss the slipper after its owner, her mind insisting, “She’s not your mother,” but her fingers did not let go of the slipper.
From down the hallway Alias heard someone cry out. She shoved the slipper into her belt and retrieved her sword from the floor. The cry had come from the third room, the one at the back of the building. Once again Alias used her weapon as a pole and brushed aside the pile of burning rags planted in front of this apartment door. The heat from the hall behind her was now unbearable; the flames shooting up the stairwell were more white than red. Alias was sure her cloak would burst into flame at any moment, but still she felt the apartment door to be sure it was cool. From within she could hear high-pitched squabbling. The swordswoman steeled herself against what she was certain she would find and rushed into the room, slamming the door behind her.
Alias, breathing the slightly cooler, slightly less smoky air, was suddenly bent over with a coughing fit. When she recovered a minute later she looked up at the room’s inhabitants—a family of halflings. They’d gone silent at her arrival, but once she stopped coughing, they ignored her and returned to squabbling and rushing about.
There were seven of them—no, eight, Alias corrected, trying to count them as they dashed about like fish in a pond. They were dressed in their nightshirts and engaged in packing all their worldly belongings into a trunk so large that even a hill giant might think twice before lifting it. Mama Halfling was overseeing everything that went in, rejecting things she did not consider worthy of the limited space—pipe collections, mug collections, rock collections, bottle collections. This resulted in the squabbling, since Papa Halfling and the Junior Halflings insisted their contributions were invaluable.
Alias felt the door warming at her back and saw the smoke winding up her legs as it crept beneath the door and between the floorboards. She staggered forward, pushing Mama Halfling and most of her brood away from the chest, toward the window.
“Have you gone nuts?” Alias cried. “This isn’t moving day! You haven’t got time to pack! You’re going to be troll meat any minute now!” She scooped up the closest halfling child, a girl no higher than her knee, and slammed open the window shutters.
The room overlooked an alley, where a crowd had already gathered. In the center of the crowd Dragonbait kneeled over a prone human. Alias gave a shout and caught the saurial’s attention. On her signal he strode to the window, set down the staff, and waited. One by one, Alias dropped halfling children into the paladin’s arms. Dragonbait caught them easily, as if he fielded plummeting children every day of his life, and handed them off to others in the crowd. The children shrieked with delight, and the crowd applauded each catch.
There was a brief argument between Mama and Papa Halfling over who would go down last. Alias eyed the door anxiously. It’s shellac veneer was bubbling and steaming as the wood on the opposite side was consumed in the hallway. Alias picked up Mama and, with not a little pleasure, tossed her out the window to Dragonbait below.
As she reached down for Papa Halfling, who clutched his pipe collection to his chest, the door broke off its hinges and fell to the floor. A monster of yellow and white fire leaped into the room, making for the fresh air coming from the window and the last victims it could claim.
Alias half jumped, half fell out the window, dragging Papa Halfling with her. She managed to twist enough so that she broke the halfling’s fall with her own body, but nothing broke her fall. She landed seat first on the hard-packed dirt, and the pain that sliced up her spine brought tears to her eyes.
Papa Halfling rolled off the swordswoman with a wink and a tip of an imaginary hat and proceeded to help Mama Halfling gather their brood. A bucket brigade had formed, but the workers were concentrating on wetting down the roofs and walls of adjacent buildings. The used clothing shop had been abandoned to its fate. Alias suspected that the brigade did not want to be seen putting out a fire started by the Night Masks.
Mama Halfling took a last look up at the window where the family’s possessions were now being devoured by the beast fire. She sighed. Then, without so much as a good-bye, the family disappeared down the street and into the darkness. Alias wondered idly where they would go, but since she’d also noted that both Mama and Papa had bulging money belts strapped around their nightshirts, she didn’t feel obliged to worry about their future.
She was seized with another coughing fit, and every hack sent a jarring stab of pain down her lower back. When the fit subsided, she was aware of Dragonbait kneeling beside her. “Are you going to be all right?” the paladin asked.
“Took too much smoke,” Alias replied, unclasping her cape, hoping the cool night air on her back would relieve her sense of suffocating. “And I really hurt my tail when I landed.”
“I think you lost your tail when you landed,” the saurial teased, pretending to look around for a detached appendage.
“If I lost it, it couldn’t hurt this bad,” Alias complained.
Dragonbait laid his hands on her back and began whispering a prayer to his god for the gift of healing. Alias remained politely silent. Praying generally left her uncomfortable, as did anything to do with the gods. After ten years in the paladin’s company, though, his healing prayer felt to her more like a lullaby, summoning in her spirit a sense of being cherished.