Cryoburn - Lois McMaster Bujold [121]
"Hm?" said Vorlynkin, so Jin explained his first night's safety procedures, which just made Vorlynkin go "Hm!" and set his teeth to his lower lip. But from the way his eyes crinkled, Jin didn't think he was mad or anything.
Jin's old bedding of shredded flimsies was still piled against the wall; if he slept out here, he could keep an eye on his new pet. Would Mom miss him? She'd have Mina-or would Mina try to stay out here with him?
Jin rose on his toes to make a grab when Nefertiti stretched her considerable length, put her front paws on the parapet, and peered over, but she drew back without any effort to launch herself fatally over the side. She visited Jin's latrine corner, and used it properly-Jin explained about the bucket-flushing to Vorlynkin-and Jin made sure to praise her, after the confusions about the corner of the recovery room. The sphinx did not quite look as if she believed him. She stretched and flapped her wings, but folded them again when she went to look over the parapet on the opposite side, toward the narrow parking lot behind the old complex.
And stiffened, growling, staring down with a predatory intensity like Lucky regarding the rats, back when Lucky had been much younger. The fur went up in a ridge along her back, and her wings spread and quivered, making a sinister rustling-rattling noise. Her tufted tail lashed.
"Foes!" she whined. "Foes!"
"What?" said Vorlynkin, sounding startled. He stepped up to peer along with her; Jin joined him.
Mina, who was not so fond of heights, hung back a few paces and asked, "What does she see?"
Jin wasn't sure what kind of night vision the sphinx had, but what he saw was a van parked in the shadowiest part of the lot, and some dark-dressed men moving about below. One swung some sort of long hammer or bat, three or four dull thumps, and Jin heard a ground-floor window pop out and fall from its frame, inward, perhaps onto a carpet, he guessed from the muffled clatter.
"Somebody's breaking in to the building," he whispered back over his shoulder to Mina, who at this news overcame her nerves and joined him to stare.
"Maybe it's robbers," she whispered back.
"What would anybody want to steal out of here?" The building had been stripped of usable furniture and equipment long ago; anything left inside was valueless or non-portable.
Two of the men lugged a big barrel-like thing from the van; they did something to it, then hoisted it through the window and let it fall and roll. A strange pungent aroma seeped up through the night mist, which made Vorlynkin jerk back and swear.
"Not robbers," he said through his teeth. "Arsonists!" He grabbed Mina's hand and looked frantically around.
Below, one of the men threw something through the window, and they all ran for their vehicle. They'd evidently left a driver waiting, because they shot out of the lot, past where the chain-link gate had been broken open, in a spray of gravel before the van doors were even all the way shut.
A flash of orange light; below Jin's feet, the building quaked as a boom echoed out across the lot and broke into mumbling thunder against the buildings across the street. A greasy boil of flame belched from the window, a licking tongue two meters long.
"Fire!" screamed the sphinx, all her fur on end, and her eyes like gilded saucers. "Fire! Foes! Fire!"
"We have to get out of this building, right now!" said Vorlynkin; Mina yelped as his hand tightened on hers. Vorlynkin lurched toward the towers. "Which stairs are farther from the fire?"
"Not that way!" said Jin. "There's an outside ladder drops down to the alley on the other side."
Vorlynkin nodded and ran, jerking Mina along with him; Jin grabbed up Nefertiti and ran after him. The sphinx struggled and hissed in his arms. Was there time to stuff her back into her carrier? Maybe not. Vorlynkin reached the opposite edge of the roof and found the steel staples.
"I have to go first, to let down the extension!" Jin yelled