Masquerades - Kate Novak [9]
Alias grabbed her friend's arm to hold him back. She remembered Old Mendle, who ran the shop long ago, when she was a child. He used to let her play dress-up among the bins of garments he had gathered from the better homes, and which Mrs. Mendle had then sewn or knitted back into serviceable shape. He lived in the back of the shop now, alone since Mrs. Mendle had died. Alias released her hold on the saurial warrior and gave him a nod to proceed.
As she hurried up the stairs, using her cloak as a shield against the smoke and heat, she realized there probably was no Old Mendle. He was an invention Finder had put in her memory-unless he had drawn the indulgent clothier from some other, real, little girl's life.
Whether the fire's victims were those she remembered or not made no difference to the swordswoman. She was angry that her remembered home was burning. The stairway rail, from which she remembered having led imaginary attacks on invisible dragons, collapsed into the hallway below, and her craw knotted in fury. She paused on the landing where she had-no, where she remembered having had scribbled pictures with a charcoal stick. By the light of the fire, she could see there were scrawls on the wall still, but she hadn't time to examine them.
She turned on the landing and dashed up the second flight of stairs; the steps had begun to list inward from structural damage. The smoke was thicker up here, and she bent down to stay beneath its lethal embrace. She turned again and peered down the hall at the doors leading to the three apartments. The arsonists had piled rags before each door and lit them.
Alias pulled her sword and used it to thrust aside the pile of burning cloth in front of the door nearest to her. The door led to the apartment overlooking the streets, the apartment Old Mendle used to rent to transients with money to waste on the view. The Company of the Swanmays, an all-female band of adventurers, had once rented it, or so she remembered. Alias put her hands against the door. It was cool to the touch. She touched the knob. It, too, was cool, but it would not turn. The swordswoman stepped back, drew a lungful of smoky air, and gave the door a hard, sharp kick.
The doorjamb, already weakened by the fire, splintered, and the door swung inward. Alias peered into the darkness. She grabbed up a burning rag on the end of her sword to use as a torch. The room held four beds with straw tick mattresses, all empty. As she stood there, reassuring herself that the room was vacant, Alias heard a grumbling noise, and a section of the room's floor near the front wall collapsed into the shop below.
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 shensight, 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 familar 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