whuff, curse, and bend over, and Alberich was out into the not-so-open street.
It should have been dark and relatively empty. It wasn't. It was filled wall-to-wall with a churning mass of spectators and a growing number of those who actually were doing something. A lurid red glow reflected off their filthy, upturned faces as the wretched denizens of this neighborhood organized themselves into lines of hands that passed buckets of water away toward Alberich's right.
The source of the glow was as hellish as any Sunpriest sacrificial fire Alberich had ever seen in Karse.
An inferno that had once been a building raged madly against the black of the night sky. It was one of the nearby tenement blocks, and it was a solid sheet of flame from its foundation to its roof. It couldn't have been more fully involved, and Alberich was struck motionless for a moment at the sight, for he couldn't imagine how it had gotten that way so quickly — short of a Red-Robe Priest's demon calling. For one horrible moment he wondered wildly if a Red-Robe had infiltrated the capital of Selenay's Kingdom —
But then an acrid whiff told him the real reason the building was so thoroughly engulfed.
Tar. Someone had been painting the sides of the building with tar. The heavy black smoke roiling over the tips of the highest flames confirmed it. A sudden wind drove it down into the street, and screams turned to coughs and gasps.
Now, that wasn't uncommon in this part of the city. Landlords didn't care to spend more than they had to on maintenance of these old buildings, and when they got word that an inspection was in the offing, they frequently created a new and draftless facade by tarring and papering the exterior with any of a number of cheap substitutes for real wooden siding. The work could be done in a day or less, and when finished, presented a less ramshackle appearance that generally fooled overworked inspectors into thinking that the building was in better shape than it actually was. With so many buildings to inspect and so little time, the inspector could easily convince himself that this one didn't need to be looked at any closer, and move on. The work would hold for a while, but soon the paper would disintegrate, the tar soak into wood left un-painted for so long that it soaked up anything, and the place would revert to its former state. A little darker, perhaps, and for a while the tar would fill in the cracks that let in the winter winds, but nothing more.
Still… it seemed odd to Alberich that the thing should be blazing with such fiendish enthusiasm. Slum landlords were as stingy with their tar and paper as they were with everything else, and to burn like this, someone must have laid the stuff on with a trowel —
“Stop him! Stop that boy!”
Alberich sensed, rather than saw, the swirl in the crowd that marked someone small and nimble bouncing off the legs of those around him. Then a wiry, hard body careened into his hip.
He was running to the fire. Somehow, Alberich knew that — and his Foresight showed him what would happen if the boy made it through the crowd.
A small body writhing in the flames, screaming, dying — An echo of the sacrificial fires of Karse. His gorge rose.
Automatically he reached out and snared the tunic collar of the boy before he could get any farther.
The boy turned on him, a spinning, swirling fury. “Let me go!” he screamed. “Let me go!”; He spat out a stream of invective that rivaled anything Alberich had ever heard, and flailed at Alberich's arm with hard little fists. “I gotta get in there, ye bastid! I gotta!”
Screaming and writhing in the flames…
Alberich didn't bother arguing with the brat, who was red-faced and hysterical, and he didn't have time to calm him. No doubt his family was in there —
Gods. He pulled the boy off his feet, and the brat still fought.
Well, if they were, they were all dead, or they were somewhere out in the street, sobbing over the loss of their few possessions. Nothing could survive that inferno, but there was no reasoning that point. Alberich couldn't let the boy go —
But there was work here; he might not be dressed in Whites, but he knew his duty, which was to help to save the buildings around the doomed one. He couldn't do that if he was playing nursemaid. With a grimace of pity, Alberich pulled his dagger as the boy continued to struggle toward the blaze, and tapped him behind the ear with the pommel nut the first moment the target presented itself.
The boy went limp. Alberich was still near enough to the door of the tavern to struggle back and drop him just inside, as far out of harm as possible in this neighborhood. Then he joined one of the many bucket brigades coalescing out of the mob. Until the Guard and the pumps and hoses arrived, they had to help convey water to soak down the buildings to either side of the fire to keep it from spreading. Already Kantor was raising the alarm for him, and help could not be more than a few moments away.
But he felt a moment of pleasure at the way people around him were responding to the emergency. So they weren't all villains, even though that was all he'd met since he began frequenting The Broken Arms. Even in this neighborhood, people could work together.
