A deep rumble of thunder crashed across the nearby rooftops, echoing up and down Spire, and setting the windows of my dingy office rattling and dancing. It disturbed the flow of raindrops that traced their way down the fogged-up glass panels, giving them the appearance of interrupted tears. After a moment they settled into their regular patterns again, resuming their trickling course, a slow trail that looked too much like amorphous slugs.

Or worms.

I repressed a shudder. You would have thought that lacking a body would mean that your flesh couldn't crawl. Trust me on this. It can and it does. There are some things too ingrained in the flesh, so to speak, to be forgotten.

And there were some memories that I could do without.

In the lower districts of the endless city that is Spire, the rain never ceases, not truly, and yet for all that it rains, it still cannot match the tears shed by those who inhabit it. There are always tears in Spire, interrupted or not, figurative, metaphorical and literal. Possibly even metaphysical at times. It is the literal ones that keep me in a flow of work as steady as the rain. There are troubles aplenty, more than enough for anyone to have their fill. Usually. Right now, it all seemed as dead as I was. People were laying low and not airing their troubles. Which normally meant some bigger trouble was coming.

I turned away from staring out of the window. The view through it never changes and there is only so much of it that one can take at any one time. It is a view liable to depress, given long enough. Always there are the raindrops collecting on the smoky glass. Beyond it is one of the many narrow and brooding streets of the city, with buildings looming on either side, and all of it shrouded by the mists and fogs and rain and smoke, it being hard to tell the one from the others, that comes sulking in. The shadows of the buildings crowd in close around the street, resulting in a dismal and dreary sight, coloured by a hundred shades of grey, and little else. The monotony of it is broken up, and that barely, by the sullen, dull orange glow of the streetlamps that battle with no enthusiasm to shed their light, looking like little more than smouldering embers in hazy smoke. Despite their mediocre performances as sources of light, they are still a necessity by day and essential by night else one wishes to wander blind, groping in the dark. There are things out there in Spire that are perfectly at home in the dark, and some of them no one would ever wish to run into.

It isn't like the view of the room that serves as an office for Tomat and I is much better. There isn’t a whole lot of difference between the outside and the inside, except that maybe it was drier inside. Little but pale light comes in through the windows, and as usual the illuminance globe set in the ceiling fan was its fitful self, the filament cycling between an almost brilliant white to a dull orange, and for the most part it favoured the dull over the bright. The best that could be said of the lighting, or lack thereof, was that it hid the worse of our sins.

The room did not have a whole lot going for it. The wallpaper, meant to look like some form of stylised feather pattern in gold and brown, was faded and peeling in places. The old carpet on the floor was now more holes than thread, and what remained was rather worn to boot. It showed off the scuffed wooden floorboards beneath it through gaping holes. The original colour of it could have been one of any number. Now, having faded, it could best be described as a drab grey that more than matched the demeanour of the rest of the room.

What furnishing did outfit the room consisted of an old wooden desk and a couple of battered grey filing cabinets. They held case notes, when we could remember to record them, unpaid bills conveniently forgotten, scribbled notes that may or may not have been legible at some point in time, more than a few empty bottles and whatever else we had shoved into them over the years, some of which is probably best left forgotten and undiscovered.

The desk, a big and solid thing, stood in the centre of the room, right beneath the illuminance globe. It had a weight and a reassuring gravity to it, a heavy thing that could soak up a slug or three when the need arose. There were more than a few in it that provided mute evidence that it had on occasions.

Not that I need the cover it provides any more, but old habits die harder than I did.

There was one more item in a room, an old bucket, tucked away in the corner. It collected water that dripped down from a leaky roof. We had meant to get it fixed many times but always something came up that stopped us and by now it had become something of a fixture. And a convenient means of telling the time. Each morning we emptied the bucket and during the day it slowly filled up again. By both the level of the water in the bucket and the change in the sound of the drips as they filled it up again, it could be handy for giving a decent estimate as to the time of the day. It currently indicated it was around mid-morning.

Seated across the other side of the desk from me, his back facing towards the door into the office, was my partner in crime; Tomat. He had about him, both apart and at the same time, a presence large and small. Just by the look of him you could tell what his heritage was, that being one of the dwarven blood. He reached no great height, even though he was of mixed blood, being half dwarf and half something else. What the other half was he had never said. Whatever it was, he stood a little taller than most dwarves but was still shorter than most humans. He never seemed to care for that other side, which may have explained why he never spoke of it, instead playing up the dwarven side for all it was worth. He had the thick beard, of course, black in colour and immaculately groomed, as well as the burly frame, broad across the shoulders and thick of arms and chest. And there was the ever-present scowl, that look all dwarves seem to carry, as if hard done by, and the world at large was at fault for that. Like all those of his persuasion, his build, and the manner in which he carried himself, a certain swagger and self-belief, resulted in a presence seemingly larger than his height would have suggested. There is just something about dwarves that makes them seem more there, more real. Perhaps it is the belligerent, stubborn nature of them that makes them harder than rocks, and just as difficult to budge, that gives them that aura.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Whatever it was, he sat there, a scowling presence larger than life, wreathed in smoke from the stub of a cigar that he had clenched between his teeth. The sleeves of his black shirt were unbuttoned and rolled up, revealing thick dwarven rune tattoos on his bare forearms. One spelled out Urdna, Wrath, while the other said Uthaq, Revenge. Set down on the table in front of him was a glass half full of dwarven whisky, the open bottle beside it, and the tools of his trade.

Tomat very much had a dwarven soul, whatever his mixed heritage may have been, and at the heart of the dwarven soul was a cultural affinity for hard work, a pride in that work, a knack for the mechanical, for devices and tools, and of course the legendary desire for wealth. It was just such factors that helped the dwarves not just survive in Spire but to thrive. Without them, I doubt the place would run. Or at least not very well. They have become the cogs and the clockwork that keep it all ticking over. Whole districts of the city were given over to their factories and foundries, their workshops and armouries and everything else they ran. Whatever a dwarf sets their mind to, in terms of crafting, they excel at it. Dwarven made is a byword for a good product. They make things you wouldn't expect either. They run apothecaries, confectioneries, potteries, bakeries, distilleries and a host of other workshops in between, all of them respected and top of the line.

With any race and people, though, there are always outliers and that person, in the case of the dwarves, was my partner Tomat. Oh, he had the knack for the mechanical all right, and the pride in it, as well as the desire for wealth, but not the affinity for hard work. It seems to have passed him by. As far as he was concerned, it is better to let others do all the work and then to take it from them. Thus he became a lock breaker and safe cracker. A rogue and a thief. Being, as he was, dwarven, or mostly dwarven, he was good at it. Very good. If he had a flaw, it was that he was not so good at gambling. The circles that he moved in it, that was not a good flaw to have. It led to trouble, and in time the trouble led to me.

I had helped him out of the predicament he had found himself mired in, and in the end, he became my business partner. A good lock breaker is useful in our line of work. Due to my changed circumstances, it is not so much a necessity for me in gaining entrance to places, but there are always items or people that we need to help in and out of places. And he is useful in many other ways as well.

The result of all that is that his tools are not as many would expect. Laying on the table in front of the glass and bottle were lock picks, skeleton keys, pitons and jimmies, clockwork crawlers and glass cutters and a host of other items I couldn’t even begin to describe or understand, all being cleaned and polished and blackened so that no light shone on them. Along with the tools were a pair of nasty looking curved knives of the type he favoured and a stubby revolver, all brass and lethal precision. Dwarven made of course.

He picked up one of the knives, looking down its blackened blade, eyes narrowing as he did. Rolling the cigar from one side of his mouth to the other, he picked up a whetstone and started working on the blade.

As he did, off in the distance, far above, from the heights of Spire, a gong sounded, one deep and sonorous and dreadful to hear. Tomat set down his knife on the table and picked up his glass of whisky. He raised it towards the ceiling, towards where the gong sounded from.

"Another for the Drop. Poor devil. Ain't ever going to catch me taking it. Hell of a way to go."

"That it is," I agreed as Tomat took a swig of the whisky.

Tomat set down the glass on the table and gave me a look. It can be hard at times to judge the expression of those of dwarvish blood, even if Tomat was only half so. The beards and the dour expression do a lot to mask it. Still, I could tell that Tomat was curious about some matter. The manner in which I had replied to his comment seemed to have aroused some interest in him.

"You never did tell me how you met your end."

"You never asked," I countered.

He grunted at that. "Fair enough," he replied, taking up the knife and whetstone again. "So you dropped like a stone." I ignored his attempt at humour. After a moment he continued on. "Never figured you for one who took the long drop. Got mixed up with Them Above did you?"

"Wasn't the plan." One never plans on dying. It isn't a habit I plan on repeating either. Once is enough. I at least was lucky. I came back. In a manner of speaking. A rather broad manner of speaking.

"Never is." He leaned back in his chair, folding his arms across his chest, knife in one hand, whetstone in the other, so that the tattoos on his forearms showed prominent. "What happened."

"Long story."

"I've got all day," Tomat told me. "Not like we have any other business to hand at the moment."

There was more than a bit of truth to that. It had been a slow few days. It had been a slow few weeks to be honest. If things didn't pick up soon...well, that was a matter for a future day. It didn't do to borrow trouble. And so I began to tell him of the manner of my death.