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The most recent inexplicable phenomenon only added to the legend of the dais-cage, that being how Sleet and Hail Mistresses trained and working as professional bodyguards fell for a trap so difficult to trigger. The puzzle occupied Dirant's thoughts while he watched the four extract themselves from the imperiling marsh. Chisops Dogai-Brein probably was thinking of citations and lost all concentration, which answered that question before it was asked, but it was for exactly that species of circumstance that he had attendants.
Millim Takki Atsa called out the answer before Dirant could ask it. “Hey, Ressi! You can come down now. Have you ever heard of a dais-cage hiding below ground level? Oh, and have you ever heard of a dais-cage?”
“I have, and in the language to which you switched in order to say the name of that monster as well. As to its typical disposition, I know little enough about it.”
“It's true no matter how rare it is,” Hail Mistress Isarbas Kwin insisted. She made sure to put a little outrage in her voice, just a bit of umbrage at the unfair practices of that one dais-cage before anyone suggested she had made a mistake or else invented the story altogether as an excuse. No one did, which again demonstrated the advantages of the Dogai-Brein training regimen and its attention to social as well as martial considerations.
“There's a second strangeness too,” added Sleet Mistress Laimerif Oimer. “I stepped on it alone without ill consequence. Not before all three of us stood upon it did it shoot up. What could explain that?”
“Onsio?” Dirant asked. “Or sio? This is speculation, it must be understood.” He was by then back on the ground where Chisops was able to reach his hand and shake it.
“It is good to see you, Sajaitin.” His misadventure had not driven him entirely hoarse. “Sio may in truth excite such a reaction provided it wore off at exactly the right moment. But what then is this onsio substance? Is there at last a readier supply of monster depressants?”
Takki employed the most conciliatory tone she possessed, which was not much different from her usual speech. “This next sentence will sound rude, Eizesl, Seifises, but in a moment you'll see it isn't. That sounds like an honest question to me, Ressi.”
The bodyguards did frown. One of them bit her lip as well, the taller one. Still, they refrained from violence. There was that Dogai-Brein training yet again. Dirant tried to redeem Takki's promise. “I must accept your judgment, and further, I concur. Eizesl, onsio is a sio substitute under development by Holtatlosen Skemlena. Your research, I understand, is fundamental to its refinement.”
“That is excellent news, Sajaitin. The fear that one is being humored can lower the spirits so, but equally heartening, or rather more so, is hearing that the implications of my research are considered to say nothing of seeing any manner of implementation.” Chisops probably meant it, but his tired voice expressed not jubilation but rather raspiness which doubtless sounded more painful for him than it was.
“Indeed so,” Dirant confirmed. “We learned of onsio but yesterday and only now became sure you had not. It is an honor for us to reveal its existence to you. Will you tell us a bit more about the samples you send and their value?”
“The core of the idea is that there is a natural phenomenon I have chosen to call 'monster stations' out of nothing more than their resemblance to buildings which have nothing to recommend them but their function, the Naval Station and the Station of Shields in Dubwasef included. Monsters appear to be attracted to these. They almost hibernate upon reaching one of them, and the important point that keeps me from declaring that they do hibernate is . . . What an odd scene. It is as if the sun chose to set in Koshat Dreivis tonight.”
The sky above the town did have an orange look to it, and as for the smell, it resembled a bonfire made by a fasting hermit. Even before anyone said, “The town appears to be suffering the effects of an uncontrolled conflagration,” or a similar comment, all five were running toward Koshat.
Takki opened a good lead. Before it grew too great, she yelled back, “If this is intentional arson, weren't you two probably trapped so you couldn't do anything about it? I bet every dais-cage in the swamp is rigged with onsio!”
“Why . . . would . . . it . . .”
Dirant tried to save Chisops his gasps with a few of his own. “We think Mr. Helsodenk . . . wants to murder . . . the Stanops.”
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“Very rash.” After that, the head of the Dogai-Breins, not an old man but not quite young either, reserved his breath for the activity before him.
Indistinct screams and wails rose as high as the flames, but something even louder they heard as they approached. Keiminops Bodan-Tin was yelling hard enough to pop something. Whether his commands to evacuate southward and set up a bucket line from the beach to the town had any good effect Dirant and Chisops could not perceive until they reached the town, and when they did, Laimerif Oimer and Isarbas Kwin had done more about the problem anyway.
Families menaced by fire and smoke found relief in the cool clouds the bodyguards sent drifting through the streets. The buildings burned slower, though a mere two members of the colder classes could not suppress the inferno altogether. Strings and clumps of Drastlifars ran south under the cover of those sheltering mists, and from that a group became conspicuous for not running anywhere or panicking in the smallest degree.
They were Drastlifars too, some of them, but also Tands and Hewekers, and among the knot of a couple dozen people stood one Rik who looked on the scene with as much passion as he did a collection of legal precedents compiled by an assistant. “It's Helsodenk Nifkleskir!” Takki shouted when she saw him down a flame-bordered lane obstructed by debris from collapsing houses. “He looks incredibly smug, Ressi!”
“He always does,” Dirant shouted back.
Helsodenk responded with as much passion as when he told an assistant to research legal precedents. “I assure you that I would have appeared so much more satisfied had my first plan succeeded, but failure is not so interesting that we must be entranced by it. Did you find Steiraf pleasant?”
Aside from the intervening hazards, a consideration of the odds prevented Takki from rushing him. Helsodenk's henchmen may have included among their society any combination of elite combat classes. The gigantic Brawny Knight was there, for one. Moreover, a few Tands tossing incendiary flasks around likely belonged to the Chemistician class unavailable in Egillen barring the occasional traveler. Whatever precisely that class did, presumably it did it well. Stymied as far as punishing the malefactor, Takki's Battler-nature, self-described, spurred her to seek clarification on an unclear point or two. “Mr. Helsodenk! Aren't you doing pretty well for yourself? This doesn't seem very profitable, so do Riks care about that less than Adabans?”
Since Helsodenk had nothing to occupy him but watch the devastation inflicted by his band of scoundrels and because he anticipated the death of everyone else within listening range, he indulged in some chatter. “I attribute my success to not permitting those who try to ruin me to have their way.”
“Ressi! He really is just unbelievably spiteful! Oh, Mr. Helsodenk, that was a theory we had.”
Helsodenk ignored that in favor of listening to a comment from an associate, but he was free when Dirant caught up to confirm or deny another theory. “Mr. Helsodenk! Was it your intention to frame Onkallant Paspaklest for the assassination? Formerly that was my belief, and yet your present action must be difficult to attribute to him.”
“Mr. Dirant, it is just as you say. His escape from the fate of an apparent suicide while facing trial is irksome, but I must simply murder him by another means, as well as his sister, brother, father, every ambassador, and so. It is a long list, and I have wasted too much time here already.”
The confirmation of his clever supposition gave Dirant cheer he thought it preferable not to display under the circumstances. Even more heartening would have been to know a ritual capable of reversing the situation, but optimism becomes disgraceful greed at a certain point. “As you say. Takki, we must withdraw and leave Mr. Helsodenk to discover this backup plot also is unproductive of the desired result.” To taunt an older, more established gentleman was a practice best left at university, but Helsodenk Nifkleskir was evil. There was the matter of accuracy to consider, since the possibility existed that Poiskops Bodan-Tin was already dead; a few days before that would have counted as success. Open violence must however be a failure unless the flames devoured all witnesses. Helsodenk agreed, judging by his shouts entirely free of satisfaction when at least he saw some of the fire-suppressing frosty emanations.
By then, nearly all of Koshat Dreivis had escaped south of the walls with a few final stragglers being carried out by the Myrmidons left on guard duty and the occasional local possessed of impressive Muscle or Battler from lands far to the north which resounded with orchestral arrangements of the most tasteful and technically demanding compositions.
Panic fell off sharply when the inhabitants saw near and safe their friends, their families, and even that guy they disliked even though they almost never spoke with each other but there was just something about his expression. With a calmer, more pliant population, Keiminops had an easier time seeing that bucket lines were formed by the set of people strong enough to handle water but not to haul a human body.
Dirant volunteered his own 35 Muscle for that after assuring himself that Stadeskosken's client had survived the initial attack. A coughing Poiskops was being attended by Petarun Bavan-Ston, Posmeterin Igwodan-Tin had been hustled out of town by a human litter made of younger Igwodan-Tins and other apprentices, Isarx Tomein adopted the reverse course by assisting the younger Tomeins out along with their neighbors, and in short, so far as Dirant was able to see, the Dogai-Brein bodyguards had prevented any deaths up to that point in a triumph of public relations any firm would envy.
Even so, there was a great deal of villainy left in the arsonists, and every moment shortened the window the residents had to restore Koshat Dreivis to a state fit to receive exalted persons of the Dvanjchtlivan persuasion. Water haulers therefore raced to the beach with urgency and spirit. “The Stanops will revive our Dreivis,” they told one another, and they meant it. The foreign Ritualist among them relied on a different cause for hope, that being the distance between the popcorn stand and any wooden house. Swift action could save him from another day of box-drawing.