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Jane was shoved one way and then the other. She saw a burly knocker throw himself on a shield and its warrior fall back with an agonized cry and a broken arm. The crowd swirled and he disappeared. It swung around again and Jane saw three elves clubbing her dwarf. His doublet had been torn off him. His body lay at their feet, bloody, half-naked, and unresisting. The head lolled freely on his neck. It jerked with each blow. His spine had been snapped. Jane stepped forward. Aghast, she realized that she was going to try and help him.
Stupid, stupid, stupid! she raged at herself. What the fuck am I doing here? This is pointless. The dwarf is dead. There's nothing I can do for him. Turn away, run, flee!
Like a sleepwalker she kept on going.
A warrior loomed up before her, helmet lost and his fine blond hair lashing. The battle-light blazed in his face. He raised his club against her. Then his foot fell wrong on a wine-slick paving stone and he stumbled to one knee.
In that instant an ogre was on his back, head down and braced between his shoulder blades, bandy legs scissoring his waist, knobby hands yanking back his chin. There was a sharp crack. The elf thrashed, and the light went out in his face. His club clattered to the stones.
Jane snatched it up.
The ashes were falling thicker than ever. Any more and it would be impossible to breathe. The smell of burning vinyl-wood-fabric-plastic from the torched buildings was everywhere; it stung her nose and lingered in the back of her mouth. Jane knew this should be the darkest moment of her life, but in a bizarre and distasteful way it wasn't.
It was fun.
"Get away from me! Get away get away get away!" The club was solid metal and as long as she was, with a short crosspiece on one side to make it amenable to skillful mob control tactics. Untutored, Jane grabbed one end and swung it back and forth like a great two-handed sword. Space opened up before and around her. She could breathe again. "Bastards!" she screamed. "Cocksucking elves!"
A noise like a sigh and then another and then three more, sounds made distinct from the general clamor of battle by their quiet diffidence. Gas canisters clattered onto the paving stones. They exploded, releasing clouds of riot gas.
Those touched by the gas fell back retching. They fought and clawed at one another to escape. But before the warriors could take advantage of their disorder, croppy lads with dampened handkerchiefs wrapped around their mouths and noses dashed forward, grabbed the canisters, and threw them back at the troops.
A touch of wind folded one of the clouds gently over onto the section of crowd where Jane stood.
She couldn't breathe! She couldn't see! Her skin was on fire! She was coughing, choking, crying miserably. Snot ran from her nose. One side of her face felt like it had been wiped with nettles. Stumbling, bent over, she groped for a way out.
And then, miraculously, a hand took hers and led her away. She could feel cool air on her face. Through blinking eyes she got a watery glimpse of open road ahead.
"Come on," her benefactor growled. "There'll be more gas soon."
When they had won free of the square, though, Jane had to stop. She dug in her heels and yanked her hand free. Then she wiped her eyes against one shoulder of her jacket and her nose against the other. Through her tears, she looked back at the riot.
The smoke from a hundred fires had made of the sky a canvas and then painted it a muddy red. Under its somber canopy, dark creatures were hunkered over the bodies of the fallen. Some were stealing wallets. Others were not. She recognized some of them as prisoners she had helped free.
"We ain't got time for sightseeing," her companion insisted. "The Greencoaties are coming." And, indeed, she could hear the cadenced jackboots of fresh elven troops. He gave her a shove and off they ran. It was only then that she thought to look and see who her savior was.
It was Bone Head.
When it was clear that nobody was following, Jane stumbled to a stop. She had to puke. Bone Head steadied her with an arm about her shoulders while she purged herself of the ashes, madness, and blight. When she straightened again she felt surprisingly clearheaded.
"Some brawl, eh?" Bone Head said.
She looked at him.
"I bit this one fucker's finger right off. He had this big old gold ring on, all covered with itty-bitty emeralds and rubies and shit. Got it right here." He patted a bloody shirt pocket gloatingly. "So I got me a nice little profit out of tonight."
Bone Head was as alarmingly ugly as ever. But his eyes had changed. They were green now with flecks of gold, like leaves in early summer. A lively humor shone from them, as if Bone Head were merely a role he was playing, or as if something were using him as a mask and peeking through the sockets of his skull. "You've got something caught in your earring," Jane said.
"Eh?" Bone Head twisted around, hands flying up, as Jane grabbed at his ear. Too late. Her fingers closed about a talisman hanging from its lobe. "Hey, watch that!"
She ripped the talisman away. With a cry of alarm, he wavered and shrank. His face and features changed nature completely. The tattoos vanished, and with them his slack, malevolent expression. He was Bone Head no longer.
He was Puck Aleshire.
Jane glanced at the talisman—amber, bone, a superconducting disk, two bluejay feathers—and tossed it away. It was nothing; she could make one of them herself anytime she wanted to. "What the fuck are you doing here?"
"I was looking for you, okay? Holy pig, that smarts." He winced. Puck was wearing a battered cloth coat that didn't fit him at all well. "Look, I know you didn't ask me to come after you. But here I am anyway. And if you weren't so stoned, you'd be glad. We've got to get out of here. They've taken out their knives. They're not going to put them away when they run out of elves."
He seized her arm and began dragging her away.
Hurrying after, Jane had to admit that Puck looked heroic. His eyes blazed and his jaw was set. Her heart softened briefly. Then she looked down. Something dangled from his pocket, where it had been hastily and incompletely thrust. It was a scrap of black cloth. A pair of panties. The look and weave of them was familiar. "What's this?" Jane snatched them up. They had been worn and not laundered. She held them to her nose and sniffed.
Hers.
"Where did you get this?"
Puck ducked his head, embarrassed, but didn't slacken his pace. "I, uh, swapped something to Billy Bugaboo for it. He said you'd stayed the night at his room once, and forgot to pick it up when you got dressed the next morning."
"That Billy!" Jane said, outraged. "I'll strangle him!"
"We didn't think you'd actually mind."
"Well I do mind. I mind very much."
"Anyway, I couldn't've found you without it. Like calls to like, right? That's the law of contagion."
"Contagion?!"
"It's not such a big deal, okay? Billy told me he needed my leather jacket and what did he have that I wanted?" He glanced sideways at her and for the first time took in the sorry mess she had made of his jacket. "Hey. How'd you end up with it anyway?"
She colored.
They walked in silence for a while. Then Puck said, "I guess we've both done things we're not especially proud of. It's not important now. We really do have to get away from here before things turn nasty."
There were bodies in the road.
They were traveling in the wake of one arm of the mob. Periodically they could hear its voice roaring ahead of them. It was spooky, because for blocks at a time they saw not another living being. Just the bodies.
The corpses were mostly small—they were in a tenement neighborhood and various factions of the mob had gone in for a spot of dwarf-bashing. But there were lutins and nisken and goat people as well, though in lesser numbers. Jane was mesmerized by one in particular, a faun whose face was half-flayed. A trophy hunter had stripped the flesh from the lower jaw before something had distracted him from his project, revealing a wildly upturned grin. The one eye that could be seen was wide open and had turned a snowy blue. The resulting expression was knowing, daunting, compelling. Staring into it, Jane found herself close to understanding something important. Oh, what you're in for, that expression said. If only you knew.