A Discourse in Steel by Paul S. Kemp Page A

needed a drink of something. Ale probably. He slid off the stool, wobbled, looked around for a hogshead. Nothing. From his portrait behind the bar, Mung smiled down at him. Nix offered the Lord Mayor’s image a fak-you finger.
    He reached over and shook Egil. It wouldn’t do to sleep the whole night at the bar. He could imagine Tesha’s frown.
    “Egil. Egil.”
    A grunt, more snores, a clumsy attempt to push Nix’s hand away.
    “Egil. Go upstairs to your room.”
    The priest sat up, looked at Nix, blinked, grumbled something unintelligible, and put his head back down, face turned away.
    Nix regarded him for a moment and shrugged. “As you will.”
    He turned to regard the central stairway. It didn’t usually seem so far away or so high. He stared at it for a time, shaky on his legs, trying to work up the confidence to ascend it. He decided it was too much work. He slid back onto his stool and rested his head on the bar.
    Sometime later a scraping sound from the rear of the inn, behind the bar, pulled him back to alertness. He sat up, cursed, listened, blinking, but it did not recur. A dog or cat must have gotten inside the fence. Or a rat, maybe. He put his head back down.
    He heard a similar sound, but this time from the front doors of the inn, and it pulled him fully to wakefulness. He turned on his stool, head cocked. He heard whispers from behind the door.
    “The fak?” he muttered.
    He rose from the stool, in the process toppling it. It hit the floor with a crash that sounded loud in the silence. Egil stirred, lifted his head.
    “What’s this, now?”
    Nix ignored him and picked his way through the tables, past the fireplace, to the front double doors. He stood there a moment, listened, thought he heard the soft sound of stealthy movement on the other side.
    “What is it?” Egil called from the bar.
    Nix held up a hand for silence, slid the bar out of the doors, and tried to jerk them open. But the doors gave only a finger’s width and he jarred his shoulder in the effort. Something had been wound through the two handles on the other side—a chain or rope—preventing them from opening it.
    He heard a soft, menacing chuckle from the other side of the doors and put everything together in a rush. The sound he’d heard coming from the back hadn’t been an animal. It’d been someone barring that door, too. And he knew of only one reason to seal people into a building. Adrenaline flushed the drunk from his system.
    “Fak! Everyone up!” he shouted. “Up! Up!”
    Egil was on his feet, a bit wobbly but a hammer in each hand. “What is it?”
    “We’re locked in.”
    Egil’s eyes widened. He understood the danger, too. “Fak!” In his deep, booming voice, he shouted, “Up! Tesha, get everyone up! Now! Right now!”
    Nix’s eyes went to the metal frame windows. The Tunnel had once been the house of a noble before the rich had moved across the Meander to the west side of Dur Follin, so it featured tall, narrow leaded glass windows. They’d provide egress only to brooms.
    Glass shattered in one of the windows facing Shoddy Way. Another broke on the other side of the common room. Nix saw movement and a dancing flame through the greasy, murky glass of the remaining panes.
    He drew and flung his hand axe through the broken pane of one of the windows, just as the man outside tried to toss a bottle of what Nix presumed to be alchemist’s oil into the Tunnel.
    The throw was off and Nix’s axe shattered another pane, but it sprayed the man with glass and he shouted, staggered back, fumbled the bottle, and leaked oil all over himself. Instantly he burst into flame, screaming in agony, staggering, flailing. The stink of burning flesh poured through the broken window.
    Through the other window came a second bottle of alchemist’s fire and this one made it inside. It hit a table and shattered, the oil spraying table, floor, and nearby chairs, bursting into flames.
    “I got the doors!” Egil shouted. “Get