Must Love Hellhounds

“What happened was this,” Crick said, suddenly chatty. He’d taken a seat at the table, and Clovache and Batanya followed suit. “I obtained a certain item from the King of Hell, and I misplaced it when I had to leave. I definitely didn’t enjoy my stay with the king, and I’m afraid my abrupt departure may have angered him. As you may have deduced, I need to avoid Lucifer. I very much need to avoid him. I must get in and out of Hell as quietly as possible. Since I can’t look in every direction at once, I hired you two to help me watch.”

“So you’re a thief.” Batanya was entering a list of things she needed to take, using her wrist communicator. She glanced up long enough to make sure he was listening.

“Ah, yes. But a thief with a cause,” Crick added brightly.

“Don’t care,” Batanya said. “No matter what you are, no matter what your cause or motivation, we’ll do what we’ve been hired to do.” She looked him square in the eyes.

“Then we’re all fine,” Crick said, in his most foolish voice. One of the castle cats wandered in and leaped into his lap. He stroked its long orange fur. Batanya eyed it indifferently. She’d never been one for pets, though cats were at least preferable to dogs.

Anything was preferable to dogs.

“How long do you expect we’ll be gone?” Clovache asked Crick.

“If we’re not back in two weeks, we’re not coming back,” Crick said with a pleasant smile. “That would be my best evaluation.”

Batanya remembered that Clovache had tickets to a concert in a week’s time.

“Can you turn those tickets in?” Batanya asked. She ran her fingers through her short, inky hair.

“Nonrefundable,” Clovache said gloomily. “Oh, well.” She rose to her feet. “Senior,” she said, her voice formal, “I ask leave to go prepare.”

“I’ll be there in a minute myself,” Batanya said. “Go ahead.” She eyed their client narrowly. As soon as Clovache had gone, Batanya said, “I know there’s much you’re not telling us. No client ever tells us the whole story. You always lie. But if there’s some word you could speak that would help us prepare to guard you, now is the time to speak that word.”

Crick looked down at the table for a long moment. The cat jumped out of his lap and left by a window. “Nothing,” he said. “There’s nothing else I can tell you now that will be of any assistance.”

“All right then,” she said grimly. “You’ve got two of Britlingen’s best protecting you, Crick. I hope you appreciate that.”

“I am paying well for the service,” he said. His voice was cool.

Batanya might have told him that no amount of money could make up for the loss of their lives, but that wouldn’t have been true. The Britlingen Collective had put a price on that, and Crick had paid it.

“I’ll return shortly,” she said, and rose to her feet. “The witches and mechs will be ready by then, too.” She saw, with a grim satisfaction, that the mention of the witches made Crick shiver. Witches gave everyone the creeps.

Standing in the middle of her little room, Batanya hauled her backpack from the footlocker. She checked her wrist communicator. It showed her the list she’d made-not in written words, but in symbols. Some of the weapons she often carried would be useless in Hell. Any fray would take place suddenly and at close quarters, almost certainly, so taking some of the missile-firing guns would be useless, as would any of the weapons relying on sun power. Hell was underground in a vast network of intersecting tu

“Batanya,” called Clovache, whose room was across the hall, “What about crossbows?” The wrist crossbows were incredibly powerful and ranked at the top of Clovache’s list of favorite devices.

“Do they kill demons?” Batanya called back. “I don’t think so. I think we should take the…” What did kill a demon? The bespelled throwing stars, of course. “The throwing stars,” she called. Steel? Silver? What else would be useful?

She went over all the armaments in her head as she pulled on her summer armor, which was a very lightweight porous fabric spun by spiderlike creatures from Moraeus. The summer version was like wearing chain mail all over, though it had the texture and appearance of cloth. It was even more expensive and harder to find than liquid armor. The Britlingen company store sold it at what they said was cost-but Batanya had had to save for two years to purchase it. She’d loaned Clovache the money to buy her own summer armor during Clovache’s first year as Batanya’s junior. “Damn Collective,” Batanya muttered as she put the few extra things she’d need into the prepared waterproof backpack that all Britlingens carried on their travels. It was always stocked with a few microthin clean garments, compressed cooked food that could be eaten on the run, a pill or two that provided bursts of energy and had to be used judiciously, some bandages and antibiotics, and a bottle of water. To forestall other kinds of emergencies, all the Britlingens, male and female, were injected with birth control drugs on a monthly basis. Those who skipped this injection were listed in bright red chalk on a big board in the entrance hall.

“Got your list?” she asked from Clovache’s doorway. “Oh, have you checked your pocket?” Batanya had already touched her tongue to the artificial pouch in her right cheek, and she nodded when Clovache’s right hand flew to her left armpit. Clovache nodded in confirmation and then burrowed back into her closet.

“Yes, I just need to write Geit a note.” Clovache’s voice was muffled. She was probably searching for some paper and a pen, items Clovache didn’t need too often.

“Are you and Geit knocking armor?”

“Yes. He’s very vigorous.”

Smiling, Batanya shook her head, though Clovache couldn’t see her. “You’d do better to keep Geit as a friend,” she said. “But I guess it’s too late for that.”

Her junior reemerged. “He will be. I always stay friends with my lovers. It’s my gift.” Clovache’s light brown hair stuck up in spikes all over her head. She hadn’t pulled on the armor’s hood yet. It was her least favorite piece of protection. Batanya was none too fond of it either, though her own close-clipped curly black hair lay so close to her skull she might as well have been wearing the hood already.

Together, checking and rechecking their equipment, the two bodyguards went down the list. Traveling very light made careful preparation even more crucial. The older warrior noticed that Clovache had slipped the frame of her wrist crossbow into the special compartment on the outside of the pack, and she kept her mouth shut. If it made Clovache feel stronger, the slight extra weight was worth it.

At last the two decided they were ready, and they walked out of the dormitory. Neither Batanya nor Clovache bothered to lock their doors behind them. Theft was a rare occurrence in the castle. It was punishable by death. Of course, unlocked doors made elaborate practical jokes very easy to stage. Batanya touched the scar on her cheek.

Their employer was waiting in the Hall of Contracts, just as he’d been bid. Batanya gave the Parduan a sharp nod to indicate they were ready to go. Crick stood, brushed the wrinkles out of his outer tunic, and said, “I suppose now we meet the witches and the mechs?”

“Yes,” Clovache said. “No way around it, Crick.”

He looked startled for a brief moment. “It shows, then.”

Batanya snorted.

“That would be a yes, I take it. Well, well. Where do we go?”

“This door.” It was heavy Moraeus wood and banded with metal. There were runes and other symbols from several magical systems incised in the stone all around the door and carved into the door itself. If the Britlingen Collective were destroyed at that moment, Batanya reckoned the Hall of Witchcraft and all within it would remain standing.

She knocked on the door, the pattern of a bodyguard, four evenly spaced knocks. After a moment, it swung open, and the three walked through, falling into the pattern they would assume for the journey: Batanya in front, her eyes moving from side to side, Crick following, and then Clovache, whose task was to keep her face forward but her ears behind-a tricky thing to do, but that was the traditional job of the junior.