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“Yes.” Crick looked rather proud.
“Did you make it?”
“No, of course not. I stole it on commission.”
“You mean you stole it from the Lord of Hell because someone had asked you to get it?”
Crick nodded, looking pleased with her acumen.
“Who?” Batanya had a creeping feeling along her arms. This was getting worse and worse. “Who commissioned the theft?”
“Belshazzar.”
“And you went back to Pardua without the ball? Having taken his money?”
“Taken it and spent it,” Crick said, his foolish face looking rather downcast.
“We are so fucked,” Clovache said.
There was a moment of silence while they all considered the truth of this. Belshazzar, a warlord of Pardua, was actually a glorified gangster. (Perhaps all warlords are.) Belshazzar was ruthless, drastic, and notoriously indirect in his punishments. He would enjoy amputating your hand if you stole from him, but he enjoyed even more kidnapping your mother, say, and forcing you to watch as he amputated her hand. Then yours.
“Hey, we’re Britlingens,” Batanya said bracingly. “Not only are we made of tough stuff, but we can hardly be blamed for what our client has done. Britlingens are hired hands, not the responsible parties.”
“True,” Clovache said. “Our Collective would intervene, if they had any notion of where we were. Trovis wouldn’t pay ransom for us, but Flechette might. I’m not so very partial to my left hand, anyway. And maybe we can buy some time by persuading Belshazzar to kill Crick here, first.”
“Thanks, bodyguards-sworn-to-protect-me,” said Crick, somewhat coldly, “but let’s leave the discussion of my possible demise for later. Right now, we’ve got a conjuring ball to retrieve.”
“Did you hide it or was it captured?” Batanya asked.
“I hid it,” Crick said. “I seized a moment of solitude.”
“Where?”
He peered at the map. “Here,” he said, and indicated a tu
“If you had given the witches this map, they could have landed us right there,” Clovache muttered.
“Yes, but then we would have landed in the barracks. So that seemed like a poor choice to me.”
“You hid the ball in the barracks of the soldiers of the King of Hell?”
He shrugged. “It was where I was.”
“How’d… No. Let’s focus. Unless you have a better idea, we’ll work our way closer and see what our chances are.” It was obvious from Batanya’s tone that she considered those chances slim to nil. “Lucky for you I don’t have children, Crick, or I’d be cursing you in their names.”
“Oh my goodness, that’s hard to believe,” Crick said blandly. “That you don’t have children, I mean. What could the men of Spauling be thinking of?”
“Slitting your throat, most likely,” Batanya said. “I know that’s crossed my mind.”
“What is the law?” Crick didn’t sound at all worried.
“The client’s word,” Clovache said, but Batanya could tell it hurt her to say it.
“Let’s get moving. Stop the jawing.” Batanya wanted to correct Clovache’s attitude. That was her job.
“This place gives me the creeps,” Clovache muttered, by way of apology. “This is a very bad mission.”
In a few seconds, Clovache’s dark outlook was validated. Just as they were edging forward to take a gander out the mouth of their tu
It was something that was dragging itself along.
“It’s a slug,” Crick said urgently. “We must move now or be stuck to the tu
They hadn’t the faintest idea what Crick was talking about, but he’d been there before and they hadn’t. Also, the smell that preceded the dragging sound was strong enough to make even the hardened bodyguards gag. Batanya checked to make sure the passage was clear, and the three darted out into the main tu
This tu
It was hard to say in the dim lighting that was only a step above darkness, but Batanya, cleaning her sword on the trousers of one deceased soldier, felt Crick might even look a bit green.
“Thank you,” he said, after a moment.
“Don’t mention it,” she said.
They crouched in the gloom with the corpses, Clovache glancing at the bodies from time to time in curiosity. “Have you ever seen that?” she asked Batanya, pointing to the conjunction of a greenish brown snake-headed humanoid creature and a wolfwoman. Batanya shook her head. “This job is always an education,” she said.
After a few minutes, it seemed apparent no one had heard the muted groans and gurgles of the dying soldiers; or perhaps if any passerby had, the noises had been perceived as arising from their activity. At any rate, no one came to investigate.
Batanya knew it was only a matter of time before they came face-to-face with someone who would challenge them. The traffic in the tu
“If we’d known, we could have brought metal cleats,” Batanya said practically. “Perhaps someone should have told us.”
Crick was wise enough to keep his response to himself. He just gri
Some hours passed, and the activity in the tu
“At least we haven’t seen any animals,” Clovache said in a bright whisper. “I wonder how they supply themselves with meat?”
“There are pens of cows and other edible creatures, kept pretty far distant from the rest of Lucifer’s palace,” Crick said. “Why are you glad we haven’t seen animals?”
“They might bark,” Clovache said quickly. In the dim light that pervaded the tu