A gray-robed Circle Wizard had run away from the area of Souterm’s North Gate as soon as the party appeared, and any number of travelers stood staring at them in amazement. The group did not linger. Phin Phoarty led the way south along side streets and back alleys all the way to the docks just short of the Miilarkian Quarter at the foot of Broadsword Ridge’s southern end. The party had vaguely agreed that was the best place for everyone. On the way the ragged, dusty band stared around in wonder, for a living city full of colorful storefronts and signs, trees rustling in the breeze, and people of all descriptions laughing and talking and strolling along seemed the strangest place imaginable.
The party took rooms in an inn before evening started to fill the place, and plans for a meal were put aside as people collapsed in the comfortable quarters. Most slept through the rest of the day, and the night as well.
Tilda awoke feeling very strange, and it was a moment before she realized it was because she was lying on a bed for the first time in weeks. She sat up and saw the shallow light of morning shining in through the wooden blinds. One other bunk in the room was occupied by the small shape of the Duchess Claudja, while the other two were empty. Amatesu’s was neatly made, Nesha-tari’s was a tangle of sheets and covers.
Tilda let Claudja sleep for the Duchess had told her she intended to approach the officials of the Codian Empire today, as well as the reason. The noblewoman from Daulic Chengdea would need her rest. Tilda washed up in a room at the end of the hall and looked at her face for a long time in a mirror above the basin. She could not decide whether or not she looked older but the plains of her face seemed sharper than she remembered, and the cheeks more hollow. Home cooking in Miilark could repair that, at least on the surface.
The thought of food sent Tilda rapidly downstairs to the common room of the inn. Nights on the docks went long but the mornings started slow. Uriako Shikashe sat alone at the bar and Tilda hardly recognized him until he nodded at her, for he seemed much smaller without his full o-yori armor. His swords remained as ever on his hips.
Zeb and Amatesu sat at a table by a paned window fronting the porch, and both smiled at Tilda as she approached. She glanced past them at the masts bobbing in the harbor, the warehouses and the blue water. If it was not Miilark, yet, it at least looked a bit like home.
Tilda settled into a chair and Zeb pointed at the mug on the table in front of him. The rich aroma of imported Xoshan coffee rose on the steam, as no self-respecting Soutermese drank the local Doonish brew.
“Oh, gods yes,” Tilda said, and Zeb raised a finger at the barman.
“You look well, Matilda,” Amatesu said.
“My friends just call me Tilda.” Tilda reached out impulsively and hugged the shukenja, who tensed for a moment but then patted her on the back.
“Even this miscreant looks almost presentable,” Tilda said, smiling at Zeb. He had shaved down to a heavy goatee and a light mustache, which together made him look like a fellow who could not quite make up his mind. He smiled back, and he looked more himself.
“So what has you three up so early?” Tilda asked, looking eagerly toward the bar for her coffee.
“We’ve been on the docks,” Zeb jerked a thumb. “Found Madame Nesha-tari an Ayzant boat, bound up Channel.”
Tilda blinked. “When does it leave?”
“Today. She is already aboard.”
“What?” Tilda was surprised to feel something like a loss at the thought that a member of the party was leaving the others so soon. She scarcely knew these people at all, it was true, yet after the last several days she felt close to each of them. Even the Zantish sorceress, Dragon Cultist, man-eating-monster.
“She says goodbye to everyone,” Zeb said, and Amatesu frowned at him as she stirred her own coffee.
“Madame Nesha-tari did not say this.”
Zeb sighed. “Well, it would have been nicer if she had, correct?”
“Doesn’t she still owe you all a great deal of money?” Tilda asked. She attributed the return of her Miilarkian interests to her proximity to the sea.
Amatesu looked unconcerned but Zeb sagged back in his chair and groaned at the ceiling.
“We had this out on the docks. The Madame feels we were paid, as the Shugak set aside big chests of money for us. Of course, the little blighters will kill us if we go back to collect, but the Madame seemed to feel that was our problem.”
Zeb rocked forward in his chair and looked miserably at Tilda.
“I was a rich man, Tilda. For about thirty seconds. The hobs opened a chest with two hundred and fifty gleaming pieces of gold in it, with my name on them! Not literally, of course, but you know what I mean? I just stared at it, and nodded okay. If I knew I was never going to see it again, I at least would have touched it. Actually, I would have stripped to my skivvies and rolled around in the pile, tossing coins in the air and singing tra-la-la!”
“That would have impressed the hobgoblins, I am sure,” Amatesu said solemnly, and Tilda laughed at them both.
“So what are you going to do now?” Tilda asked, holding out a hand to include Shikashe at the bar, who was now tucking into a plate heaped with enough fish to stock a small pond. The sight made Tilda even hungrier.
Zeb and Amatesu just looked at each other.
“No idea,” Zeb said, and Amatesu gave a small shrug.
“Something always comes along.”
“Aren’t you part of some military unit in Larbonne?” Tilda asked Zeb, who smirked.
“Sure, a mercenary outfit that sold me to a lion-monster and these two crazy Westerners. I don’t think they will miss me.”
“What about you…Tilda?” Amatesu asked. Tilda smiled at her, though she felt a qualm at the question.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I should talk to John.”
Zeb jerked his thumb at the window again. “On the porch.”
“What?” Tilda blinked, and looked outside. John Deskata was sitting alone at a table at the end of the wide, covered porch, facing the street with his back to the window.
“He came with us to the docks,” Amatesu said. Zeb cleared his throat and his smile faltered.
“I think he found a Miilarkian ship.”
A serving boy was almost at the table with Tilda’s coffee, but when he set it in front of her she excused herself from Amatesu and Zeb, and walked outside.
She did not step loudly, but John looked over his shoulder as she came. She passed him and turned to stand across the table. He had an inkpot and quill, and a few lines written on a parchment square. He did not meet Tilda’s eyes, but she saw that his were brown again. His tower shield, covered by a cloth, leaned against the porch railing with his small pack bundled against it.
“You found a ship?” she asked.
“Yes. Fast cutter of House Tagalai.”
“How fast?”
“Not fast enough. If we make good time I will still be late by two weeks.”
John had still not looked up at her, so Tilda sat down across from him.
“How much do they want for passage?”
“They are short a hand. I’ll work my way across.”
Tilda blinked. “What about me?”
John gave a sigh instead of an answer. Tilda reached across the table and snatched the parchment, rattling the inkwell. John made a grab for it, but stopped himself and let her take it.
The ink was already dry. It was dated at the top and written in formal Miilarkian in a surprisingly delicate hand. That actually made sense, Tilda realized, as of course John Deskata had been for all his early life the privileged son of a Great Island House, trained in calligraphy and other noble pursuits. The stilted words were bland, a dismissal of Matilda Lanai from all services and interests pertaining to the House of Deskata.
Tilda stared at John over the paper, and he sighed again.
“I was going to write more, to mitigate that. I have been sitting here for half an hour trying to think of something to say.”
“What is this?” Tilda hissed.
“Just what it says. You’re fired, Tilda. I’m kicking you out of the House.”
Tilda stared, both her hands on the paper.
“You can’t do that,” she said. “You don’t have any real authority.”
John met her eyes, and green or not his flinty stare was as much authority as he needed.
“I am Jonathan Malohan Deskata, the last man of the Deskata blood, and I am putting you out of the House, girl. Not that there is still a House to speak of.”
John leaned across the table and held Tilda with his eyes.
“It is over, Matilda. The Assembly will carve up the House, and all the assets will be divided. That includes the Guild, and the Guilders. If you return to Miilark as a Deskata Guilder in good standing, you get assigned to another Guild of another House. Is that what you want?”
“I want to fight for my own House!” Tilda said. “My family has served yours for three generations.”
John waved a hand. “They’ll be fine. The merchants always go smoothly.”
“But the Guild will fight. As will the fleet!”
“Not if nobody asks them to,” John said. Tilda stared.
“Even if you don’t make the Assembly, there will still be time…”
“Tilda, you are not listening. No one is going to fight for Deskata if no Deskata asks. And I won’t do that. I won’t.”
“It is your House!”
“The hell it is!” John said bitterly, banging a hand on the table so hard that the inkwell jumped and tipped on its side, drops of the viscous black fluid burbling out onto the wood. The two Miilarkians sat there with neither making a move to right the pot.
“Then why go back?” Tilda asked. John stared at the inkwell.
“Personal business,” he said. He held out a hand toward Tilda, and she slowly handed him back the note. He wet the quill from a blob on the table and signed the note in a flourishing hand. He put it back on the table in front of Tilda and stood, hoisting his shield to his back.
“I want to go home too, John,” Tilda said quietly, keeping her voice still.
“Wait a few months,” he said as an order. “Things will be quiet by then. Business will be back to normal.” He looked at Tilda, though now it was she who did not lift her eyes to meet his.
“You are good at what you do, Matilda Lanai. You can have your pick of another Guild if you want it. Or do something else. Your life is your own. Goodbye.”
John turned and walked with his long, legionnaire stride for the porch stairs. Tilda stopped him at the top of them.
“Captain Block did not die for you, you know,” she said. “He died for the House of Deskata.”
John froze, but only for a moment. He stepped down the stairs and moved onto the street, soon losing himself among many others making their way to someplace else.
*
Zeb tried to be nonchalant as he kept an eye on Tilda and John out on the porch, but Amatesu was not fooled for a second. His conversation with the shukenja had trailed off into silence for quite a while before he remembered to look over at her. When he did, Amatesu was smiling at him faintly.
“I’m sorry, what?” he asked.
Amatesu lowered her eyes and sipped her coffee.
“You should ask if you may go with her,” the shukenja said.
Zeb blinked. “What?”
“With Tilda.”
Zeb stared at her. “I don’t even know where she is going.”
Amatesu glanced at him with an eyebrow raised. “Do you care?”
“Not even a little bit.”
Amatesu smiled again. “Then ask.”
Zeb looked back out the window. Tilda and John were speaking intently, and Zeb thought Tilda looked troubled, or sad.
“Do you think she would say yes?”
Amatesu set down her cup. “I do not know, Zebulon. But I know that if she leaves and you have said nothing, you will regret it for the rest of your life.” The Shukenja’s smile faded. “One should not have regrets, if it can be helped. They are very burdensome, and the large ones never become less so.”
Outside, John stood up at the table, slung his shield and turned away. Tilda said something Zeb could not hear through the window, and the man paused at the top of the porch stairs before he took them down and walked away. Tilda sat alone, staring after him.
“Someone should take Tilda her coffee, at least,” Amatesu said.
“What?”
Amatesu pointed at Tilda’s untouched cup, sitting atop a polished board beside a seashell mounded with sugar, and a tiny glass ladle.
“Tilda’s coffee grows cold. Some kind soul should take it to her.”
Zeb narrowed his eyes at the shukenja. “You know, you are very cunning for a priestess.”
Amatesu looked at him levelly. “I had bad training in my youth.”
Zeb rose and balanced the board, made his way out the door and around to the table where Tilda sat. She saw him coming but hardly glanced over before staring again off into the crowd where John had disappeared. Her shoulders were slumped and her face, normally so expressive and warm, was only blank.
Zeb set the board down in front of her, and Tilda thanked him absently.
“Anything else, Ma’am? Buttered scone? Turtle soup? Pickled orc foot? Bucket of whiskey?”
Tilda glanced up and Zeb straightened, snapping his heels.
“Cheddar wheel? Sparrow shish kebab? Squirrel surprise? Groggy varmint?”
Tilda broke into a smile despite herself. “Groggy varmint?”
“’Tis how you know they are fresh, Ma’am.”
Tilda laughed, and it was the best thing Zeb had heard all day. She finally noticed the coffee and clapped both hands, then started dumping sugar into the cup and stirring. Zeb sat down next to her as innocuously as possible.
“You’re a very strange man, Zebulon,” Tilda said, taking a sip and closing her eyes with a contented sigh. It was very good coffee, Zeb had thought.
Tilda opened her eyes and looked at him. Her eyes were nut brown and a slight squint gave them an almond shape as well.
“What happened to you?” she asked. “When you went through the gate?”
“Was I less strange before that?”
“Not really. I am just wondering.”
Zeb frowned and scratched his head. “I don’t know if I can really say. I mean, one moment I was on the dais, then I fell into deep snow. A woman helped me up…”
“A woman?”
“Yes, in furs and a scarf. There was a man there, a one-armed mage with a staff, but only the woman spoke. She called me by name, told me to run through the next gate, and then pushed me through one standing in the snow.”
“Through another gate?” Tilda asked.
“Yes, it looked like the one in the tower but it was made out of giant tusks instead of metal. When I went through it, I fell out into woods. Nice woods. Trees, and flowers, and a blue sky above. I could hear water, like a stream, and it all seemed…familiar, somehow.”
“It sounds like it was pleasant,” Tilda said, looking very earnestly at Zeb. He nodded.
“It was. I think…I think I might have stayed. But the woman in the snow had told me not to, so I ran through a third gate. Shaped like the others but made from the trunks of trees.”
“Why did you do what she told you?”
Zeb shook his head slowly. “I don’t know. She seemed worried about me, and I trusted her. She told me to go, so I did. And then I ran back into the tower, and into you.”
Tilda’s smile slowly returned at the left side of her mouth. “I remember,” she said. “That is what I mean. You’re a very strange man. That may be why strange things happen to you.”
“Perhaps,” he said. “Though really, that was only the fourth or fifth strangest thing that happened that day.”
“Sure,” Tilda nodded. “Nesha-tari turned into about half a lion.”
“Right. And a big Black Dragon yelled at us.”
Tilda nodded. “Amatesu got shot by a demoness in skin-tight leather.”
Zeb frowned. “Darn. I actually didn’t see that demon. I saw the big pig-ape. And an upstart Circle Wizard teleported us twice without killing us. You know, falling through two or three magic gates may have been the least strange thing that happened.”
“Maybe so,” Tilda said. “I even think you might actually have hit one of the hobgoblins you were aiming at. Maybe.”
“Hey!” Zeb said, and Tilda laughed again, white teeth showing brilliantly in the morning sun on the shaded porch. He had about gathered his nerve enough to touch her hand or maybe even try and kiss her, but was disturbed by heavy footfalls pounding up the porch stairs.
“Heggenauer!” Tilda cried happily, and Zeb turned to find the blonde priest nodding at them, washed and cleanly garbed but with his steel breastplate all battered and dented.
“Matilda. Zebulon.”
“How is it a priest happens by the second you’re about to kiss a pretty girl?” Zeb whined.
Heggenauer raised an eyebrow, but smirked. “Sorry, we learn it in the temple seminary. Matilda, is the Duchess Claudja about?”
“Call me Tilda, and no. Still asleep.”
Heggenauer frowned, but nodded at them both and stepped inside the inn. Zeb turned back toward Tilda, who was looking at him with her eyes soft, and a thoughtful purse to her lips that was quite distracting.
“We’re you really going to try and kiss me just then?”
“Um. Yes. It depends. How many daggers do you have on your person right now?”
“Twenty-three.”
Zeb blinked, but Tilda’s mouth widened into a lopsided smirk that made his stomach feel fluttery.
She sat up straight, facing him, and folded her hands on the table.
“Tell me one thing,” she said.
“Anything.”
“Just one thing, Zeb. One thing that is not a joke, or a jibe, or something silly. Just one.”
She was waiting. Zeb took a deep breath, and straightened up on his own chair. He looked Tilda straight in the eyes.
“The first time I saw you was in the inn across from the Dead Possum. I’d been choked unconscious by a Destroyer of Ayon, and I came-to sprawled across a table in the bar.”
Tilda nodded that she remembered, but she did not interrupt.
“The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was you, lying on a bench along the back wall. There was a square of sunlight coming through the window, shining right on your face. I thought for a moment that I had died.”
“Did I look that bad?” Tilda asked, and Zeb shook his head firmly.
“No. You were beautiful. I thought I had died, and gone to a better place than I have any right to expect.”
Tilda stared back at him for what seemed a long time. She gave a short nod.
“That will do,” she decided. “You may kiss me now.”
*
Phin was alone in the room when he awoke, the other fellows having gone off to somewhere. He washed up down the hall and dressed in his least-dirty plain clothes, for wearing the robes of a Circle Wizard here was probably not a good idea. Before he went downstairs to look for the others, his mind turned to other matters. Phin sat on the floor by his bunk and pulled out the leather satchel he had stowed beneath it.
The book was inside, which still contained one teleport spell, but it was not on Phin’s mind at the moment. Instead he felt along the side of the leathery volume until his fingers touched the spiral shaft of the wand Phin now thought of as the Scepter of Kanderamath. He drew it from the satchel and sat looking at it for several minutes before there was a knock on his door. Phin jerked, startled, and crammed the wand back into the satchel.
“Hello?” the Duchess Claudja’s voice called through the door. “Is anyone in there?”
Phin climbed to his feet but instead of putting the satchel away he slung it over his shoulder. He hurried to the door and opened it, and the Duchess smiled up at him.
“I thought you had all gone,” she said. “Where is everyone?”
“I just woke up, and was going to look myself. My guess is the common room. Are you hungry…your Grace?”
Claudja smiled again, and slipped an arm through Phin’s.
“Famished. And if you please, do dispense with the title. It just seems silly after all that we have been through. Does it not, Phin?”
“As you wish, Claudja,” he said, and the two walked arm in arm to the stairs and down, Phin hardly even thinking about the Scepter in his satchel.
The others, minus Nesha-tari and Deskata, were grouped around a table and laughing, probably at something Zeb had said. Tilda saw them coming first and leaped to her feet to hurry toward them, beaming a smile. Claudja shook loose from Phin’s arm and hugged the Miilarkian fondly.
“I ordered you eggs,” Tilda said. “Is that all right?”
“Nine Gods, yes,” Claudja said. “Eggs and all the chickens that laid them.”
Tilda turned to Phin, and to his surprise she hugged him as well.
“You saved all of us, Phin,” she said, stepping back and smiling at him. “That’s why I’ve decided not to kick you in the belly for knocking me out with a sleep spell.”
“Obliged,” Phin said.
“Duchess Perforce,” Heggenauer said solemnly, standing up next to his chair. He bowed from the waist.
“Really?” Claudja asked. “I have to curtsy in these trousers?”
“Not necessary, your Grace. I only wish to say that I have arranged for you to meet with the Codian Grand Duke of Doon, as you wished. He shall await your convenience in the First Fort on the old Pirate Cove, anytime after the noon hour.”
“Heggenauer, thank you,” Claudja said with such deep earnestness that Phin wished he had gotten up early and arranged such a meeting himself, not that he had any idea of how he would have done so.
“What’s all that about?” Zeb asked, and Tilda gave him a look. He shrugged. “What? It’s a secret?”
Claudja looked around at the others, and seemed to reach a decision. She took a breath.
“I have come to the Empire on behalf of my father, Duke Cyril Perforce of Chengdea. The Emperor must be informed posthaste that our Duchy, and all the prominent citizens therein, are prepared to make formal acceptance of the Code of Beoshore. We petition his Imperial Majesty for assistance in our time of travail.”
Everyone stared, Phin and Heggenauer even more stunned than the others as they were both Codians born.
“You wish help against Ayzantium, your Grace?” Heggenauer asked.
“And against the Kingdom of Daul,” Claudja said. “This news will anger the King on the River Throne greatly when it is known, which is why I traveled in secret. Or rather, why I tried to do so.”
The Duchess looked around at everyone again, and reached out to squeeze Phin and Tilda’s hands.
“I am telling all of you this now, only so that you may know how profoundly I mean my thanks. For getting me this far.”
“I so should have charged you more,” Tilda said, and Claudja grinned at her.
“I would have gone much higher, were you a better barterer.”
The two of them laughed and hugged again, and cheers went up from the table as the doors behind the bar were pushed open by people bringing food from the kitchen, platters of eggs and great bowls of thick Soutermese sausage, spiced with Agintan pepper and wild chives. The party ate, together, and for an hour the thoughts of what came next for each of them were held at bay. It seemed that whatever was to come, it surely must be better than what had gone before.
*
The Ayzantine vessel sailed at first light so Nesha-tari left Souterm without returning to the inn, saying goodbye to no one but the Westerners and Zebulon. She did however stand in the stern as the ship left the docks, looking back at the skyline she had first seen little more than a month ago, though it already seemed much longer. She felt no Hunger as of yet, and so was unconcerned by the ship’s crewmen around her. Neither did they leer at Nesha-tari any more than they would have at any other woman.
She had completed the task given to her by Akroya successfully, slaying Horayachus and keeping the Red Priest’s plans for the Duchess of Chengdea from coming to fruition. Nesha-tari still had no idea if the second thing had really been of any interest to the Blue Dragon, but she could not imagine he would have a problem with it. She had been bidden to sail to Roseille to meet with others in Akroya’s service after the task, and from there she thought surely she would be allowed to return home. Back to the high desert desolation of the Hakalya, and back to the life she had known now for more than a century. She had been waiting for that return since the moment she came down from the desert, and though she was moving toward it now Nesha-tari was still looking back, away from her future.
The servants of Blue Akroya were a contentious lot, and their cut-throat rivalry for the Dragon’s favor often became literal. They were the only people Nesha-tari had ever known in her life, not counting prey, and they were her most dangerous enemies. There was not one among them who Nesha-tari could even tenuously consider a friend.
Though Nesha-tari knew it was ridiculous for her to think of any of the people she was now leaving in that way either, she felt something like melancholy as Souterm receded in her sight. Amatesu and Uriako Shikashe had been her companions for months, and the shukenja had told the others their terrible story to demonstrate that they were not so different than was Nesha-tari herself. Little better, and perhaps even worse. The Jobian Kendall Heggenauer, despite his initial revulsion, had put himself between Nesha-tari and Balan, even as the Devil Lord was exposing her for what she truly was. Despite seeing her true form the party had stayed with her, and taken her with them when they escaped Vod’Adia.
That, to Nesha-tari, seemed to be the sort of thing that friends would do, though she had never had any personal experience with the phenomenon. She was half Lamia and half human, but only the first had ever been of any value to her, or to the Blue Master to whom her mother had sold her, long ago.
Nesha-tari was leaving what might have been a different kind of life had things been much different, but somewhere within her she knew that it was a kind of life she could only consider at a time like this, while she was not Hungry. She thought about it for those moments all the same, and she did not leave the stern railing until the city of Souterm had disappeared around a bend of the river, the waters carrying her back toward home and the thing that she could not help being.
*
Black Danavod returned to Vod’Adia with the setting sun, skimming low over swamp and hill on her great wings. She dropped into the valley on the southern side, away from the Camp Town. The Great Dragon shivered as she broke through the cloudy veil, for even a creature of her colossal power was not immune to the sheer magnitude of the magic that had once been worked in the dark city, the Cataclysm that for a time had severed the place from this world and ringed it in occluding fog.
As she passed through the veil, Danavod thought she could almost sense that it was slightly weaker than it had been this morning, though that may have been her imagination. It was probably too early to feel it, though she knew it was happening.
Danavod beat her wings and pulled up her snout as she came in low over the city, swerving around towers. She did not roar this time as she was not in the mood. She pulled up sharply before the palace, rising high above it on a level with the pointed roofs of the nine subsidiary towers, then settling back toward the familiar courtyard within one connecting wing.
Balan awaited her there, ringed by several of his little spiky minions who all winked away before Danavod settled to a landing on her hind legs, leaving the Devil Lord alone. Danavod folded her wings and planted her forelegs, sitting cat-like in the courtyard directly before Balan, who bowed.
“Your Humongousness,” he called. Danavod’s head loomed high above him at the end of her long neck.
“Balan,” Danavod’s disembodied voice purred out in the gathering gloom.
“I hear the monkeys got away. Rough, that.”
“Nesha-tari told me the Circle Wizard did nothing at the Node,” Danavod said. “Yet he was allowed to reach that place.”
“Well, I don’t know that allowed is really the word…” Balan said.
“Did you arrange for the Wizard to come unto the Node, Balan?”
The devil winced and scratched the back of his neck.
“Yes I did.”
Danavod flicked out a single claw, a casual gesture that laid the devil’s abdomen open almost to his spine. Balan screamed and collapsed on his seat. Spiney devils began to pop into existence all around, while larger Bearded ones pounded out from the halls giving into the courtyard.
“Shall I kill all your minions as well, Balan?” Danavod called.
“Out!” Balan shouted. “Everybody out!”
The devils sulked and growled but withdrew, either on foot or by simply disappearing. Their lord groaned and flopped onto his back on the flagstones, clutching his leprous innards to his belly with both hands. Danavod leaned forward so her massive head hung in the air directly above him. Red blood was forming a pool around Balan, and two black horns had sprung out of his forehead, as he was distinctly not in full control of himself at the moment. The devil’s blood looked and smelled just like that of the humans. Danavod had always thought that implied that the two species were related.
“Madame, you have no idea how much that hurts,” Balan hissed through his fanged teeth.
“You are a Prince of Hell, Balan. You will survive that wound. Though I expect those pants are a loss.”
Balan groaned and opened his burning red eyes.
“What has happened at the Node?” Danavod growled. The devil sighed up at her.
“Honestly, we don’t know. One of Nesha-tari’s minions blundered through the thing, and came back only a minute later. We examined the gate afterwards, though as near as we could tell it remained unchanged. But then the monkeys got out of the city.”
“They teleported.”
“Yes, twice. A heads-up that they could do that would have been nice, by the way. Anyhow, as soon as they were gone…the world stopped spinning.”
Lying on his back, Balan gave a shrug that made him grunt and clutch his hands more tightly against his belly. Most of his entrails had oozed back into his body, though he was still awash in gore.
“What do you mean?” Danavod demanded.
“Well, not the world, but this city at any rate. Vod’Adia has been turning since the Witch King Kanderamath cast his spells, your Massiveness. I am told gyring is the technical term. Not at a speed where it was perceptible for the one month in a century that it appears here, but moving all the same. When the monkeys scurried out past your frogs and whatnot, Vod’Adia ceased to turn. And here it sits.”
Balan raised his hoof just enough to tap it against the flagstones a couple times, shooting up two sparks.
“It is your fault, Balan,” Danavod growled even as her voice spoke. “Had you done as you were told, stopped the Wizard and turned back Akroya’s servant, none of this would have occurred.”
Balan’s diabolic features twisted in an ugly sneer, and Danavod realized with some surprise that the creature was as angry as it was afraid. Balan raised one trembling hand to point at the horns now jutting from his forehead. The gray flesh of his abdomen was already knitting itself neatly back together.
“Madame, please. Did you not see the horns? How about the cloven hoof and the tail? I am a devil, Madame, and I don’t do nothing for nobody, ’less I got a contract, see? We are like a union that way.”
Danavod extended the claws of her right foreleg again, and Balan cringed back against the ground. She held the claws in the air above the devil, extending only the scimitar-nail of one digit until it almost touched his forehead.
“Do it, if you are going to,” Balan spat. “That is the only way I will get home now.”
“What do you mean?”
The devil lord let out a rough exhalation. “With Vod’Adia stationary, there is no longer any connection to the Outer Planes. I can’t go back to Hell, nor can any of my devils, short of having our bodies slain in this world. Same with the demons from the Abyss, and the various and sundry ne’er-do-wells from Ghenna and Tarterus. We are all stuck until we are killed here, and that mode of travel is not much to anyone’s liking.”
Danavod thought intently, two tendrils of noxious green smoke emerging unnoticed from her snout. She moved her claw aside and put it on the ground next to Balan, absently gouging the stone.
“That is why you did not seek to hide from me,” she said. “You knew I would return, and you knew I would be angry.”
“I had an inkling.”
“Do you wish me to kill you, Balan? There is not very much else in this world that could do so.”
Balan took his left hand away from his abdomen, which was again smooth and whole though still of his sickly pallor. He leaned up on his elbows and looked at the pool of gore he was lying in, and the state of his slashed and soaked garments.
“This is such an awful week for my wardrobe. No, your Great Hulkingness, I do not want you to kill me. For as I say, dying to go home entails a great deal of unpleasantness, and takes a terrible long time. Also, as you have pointed out a time or ten before, you know ways to obliterate me utterly, leaving no soul to travel back to Hell.”
“So I do,” Danavod said.
“Great,” Balan sighed. He looked up toward the sky, but frowned as he could just see his own sharp, black horns as they projected a bit forward from his temples. He glared at them until they sank back into his skull, then he pointed up at the sky.
“That veil is not actually doing anything right now. It is just a shadow, of a sort. We believe that at the end of the month, instead of becoming impermeable again, it is simply going to dissipate. That will leave the Sable City sitting here, where everyone in this world will be able to see that it has returned. And what would your Immensity suppose happens then?”
“The humans will come for it.”
“Right. Not as small parties you can manage, but as the armies of nations. There is just too much wealth left in this place for the monkeys to leave it alone.”
“You think I would permit this?”
“I think a bunch of toads and oversized goblins won’t be enough to stop them. And didn’t a number of your Great Dragon relations already get themselves killed? After they started eating whole armies and burning down cities? As I recall, a band of dwarves murdered a good Dragon just for sitting on top of a gold mine!”
Danavod was silent for a time, emitting not a grumble nor a single puff of smoke.
“You know much of this world, Balan,” she finally said.
Balan climbed wearily to his feet and stood, though as Danavod had sliced his suspenders along with his body he now had to hold up his trousers with one hand. The Devil Lord attempted to do so with as much dignity as he could muster, though it was a losing cause.
“Adventurers have always brought a lot of baggage with them into Vod’Adia, including their knowledge,” Balan said. “There are those among my fellows who enjoy taking that from them, along with everything else.” Balan looked up at Danavod and sighed. “You can kill me or obliterate me, your Sizableness, and maybe you can root out most of the fiends within this entire city. But you will never get them all. There are just too many, and there are some of great cunning and strength. Some will escape, perhaps enough to make the Dead War that once raged here for thirty years look like a picnic.”
“Or?” Danavod said, and for the first time in a while, Balan grinned.
“Or we can renew our deal of cooperation, Mistress, now in these altered circumstances. I have full command of the devils here, and at least some sway with the rest of the wicked. Together, I imagine they would amount to an army unlike any that has ever walked this world.”
“And what would you seek to gain from such an arrangement, Balan?”
The devil nodded and pantomimed tipping a cap.
“Time, your Gargantuaness. This is a world replete with magic, and in such a place it is always possible to discover a shorter way from point A to point B. Plus, as long as me and mine are all stuck here, there is no reason for us not to have a bit of fun.”
The Dragon gazed down at the diabolic creature. Balan plainly knew much of her world, though he did not know nearly as much as did Danavod, who had dwelled here since before Men had even reckoned time, and before they had invented divisions between the present, the past, and the future. Balan had likely never heard of Danorian Prophecy, for there were few men yet alive who remembered its ways, and surely none of them had blundered into the devils’ clutches in Vod’Adia. Balan did not know that the return of the Sable City was but the first in a series of signs, signs that might presage something far worse yet to come. Danavod did know it, and she knew that depending on how things continued to unfold, she might well have need of an army far more formidable than the Shugak.
“I will require another contract, this time,” she said. “One that is exhaustive in its specific terms.”
“Goes without saying, Ma’am.”
Danavod puffed her toxic smoke.
“Speak on, then, Balan, for I am still listening.”