Charlaine Harris: Must Love Hellhounds

“I couldn’t afford the kind that shows all life-forms,” Crick said apologetically.

“What, you actually paid for this?” Clovache’s eyebrows were raised skeptically. She clearly thought he’d stolen it.

“Well, no. I mean I couldn’t afford the jail time. The better ones were locked up tighter, and I was in a hurry,” he said, without the slightest trace of shame.

“What is this object of yours that you ‘left behind’ the last time you visited this place?” Batanya said.

“It’s a conjuring ball.”

“But those are everywhere, you can buy one in any shop.”

“Not like this one. It’s for real.”

The two Britlingens stared at their client. Conjuring balls, full of tiny machinery and spells and capable of performing very innocuous bits of magic like lighting candles or drying plates, were hugely popular gifts for children. Even a cheap one could entertain a child for hours until the magic ran down, and the more expensive models were almost as good as giving someone a pet. They might last two or three years, and could do quite a variety of tasks and tricks. But everyone knew that the balls were not permanent sources of magic. Sooner or later, they’d exhaust their power.

“You’re telling us this conjuring ball is eternal?” Clovache said, her voice almost a growl.

“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 tunnel to the north of the one where they crouched. There was a fair amount of walking in between.

“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 tunnel, they heard something moving in the darkness behind them.

It was something that was dragging itself along.

“It’s a slug,” Crick said urgently. “We must move now or be stuck to the tunnel walls in a coat of slug goo. Or we’ll be absorbed.”

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 tunnel, turning left; Batanya figured that was north. They left the dragging noise and the awful smell behind them, so evidently the slugs didn’t move very swiftly. But after a few minutes, Batanya heard footsteps coming at a fast clip. At her hand gesture, the three leaped into a very small side tunnel, much narrower than the one that had been their first refuge.

This tunnel turned out to be occupied by three soldiers doing the nasty, and in this instance that was no euphemism. Since they were from different species, this was an unattractive and complicated undertaking. Before Crick’s involuntary sound of disgust had cleared his throat, before Clovache had quite figured out how they’d all hooked up, Batanya had silenced the soldiers permanently with her short sword.

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 tunnel made it obvious that they were getting closer to the hub of Hell’s activities. Several times various beings passed the mouth of their little hidey-hole, and each time the three held their breath until the footsteps had passed (if the creatures had feet). One of the slugs oozed by, and Clovache and Batanya got to observe firsthand how the creatures undulated through the tunnels, the slime oozing from their underbellies and sides to grease their passage. This slime hardened within seconds. Now Clovache understood why the floor of the tunnel was so smooth and even; the passage of the slugs, the largest of which was perhaps ten feet long and as big around as a medium barrel, had led to a gradual buildup of the substance. There was a coating on the bottom half of the walls, too, but it wasn’t as thick and glassy as the layer on the floor.