M McNally - The Sable City

“Their leader told me. I spoke with the Devil Lord while the rest of you were up in the tower.”

Zeb stared at her in the flickering light.

“Do you want me to tell everybody that?”

Nesha-tari growled. “I do not care, Zebulon. This matter is at an end, or close enough to it that these details are of no consequence. Come, we will speak with the hobgoblins.”

“We will do what now?”

Nesha-tari turned away from the window and walked to where the unlit lantern had been left by the door, as the others were still concerned that no light should show from the house. She picked it up and reached inside to pinch the wick between a finger and thumb, and lit it with a sparking snap and a whiff of ozone.

The rest of the party made various noises of alarm, and Nesha-tari sighed and rolled her eyes. She’d had just about enough of humans, devils, bullywugs, hobgoblins, and at the moment, even Dragons. Danavod was running a slipshod operation in Vod’Adia, and Nesha-tari presently had no more interest in the whole sorry mess of it all. So long as the Duchess of Chengdea did not end up where Horayachus had wanted her to go, Akroya’s purpose in sending Nesha-tari here should certainly be fulfilled. To hell with the rest of it.

“All of you shut up,” she snapped, and the party did so without Zeb having to translate. She glared around at each of them.

“This is over. Coming into the city was pointless. We will see to the denouement, but our involvement here is through.”

Zeb started to say so to the others, and they of course started asking more questions before he had gotten very far. Nesha-tari growled again and turned to go, ready to leave the squabbling idiots in the dark, but she stopped as someone gave a sharp whistle.

It was Amatesu, standing with one hand raised for silence and her head tilted to the side. She said something, Nesha-tari did not know what, but then everyone heard a set of steady knocks, coming from outside. It sounded like someone rapping a hand on the front door downstairs.

The party rushed to the windows and Nesha-tari looked down from one next to Zebulon. They stared down into darkness until Nesha-tari extended the lantern outside, and the flickering light shined down on the gray, upturned face of the Devil Lord, Balan.

“Hello again, itinerant adventurers,” the devil called up to them. “Anyone up for a parley? We‘ve an awful lot to talk about.”

After the little devils had snatched Claudja’s clothes and stranded her in the tub, the Duchess had fashioned a sort of poncho from bed sheets. She was sitting huddled in them on the bed an hour later when there was another knock on the door, but Claudja had decided she was through with crouching behind the tub and brandishing a silver butter knife.

“What?” she called irritably, and the door opened. A little devil flew in and returned her clothes in a neatly folded pile, washed, mended, and still warm as though they had been dried before a fire. Claudja redressed and went on plotting her escape, though she had not gotten very far in that direction all day.

The room’s single window gave a view of packed dirt and the side of a long building made of black stone, standing five stories tall and with rows and rows of arched windows covered by shutters. Claudja could lean out her window far enough to see that her room was in the top story of an identical building, laid out at an angle to the first rather than in parallel. The two wings came together at a central tower to her right, while out at their far ends to the left both ended at towers extending another three or four stories up into the gray sky. A slice of Vod’Adia’s monochromatic streets was visible beyond the towers, past the surrounding area of bare dirt and sifting gray dust.

The window was wide enough to jump through, but the fall was certainly enough to kill her. Claudja had enough sheets and towels to knot together a rope that might get her halfway down. A fall from there would probably break both her legs, but might leave her alive. For a while. Claudja made that her backup plan.

She thought she could brain a little devil with a chair the next time one hovered in, but that would only be of use if a dozen of them did not enter together. She also knew from the glimpse of a voluminous white sleeve in the hallway the first time her door had been opened that there was a bigger devil out there, probably the same sort of bearded creature that had carried her to this place. Claudja tried to listen for it through the slight crack under her door, but heard nothing in the hall, not even breathing. The thought that devils might not have to breath gave her a chill.

Claudja still had no good ideas by the time the sky grew dark outside, the mist-dulled shadows from behind her building letting her know that she was facing east. Dinner was brought to her, the same as lunch, and Claudja ate again without drinking the wine this time.

Though she was exhausted Claudja stayed off the bed and sat in a chair in the corner, after deciding not to bother wedging it under the doorknob. She sat with her arms crossed, biting her lip, mind running down intricate scenarios that had yet to lead anywhere good. Her eyes grew progressively heavier, and each time she started to nod-off the light from the hanging glow stones started to fail. At one point when they had gone almost completely to darkness, the door banged open with a crash.

Claudja jerked in her chair as a tall figure breezed into the room. Claudja recognized her as the creature who had killed the legionnaires, though she had replaced her tight black leathers with a long gown flowing to the floor, colored a deep burgundy and moving like silk. Her green and blonde hair was pinned up and neatly arranged to frame her face which was pale as alabaster, or a corpse. Her red eyes, fangs, and folded bat wings topped with hooks made her rather hard to mistake for a human woman.

“Hi there,” the creature grinned at Claudja. “We were not introduced. You may call me Uella.”

It was the first time all day a devil had spoken to Claudja. She got to her feet with her hands in fists at her sides, which Uella seemed to find funny.

“Where is Phinneas?” Claudja demanded in the most regal tone she could summon.

Uella beckoned with a finger, the nail a dark red that matched her dress.

“Come this way, and I will show you.”

“I am not going anywhere with you, Devil Woman,” Claudja said. Uella frowned.

“First off, I am a demon, not a devil. No tail, as you can see. Second…what do I call you?”

Claudja was not about to go on casual terms with a demon.

“I am the Duchess of Chengdea.”

“Good for you. Second, Duchess, you absolutely are coming with me. But I leave it to you if you wish to walk, or would prefer being bound and dragged.”

Claudja’s heart was racing and the palms of her clenched hands were clammy.

“Shall I get a rope?” Uella grinned, but Claudja stepped away from the wall. The demoness gave a disappointed cluck and a shrug, then turned to lead the way out into the hall, turning to the right. Her gown was open in the back from neck to her slim waist, allowing her wings plenty of room.

There was indeed a bearded devil in the hall, standing just to the left of the door and holding a pole arm with a cluster of sharp blades and twisting hooks at the top. Claudja shied away from the creature and followed Uella, who was skipping away down a wide passage lined with doors on both sides, illuminated by candles in ornate candelabras. The demoness was whistling an unfamiliar tune. Claudja looked back over her shoulder and saw that the bearded devil was following them, albeit it at a polite distance behind.

Uella skipped along gaily for quite a while before halting before another door where a bearded devil stood guard, and Claudja hurried forward hopefully. As she arrived the demoness pulled open the door and Claudja looked into a room very much like her own. Phinneas Phoarty was just sitting up in the bed, where he had been lying atop the covers. His face looked freshly scrubbed though his eyes were sunken and exhausted, and his gray wizard robes were clean. They actually looked like they had been pressed.