Lilith Saintcrow - The Devil's Right Hand

Not the best way to meet the Devil at all.

Venizia lay atop its lagoon, shimmering gilt and pearl. Once, long ago, the city had been at the mercy of a rising sea. Climate control, antigrav, and reactive had changed all that. Now the entire city was mythically beautiful, its buildings arching over canals gleaming crimson as the sun died its daily, fiery, bloody death.

After the failure of the celebrated Gibraltar Locks Project, the Hegemony had funded a massive retrofit to keep Venizia afloat. Everyone was mildly surprised when the Locks architect (an Academy Magi dropout-turned-engineer named Todao Shikai) was assigned to the task, and slightly more surprised when he actually pulled it off. He collapsed and died of a massive cerebral hemorrhage six months after the retrofit was finished. Rumor was he had called up a particular imp after the Locks project failed and bargained away his life for a career success. I’d always discounted the old story—but I was on my way to my second official meeting with the Prince of Hell.

Meeting the Devil does tend to change the way one looks at gruesome old legends—the more gruesome, the more thought-provoking.

The transport floated down, hovercells whining as it held steady above the water for a few moments before gliding onto the dock and landing with barely a thump. Whoever the pilot was, he or she was highly capable. AI decks can’t land without jolting everyone aboard; it takes a human touch.

I sat looking out the window, as everyone coughed and shuffled off the transport. Japhrimel, his fingers warm against mine, said nothing. There was a time when I would have fought tooth and nail to get out of the damned transport as quickly as possible, but for now I was content to let everyone else go their merry way first. Well, maybe not content . Maybe I just didn’t want to get out of the hover.

“We must go, Dante,” Japhrimel said quietly. His thumb touched the underside of my wrist again, the heat flushing through me and washing away sharp cold fear. The man was dangerous to my pulse. “I would ask you something.”

“Hold that thought.” I blew out between my teeth and stood up. He moved too, without relinquishing my hand. We went down the central aisle, my bag bumping against my hip. He had to bend slightly, a little too tall for a human transport. His coat rustled, sounding like soft cloth-leather; he must have been agitated for all his face was calm and his aura perfectly controlled.

We stepped off onto the dock washed with sunset light. I glanced into the sky, looked across the dock to where water glittered and foamed under the antigrav. Shikai had done a good job—the retrofit was seamless; Venizia was now truly a floating city. Unfortunately, that much antigrav meant that the whole city whined with a sound inaudible to most normals. Most psions can’t stand the sound of hovers for long, it settles in the back teeth and rattles the bones. I sighed. My shields swirled, taking in the quality of the Power here—people and stone and reactive, a taste like sour oily water on the back of the throat, overlaid with coffee fumes and synth-hash smoke. What would have taken me hours before I met Japhrimel—acclimatizing to a new city’s Power well—was done in seconds, my almost-demon metabolism shifting through the necessary adjustments. “I bet there aren’t a lot of psis here,” I muttered, then looked up at him. “What is it you’re going to ask me?”

Japhrimel finished scanning the dock, his eyes glittering and that look on him again—the look of listening to something I couldn’t hear. His jaw was set, golden skin drawn tight over his bones. I wondered what it felt like to him, to be going back into Hell. Then again, he’d gone last night, right?

I wondered what it was like, seeing what he’d given up for me. Hell was no place to party if you were a human—but he wasn’t, and it was his home. Was he homesick?

Then he looked down, and that rare smile lit his face. I couldn’t help myself—I caught my breath, smelling pollution-dyed water and sunwarmed stone, and a thread of synth-hash smoke. The pilot and copilot of the transport had just come out of their cockpit access hatch, the gold braid on their uniforms twinkling. The pilot had a synth-hash cigarette dangling from her lip.

“I ask you again to trust me, Dante. No matter what befalls us. And I ask you not to doubt me.”

“I’m here, aren’t I?” I hunched my shoulders, a faint breeze off the Meditterane touching my braided hair. As usual, a lone strand had come free and fell in my face. It seemed the longer my hair got, the more of an independent consciousness it possessed.

“You are.” The smile faded from his face. “ A’tai, hetairae A’nankimel’iin. Diriin. ” It might have been a prayer, the way he said it, but it wasn’t a prayer I knew. He had only taught me a little of the language demons used among themselves, saying it wasn’t fit for my tongue, and anyway we had time.

Now I wished we had more time.

“What does that mean?” I searched his face as the sun finished its slow slippage under the horizon. I took a deep breath—the wind off the sea was warm, but with a promise of later chill. Lights flickered in the city atop the lagoon. The antigrav made the ground feel as if it was thrumming underfoot, like the deck of an old ship or a balky slicboard.

“Promise me. Say you will not doubt me, no matter what happens.”

“It would be a lot easier if you would tell me exactly what’s going on,” I said irritably. “Are we going to get this over with or not?”

“Promise me.” He wasn’t going to budge. Stubborn demon, stubborn human woman—only I wasn’t fully human anymore.

I set my jaw and glared at him. “I promise.” After all, who do I have left, Japhrimel? Tell me that. You and Gabe, and Eddie by extension. That’s all.

I’m damn near rich, having even that much.

“Say you will not doubt me, no matter what.”

And he called me persistent. “I promise I’ll trust you and I won’t doubt you,” I chanted as if I was back in primary school. “No matter what. Now can we get this over with?”

“I will never understand your tendency to hurry.” But his face had eased. Now he looked thoughtful and almost relaxed. It was only a millimeter’s worth of difference or so in the lines around his mouth but it shouted at me. At least I knew him well enough for that.

If I have to do this, I want to get it over with. Then you and I are going to have a little chat about our relationship. It’s high time we got a few things straight. My heart leapt into my throat, I lifted my sword slightly. “I’m armed and ready to face the Devil, Japhrimel. Let’s go.”

I wish I could say I saw more of Venizia. The city is a treasure trove of pre-Hegemony art and artifacts; its architecture alone is worth a lifetime’s careful study. As it was, I looked down at my feet, barely marking the turns we made and fixing them into a mental map, letting Japhrimel navigate me over bridges and through darkening streets not big enough for even single-passenger hovers. The people here used narrow high-prowed transports on the canals—some of them open-air transports, which gave me a shudder—and slicboards to get around. The fourth time I got tagged by the wash from a slicboard’s localized antigrav I made up my mind to draw my sword the next time one came near me.

I almost did it too, but Japhrimel closed his fingers around my right wrist, a bracelet as gentle as it was inexorable. “You are out of sorts,” he murmured, making me laugh. The sound sliced through the street, rattled away against the hoverwhine pressing against my back teeth.