"I was imprisoned on a false charge, and I received a full pardon," I said. "But don't worry that Galm is going to be upset that his future son-in-law has ties to the Dominari. All the Darklords know about them. Dis too. They couldn't do business in the city without the Lords' approval, tacit though it might be. The Dominari operate a literal underground economy, and whatever you or I might think about their activities, they're necessary for the city's survival."
Most people know the Dominari as Nekropolis' version of the mob, and that's true enough as it goes, but there's more to it than that. Nekropolis is as self-sustaining as a city can be, producing its own goods and services for the most part, and importing anything else it might need from Earth. But the Dominari fill in the cracks in the city's economy, and without them, Nekropolis couldn't go on. As a former cop, I'm uncomfortable with the situation, to say the least, but as a pragmatist, I understand it.
"And your connection to them is…" Varney asked.
"Something I can't talk about. The tongue thing again, remember? But I'm no criminal, if that's what you're asking."
He thought about this for a moment and finally nodded. "Very well. I've observed you long enough to believe you're a trustworthy man. I'll accept your word on that matter."
"What about you?" I said. "How did you get to be a secret agent for Lord Galm?"
He shrugged. "There's little to tell. As you might imagine, Galm has many servants, and he uses us as he sees fit. I have a talent for pretending to be someone I'm not. Centuries ago, when I was human, I dreamed about being an actor, and in a way, I suppose I've become one."
"I'm no theatre critic, but as far as I'm concerned, you played the part of an annoying airheaded cameraman to perfection."
He smiled, showing a hint of fang. "Thank you."
"Where are we going?" Shamika said, sounding more like a kid eager to get on with the next fun activity than an ancient alien entity struggling to defeat the darker half of her personality. Maybe in a way this was fun for her. I wondered what it was like, observing the Darkfolk for four hundred years, getting to know them in intimate detail, but never actually being part of their lives. Never actually living. I couldn't imagine how lonely it must've been.
"I've been thinking about that," I said. "If we're going to find Devona, we need to confront Gregor. And since he's masquerading as General Klamm right now, that means we need to get into Demon's Roost. But we have to do so on our terms, not his."
"And there's the little matter of a demon army standing between us and him," Varney pointed out.
"Correct. Which means that we're going to need help. The kind of help that specializes in dealing with Darkfolk in general, and demons in particular."
Varney's organic eye widened in surprise. "You can't mean…"
I smiled. "Yep. We're going to pay a visit on the Hidden Light."
FIFTEEN
But first we had a stop to make.
We drove through tunnels for the better part of twenty minutes, taking turns as necessary, and passing other carts as we traveled. The other carts were usually laden with cargo of one sort or another, almost always packed away in anonymous brown cardboard boxes. The carts were driven by vermen – human-sized bipedal rats – though they were patchwork Frankenstein versions of the creatures, dead who'd been returned to life so they could keep on working. Like I said, the Dominari loathe waste.
The "repurposed dead" ignored us as we passed. I had no idea if they recognized me or if they simply assumed that anyone traveling the Underwalk belonged there because the Dominari were so careful about whom they revealed their subterranean tunnel system to. All I know is that ever since I accepted the geis that makes it impossible for me to talk about the Underwalk, I can travel it without anyone challenging me.
As I steered the cart with my one remaining hand, I tried not to worry about Devona. I reminded myself that she was more than capable of taking care of herself. She was intelligent, strong, emotionally resilient, and she had her psychic abilities to draw on. Gregor might be a powerful adversary, but he wouldn't harm Devona if he needed her, and the longer she remained alive, the more chance she'd have to find a way to escape or, at the very least, contact me. It helped that several times during the trip I felt the weird phantom sensation of my missing right hand moving. I knew the sensations were just my imagination, but since my hand was with Devona, feeling them was like sharing a connection with her and it was a comfort, strange though it might be.
Eventually we came to a ladder, and I stopped the cart and turned it off. A light in the ceiling came on to illuminate the ladder for us, and we climbed up and opened the trapdoor. The door opened easily for me, though the security spells on it would've stopped Shamika and Varney, and probably reduced them to ashes in the process. We entered a basement filled with crates and barrels, and shelves containing bottles of wine and various other types of alcohol.
"Where are we?" Varney asked.
Shamika answered for me. "This is Skully's basement," she said.
Varney thought for a moment. "Isn't Skully's a dive bar on the western edge of the Sprawl? I've never been there, of course," he added, as if it was important to make that point. A lot of the older Bloodborn tend to put on aristocratic airs, and I found myself actually missing Varney's hippy cameraman persona. That Varney might have been irritating, but at least he wasn't a snob.
"Well, you won't be able to say that after today," I told him. I turned to Shamika. "Do you know if Gregor is aware of what we're doing?" I wasn't sure how the split personality thing worked with Shamika and Gregor, but I gathered that one side of their group mind didn't know what the other side was thinking. So while that meant Shamika couldn't tell us what Gregor's ultimate plan was, it also meant he couldn't read Shamika's thoughts and automatically know what we were up to. But that didn't mean he couldn't simply observe us, and I knew from experience that Gregor had eyes and ears everywhere in Nekropolis.
"Gregor has trouble getting his insects into the Underwalk," Shamika said. "As do I. The Dominari work very hard to keep us out. We always manage to get a few in, but I didn't sense Gregor's presence in any of the carts we passed." She paused and looked around Skully's basement. "He's not down here, either." She looked up at the ceiling. "Nor is he upstairs. I'm doing my best to keep him busy throughout the city by creating other copies of you for him to follow. Right now, there are several dozen Matts running around the Sprawl, and they all have Shamikas and Varneys with them." She grinned. "I made them right after the first duplicate was destroyed by the Blastphemer. I knew Gregor was watching, and he wouldn't be fooled by my duplicate. He could sense what I'd done. So I decided to distract him with even more duplicates." She paused. "Is that OK? Should I have asked first?"
Maybe there was a reason she'd chosen the form of a young girl beyond trying to pose as Papa Chatha's niece, I thought. The more I got to know Shamika, the more childlike she seemed. Maybe in a sense she was a child. The Watchers might be ancient as a race, but the personality that called itself Shamika had only recently emerged. And like a child, she was eager for an adult's approval.
"You did great," I said, and she beamed.
We headed upstairs and entered the bar proper. Skully doesn't believe in wasting money on decor. The nine-foot-high front door is solid iron, and there are no windows for customers to break – not because Skully cares about his patrons' safety, but because it's a pain in the ass to keep replacing glass all the time. The walls are brick and the floor concrete, which makes mopping up bloodstains less of a chore. The solid oak tables are bolted to the floor, and the wooden chairs are cheap and easy to replace. Darkfolk tend to get more than a little rowdy when they overindulge, and Skully has learned from experience that the best way to protect his place is to make it hard to destroy.