“So?”
“Try to get some of it onto your wrists. Maybe then you can slip loose.”
I was about to tell her that I could not reach the floor, not nearly, when I realized that I was standing an inch deep in the very muck she was talking about. I lifted my foot as far as I could and heard a dollop of something unpleasant drip from my toes and splatter the floor. I tried again and managed to bend my knee and lift my foot as high as my own waist, but it was still far from my shackles. I twitched, trying to fling the stuff at my wrists, and felt it splash across my chest and shoulder. I tried again. And again.
I don’t know how much later it was when the bolt rattled and the door swung inward, but I had been in complete darkness so long that the light of a single torch was blinding. Bells jingled softly. It was Niloch’s torturer—sorry, “jester”—Greenteeth. The warty thing lurched closer to examine me, its mouth full of poisonous sharpness like a Viet Cong pit trap. The jester was short, but its stunted arms and legs were heavy as a gorilla’s, and though it scarcely topped my waist I had no doubt that Greenteeth outweighed me. I gripped the manacles in my aching hands and wondered when it would notice they weren’t around my wrists any longer.
“Ready, you?” it asked in a disturbingly wet voice. I still couldn’t make out any eyes, but I could tell it was examining me, especially my bloody arms, pawing at my skin and tasting its cold, knobby fingers. “Trying to get free? Of course, of course, but not too much hurt things. Will spoil the music of what soon we do.” It reached out a hand so it could stroke my chest. Even with all the pain I was already in, the clammy touch of the thing made me shudder and flinch backward. “Oh, no. No fear. Together we will work for goodness. Together we will make something wonderful, quite.”
Then Greenteeth finally noticed that I had slipped my cuffs and was only holding them. Still no eyes, but the toothy mouth gaped in surprise. I didn’t give the horror time to raise the alarm, but kicked as hard as I could where I thought it might be vulnerable, somewhere between the legs and the chest. It dropped the torch, which guttered but did not go out, and as it stumbled and fell onto its back, wheezing with what I hoped was severe, crippling pain, I jumped onto it with both feet, then proceeded to leap up and down as hard as I could, paying no attention to the sensation of bones cracking beneath my heels because I had no idea how strong the thing might be. When the body got too slippery for me to maintain my balance I stepped down and started kicking, working its head and chest.
“He won’t hurt you now,” said Heartspider at last. She sounded like she’d enjoyed what had just happened. “Won’t hurt anything, not for a long time.”
But there was a frenzied anger in me that wouldn’t let go, and I kicked the rubbery, broken thing another half dozen times, seeing dim sprays of fluid in the half-light and liking the way they looked. When I stopped I was gasping, and my heart beat like a stamping press set on high, but all I wanted to do was kick the nasty thing some more. Hell was definitely getting to me.
I found the key on its belt, along with a string of little bells and enough sharp objects to get an entire street gang thrown in jail. I wiped scum off the torch until it burned brightly again, and at Heartspider’s direction I gathered up her bones, still ribboned with leathery shreds of flesh. I had nothing to carry them in, but I found some rags stiff with old blood and tied them into a hobo’s bindle, then slung it over my shoulder. The bones clicked against each other as I made my way out into the dark corridor. I swear, they sounded happy.
Heartspider spoke into my ear, making me jump. “If only we could give Niloch the same, but he is too strong for you.”
I had no urge to encounter my host again. “Just tell me where to go. How do I get out?”
“Down. Like most lordlings in Hell, the Commissar of Wings and Claws has many ways in and out of his lair. Down where the boilers are. Down.”
I let her guide me downstairs and across several basement floors. Even in the middle of the infernal night, there were sounds coming from behind doors that made me pray—yes, pray—that I never had to see what was on the other side. The place was a maze, and by the time we found our way down to what Heartspider told me was the lowest level, I was certain that Niloch or his slaves must have noticed the mess I’d left behind, especially because most of it had been his beloved jester.
The bottom room was more like the Roman catacombs, endless arches of heavy stone and gigantic pipes that looked like they might have been made of fired clay, lit by the kind of globe lights I had seen in the entry hall. It looked almost ordinary, like the underbelly of a subway station or some other bit of urban architecture, except for the bulging pipes, and the curses written on the wall by slaves or prisoners in their own blood.
“The breath of the underworld,” Heartspider said when I asked her what the pipes carried. “It fires the lights and Niloch’s machines.”
Which must be the volcanic gas he’d bragged about, the endless supply that had helped make the commissar a powerful lord in these central realms of Hell.
I could hear noises drifting down from above now, voices shouting and the slap of feet. I knew I didn’t have long, so I let Heartspider guide me through the maze of tunnels and pipes. Unfortunately, she didn’t know the bottom level all that well, so I spent as much time retracing my steps as going forward, and each moment I got more nervous. Niloch must be searching the house, and how long before a party would be sent down here? The distances between lights was growing longer; if I hadn’t had the torch I would have never found my way.
“There!” Heartspider told me as we rounded a corner. At the end of the passage a ladder of ancient wood led upward into a vertical tunnel. “That passage leads up to the gardens. From there you can find a way off Niloch’s land and burn my bones. Then I’ll be free to begin again.”
Heartspider’s words had given me an idea. I searched the floor until I found a piece of loose stone, then stretched up as high as I could and smashed the shining globe at the end of the corridor. I ran back up the passage and quickly smashed a dozen more.
“What are you doing?” Heartspider demanded. “Niloch will be out with his hunting birds in a moment. They’ll shred you with their iron beaks. You can’t wait. You must get me off his land, or I will never be free!”
I could hear the gas hissing out of the broken lights as I ran back. This wouldn’t be the fancy kind of gas that had a smell, but I was pretty sure it could damage me, so I hurried to the ladder and started climbing. At the top I found my way blocked by a rusted iron hatch, but the thing hadn’t been all the way closed and I was able to force it open, although not without doing more damage to my already torn and bloodied demon body. When I climbed out into the relative brightness of the lit garden, I pushed the lid down again and sat on it. I could hear excited noises from Gravejaw House a short distance away, so I knew I didn’t have long, but despite Heartspider hissing and snarling in my ear, I waited.
“He’ll come! He’ll find you! His dogs will chew your bones—and mine!”
I ignored her. She raged at me, but I wouldn’t move.
“You fool! What are you doing? Do you have any idea . . . ?”
Somewhere just out of my sight I heard the great front doors creak as someone began to draw the bolt, which probably meant Niloch had finished searching the house, or at least had decided it was unlikely I was still inside. Any moment now he would come riding out with slaves and soldiers and his iron-mouthed birds, whatever kind of horror those were.
“You traitor! You are dooming yourself, too!”
Even as Heartspider’s voice rose to a pitch of despair I felt sure the commissar would be able to hear, I turned and yanked the hatch back open. It screeched as rusty metal rubbed on metal, resisting me, but I only had to get it up just a little way. I pushed the torch through and forced the hatch closed again, then started to run across the stony garden, heading for the shelter of a copse of petrified trees.