I frowned at the ogre. “You steal his money?”
Riprash laughed even harder. “You’re joking! I wouldn’t take a quarter-spit off the little hairwad. But he doesn’t trust me. Likely he doesn’t trust you, neither.”
I remembered how long it had taken before the boy would let himself sleep while I was awake. “It’s likely you’re right.”
To my relief, Riprash said he was heading out the next night and would be happy to take me, which meant that if I could somehow convince Caz to come with me, I wouldn’t have to keep her hidden from Eligor very long. The grand duke was a rich, powerful figure, and I felt pretty sure he’d send everything at his disposal after us.
Riprash seemed pleased by the prospect of my company on his voyage back to the slave market at Cocytus Landing, but just to help him keep his priorities straight I gave him a copper-handful coin, worth six spit, and told him I’d give him two more like it once we’d lifted anchor.
His chuckle was pitched so low it made my teeth hurt. “Pay me when we get to Cocytus Landing. You never know what might happen before then, and I like to earn what I make.” He looked a little surprised when I stood up. “Where are you going?”
“Believe it or not, I have a date.”
Gob barely seemed to notice that I was leaving. He was still looking suspiciously from the iron segments in his hand to Riprash, then back to the money.
Somehow, when getting dressed to go out means hiding your knife and various other small weapons, not to mention covering important bits of you with strategically thicker clothing, it undercuts the romance a bit. I hasten to say that even though Caz had a bad habit of belting me across the face from time to time, she wasn’t the reason I was dressed-to-protect. Any errand in Hell, including a walk down to the corner grocery, was likely to turn into a major bloodstorm. Wander out of the house without any means of defense and you might as well stuff your pockets with money and consumer goods and go out fishing with Somali pirates. In fact, I’d have liked to wear armor, but I didn’t know what the rules were for my sect, and the last thing I wanted was to be picked up for some bullshit dress code violation.
I made my way back across the center of the city to Dis Pater Square, where I was supposed to find what Caz had called “the temple.” I wasn’t sure what that was, and it didn’t seem like it would be easy to find: Beeger Square back home was a pretty big place, but you could have dropped about ten of them into Dis Pater and still had lots of ugly space left over. Also, Dis Pater wasn’t kept anywhere near as tidy as Beeger Square. Hell has no building codes and pretty dubious physics, so if there was such a thing as an old temple, it might easily be obscured underneath squatter camps and impromptu markets. Dis Pater was the center of Pandaemonium. Like big cities back on Earth, it drew refugees from all over, but didn’t have enough places to put them all.
I walked past some of the most bizarre gypsy-type camps you can imagine, including tents aerated by eye, nose, and mouth-holes still visible in the stretched skin. Others had been cobbled together from the shells of giant infernal bugs. On one side of the square a massive flock of winged demons perched like the pigeons of Venice on the facade of an abandoned palace, fanning themselves with their wings. Dozens of other creatures squatted in the shadows beneath them, perhaps enjoying the breeze from the winged ones’ flapping squabbles, but more likely feeding off the garbage or even the guano they dropped.
I found Caz’s temple at last, a structure that would have been small and unprepossessing if not for its aura of immense age. The blocks were so crude that only time had brought any smoothness to them, but you could still see where they seemed to have been torn loose from the mother stone. I climbed the steps to the open doorway, which gaped like an idiot mouth, and peered inside. Nothing seemed to prevent me from walking into the shadowed interior, but it would have taken a lot more than the threat of mere physical pain to get me to do so. The ancient temple was dark, hot, and airless, of course, and quiet but for the buzzing of an unusual amount of flies. It seemed deserted, but something about the place was so creepy that I still think about it today, even after all the other things that have happened to me.
When I turned away from the door, I saw a robed, hooded woman standing at the foot of the temple stairs. For a brief, happy moment I thought it was Caz, but as I started down she beckoned for me to follow her, and one glimpse of her bloodless, water-swollen hand told me who it was. Marmora, the drowned girl, led me out of the square and down a series of narrowing back streets. We walked blocks and blocks, but she never stopped dripping and left wet footsteps everywhere.
We went on for what felt like the good part of an hour, the last half of it uphill through a series of increasingly overgrown, silent streets. It was still evening in the Red City, but this neighborhood was in an angle of the Lamian Hills where the beacons didn’t reach, so shadowed that it might have been full night. It was a lonely, silent place that kept me on my guard. I didn’t see the little cable car station until we were right on top of it.
I say cable car, but I think back on Earth they’re called “aerial tramways”—at least the ones in America. We have them in the wine country north of San Judas, and there used to be a cool one on Mount Tamalpais near San Francisco that went down in the ’98 quake. If you still don’t know what I mean, it’s the kind of cable car that hangs way up in the air. I’ve never loved the things, but compared to what I was looking at now, the earthly ones were safe as a kid’s tricycle. These cables led up at a truly impossible angle, and the machinery, unmanned, looked incredibly old and unsafe. Nevertheless, there it was with its huge gears and huge cable, and there was the car, a rusted box with the rotted remains of what had perhaps once been some nice fittings.
When Marmora reached the steps she lowered her hood, showing me her lank hair and poached-egg eyes. “The Countess is at the top,” she said in her quiet, slightly soggy voice. I couldn’t guess what she was thinking. “She’s expecting you, Lord Pseudolus.” She turned and walked away down the winding path.
I stared at the clanking, groaning machine, which reminded me far more than I liked of the lifter. At least this time I wasn’t bleeding to death.
I stepped up into the small tram and found what looked like the brake. I disengaged it and, after a moment of rattling indecision, the car began to lurch upward along the swaying cable.
Just get through this bit, I told myself, and Caz is waiting. Then it’s all good.
I was extremely wrong, of course. As usual.
thirty-one:
snips and snails
I WAS ABOUT halfway up the slope, the black and tangled vegetation of the valley falling away beneath me, when I saw Eligor’s car parked in a cleared space below me. It looked like a cross between a steam-powered Duesenberg and a Humvee, except it was covered with ornate lanterns and the bumpers were studded with long spikes. It was also heavily armored and probably full of weapons. Leaning against the car were two big demon dudes, their bald, gray heads perched on grotesquely muscled bodies—Candy and Cinnamon, the Countess’s former bodyguards, keeping an eye on their boss’s property.
So, the sugar and spice boys were here. The good thing, though, was that I saw no sign of Caz herself in the crude clearing that served as a parking lot, and no obvious way to get the grand duke ‘s car farther up the mountainside, so it suggested they were going to wait there for her. I ducked back into the rusty gondola in case one of them decided to look up.
The sudden thought of having Caz alone was enough to make me almost breathless, but the cable car still crept slowly as a caterpillar, leaving me with nothing to do but look at the scenery, which by Hell’s standards was pretty interesting. I could see now that Pandaemonium was actually built on a series of hills, with the great black city walls around the outside. I was traveling up the tallest hill, Mount Diabolus, which showed bones of black obsidian and a variety of plants and trees growing on it, mostly in shades of red, black, and gray. (One thing I had begun to understand is that absence of color itself could be a punishment, and I was certainly getting tired of those colors. No wonder the infernal gentry liked to dress up.)