The Void Prince Who Devoured the Demon Queens

Chapter 6: The Imp and the Planes

The imp had spent six years locked in a cellar, and he had come out of it with a better business plan than any man Kaelen had ever met.

"Ransom," the creature repeated, as if the word were a sweet he was rolling around his mouth. He fanned the cards in his claws and studied them with one yellow eye. "I'd say fifty gold. A hundred, if you've got a taste for theater. I do have a thing about being let out of cages in a dramatic fashion."

"We're not here to rescue you," Ignis said.

"No, no, of course you aren't." The imp looked her up and down, from the burned-off Church sun on her cloak to the horns, and gave a little delighted whistle. "Princess Ignis Ashblood. In a Church cloak. Oh, that's rich. That's the best thing I've seen since the garrison started eating their boots."

Ignis went stiff. "You know me."

"Sweetheart, I know everyone. It's the whole value proposition."

He was about the size of a house cat, with gray-green skin, bat wings folded around him like a scarf, and a barbed tail that curled idly around the bars. He wore what looked like a scrap of altar cloth knotted at his neck. The cards in his hand were cut from stiff parchment, and when Kaelen stepped closer he saw what they were: prayer cards from the chapel, the faces of saints, redrawn in careful charcoal with devil horns and mustaches.

"Pip," said the imp, and tipped an imaginary hat. "Broker, fixer, purveyor of rumors. You'll have heard of me."

"I haven't," Kaelen said.

"Then you're new. Which means you're the interesting one." The yellow eye slid to him, bright as a coin. "You walked through that ward like it was cobwebs. The Church put a Seventh Circle seal on that door. Four priests and a week of fasting."

Kaelen crouched by the cage. Up close, the imp smelled of old paper and cheap sulfur. The bars were plain iron, nothing fancy, and the lock hung open on the door. Anyone could have lifted it.

"The lock's open," he said.

"The lock's open. The ward was the cage." Pip rattled the door with one claw, and it didn't so much as shiver. "Quasits can't cross a blessed threshold. Try it, and I bleed from the eyes. Dungeons I've been in: eleven. Dungeons I've been stuck in: this." He sighed theatrically. "Six years. Rats and spite."

"What do you want?" he asked.

"Out. Food. A little dignity." Pip counted on his fingers. "A cut of whatever you're doing with all that tallow, because I smelled it from here, and I'm telling you now, it's the smartest thing anyone's done in this keep in a hundred years."

"Soap," Kaelen said.

"Soap! Magnificent." The imp pressed a hand to his chest. "Do you know what a devil magistrate hates most in the world? Stains. A smudge on a contract is a smudge on the Law, and they'd sell their grandmothers for something that gets ink off a clerk's thumbs. You bring clean hands to Brimstone Market and you'll be rich before the month is out."

"And what do I give you?"

"Whatever you like, as long as it isn't a signature." He shuddered. "Last time I signed something, I spent a decade as a candlestick."

Pip scratched his chin. "I'm a liar, sure, but a useful one. I can tell you which stall in the Market sells poisoned wine, and which sells the antidote, and which are run by the same devil." The grin faded a notch. "And I can tell you what a Hallowgate audit is. Because you're going to need to know."

The cellar went very quiet. Kaelen looked at Ignis, and Ignis looked at the floor.

"How do you..."

"I can smell a Hellfire seal on a man at forty paces. It's like cheap perfume." Pip tapped his own nose. "You did something stupid with a flame and a piece of paper. Don't worry. Everyone does, once."

---

They took him up to the kitchen, because the cellar made even Ignis uneasy, and Pip ate three crusts of hard bread, two onions, and a raw egg before he said anything useful.

Then he cleared a space on the table and dealt out his saints.

"Right. Plane Politics. Pay attention, because I'm only doing this once, and there's a f*e." He laid down a row of red cards, horned and snarling. "The Abyss. Chaos. Demons. They don't plan, they don't bargain, they don't forgive. Every one of them is the toughest thing they've ever met, and when two of them meet, they find out who's right with their fists. Your lady friend, for instance."

"I'm not his lady friend," Ignis said.

"You're wearing his soap." Pip laid a second row, black cards, neat as a column of figures. "The Nine Hells. Law. Devils. They do plan, and bargain, and file things in triplicate. Every devil is somebody's subordinate, and every contract is a chain of command. They'd rather win an argument than a fight, and they'd rather win a fight than lose face. They've been at war with the Abyss since before the first star, and neither side has ever won, because the thing about chaos and order is that each one needs the other to be worth fighting."

Kaelen leaned back. He had seen this chart before, drawn in pencil on the inside cover of a hundred rulebooks. Lawful and chaotic. Evil in two flavors, one with paperwork.

"Alignment," he murmured. "Of course."

"Beg pardon?"

"Nothing. Go on."

"Aethelgard," said Pip, setting a crooked, dog-eared card between the rows, "is the battlefield. The Ashfall Dominions are the Abyss's foothold on this side. The Nine Hells keep their embassies in the border towns, mostly out of sight. And Brimstone Market," he tapped a card showing a very fat saint with a very large purse, "is where the two of them put down their knives and do business. Demons supply the muscle. Devils run the law. They hate each other, and they still come to the same table every week, because both sides like gold more than they like their grudges."

"Where do humans fit?"

"Humans?" Pip's grin was razor-edged. "Humans are the livestock. Nobody asks livestock where they fit."

Kaelen caught his own reflection in a polished lamp. The scars across his ribs, through the open collar, glowed a steady ember orange. Pip's eyes followed his gaze.

"Ah," he said, and the playfulness drained out of his voice. "That."

"What?"

"How many have you had? Demon fire, I mean. Hellfire blood."

"One," Kaelen said, and did not look at Ignis.

"One. Good. One's fine." Pip's tail twitched. "I knew a barbarian who ate a fire-demon's heart on a dare. Then another. By the fourth he couldn't stop shaking. By the fifth he was seeing his mother on the ceiling. By the seventh..." The imp made a quiet, popping sound with his lips. "Chaos mana is poison, my boy. It feels like a gift, but the blood only has so much room."

He watched Kaelen's face. "There are cures. Cold things. Lawful things. But nothing's free."

A new line unfolded in the air above the table, in pale blue.

[CHAOS TOXICITY: 7%] [Warning: Toxicity increases with every Chaos-aligned union. At 100%, Demonic Combustion will occur.]

"Seven percent," Kaelen said slowly. "It was there the whole time. It just didn't show until someone said the word."

"What's it say?" Ignis demanded. She had come half a step closer. Her voice was very careful. "Is it me?"

"It's the fire. It was always going to be the fire." He kept his tone level. "It's seven percent. It's fine."

She didn't look reassured. Neither did Pip.

That was when the paper bird came in through the window.

It was small, black, and folded with unnatural precision. It fluttered across the kitchen, trailing a single thread of silver light, and landed on Kaelen's shoulder with the soft weight of a moth. Pip made a noise like a kettle changing its mind.

"Don't touch it," the imp whispered. "Don't. Don't. Oh, you touched it."

The bird unfolded itself into a single sheet of black parchment, and silver letters rose out of it, neat and cold.

NOTICE OF INSPECTION Pursuant to the Ledger of the Nine Hells, an infernal seal has been registered in the Ashfall Reach without prior declaration. All parties to the Contract of Embers are summoned to appear before the Hall of Contracts, Brimstone Market, within five days of this notice. Failure to appear constitutes breach. Penalty: forfeiture of name. Signed, V. Hallowgate, Magistrate of Contracts.

Pip had retreated beneath the table. Only his eyes showed, and they had gone very wide.

"Forfeiture of name," Ignis said, hoarsely. "She can't. That's..."

"She can," said Pip. "She will." He crept out, one claw at a time, and looked at Kaelen with a sort of pained admiration. "Congratulations, Your Highness. You've been noticed."