The Demon's Apprentice

by Ben Reeder

  The entrance looked like the brick wall of an old warehouse. But to someone who could See, like yours truly, there was an iron gate set in a jagged hole in the wall behind the illusion. The gate was mostly to keep the High Fae out, since they were deathly allergic to the touch of iron. It was easy to open, but you had to know it was there, first. I lifted the latch and let myself in, and the sounds and sights of the normal world faded behind me. Not that the Hive was much better.

  People milled about, many with hoods and cowls up, or elaborate masks that demonstrated wealth or power without giving their names away. The sides of the main alleyway were crammed with makeshift stalls, carpets, and cubbies with wares laid out on display. Tables, shelves, carpets, racks, and hanging baskets held anything a budding young sorcerer could want for casting most spells: from basic herbs to ground gems to wands and staves. The crowd was quiet, but it was still a crowd, so there was still a little chatter going on as people went from stall to stall. In the Hive, you could find pretty much anything if you knew who to bribe. Forbidden tomes of Infernal lore, illegal ingredients from endangered creatures, or reality-warping devices were all here, for a price. If you knew where to look and who to ask, you could buy people here, mostly by the hour, and oblivion, usually by the gram.

  Located on a conjunction of ley lines, New Essex had more magi and hedge witches than some entire states did. Humans made up about half of the mystic population in New Essex, though. The other half was very not human. It felt like most of the non-humans in New Essex were trying to walk through the Hive as I threaded my way through the noise and smell of too many species packed into too little space. Some of them were just as nasty as my former employer, but most were okay folks just trying to make a dishonest living. It was one of the second that I was looking for.

  I threaded my way through the press of beings, occasionally stopping to ask for directions. Things tended to move around in the Hive, so it was anyone's guess where a particular merchant was going to be from one day to the next. Finally, I found a sprite who knew where Billy the Gnome’s new place was. It ended up being not too far from where it had been in September. He’d moved it to a more secluded location, this one in the corner of two buildings, so that two of his walls were brick or wood and the third was at an angle between them. The front of his squat was a mix of aluminum, wood, and cloth: an old frame of some sort that he had fitted up against the wall to make a triangular affair. He’d covered the frame with a heavy white cloth, and painted his name in several languages across the front. Billy himself was nowhere to be seen, but judging from the throaty giggling from his tent, he was definitely around, and not alone. I stopped at the line of runes painted on the brick cobblestones, the edge of his wards.

  “Hey, Billy!” I called out. “You there?”

  Billy didn’t answer, but the noises from inside his squat stopped, and an image shimmered into existence in front of me. The ghostly figure of a troll in what looked like a decent knockoff of a Brooks Brothers suit was standing in front of me, translucent and slightly out of focus.

  “The proprietor is not in at the moment. Protective wards of a lethal nature are currently active for your protection, and that of your accounts,” the troll’s image said in a tinny radio voice. “To leave a message for the proprietor, please speak your full name, or the alias your account is held under, and the proper name of the person for whom the message is intended. This simulacrum will not ask for your account’s password or access item under any circumstances. Have a nice day!” Then, it froze in place, with a smile plastered on its face.

  Trolls don’t have pretty smiles. Eight feet tall, broad as a building, hairy, and ugly, they made great bodyguards or thugs. They don’t have a neck to speak of, but what they lack in neck, they more than make up for in teeth. This one had never met a dentist he didn’t eat, with fangs that pointed every which way, some of them broken and jagged, all of them some shade of brown or yellow. On him, a smile made a good threat, which is what I figured Billy was going for.

  I sighed and leaned forward, where I could be heard by anyone in the tent, but not by everyone else. “It’s Dulka’s servant Chance, here to see Biladon Garnet, gnome, loan shark and all around degenerate.”

  “Hey!” Billy’s high-pitched voice came from inside the tented squat, “Who’re you calling a loan shark?” The cloth moved aside, revealing an indignant looking, half-dressed gnome sitting between a pair of long, shapely red legs. The top half of the woman attached to the legs, slightly less-dressed, leaned into view a heartbeat later, revealing dark black hair, deep black eyes, and a pair of stubby black horns that protruded from her bangs. Even under the thick furs she was covering herself with, I could tell she had some pretty dangerous curves. With red skin and mostly human lower legs, she had to be a cambion: a half demon, with incubus or succubus blood on one side, and human on the other.

  Billy wasn’t much to look at beside the woman. All of three feet tall if he jumped, he had the bald dome that all gnome men shared, a ring of brown hair, and an elaborate mustache and mutton chops. His mustache drew attention to his nose, a feature all of his kind were inordinately proud of. Among gnomes, the size of the nose was a sign of virility, and Billy’s shnoz must have made him a real sex symbol.

  “Did I interrupt something?” I asked innocently.

  “Pillow talk, nothing important,” Billy said quickly as he stepped out of his squat and pulled the cloth in place behind him. That left him outside with his pants undone, but in the Hive, that was better than letting anyone see how expensive a whore you could afford. And if he could afford an hour of a cambion's time, Billy was pretty well off.

  “I could come back later,” I teased him.

  “Nah, we were done,” he said as he laced his trousers up. “Her owner isn't expecting to see her back on her feet for a little while,” he explained quietly. “I figure she’s better off here than there, ya know?”

  My fists curled up at my side at his remark. It was a reminder to me that freedom in the Hive was a relative thing. Half-breeds, especially demon half-breeds, had very few rights, since neither side of their heritage was usually willing to claim them. Odds were good that she was a slave, being tricked out to make a tidy profit for her owner. I wondered if the girl in his squat had a life as crappy as mine used to be, and something in me went cold and angry.

  Billy went to the gnome-sized desk he kept out front and sat down behind it: his version of an open sign. The desk was essentially a board he’d laid across two wood crates and covered with a threadbare piece of blue velvet.

  “What do you need?” he asked in his best business tone.

  I ignored the anger for the moment, and tried to remember that aside from using a sex slave, Billy was a pretty decent guy. He probably hadn't even hit her.

  “How much is left in the account?” I shot back.

  “Quite a bit. Without consulting the books, my best guess would be about twelve thousand six hundred ninety five trade points: mostly in gems, gold and silver ounces, and some in trade bars. Roughly.” For Billy, “roughly” meant he didn’t get into fractions of grams.

  I stifled a gasp of surprise at the number he rattled off. I knew I’d been working hard for Dulka, but I had never dreamed I’d earned him that much in trade. It was enough to buy everything I needed, and outfit my own lab if I had the space.

  “He needs about…” I stopped, and put on my best thoughtful look, “half of that. Six thousand five hundred trade points’ worth. In as small a package as you can manage.”

  “So, this wouldn’t have anything to do with you busting your master’s chops the other night, would it?” Billy asked as he dug his books out from under the makeshift desk. He sounded just too casual to be serious, but I was more concerned that he already knew.

  “Technically, let’s just say I’m still making a legit claim to an open account,” I answered him, hoping he’d take that.

  “Hey, I got no beef with that,” he smiled, hands up. “Seems to me
you did most of the work there anyway, so half is the least you deserve. I haven’t heard anything official yet, so for all I know, you still work for the Count. And it ain't like he's ever gonna see the inside of this place, is it?”

  “Or any other place with a ward or a threshold,” I agreed. Like most summoned beings, demons weren't really welcome on the physical plane. A simple threshold would hold them out of a personal home, at least in most places, or a well-constructed ward.

  As we were talking, he had been scratching away in his thick ledger with a pen, and I saw a flutter of movement from inside his squat. Black-within-black eyes stared out at me from inside the folds of cloth for a moment before the woman slid the fabric aside and strode out into full view: six and a half feet of red skin and black leather. If she had been dangerously built when she was mostly covered with loose, baggy furs, she was damn near lethal when she was dressed. A black corset hugged her figure into a serious hourglass shape, while black leather gloves covered her from upper arm to her knuckles. She barely wore a black leather mini-skirt, but what it didn’t cover of her thighs, it left to a pair of boots that came up to a few of inches from the bottom of the skirt’s hem. I stared. I think I drooled. Until I looked at her eyes, and saw the black iron collar around her throat.

  While I was ogling the demoness, Billy got up from his stool and went back into the depths of his squat. A few moments later, he came back out, a leather satchel in his right hand, and a canvas sack in his left. “Without sending a runner, I can only give you part of it in actual hard currency, mostly in gems, with a little gold and silver thrown in. There’s a hundred and fifty in here,” he told me, holding up the bag. “The rest is in here, in bearer chits from Bjerning Depository,” he held up the satchel to make his point.

  “Bjerning?” I asked, incredulous. “Billy, they’re dwarves! The only thing greedier than a dwarf is a demon!” The demoness snickered at the comment, but I knew better than to try to apologize. To most demons, an apology was a sign of weakness. No self-respecting demon could let a weakness go unexploited.

  “They may love their gold, kid, but they’re also the most honorable folk you could hope to deal with. A dwarf might squeeze you for every last penny he can get, but you’ll get what you bargained for. No better folk to watch your money than the dwarves. If you want my advice, and trust me, kid, you do, you’ll head over there right now, and open up a strong room of your own with what you got. They won’t deal with any demon, much less the Count. The fact that you escaped from him will sit pretty with them, too. Especially now.”

  “I don’t have time to go to the Underground today, Billy. I just need some stuff for some charms, and maybe a wand blank. Besides, the Conclave pretty much runs that place. I’ve broken about a thousand of their stupid Laws of Magick.”

  “Believe me kid, now is the time to go. Somethin's brewing out there, and the Sentinels are thin on the ground right about now. You do what you gotta do today, and you get to Bjerning's as soon as you can.”

  As Billy was talking, the half-demon hooker sashayed up to me on improbably high boot heels, laid one hand on my shoulder, and moved around behind me, so that her arm ended up draped over my shoulder, and some of her softer curves were pressed up against me. From up close, I could see that she was making the corset work overtime to keep her breasts covered, and as tall as she was, they were pretty much at eye level for me. But none of that was as hard to resist as her voice.

  “I suggest you make time, young mage,” she said softly in my ear, her voice like a touch by itself, “as soon as you may. You will want to be prepared for the times that are to come.” Her full, black lips brushed my hair as she bent down over me, and I shivered at how good it felt. “Biladon does not give advice lightly, and never for free.”

  “Even Synreah knows I'm right,” Billy said as he backed toward his squat. “But you better get outta here. No one knows you're here, and right about now, you got a rep about as big as a dragon's ego. Oh, and I'd take it as a favor if you wouldn't mention the free advice thing,” he said from the flap to his squat. “If word of that gets out, people will think I’ve gone soft. Then everybody will start asking for a handout.”

  “If it helps, I’ll complain about how much you charged me, and bitch about your fees,” I said with a smile.

  “Your kindness is killing me,” he groused. “But seriously, you need to get the hell out of here, before it gets too crowded.” With that, he slipped back into his squat and closed the flap, and I felt the static in my head a few seconds later as his wards came back up.

  “Movement is the best camouflage,” Synreah purred from beside me. “For both of us. If time is an issue, I can guide you to the places you need, for a fee. And, if you've the time afterward, and the currency, we can add to your list of sins.”

  “Yes to the guide services, but no to the other,” I told her as I pulled a pair of topazes out of the bag. Her eyes gleamed at sight of the yellow gems, and I held the smaller one up in my fingers. “This one now, and the other if you can get me where I need to go, with everything I came for, before an hour and a half passes. Have we an accord between us?”

  She smiled as she reached for the gem. “Between us? Aye,” she said, and tucked the gem down the front of her corset. “I trust your discretion is assured?”

  “It is,” I said. My assurance of discretion meant that she wouldn't have to tell her owner about our deal, because he hadn't brokered it. Slaves could sometimes buy their way out of their contract, and deals like this helped them pay it off sooner because their owners didn’t take the dragon’s share of the profits. I shouldered the satchel and tucked the bag of hard currency inside, then headed for the mouth of the little side alley.

  “How close are you to meeting your owner's price?” I asked as we stepped back out into the busier throughway.

  “He hasn't set one,” she said with a grim smile. It was hard to suppress a shudder at the sudden cold tone in her voice. Without a price set for her freedom in her contract, my guess was that she was saving up to purchase the kind of contract that her owner wouldn't survive.

  “So, where do you need to go?” Her voice shifted back to a sultry purr without a breath of hesitation, and I reminded myself that for all that she was enslaved, she was still half-demon. I took it as a warning not to underestimate her, and told her the name of the place I had in mind.

  Shopping with six and a half feet of Infernal wet dream at my side was a new experience. I tried not to stare but I’m a guy, and Synreah was all kinds of woman. She bounced, she jiggled, and she shimmied in all the right places as she took me to the first place I asked about. The wizened little geomancer I was hoping to barter an amethyst from could barely keep his eyes out of her cleavage when she knelt at the edge of his blanket and cooed over his selection of gems. When I squatted down beside her, she reached for an oval piece of onyx and placed it over her bosom.

  “What do you think, baby? Wouldn't that look nice?” she simpered.

  “It already does,” I said. “How much for the onyx, Mr. Krishnamurti?” He looked at me for all of a microsecond before muttering something that sounded like fifteen sterling. Then his eyes went back to Synreah's body as she leaned forward and reached for a rough point of amethyst about an inch around. Leather creaked as her top strained to contain ample curves, and her cleavage deepened to the point where I was pretty sure it had its own gravity. She laid it in the same spot and gave Krishnamurti a broad smile, and I knew he was pretty much lost.

  “Twenty sterling for both pieces,” he said in his clipped accent. “No less.”

  “Is that a firm price?” Synreah asked. Her mouth quirked up a little on one side, and she tilted her head a little like she was sharing a subtle joke with him.

  “Very,” he said with a little squeak.

  I laid the twenty silver ounces down, and reached for a bowl full of crushed quartz pieces. “I need three ounces of these, too,” I added.

  After he poured a pile of them ont
o his scale, carefully measuring out the three ounces, he added another two sterling ounces to the price, but threw in a silver chain. A quartz generator crystal and a half dozen pieces of magnetite only added another ounce sterling to the price. We walked away from the blanket, out only twenty-four sterling, when I had expected my pouch to be lighter by thirty or more. Well, I walked, what Synreah did was more of a strut.

  “Are you sure you want to be dealing with Ashkhabad?” she asked me softly as we waited in a side alley for a gang of redcaps to stalk past us with their iron pikes carried against their shoulders. While they didn't look like they were on the hunt, their caps were still glistening wet with blood, and I didn't want to get their attention if I could avoid it.

  “Not really, but I can afford his stuff,” I told her, once the sound of their iron-clad boots started to fade away around the corner.

  She muttered something as we stepped into the larger alley, and Ashkhabad's latest squat came into view. It looked like he'd taken over the front room of a burnt-out building. Boards were nailed across the two doorways on either side of the front room, and a canvas tarp served as his roof, with a pole in the center giving it a broad point at the top. Most of the front wall was missing above waist height, and the doorway was just an empty rectangle, with no actual door to fill it.

  Synreah led the way inside, where a pair of gossamer-winged fairies were fluttering over a pair of four inch wands on the makeshift counter, and a man in brown robes with a girl in off-white robes were sorting through cubit-long pieces of plain wood. Both of them had their hoods up, so that only the lower halves of their faces were visible. A blue-green rune glowed into existence in the air at the back of the shop as Synreah stepped across the shop's threshold, and a red one flared to life beside it as my feet crossed the invisible line across the shop's doorway. Heads turned my way, and I heard footsteps from the back of the shop. A second later, a dark-haired, olive-skinned man in baggy black pants, long-sleeved white shirt, and a patched brown vest came out of the doorway to the back of the shop with a wooden crate in his hands. He took a look at the runes as he came out, then turned to face us with narrowed eyes.