Snap out of it, girl, she admonished herself. And then, to Azzie: "So what's new?"
"Nothing much," Azzie said with an elaborate shrug. "Just the same old skulduggery and double-dealing.
You know what a demon's life is like."
"Who have you been double-crossing recently?" Ylith asked.
"Me? No one. It's been a quiet time for me, since the Powers That Be in all their wisdom decided not to employ me on the current Millennial contest."
"Mephistopheles is a competent demon, so I hear," Ylith said. "No doubt he'll do a good job for Your Side."
"No doubt. Especially since he improves on chance with guile."
"That's to be expected. He's a demon, after all."
"I know. Guile's fine. But outright cheating is not, according to the agreement."
"Cheating?" she echoed. "I'm sure Mephistopheles wouldn't cheat. He's an upright devil, from all I've heard."
"Perhaps it wasn't cheating, then," Azzie said. "Perhaps I misunderstood."
She sat up, her back stiffening. "What did you misunderstand?" "It was the merest nothing," Azzie said, breathing on his fingernails and buffing them on his flaring red velvet jacket.
"Azzie, stop teasing me! What did you see?"
"Nothing at all. But I overheard…"
"What?"
"I overheard the redoubtable Mephistopheles giving instructions to Johann Faust, the contestant in our game of Light and Dark."
"Well, of course he gave him instructions! Otherwise Faust wouldn't know what to do."
"Now he knows all too well," Azzie said.
"Stop these vague presentimentalistic mutterings! Tell me what you are hinting at."
"Mephistopheles is supposed to offer Faust a choice, correct?"
"That is well known."
"I heard him tell Faust exactly what choice he should make, and how he should go about accomplishing it."
"You mean he coached the contestant?"
"That's exactly what I mean. Forget about free will in this contest, my dear. It is Mephistopheles' will that is being served."
She stared at him openmouthed. And Azzie told her of the conversation he had overheard between Mephistopheles and Mack in the inn in London, and how Mephistopheles had directed the famous magician to save Marlowe, and had even suggested to him how to go about it.
"Azzie, if you're just trying to stir up trouble…"
"I'm always ready for that," Azzie said. "But what I have told you is absolute stone truth, without elaboration or embellishment."
Ylith was silent for a time, taking it in. She took two sips of her nectar frappe, an ambrosial beverage that disappeared from the world when Alexander the Great leveled the walls of Babylon and destroyed the frappe parlors in an act of misplaced Macedonian piety. Then she said, "If you say true, this is very serious."
"I never thought otherwise," Azzie said. "But you see, I am at a disadvantage here. Mephistopheles is on my side, and it wouldn't look right for me to go to the High Council with word of his misdoings. And yet, within me, Ylith, there beats a heart dedicated to truth and justice, just as your own does."
"How can you say that?" Ylith demanded. "You and your kind willingly serve lies and Badness!"
"Yes. But we do so in the cause of truth," Azzie said, employing paradox when the simple truth would never do. "We Darksiders just have our own way of going about it."
She shook her head at him, but her smile was fond. "You always were a silver-tongued devil!"
Ylith didn't understand Mephistopheles' motives.
"If he rescues Marlowe," she asked, "won't that be a Good Thing, since it will give the world more of his plays?"
"That's one way of looking at it," Azzie said. "But since Marlowe is a mighty blasphemer against all things good, his unwritten plays are more likely to subvert the cause of piousness than to promote it."
"Azzie," Ylith said, "you have given me much to think about here. I shall have to consider what to do with this information."
"Use it as you please," Azzie said. "My conscience at least is clear. Now, shall we drink up and be about our divers pursuits?"
Ylith nodded, and finished her frappe. The two of them left.
In the next booth, a small figure stirred. He was clad in thigh-high boots, a stout leather jerkin, and he wore a long yellow beard.
"Ha, ha, my fine fox-faced demon," said Rognir—for such it was. "So that's how the land lies, eh? I see through your little scheme, though, and I see through the damnable self-interest that brings you to forswear your own side in order to gain temporary advantage."
Since his stint of cleaning up at the Witches' Sabbat under the foremanship of Azzie, nothing had gone well for Rognir. He had hurried along to Montpellier. He had arrived too late for the jamboree. The various dwarverias had been there and gone. There were many empty kegs of beer lying around, that was all. He had gone home, tough burrowing all the way, and found when he got there that someone had broken into his buried treasure, stealing it all. It was not Rognir's only trove, of course. No self-respecting dwarf keeps all his loot in one trove. But still, the loss was not inconsiderable, and the bad luck rankled.
Rognir was still angry at the way Azzie had treated him at the Witches' Sabbat. He had been harboring a grudge against the demon ever since, hoping to And something to use against him; for dwarves have long memories and can hold a grudge longer than mountains can hold their shapes. Now he rubbed his chubby hands together, thinking how best to use this knowledge so recently come upon. And then a course of action occurred to him, and he left the tavern and went to the outskirts of Babylon, there finding one of the underground dwarf tunnels that leads to anywhere and anywhen. A ready-made dwarf hole was just what he needed. Suddenly he was in a hurry.
CHAPTER 3
Charon had quite an interesting load of dead that day. He had picked up three fishermen drowned off the coast of Sparta, brought to the underworld in a sudden squall that had blown up from the north. The fishermen were penniless but had promised payment through a cousin, one Adelphius of Corinth, who maintained a fund in the Dead Souls' Ferrying Society Relief Scheme. They explained that an obol for each of them had been deposited into a bank account in the Greater Hellenic Savings & Loan with offices in upper Corinth. All Charon had to do was call at any time, or send his representative with proper documentation, and he could collect his money for their passage.
Charon couldn't find an argument to use against it but he still didn't like it. Of course, even he had to stay up with the times. In strange ports that he called at when he needed repairs for his boat, the people didn't take obols. Funny money, they called it.
In any event, it was all academic now. Here he was, wrecked on a reef in the Styx, at a place where there shouldn't have been any rocks at all.
It was a noisome spot, dark and marshy, with lowering skies and a constant little wind that smelled of dead fish. Small, scum-covered waves lapped at the lapstraked sides of the boat. There were low misshapen trees near the bank, and from several of them hung dead men. The dead men waved their arms and begged to be taken down. Coals to Newcastle, Charon had all the dead he could handle. He had twenty or thirty of them packed onto his little boat. They sat on the forecastle and played cards with a tattered Tarot deck. They lounged on the deck, their loathy shirts open to their scabrous waists, paddling their feet in the water under a gibbous moon. Leaving the becalmed vessel they splashed around in the marsh, playing water polo with a moldy old head that had floated by.
Charon walked up to Faust and said, "This is your fault, you know. What are you going to do about it?"
"There's nothing I can do," Faust said. "It's the fault of that damned demon, Azzie. He doctored my good luck charm."
"Why don't you throw it overboard, then?" Charon asked.
. Faust shook his head. "That's the worst thing you can do. No, we simply must ride it out."