The Devil's Right Hand by Lilith Saintcrow

Author:Lilith Saintcrow
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Horror & Ghost Stories
Published: 2010-05-22T02:26:47.952000+00:00

24

Japhrimel said nothing as we hit the street outside. Rainy sunlight still fell down, but darker clouds were rolling and massing; I smelled wet heaviness riding the air. That was worth a nose-wrinkle, and I wondered if another storm was moving in. I walked with my head down and my left hand holding my sword, my eyes fixed on the pavement and only occasionally lifting to check the crowd and the sky above.

Urban dwellers learn quickly to be peripherally aware of hover and slic traffic. Practically all Freetowns have realtime AI traffic controllers just like Hegemony and Putchkin cities. Freetown New Prague was no exception. The distinct swirls of hover traffic with slicboards buzzing in between were almost complex enough to use for divination. The thought of hovertraffic divination made me smile. I glanced up again, my eyes tracking the patterns, my nape tingling. Why was I so uneasy?

This is too easy. If there’s a demon in New Prague who knows I’m here, why hasn’t he thrown everything but the kitchen sink at me? Just a lone imp and one attack in a ruined building doesn’t qualify as a real battle. Either he’s more frightened of me than is possible . . . or he’s laying plans.

Another, more interesting thought occurred to me. Why would Lucifer bargain to have me as his official Right Hand and not Japhrimel? What purpose did that serve?

Maybe the sparring was what I needed to shake my thoughts loose. I cast around for a likely place and saw a noodle shop, its door half-open.

Lunch and some heavy thinking. I ducked out into the street, dodging a swarm of pedicabs. There was some streetside hover traffic too, but the hovers were in a crush of pedicabs and people and had to move at a creep, anti-grav rattling and whining, buffeting people out of the way.

Making it across the street in one piece, I slid into the noodle shop. The smell of cooking meat and hot broth rose around me; I had made it almost to the counter when Japhrimel’s hand closed around my upper arm.

“This is unwise,” he said. I hadn’t quite forgotten he was with me, but I was so deep in thought I hadn’t even spoken to him. Taking it for granted he would follow me, understanding my need for serious contemplation of this problem. I set my jaw. “I’m hungry, and I need to think.” My tone was sharp enough to cut glass. “Something about this smells.”

Amazingly, he smiled. “Now this is revealed to you?”

I swear, he could sound caustic as carbolic when he wanted to. I scanned the interior of the noodle shop—plascovered booths, the counter with three Asiano normals behind it, two staring at me and another one chopping little bits of something that smelled like imitation crabmeat. Holostills of Asiano holovid stars hung on the walls. The ubiquitous altar to ancestors sat near the front door with a small plashing antigrav fountain floating above it, coins shimmering underwater in its plasilica bulb just like miniature cloned koi.

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