The Sable City

by M. Edward McNally

After the little devils had snatched Claudja’s clothes and stranded her in the tub, the Duchess had fashioned a sort of poncho from bed sheets. She was sitting huddled in them on the bed an hour later when there was another knock on the door, but Claudja had decided she was through with crouching behind the tub and brandishing a silver butter knife.

  “What?” she called irritably, and the door opened. A little devil flew in and returned her clothes in a neatly folded pile, washed, mended, and still warm as though they had been dried before a fire. Claudja redressed and went on plotting her escape, though she had not gotten very far in that direction all day.

  The room’s single window gave a view of packed dirt and the side of a long building made of black stone, standing five stories tall and with rows and rows of arched windows covered by shutters. Claudja could lean out her window far enough to see that her room was in the top story of an identical building, laid out at an angle to the first rather than in parallel. The two wings came together at a central tower to her right, while out at their far ends to the left both ended at towers extending another three or four stories up into the gray sky. A slice of Vod’Adia’s monochromatic streets was visible beyond the towers, past the surrounding area of bare dirt and sifting gray dust.

  The window was wide enough to jump through, but the fall was certainly enough to kill her. Claudja had enough sheets and towels to knot together a rope that might get her halfway down. A fall from there would probably break both her legs, but might leave her alive. For a while. Claudja made that her backup plan.

  She thought she could brain a little devil with a chair the next time one hovered in, but that would only be of use if a dozen of them did not enter together. She also knew from the glimpse of a voluminous white sleeve in the hallway the first time her door had been opened that there was a bigger devil out there, probably the same sort of bearded creature that had carried her to this place. Claudja tried to listen for it through the slight crack under her door, but heard nothing in the hall, not even breathing. The thought that devils might not have to breath gave her a chill.

  Claudja still had no good ideas by the time the sky grew dark outside, the mist-dulled shadows from behind her building letting her know that she was facing east. Dinner was brought to her, the same as lunch, and Claudja ate again without drinking the wine this time.

  Though she was exhausted Claudja stayed off the bed and sat in a chair in the corner, after deciding not to bother wedging it under the doorknob. She sat with her arms crossed, biting her lip, mind running down intricate scenarios that had yet to lead anywhere good. Her eyes grew progressively heavier, and each time she started to nod-off the light from the hanging glow stones started to fail. At one point when they had gone almost completely to darkness, the door banged open with a crash.

  Claudja jerked in her chair as a tall figure breezed into the room. Claudja recognized her as the creature who had killed the legionnaires, though she had replaced her tight black leathers with a long gown flowing to the floor, colored a deep burgundy and moving like silk. Her green and blonde hair was pinned up and neatly arranged to frame her face which was pale as alabaster, or a corpse. Her red eyes, fangs, and folded bat wings topped with hooks made her rather hard to mistake for a human woman.

  “Hi there,” the creature grinned at Claudja. “We were not introduced. You may call me Uella.”

  It was the first time all day a devil had spoken to Claudja. She got to her feet with her hands in fists at her sides, which Uella seemed to find funny.

  “Where is Phinneas?” Claudja demanded in the most regal tone she could summon.

  Uella beckoned with a finger, the nail a dark red that matched her dress.

  “Come this way, and I will show you.”

  “I am not going anywhere with you, Devil Woman,” Claudja said. Uella frowned.

  “First off, I am a demon, not a devil. No tail, as you can see. Second…what do I call you?”

  Claudja was not about to go on casual terms with a demon.

  “I am the Duchess of Chengdea.”

  “Good for you. Second, Duchess, you absolutely are coming with me. But I leave it to you if you wish to walk, or would prefer being bound and dragged.”

  Claudja’s heart was racing and the palms of her clenched hands were clammy.

  “Shall I get a rope?” Uella grinned, but Claudja stepped away from the wall. The demoness gave a disappointed cluck and a shrug, then turned to lead the way out into the hall, turning to the right. Her gown was open in the back from neck to her slim waist, allowing her wings plenty of room.

  There was indeed a bearded devil in the hall, standing just to the left of the door and holding a pole arm with a cluster of sharp blades and twisting hooks at the top. Claudja shied away from the creature and followed Uella, who was skipping away down a wide passage lined with doors on both sides, illuminated by candles in ornate candelabras. The demoness was whistling an unfamiliar tune. Claudja looked back over her shoulder and saw that the bearded devil was following them, albeit it at a polite distance behind.

  Uella skipped along gaily for quite a while before halting before another door where a bearded devil stood guard, and Claudja hurried forward hopefully. As she arrived the demoness pulled open the door and Claudja looked into a room very much like her own. Phinneas Phoarty was just sitting up in the bed, where he had been lying atop the covers. His face looked freshly scrubbed though his eyes were sunken and exhausted, and his gray wizard robes were clean. They actually looked like they had been pressed.

  Claudja and Phin shouted each others names, but Uella slammed the door and shot the bolt.

  “Everyone brushed and watered, as you can see,” the demoness beamed.

  The door shook as Phin put a shoulder against it and he continued to shout, asking Claudja if she was all right.

  “I’m fine,” she said back through the door, though she had no idea if she was or not.

  Phin hammered with his hands, echoing loudly in the long hall. Uella frowned.

  “Phin, calm down,” Claudja called, but he was still shouting rather than listening. A deep snarl rumbled from Uella’s throat and she bawled, “THAT’S ENOUGH, MAGGOT!” in a booming voice.

  Phin’s room must have had a similar table and chair situation as Claudja’s, for it sounded as though the Wizard reeled back into them, knocking furniture to the floor and falling himself with a grunt.

  “Ahem,” Uella said. “This way now, Duchess.”

  The demoness pranced on, whistling again, and Claudja took a last look at Phin’s door before following. One bearded devil still followed her, while the second remained at its post.

  The hall ended at an open doorway beyond which a wide staircase with multiple landings descended along the outer wall of an open square shaft. Everything was of stone, presumably the same black material as the rest of Vod’Adia, but here all was painted in a soft brown tone that looked warm in the flickering light of more candles. The stairs were carpeted and the stone banisters were intricately carved with whirling designs. Claudja could see down the middle of the shaft all five stories to the ground, to a floor that looked like white marble.

  Uella led the way down by the expedient of hiking her gown up over her boots and sliding sidesaddle down each banister, crying “Weeeee!” every time, and waiting giggling at each landing for Claudja to walk down the steps behind her. Claudja started to wonder if insanity was typical to all demons, or if Uella was peculiar even for her kind.

  The landing of the second floor had no wall on the outside of the shaft, leaving a balcony with a banister across the open space. Uella sat on the banister, swinging her feet over the side, and Claudja gasped as she looked out past the demon‘s furled wings. They had reached the outward end of the long gallery, and Claudja saw with some surprise that the adjoining tower was hollow within, just an enormous space like the interior of a silo with windowless black walls and a floor of naked white stone. Several torches burned on stands down on the floor beyond the bani
ster, and their light did not reach all the way up the round walls to the ceiling high above. It did illuminate a great pair of doors at ground level, across from the balcony where Claudja stood and Uella sat. Even as the Duchess looked at them, the two wooden portals were swinging open.

  “Such timing,” Uella said happily.

  The doors swung wide and a single figure stepped into the torchlight from the night beyond, a male devil with a tail and a single hoof that struck up a spark each time it touched the floor. It walked in past the torches, turned around and gave a deep bow, moving its arms in a sharp gray jacket as though bidding others to enter. Two more figures did so slowly, creeping into the cavernous space and looking all around. On the left was a man in ragged armor carrying a crossbow pointed at the floor, and on the right with a short bow at a half-pull, familiar in her triangular half-cloak now coated a dusty gray, was Matilda Lanai.