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Chapter 6: Demesne

Amidst the howls and roars of fleeing fiends, Tuco ran for the exit. The trouble was, he wasn't sure exactly how to find it through the chaos. Bits of various prisons--iron, glass, plants, gold, limbostone--every material he could imagine, and many more he couldn't--rained down around him. A metal beam as tall as a church steeple thudded down in front of him, embedding itself in the ground so deeply that Tuco was certain that had it struck him, it would have killed him, no matter how strong his body nor thick his scales. He grunted and covered his head with both hands as what seemed to be a hail of giant eggs pelted against his back, shoulders, and tail, cracking open and splattering their slimy insides across his scales. Everywhere he ran, his feet trampled broken glass, stones, and even cut gems.

Fiends barreled, flew, or burrowed past him on all sides, ignoring him. A blow from a tail with six glowing green spikes slammed into his shoulder, spinning him around, and then he was trampled into the ground as something absolutely enormous and heavy ran over him. He pulled his face from the ground and roared in frustration at the creatures scattering around him. His voice was deafeningly loud, but nothing seemed to pay him any attention. Thousands of souls had gotten their first taste of freedom in centuries, even millennia, and nothing was going to keep them from it. A great, pink-furred, catlike beast with twelve legs scurried past, and, lacking any better options, Tuco ran after it, dodging a strange being that looked like a cross between a clown and a wagon wheel, arms for spokes, rolling past on its many hands.

Though the crowd's movements were chaotic, it mostly followed a direction, and that direction took them away from the bottomless pit that had once housed E-Temen-Anki. The great wall that had surrounded the prison was now rubble, leaving only the jutting black shapes of limbostone encircling the site, like menhirs in an enormous henge. Tuco scrambled over the broken rubble and darted out into the open field of grass. He turned back to avoid being trampled once more, but saw that by now, most of the escaped fiends had fled, and only a few dozen stragglers remained to scurry past. In the skies above, winged and serpentine shapes diminished into the distance. Smoke and sparks rose from the hole where E-Temen-Anki had once stood. The ground was littered with debris of every description.

"Hob!" Tuco bellowed, searching for his imp. "Hob, are you still here?"

It took a while for him to find the little creature, but he followed the rubble of the ruin widdershins and eventually came across the little creature fluttering madly toward him. "There you are, Sir Tuco! Hob is so pleased that you were so wise and clever in following his instructions!"

"And you were clever at realizing we could free all the devils to destroy Flavros. How ever did you manage to convince them to give you their blood?"

The little demon swelled up his chest with pride so far he nearly pitched backward. "Hob could not convince many! Many could no longer move or harm themselves. But those who could were desperate, and listened to Hob's brave story of how he freed Sir Tuco, the Knight of Lust, from the prison, and could do the same for them! Many had little to lose, and agreed. Enough, it seems. Then Baronet Flavros fell?"

Tuco grimaced. "Torn apart by his charges, I'm afraid. And I didn't have a hand in it, for once. I wonder who will be Baronet now?"

Hob rubbed at his coal-black chin. "Perhaps the devil who gave the killing blow? Hob does not know."

"Well, at least the eyes of the Abyss won't be on me, for once."

His imp peered at him as though he were wearing a duck on his head. "Master, the prison of the Abyss has been toppled. It has stood nearly since the fall of angels. Even Paradise will notice what you have done here today."

Tuco gaped. "Truly? You mean even angels will know of this?"

"Master, even Lucifer Morningstar and the One Above will notice."

Tuco sat down heavily, before the reeling in his mind could take the decision to do so away from him. "Well, what do we do now? Where do we go?"

Hob cleared his throat. "If master is willing, perhaps it is time for him to come and see his demesne here in the Abyss? There are many matters to tend to, and there, at least, he should be safe from many threats, especially those in the mortal realm."

"All right then, let's see my demesne. Whatever that is. I've... never had one before."

"You may wish to ready yourself, master. Hob knows you have been a mortal and may not be prepared for some of the more disturbing elements of the Abyss."

"What do you mean, Hob? Surely my demesne cannot be all that terrible."

"Yours, master? No. But you must remember it was not always yours."

"Then who did it belong to? Asmodeus? I see how that could be a bit much."

"No, master. Before you inherited it, your demesne was ruled by Sathanus. The Prince of Darkness."

That sounded worrying, but there was no point in delaying his visit any longer, he supposed. "Very well. How do we get there? Another crack in a stone, I suppose?"

"We could use a Fissure and fall from the void above like before, but that takes much time. In the Abyss itself, devils and demons have many ways to travel, according to their gifts and abilities. Master is strong enough that Hob might suggest he travel by leaping. Although that can be very destructive. But to travel to your own demesne is very simple, and simple to bring any denizen of the Abyss with you." Hob fluttered up and landed on Tuco's shoulder. "All you need do is fix your demesne in your mind, and make your brand in the air with your fingers."

"Like this?" Tuco lifted an index finger and made an attempt to draw his mark in the air, inscribing three small circles and then one larger one around it, while thinking home as hard as he could in his mind.

He heard a tiny, weary sigh from his shoulder. "No, Sir Tuco. You must use all fingers on your hand at once."

Tuco blinked. "But I can't move my fingers like that. How would I even manage it? Just--" To prove the impossibility of such an action, he put all four fingers and thumb in the air and tried to wiggle them, but then a movement caught them, something his hand just knew how to do, as it had learned how to handle a quill after weeks of practice. All five fingers moved at once, his middle three inscribing the shapes of the inner three circles, his pinky and thumb tracing the arc of the outer one.

Even as he was still trying to determine how it was done, the sigil blazed silver-black in the air. Then it rotated, spiraling away from him and pulling the world around him with it--grass, trees, sky, all stretching and warping into a spiral, pulled into a point far in the distance, as though the entire world were just a painting being sucked into a far-distant whirlpool. The mark he had made in the air diminished into a point and was gone. Behind the torn-away painting had been red skies choked with dark smoke, and a broken, dry landscape.

The sudden twisting of the world sent Tuco to his hands and knees, a powerful wave of vertigo threatening to bring up his breakfast. A raw, high-pitched sound permeated the air, seeming to come from all sides at once.

"Are you all right, Sir Tuco?" Hob tugged at Tuco's ear in concern, speaking loudly into it over the din. "The travel is perhaps upsetting for new devils the first time. Though of course there have never been any new devils before, but Hob has heard that mortal souls find it distressing too."

"I'm all right," Tuco said, sooner than he felt it, trying to shake the dizziness from his mind along with the raw wrongness of seeing the entire world wrenched away from him. He took slow, measured breaths to steady himself, and his lungs filled with the stench of sulphur, smoke, blood, and rot, none of which was particularly helpful.

Once his stomach had settled, he got to his feet and stared out over the blasted landscape. He drew his hands to his mouth in horror. They stood atop a small cliff, and below them lay a scene worse than any nightmare. It was hard to know what he beheld. At a small, isolated glance, it might have been a crumbling and ancient fortress of stone, all grey and brown, with gaping black windows that poured black and rust colored stains from their sills. But where a fortress might sit atop a hill overlooking the countryside, this extended in every direction as far as Tuco could see: an endless fortress city made up of crumbling walls, sagging towers, keeps and halls and stairways. It squatted malevolently beneath a low, smoke-choked red-black sky, a rotting, broken-toothed city not yet dead. Black masses of giant insects swarmed the air above the city, and giant black flies crawled over the walls, their sponge-like mouthparts dabbing at the bloodstains that liberally spattered the edifices. Horrific, fleshy creatures with many long, human-looking legs and arms spidered up and down the walls and across the ramparts, licking, nibbling, feasting on--

It was people. The souls of the damned, suffering every imaginable torture: hacked up, flayed, burning, pustulent with disease, blistered. They were impaled on long skewers, nailed to walls, to inverted crosses set aflame, stretched across terrible nets of barbed metal. The horrific high-pitched sound that filled the air was their eternal screams, gone raw and inhuman from centuries of unceasing torment. Instantly, Tuco turned away, wishing he could unsee the dreadful scene, wishing to tear his eyes out that they never again give him such an image.

"How do we stop it?" he managed to ask through his trembling.

"Stop what, master?" Hob inquired.

"Stop the torment, the torture, how do we stop it? How do we make all that go away?"

"Well... if you wish it to end, it is your demesne now. Simply say aloud that you wish it so. But I warn you that--"

Nothing Hob could have to say could justify what Tuco had seen. "I wish it so," he said.

"Then louder, master, so all the demesne can hear you."

Tuco turned around, bunching his arms at his sides, and roared, "I COMMAND THIS TORMENT TO STOP!" His voice bounded and rebounded across the endless castle-city, so loud it set his own ears to ringing, so loud that the smoke clouds in the sky above it broke in waves and ripples. As though he had imagined them, the grotesque human remains vanished, leaving behind only the wretched city and the insects swarming over it.

"Where did they go?" Tuco asked, and could hear neither his voice nor Hob's reply over the ringing in his ears. He waited for a moment, and the tinnitus faded into a strange and unnatural silence. "Where did they go?" he asked again.

"The souls, Sir Tuco? Back into limbostone, to await whatever new punishments you devise for them."

He stared at Hob. "New punishments? What could I do to them that they would deserve after that?"

The little imp shrugged. "It is not for Hob to decide. The One Above decided that those who did not love and worship him should be given to the devils, and the devils do as they please. But if you look at their souls, you can see what they have done. Many of them have committed terrible sins, though. Murder. Genocide. Rape. Of the innocent and vulnerable. It was Prince Sathanus who decreed they should be punished by eternal torment."

Tuco shuddered. "Eternal? Surely no man has committed crimes worth that."

"One of Sathanus's prized souls is Vladislav ?epe?, a famously cruel tyrant who impaled hundreds. He skewered babies inside their mothers, boiled people alive inside a copper cauldron, and sewed up live starving rats inside his victims. He massacred tens of thousands, master. What mercy does he deserve?"

"The entire point of mercy is that it is undeserved!" Tuco snapped, and Hob wilted, his batlike ears folding backward as he hunched down.

"Humblest apologies, oh wise and benevolent master."

Tuco shook his head. "And what is this torture intended to accomplish? What purpose does it serve humanity or the Almighty to have torment revisited upon any of these people? They are dead, are they not? They can do no more harm. What purpose can further cruelty serve? To prove we are even greater monsters?"

Hob crept up to his toes, trembling. "But master, you know Prince Sathanus's prime temptation, do you not?"

It took a moment of pondering before he found the answer. "Vengeance. Surely it must have been the Temptation of Vengeance."

"Yes. Sathanus promised all the victims of cruel men that their suffering would be answered with suffering a thousandfold greater, and so won their souls."

"For what can be more evil than wishing suffering upon others?"

"Indeed, master. And by falling to that desire, by losing their souls, so they too became his agents, and inflicted suffering of their own, and inspired others to seek vengeance on them. It is what made him Prince, master: the most brilliant manipulation of humans in all the history of the Abyss. One act of great cruelty can deliver a hundred souls to sin, and each of those hundred another hundred. All Prince Sathanus need do is promise the torment of the wicked, and a million more fall in their glee into darkness. Of all the great temptations, only vengeance creates itself."

"Well, it ceases today," Tuco said firmly. "At least in my demesne, there will be no further torment. Souls that have fallen due to great evil will be made to reckon with the suffering they have inflicted upon others, but I will not compound horror with horror." A day prior, he would have doubted the wisdom of his declaration, but after seeing what eternal torment looked like, after witnessing what had just been emblazoned into his memory, he could no more countenance it than he could drive needles into his own eyes. No heart with an ounce of compassion could see that and witness it upon any person. And, he thought with a growing sense of unease, no God with more love in His heart than Tuco's could have permitted it. Only hatred could send people to such a place as this.

Hob dipped his head. "You are master here now, and all the souls that dwell within are subject to your will. Many were bargained on the promise of vengeance, but it is Sathanus who made that bargain, not you, and you are under no obligation to uphold it."

"We will find ways to heal them, Hob."

"A noble aspiration, master, but prepare yourself for the possibility that not all souls may be healed."

"Then we will keep them in limbo, where they can harm no one and feel nothing. Surely that is merciful."

"More mercy than many deserve."

"Justice is getting what you deserve. I saw no justice here. Now how do we get rid of all these insects?"

No sooner had he spoken the words than the black swarms clouding the skies and the giant flies crawling over the city vanished as though they had never been.

"It is your demesne, master," Hob said. "It shapes itself to your desires. Should we enter, and make it your own?"

Tuco nodded. "Er, Hob, one question before I do. Pike told me that he knew what my next temptation was likely to be. It isn't vengeance, is it?"

"Pike believes you are being challenged in the order of the temptations, Sir Tuco."

Tuco pondered. "Food, ease, sex, safety... I can't believe I hadn't seen it before. So that would make the next temptation... wealth?"

"If your Favored One is correct, then yes."

"Well, that doesn't sound very likely," Tuco said. "What could coin mean to me now? Still. I shall be on my guard. Will we be safe in there?"

"From demons and lesser devils, yes. Knights and Lords must have your invitation to enter. A Duke or Baron would not. But they would have to announce themselves before entering. You will be as safe as you can be anywhere in the Abyss."

"That will certainly be a relief," Tuco said, and stepped forward on the path of jagged black rock that led to the infinite citadel. The instant he set clawed toes to stone, a wave of bright green grass rippled outward, covering the dead earth and stone with life. Above him, a tiny hole of blue opened in the smoke-choked sky. He stared in amazement.

"It is happening already, master." Hob sprang from his shoulder and flapped ahead of him. "Come!"

Tuco followed him down the hill, the green grass spreading out wider and lusher, with longer stalks sprouting flowers: the red of poppies, blue wild hyacinth, nodding white narcissus, yellow buttercups, and the large, purple heads of thistles crowning their prickly stalks. Still there was no visible sun in the sky, but golden daylight shafted through the breaking smoke, dappling the spreading lea with warmth and cheer. The craggy stone cliffs and barren canyons smoothed into round, rolling hills, and from their green-furred shoulders, the shapes of little white sheep sprouted up like daisies, looking briefly bewildered, but then bending their heads to sample the freshly grown grass.

Tuco struggled to keep the tears from his eyes. "Oh, it's just like home," he breathed. "I've missed it so much. Can it be real?"

Hob tilted his head. "What is real, master? This is the stuff of void, which you have shaped according to your will. Except the sheep. Those are souls."

Tuco stared at him. "Sheep have souls?"

"No, master, only humans, angels, and devils have souls," Hob explained patiently. "These are human souls, won by Prince Sathanus. Devils cannot make animal life; only change it."

"But--but I never intended to transform anyone into sheep!"

"Hob is certain they prefer it to their previous fate, master. So peaceful! You could grant them these idylls if you wish, or you could return them to limbostone if you do not wish to invent a more appropriate fate for them."

"It seems fine," Tuco said doubtfully. And in truth, the creatures did seem to be happy; several flopped down into the grass and wriggled, while others gamboled, kicking up heels or bounding up a hillside.

Before Tuco, the path of jagged black stone became a game trail, the soft, trampled grasses wetting his feet with dew as he followed it. The scents of rich earth, wildflowers, and fresh grass mixed with the gamy, musty odor of the sheep--the scent of the fields outside the village where he and his siblings had played as children. After everything he had been through, and after so long in strange, unfriendly places, his heart sang with joy.

The path led down the hill toward a forbidding moat bubbling with liquid fire, but as Tuco's influence reached it, blue spread throughout the orange as fire transformed into water. A lazy river cut through the green meadow now, and the air filled with the groaning and chirruping of frogs. The spit of stone that had crossed the moat became a long, beautiful wooden bridge, and Tuco traveled across this to the buildings ahead. As he approached, these, too, fell, their walls collapsing into earth, ivy and moss swallowing their stones until they were little more than ruins. Limbostone menhirs jutted from the ground here and there, and in places arranged themselves into henges of various sizes, some of them only four or five stones in a circle, others in the distance forming enormous constellations of ten concentric rings or more.

"There are so many," Tuco said, pointing to the limbostones. "And they all have souls in them?"

"They are but a small fraction of the souls in your dominion. Most will be underground, most likely, stored deep."

Tuco followed the path, the city crumbling into overgrown ruins around him, until the path led to a high hill crowned by a dark and forbidding palace, all looming edifices and unnatural angles. As he approached, this building did not crumble, but folded in on itself, the black rock brightening to a cheery redstone, yawning dark gaps in the walls transforming into whiteframed windows with real glass. Gardens sprang up around the building with white gravel paths, fruit trees, and manicured hedges. The building was larger than any home Tuco had ever entered, though not even a fraction the size of the enormous city-fortress that had crumbled around it, and Tuco recognized its general aesthetic, if not its particulars, almost immediately. When he was a young boy, his father had taken him on a journey to the southern countryside, a delivery of intricately carved, painted, and varnished furniture for some well-to-do lord or lady. The gardens and manor had astounded Tuco at the time; he could not imagine anyone needing so much space or so many rooms, but he was struck by the peacefulness and gentle splendor of the home. It had been lovely without being ostentatious, and the gardens had smelled of wildflowers and ripening fruit and honey. The home's scents had been even more inviting: rich wood and old paper, boot polish, baking bread, clean linens. It had been no palace like the Empress must inhabit. It had been a place made for serenity and comfort, a gentle place, and for all his boyhood, the memory of the manor and gardens had remained in his heart an emblem of an idyllic life that had forever seemed out of reach.

And now here it was, part of his demesne. It hardly seemed real.

A crunching white-graveled path led Tuco to an enormous doorway, at least ten feet tall and half that across--too large and grand by far for most, but appropriate for him, he supposed. The white painted wooden door was closed, and he hesitated in front of it. "Do I knock?" he asked, one hand raised.

Hob spat, a little sizzle of smoke rising from the ground. "Knock on your own door, master? Your demons ought to have detected you coming and opened it for you already!" He puffed out his tiny chest. "Hob will have to whip them into shape!"

"Er, perhaps a bit of leniency is called for, Hob. After all, their last master was Sathanus. That can't have been easy. And then he went missing, and then I showed up, their castle fell down and all their work ended because I said so. It can't be simple, managing all that."

"You don't get a position serving the Prince of Darkness because you need things to be simple," Hob sniffed.

Tuco reached up to open the door to the estate, but just as his claws brushed the wood panels, the door suddenly swung inward, letting out the smells of silver polish and smoking meats. A little wave of happiness rolled through him, and he nearly drooled, before the idea of smoking meats recalled to him the scenes of horror he'd seen when he arrived, and abruptly his appetite abandoned him.

Standing in the doorway was a tall, slender demon dressed as a steward, with a neatly trimmed black tunic with dark red sleeves and leggings. He wore a close-cropped black beard, and his yellow eyes glittered as he dipped his horned head. "Welcome to your demesne, Sir Tuco Witchywine," he purred in a deep, clipped accent. "I am the steward of the late Prince Sathanus, and would be pleased to resume the position under new management." He smiled, baring delicately pointed canine teeth. "If you would be pleased to accept me as such. Few Knights of the Abyss are so fortunate as to have a Prince's staff to serve him."

"What is your name?" Tuco asked him.

"I am called Peeves, Sir."

Hob settled onto Tuco's shoulder, standing as tall as he could and wearing as severe an expression as he could manage. "Do you and your staff swear eternal allegiance to your new master, Sir Tuco Witchywine, and vow never to betray or scheme against him?"

A cool look settled into Peeves' eyes. "But of course, with the proviso that should our dark master Prince Sathanus be somehow restored to his former position, he has a prior claim upon our allegiance. Beyond that, I swear eternal allegiance to Sir Tuco Witchywine. I vow to serve him to the best of my abilities, never to question an order, never to work against his wishes, spoken or unspoken, to defend him against all incursion and treachery, to honor him as fallen star, and to care for his souls as though they were my own, from here and unto eternity, now and forever. So I do swear."

As he spoke, Tuco heard his voice echoed by other voices all around--hundreds, thousands of them, all reciting the words that bound them to him. He felt the connections to him forming, uncountable tiny threads of devotion brushing against his vast inner being, the true heart of him that held within him all his souls, that strained with magic, that devoured devils. With a blaze of white starlight, his mark appeared on the demon's forehead, just between the two short horns that jutted above his brow.

Again Peeves bowed low and extended an arm. "Welcome to your estate, Sir."

Tuco stepped inside, his feet sinking into a thick, plush rug. Since he was a small boy, he and his family had dwelt in a modest thatched-roof home with only a single large three-bayed room downstairs for cooking, work, and food preparation, and smaller rooms in the loft of one bay--one for his parents, one for the boys, and one for the girls. His father was a carpenter, so they always had comfortable furniture, mostly made of cast-off or misshapen pieces discarded from more completed work, but very little by way of anything else, and on cold or rainy days, they shared the downstairs with the chickens and goats, which at least helped to keep the place warm.

Multiple rooms were something you found in the houses of only the wealthiest, and yet here, in his new entryway, a grand, dark-stained and polished stairway led up to a second story. He'd never even had a stair; the bed lofts were reached by a runged ladder, and if you were too injured or tired or drunk to make it to bed, why, you slept on the bottom floor curled up next to the fireplace.

But this house was his now. Granted, none of it was, strictly speaking, real, and it was lost deep in the Abyss and populated by demons, and at any moment could be invaded or stolen by a bigger and more important devil... but it was his. And it was just what he'd wished for.

"May I show the master his estate?" Peeves asked smoothly. Tuco agreed, and was taken on a grand tour of the manor: there was a parlor, a conservatory, a greenhouse, a great dining hall, a library filled with books and scrolls--none of which he expected he would be able to read just yet, but he would have plenty of time to learn, would he not? The kitchen was saturated with delicious scents of cooking food, and equipped with a larder stuffed with all of Tuco's favorite. There was a great hall that might serve as a ballroom, and, upstairs, many comfortable-looking bedrooms, so many that Tuco could have slept in a different room each night for a fortnight and still not have seen every one. There were museum rooms filled with many of Sathanus's collected relics and memorabilia, and grand towers that overlooked the rolling countryside in every direction. In every room, demonic staff stood by in smart and expensive dress, each of them branded on the forehead with Tuco's signature mark, each of them respectfully lowering their heads when he entered as though he were someone important. He had guards, footmen, cooks, and valets, though what any of their roles could be when the house had been formed out of demonic magic and surely maintained itself in the same fashion, he had no idea.

"And of course," Peeves added, at what Tuco had presumed to be the end of the tour, "there is the hoard, Sir."

"The hoard?" Tuco asked uneasily. "A collection of some sort?"

"Your predecessor, as you will recall, was a dragon in form as well as in predilection, and he amassed quite the treasure over his time as the Prince of Evil. If it would please you to precede me, Sir?" Peeves opened a side door that revealed a stone stairway leading down into comparative darkness.

Tuco glanced at Hob uneasily, but the little imp seemed unbothered, and so Tuco made his way down the stairwell. Peeves directed them to descend past several doors--a wine cellar, an ale taproom, the limbostone vaults, and an underground lake, he informed them. As Tuco descended past these, he noticed an increasing number of golden coins strewn across the stairs. He was unable to avoid treading on several of them, and their soft metal flattened slightly under the balls of his feet. Shortly after, the stairway opened up into a wide cavern. At this point, they were unable to descend any further, because the stairway disappeared into an ocean of gold. Tuco stopped so abruptly that Hob pitched forward off of his shoulder.

In amazement, he looked around. Gold: gold coins, gold candlesticks, necklaces, rings, plates, idols, woven fabric, stretched in every direction as far as he could see. And not only gold. Gems: glittering green emeralds, rich blue sapphires, blazing rubies, and starlike diamonds sparkled across the heaps in great, dazzling piles. There were billowing cascades of silks and satins, walls of fine tapestries, stacks of paintings, statues half-submerged in the sea of splendor like drowning sailors. Tuco had no idea how far down the heap of wealth went.

In puzzlement, he turned to Peeves. "I don't understand. The landscape outside changed when I approached, becoming something more like home. The citadel disappeared and left only this fine house I'd always admired. But I certainly never wished for any treasure hoard. Why hasn't it gone away as well?"

His steward cleared his throat delicately. "Devils can transform only the bodies of humans and the stuff of the Abyss, Sir Tuco. The treasure you see here is real."

"Real?" Tuco blinked again. "You mean from... from earth?"

"They say you cannot take it with you, Sir. But Prince Sathanus found a way."

"And all this is mine now."

"Unless he should return and claim it."

"I saw him perish, Peeves. It was... horrible. He isn't coming back."

"Then it will be yours forever."

Tuco stared across the ocean of gold. A domed vault rose from the ceiling a little distance away, and centered in it was an enormous statue: a calf, made entirely of shining, solid gold, its head raised proudly above the treasure. "What did you say the next temptation was, Hob?" he muttered.

The imp settled back onto his shoulder. "Wealth, master."

No sooner had he spoken than a chorus of trumpets sounded a fanfare from above. The sound sent a wrench of dread through Tuco's stomach as he recalled the seals at the bottom of the Throat. "What's that?" he demanded.

"Someone at the border, Sir," Peeves said. "Requesting entry, no doubt. I will see who it is. Sir may remain here, with his treasures, or he might perhaps retire to his parlor in anticipation of receiving guests?"

Tuco agreed that this course of action sounded best, and climbed the stairs after Peeves. In the parlor, he settled into the most comfortable chair he had ever sat in--it even had a convenient gap through which his tail deftly threaded itself. The light in the room was that of a lazy Sunday afternoon, filtering through blue and white curtains to light up the cherrywood paneling which, since he had last passed through, had sprouted paintings of his friends: Hob, Etreon, and Braxus, in positions that captured both their likenesses and demeanours exactly. He rested his arm on the plush armrest of his chair, and found that his claws brushed against a crystal glass set on a side table. The glass was filled with an amber liquid that proved to be an exquisite pear brandy, and he sipped delicately from it while awaiting whoever these visitors might prove to be.

It was hard to feel too concerned when he was this comfortable, and the brandy was terribly good, but he cast a nervous glance toward Hob all the same. "Who do you think it might be?" he asked.

Hob shook his wee head. "Impossible to know, master. Not someone who wishes to snatch you up and force you into submission, so not a brute like some rulers of the Abyss. It might simply be some of those we freed from E-Temen-Anki, wishing to express their gratitude or vow service to you. Or..."

"Or?" Tuco prompted him, as the little imp shifted and looked uneasy at saying more.

"Or it might be some more clever devil who wishes to deceive you, master."

There was a worrying thought. "I shall be on my guard," Tuco promised him.

After a few moments, Peeves appeared again at the doorway. "Sir has a very honorable guest," he announced. He strode forward and held out a silver tray in his white-gloved hand. On it was a small, square envelope of fine, ivory paper. Tuco took the envelope and slit it open with one claw, removing a card--this time apparently made of actual ivory and embossed with a gold filigree frame and lettering. It read:

His Lordship the Baron Mammon and company

graciously accepts the hospitality

of Sir Tuco Witchywine, Knight of Lust.

"Mammon?" Tuco whispered to Hob as he got to his feet and prepared to receive his guests.

Hob's jet-black scales paled to an ashy grey. "Baron Mammon," he whispered back. "The Governor of Greed."