CHAPTER 8: TRANSLATION

The inside of Hellsport was even more intimidating than its outside, and far more overwhelming. The gate opened on the southwest corner of a large cobblestoned square, easily a hundred yards on a side, full of people bustling in all directions. Further towards city center the skyline was dominated by a narrow spike of a tower with a bulbous top like a flower. Pipes flowed in graceful curves from the tower to the city below, arcing down out of my line of sight. Aside from the tower, the buildings were a mad jumble of visual nonsense—immediatedly around me they squatted and glowered in browns and blacks but to the north they swooped in blues and whites and to the east they leaned in yellows and whites. There was no neat separation; the various kinds of weirdness all sniffed each others' tails.

No sooner did I step foot on the square than I was scambling backwards, paws slipping and sliding for traction on the cobblestones, as a blocky vehicle with a black-cloud-spewing smokestack and a steamwhistle went flying past, the steamwhistle blasting warning. It brought to mind a flash of a crying baby SmolFriend. The thought was only there for a moment before a burst of pain drove it away; I had put a foot wrong on the cobbles and jammed my shoulder.

A filthy little person who was probably human suddenly pushed himself out of the crowd and up to my shoulder, where he clutched at Marcus's leg. "Lookin' for a beddie-bye, mate?" he said to Marcus. "Ol'Tam knows the best places. Easy rates has Ol'Tam, just ten stone a day. Show ya a place to kip, maybe arrange some comp'ny, eh? Eh? Pretty lady? Pretty boy? Summin' ta take the edge off? Fine wines, dreamdust, whatevs you likes."

A woman's voice came from behind me and to the left. "Please sir, spare a stone?" I glanced back to see a row of rag-dressed people slumped despondently against the inside of the city wall, most of them asleep or ignoring us. The speaker was a young woman with gray skin whose hair was thin vines that twirled down her body, shrouding her in leaves. Her arms and legs were thicker vines, twining around each other with wide spaces between them. She wore a ratty, frayed-apart silk shift that covered her torso and thighs, but I couldn't even guess the color from how much dirt was smudged onto it. "Stone for a poor wee sprite?"

"Fuck off," Eugene said to Tam, kicking him away from me. The little man went sprawling with a shout of pain before scrambling to his feet and disappearing into the crowd.

"It's okay," Marcus murmured in my ear, ignoring the byplay with Tam and the ongoing cries of the vagrant vine-woman. "It's just a car. It's not alive, it's a machine. The boiler on the back uses hellstone to boil water, which makes steam—"

{I know what a car is,} I huffed sharply. Marcus likely didn't understand me precisely but he took the general point and stopped talking.

"Get the caravan put away," Eugene told Marcus. "I want to check the tournament odds. Register yourself with the messenger service and send me whatever location you choose." He strode off without waiting for an answer.

"Asshole," Marcus muttered. He twisted around on my back so he could see the rest of the caravan. "Okay, folks!" he called. "Follow on! Let's find ourselves a bed for the night."

o-o-o-o

There was a caravansary on the west side of the square, but their rates were, as Marcus put it, 'stupid'. We explored a bit farther west and found another place, smaller and dingier but much more affordable. There was just enough space inside to fit our six wagons alongside the one wagon belonging to some other traveler that was already there.

Getting to the caravansary was a trial made harder by the feeling of jittery malaise that lay over the city. I kept having to look up to remind myself that no, the day was not overcast and the smog that hung heavy in the air, bitter and sulfurous, was not thick enough to actually obstruct vision. Still, simply being here amidst all the chaos and noise made me tired, and walking on the cobblestones for an hour left my joints aching more than a week on forest trails had done. Part of it was the constant startlement of being in a city larger than any I'd seen in my prior life. The people here were always moving, never still, going about their self-involved little lives while jabbering in a bewildering melting pot of languages and haggling at high screech with merchants who had set up in storefronts, roadside stalls, and simple spread-out blankets. The people's clothes were mostly grays and browns, sometimes black, but there were occasional splashes of vibrant color: A man (or perhaps a robot?), covered every inch in iridescent metal with a sleek and curvaceous pistol on his hip; a human woman dressed in fabric woven from strings of yellow and black pearls; a strange being that looked like three bright yellow starfish standing on edge with their backs fused together, wearing nothing but a set of leather harnesses with various objects hanging from them; a bright yellow demon, ten feet tall with a head shrouded in fire; fire-belching steamcars, a self-driving unicycle with a ten-foot wheel, armored horses, howdah-wearing steam-powered elephant robots, and far too much more.

After a while I had to keep my eyes on the ground immediately in front of my toes and trust Marcus to guide me with gentle pressure of his knees. The constant noise was making my teeth ache and my skin crawl. I found myself growling at the constant stream of people pushing in front of me and for one brief moment I really wanted to bite the head off of the rag-dressed woman who barged past, almost hitting me in the snoot as she cursed at nothing and flailed her arms. The thought flitted by and left me horrified; what kind of dog wanted to bite a human?! Especially a human who hadn't done more than behave like an idiot? The shame of it made me want to curl up and hide so that no one would see what a bad dog I was.

By the time we got to the caravansary I was shivering with the effort of restraining the conflicting emotions that this place sent washing through me. Resentment at the rudeness of our fellow pedestrians. Rage at the disregard of motorists who at best drove aggressively and at worst felt that the road belonged to them and anyone too slow to get out of the way deserved what they got. Nervousness and hypervigilance from a constant string of jump scares caused by yowling animals, steamwhistles going off immediately behind me as a demand for right-of-way, vagrants stumbling in front of me to beg coin from Marcus. The list went on.

The caravansary was a single-gated walled compound consisting of a large courtyard surrounded on all four sides by a two-story building. There was a communal dining hall and kitchen on the ground floor where they kept two huge fireplaces blazing and served overpriced beer and bread and chicken and greens. There was a business office where Marcus haggled and paid. There were bedrooms for the humans and Skaddrans (the proper name for Marza's people, as I'd finally learned). There was a warm stable for me and the horses, and the courtyard held a well, a pump, and a long trough where the horses and I were able to drink while Tamar and the others got the wagons put up for the night.

The way I was feeling I was not willing to wait for my drink; I shouldered the big gray stallion out of the way and shoved most of my head into the frigid water of the trough. The cold burned at my ears but it also shut out all the noise and soothed the pounding headache that had settled in behind my eyes.

I kept my head submerged until my lungs ached and then came up only reluctantly. The gate of the caravansary was open, meaning that all the street noise was only a couple dozen yards away from where I was dripping on the dusty courtyard.

The gray stallion pushed impatiently at me, wanting his turn at the trough, and I gave way. I shook hard, sprinkling the horses and also Bjorn. Marcus had assigned the hammerman to watch over me and the horses while Marcus was inside getting our rooms squared away.

"Ack! Careful, dog!"

{Sorry,} I whuffed.

He glowered half-heartedly at me but forgave me after one apologetic nose-bump.

"This place getting to you?" he asked, rubbing that spot just above my eyebrow that he knew I loved.

I nodded.

"Yeah, it's a bit much for me too." He chuckled. "Which is weird, because I used to make port twice a year on Bolmere, and the port there is a city the size of a continent. Guess I've been around these parts too long, gotten used to 'cities' that are smaller and quieter than back home." I tilted my head and he obligingly shifted to scratch behind my ear before continuing. "'Course, the really weird part of the Realms is all the different species. There aren't any known alien species anywhere the Celestarchy has explored, so it's just us humans." He grinned and scritched furiously for a moment. "And dogs, of course."

I huffed my approval of that inclusion, and of the scritching. He smiled and shifted back to slowly petting my neck and back. I could feel the tension melting out of my muscles at the steady, reassuring touch.

"Okay, we're set," Marcus said, emerging from the manager's office trailed by a three-foot bipedal avian in coveralls. "Everyone, this is Balpua the porter. He'll get you to your rooms. Dinner is at sunset and included in the price."

The other members of the caravan murmured tired relief and started pulling their goods out of the wagons.

Marcus came over to me and Bjorn, Estelle and a shivering Marza trailing behind him. "Athos, let's get you a translator. This whole one-way communication thing has got to be as tiring for you as it is for us."

My ears perked up at that. I was going to be able to talk to my people?

Marcus grimaced. "Also, I need to get registered with the messenger service so we can let Eugene know where we are."

I cocked my head in curiosity.

"You'll see."

o-o-o-o

A dog the size of a small horse, a bright yellow alien that looked like a palm leaf atop a stool, and three humans carrying obvious weapons, including a seven-foot war spear with a crossguard consisting of two spikes; one might suppose that would be worthy of the occasional glance. Nope. At least half the people we passed were carrying some sort of weapon and the bewildering array of non-humans and mobile machines meant that Marza and I were consistently two of the less noteworthy beings on the street.

Marcus had acquired a map from the manager of the caravansary. We got off the main thoroughfares and onto smaller streets, too claustrophobically narrow for most vehicles and with less foot traffic. Of course, that merely replaced my too-many-people discomfort with claustrophobic discomfort at having houses looming up not more than three feet on either side of me. People leaned out the window, talking loudly to their neighbors across the street; I got to hear a lot of babble that I didn't understand, as well as snatches of two gossipy conversations, one about grandchildren and the other about how the latest updates to the duelling code were going to ruin the art. Clotheslines stretched between the houses, shirts and dresses and underpants dripping on us as we passed underneath. Marza took great pains to avoid being dripped on; she was shivering badly with the cold, having left the lizard heart back at the caravansary to keep Lissi and Faffi warm and making do with some hot coals that she clutched in her fur. I had offered to let her ride, figuring that I'd be warmer than the cobbles, but she insisted on walking.

After a couple miles we turned right and back onto one of the main roads. A quarter mile later we stopped in front of a large shop with a sign in six different alphabets. The one that I could read said, "PortalCo Branch Office #18".

The roll-up door was tall enough that I could walk through without ducking, although Marcus had to dismount first. I went in warily, Marza and Bjorn on my right and Marcus and Estelle on my left. Waves of light were flickering nervously across Marza's surface. Bjorn was resting his hand on the head of the warhammer that hung from its loop at his belt. Marcus's knuckles were white on the haft of his spear. Estelle's quiver was on her left hip and her longbow was strung and hung diagonally over her back; she didn't like to carry it that way, as the string dug into her breasts and it was bad for the bow. I had a feeling that the only reason she had not had it in hand as we walked was because she wasn't prepared to look quite that ready for war. Of course, that rule was for the street; she unslung the bow and carried it loose in her left hand as we walked in.

For myself, I did not want to go inside. The place stank of sulfur so strongly that I could taste it and there was an oppressive heat radiating out. It wasn't the warm crackle of my family's fireplace at home, it was a silent, sourceless, muggy pressure that dried my mouth and made my eyes water worse than the stench already had. Still, I sucked it up and walked in. If the humans were dumb enough to go in then clearly they needed someone to look after them.

Inside the store was nothing but a counter with a pale yellow demon lounging on a stool behind it. He wore what looked almost exactly like Dad's reading glasses and was using them to peruse a newspaper just like Dad did every morning. Unlike Dad, the demon was leaning back against the wall with his goat hooves up on the counter. The demon was right out of one of those noisybox movies that Dad liked: Humanoid, bulging belly, goat hooves, little spike of a beard, sharp little horns growing out of his head. Probably about five feet tall. Behind him was a closed door painted black.

He looked up as we entered, smiled widely, and stood up, folding the paper with a casual snap and dropping it on the counter. His mouth was circular and full of razor-sharp inward-pointing fangs. Watching it distort into the semicircle of a crazy human's smile made me sick to my stomach.

"Greetings, greetings! Welcome to Office 18! Wishes granted, information dispensed, hellstone sold, money changed, pacts made, easy rates and small down payments. You may call me Simon. Which of your problems may I solve today?"

A low growl escaped my lips before I could restrain it.

Simon didn't seem remotely bothered. "Now, now," he said, looking me in the eyes and speaking in perfect English. "I'm not allowed to hurt anyone in this city unless they ask for it. Or in self-defense, of course." He paused, frowning. His nose twitched as he sniffed the air, and then he leaned forward, adjusting his glasses to get a better look at me.

"First off, we need to buy some stones," Marcus said, ignoring the demon's interest with no more than a raised eyebrow. "I've got Ozurdati bits and bar silver." He reached into an inner pocket of his vest and produced a money pouch and a small silver brick half the size of his palm. He placed them on the counter.

"Of course, of course. Let me just check the rates on bits..." Simon leaned down behind the counter and studied something, then stood up again, bringing with him a leather sack and a set of scales. He weighed the silver carefully and named a price.

Marcus grimaced but nodded. Moments later there was a small stack of gold disks on the counter in front of Marcus and Simon was sweeping all the silver and bits into a bin.

I stared in disgust at the gold disks—'stones' as they were apparently called, despite not being stone. There was something greasy about them...if my nose hadn't been stuffed up by the sulfur in the air, I would have said they smelled bad.

Marcus separated out about a third of the disks and handed them to Marza. She caught them in her fur and sent them gliding up her surface and into a pouch she had formed on the top of her head. Moments later, her shivering, already reduced by the heat of the room, slowed and then stopped completely. I was glad she was feeling better, but I was feeling worse. Specifically, nauseous.

Simon finished putting away the money and turned back to Marcus. "Is there anything else I may do for you, dear sir?" He was speaking to Marcus but still studying me intently.

"Yes. We need translation and messenger service," Marcus said, ignoring the demon's distraction with no more than a raised eyebrow.

"Happy to help! For which of you am I providing these services?"

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"Messenger for me, translation for me, Marza, and Athos," Marcus said, gesturing to me and Marza. It had been the subject of much debate on the way over as to which members of our party would get which services: For some reason, Marcus saw it as an unpleasant necessity and Bjorn had made a point of how he was 'only here in event of mugger.' Estelle had not even said a word, simply looking at Marcus as though he were an idiot. Marza and I were the only ones eager for translation.

"Very good, very good. The rate—" He paused, frowning, and leaned forward to sniff in Marza's direction.

"What in all the blarglebebbs is that?!" he demanded, jabbing a clawed finger towards Marza. "It's empty! There's nothing in there except...except matter!" He almost retched as he said the last word. "What are you doing bringing something like that into my shop?!"

Lights were flashing furiously across Marza's body and she skittered nervously backwards. Marcus put his hand on his sword and stepped in front of her. Estelle followed, one hand going to her quiver. Bjorn started to pull his hammer out of the loop on his belt but paused with it only a fraction drawn. I leaned forward, lips skinning off my teeth and a deep rumbling growl in my throat.

The demon recovered himself almost immediately. "Forgive me. That was very rude, and I sincerely apologize. Especially to you my good...individual." He nodded to Marza. "I'm afraid I will be unable to assist you with messenger or translation services, although the rest of you will be no trouble."

He took a breath, shook himself, and pasted the terrifying smile back on his face. "The rate for messenger service is ten mana per message, with a monthly forty-mana service fee. Translation is one Spirit monthly for verbal, three for universal comprehension. If you'll just sign here..." He pulled a trio of thick scrolls out of nowhere and set them on the counter, two in front of Marcus and one for me. A quill pen followed. An inkwell did not.

Marcus studied him for a moment before taking his hand off his sword and unrolling the first of his scrolls, reading carefully. The rest of us relaxed only marginally.

Marcus had to squint at the page since the writing was small and covered the page almost edge-to-edge. The page was definitely not made of paper and I found myself glad that my nose was completely blocked by the sulfur stench, because if I had been able to smell what that scroll was made of, I think I would have been upset. The longer I spent in this room, in the presence of 'Simon', the more my upset became focused on him—on it. It might wear a small beard but it was not male. I didn't know how I knew that, but I did, and I instinctively hated it. I might feel badly about wanting to bite the head off a passing human, but biting the head off this thing across from us bothered me only because it would probably taste bad. 'Simon', or whatever its name really was, was simply wrong on some deep level and being in its presence made my skin crawl. And that was leaving aside the question of its reaction to Marza. Marza wasn't human but I liked her and would be happy to extend her the same sort of protection I gave the humans in the group. Also, having a good reason to bite Simon felt like it would be really, really satisfying.

"It's just the standard terms and conditions, sir," Simon said to Marcus, sounding vaguely irritated. "It's been vetted by multiple barristers and used by thousands of satisfied clients."

"I'll read it for myself, thanks."

Simon gave an aggrieved sigh and looked over at Estelle. "Anything I might offer you, dear lady? Magical enhancement for that bow, perhaps? We have very reasonable rates on our Everfull Quiver enchantments. Perhaps a makeover? You have an excellent bone structure but that nose isn't doing you any favors. A little bit of smoothing, perhaps some enlargement in the chest area, and you'd be quite attractive."

Estelle said nothing, staring straight through him with a face like stone.

"How about you, my good man?" Simon asked Bjorn. "You're Patched, yes?"

"Yes," Bjorn said in surprise. "How can you tell?"

Simon tapped its nose. "The nose knows, dear lad. Your spirit doesn't match the air of this place."

I cocked my head at the word 'Patched'. What was that all about?

Simon noticed my confusion. "You're not familiar with the nature of this Realm, my fine Patched canine? I'd be happy to explain it for a modest fee. How does five mana sound?"

Estelle put her hand on my shoulder. When I looked over she jerked her head 'no'.

"Don't make any deals with him that you don't have to," she said. She paused a moment. "I didn't realize you didn't know about the Patches. No one talked about that on the road?"

I shook my head. Mostly we had focused on the practical—the things around us, common actions, food, that sort of thing. Ozurdati-the-language was a weird language with six different ways of saying a word depending on time (distant past, near past, present, near future, distant-but-probable future, distant-and-unlikely future) and four based on relationship of the speakers (unrelated, team, friends, lovers/family); it took a while to learn. Also, the caravan had been traveling hard since leaving Ozurdati-the-city, traveling even under moonlight and pushing the pace to get to Hellsport as quickly as possible in order to avoid the various threats along the way, of which the wolves had not been the first. Things had gotten easier after I showed up to smell out and scare off predators, but everyone was still tired all the time. Meal times had been short and there was less sitting around chatting than there could have been. It wasn't surprising that there had been few personal stories and nothing about whatever this 'Patched' business was.

"The multiverse consists of many Realms," Estelle explained. "They drift around and sometimes they bump into one another. Our Realm has a very thin firmament, so sometimes when there's a collision things get stuck here—people, things, even places. We call those places Patches. This city is on the intersection of four different Patches."

"Five, actually," Simon said. "A new one showed up last week. About a half mile square, swapped itself for a section of the Tumbles. Missemblomancy works there and it's caused quite the stir in the local economy."

"I'm sure. Anyway, Patches typically maintain the laws of their own reality, more or less. Often a Patch will have magic that isn't available anywhere else, which gives them something to trade. Magic users or magical effects will typically retain their power for a while outside of their Patch but it fades away over time. Same for some technology; no Realm will support anything too far beyond that of the most populous culture in the region. You saw that guy in the color-shifting armor that we passed? If that's a power suit then he's probably got a few weeks at most before it turns into a paperweight."

"Happened to me," Bjorn said. "My bouncepack ran down two weeks after the wreck, despite having a battery that should have outlasted the sun. My multitool"—he tapped the warhammer hanging from his belt—"lasted a month or so and then got stuck like this." He snorted. "I'm just glad I didn't have it in ladder format when it ran out. Would have been hard to carry around."

"I'm sure you know that my home spans multiple blarglebebbs?" Simon asked politely, looking at Bjorn. "Your afterlife is included. If you'd like, I could probably find the place for you. Might give you a chance to reset your tool, get the full functionality back. Or, alternatively, there's likely an exit back to your own Realm. Most afterlives have them."

Bjorn blinked. "Wait...I could go home?"

Simon shrugged. "Probably. I'm not familiar with precisely which Realm you come from, so I can't guarantee that you have an afterlife or that it has an exit back to your mortal world. Still, it's almost certainly there somewhere and more afterlives have an exit than don't." He raised a black-clawed finger. "In the interest of responsible shopkeeping, let me note that your Realm undoubtedly has multiple afterlives based on its various cultures. Exits from an afterlife always lead back to locations important to their source culture, which might or might not be near where you want to be. Basically, I don't promise that I can get you to your house but I can probably get you somewhere where you can get a cab home, for some rather esoteric values of 'cab'."

"I...need to think about that. Traveling through the Dim...."

"This part won't do," Marcus said, straightening up and pointing at a passage on the scroll. "It says that we can cancel messenger service at any time by coming into a PortalCo office and paying any outstanding balance plus an early termination fee. We might not be able to physically come here. It should be perfectly workable for us to simply tell the translation demon—"

"Imp, sir. I understand that we all look alike to you humans, but demons and imps are quite different."

"Fine, whatever. We should be able to end the contract simply by telling the translation imp that we no longer require its services and it can go. We can pay it the balance and you can collect from it."

Simon shrugged. "I'm sorry to hear that you are dissatisfied, sir. Those are our terms. We aren't in the habit of selling custom plans."

Marcus nodded thoughtfully. "All right. I really only need to send the one message. I'm sure I can find someone on the street to do it for me, or just find Eugene directly." He snorted. "That horndog little bastard is probably back at the gate right now, waiting to hit on that Guard Sergeant once she gets offshift. As to the translation service, I'm sure one of your existing customers will be willing to tag along and translate for us while we're here." He cocked his head, considering Simon. "You salesdemons work on commission, right?"

Simon glowered. "Fine, perhaps we could work something out. There would need to be a higher rate to pay for the increased uncertainty on our side. Let's say...two hundred mana for the activation fee, plus twenty per message and fifty for the monthly maintenance charge."

"Two hundred?! Are you nuts? I'd burn a point of Spirit for that! And the rest of that is highway robbery."

"That seems entirely reasonable given how much scrollwork I'm going to need to do to justify this to the back office."

"Regular maintenance fee is only forty. I'll pay fifty with no activation fee. And two per message."

There followed several minutes of Marcus and Simon growling numbers back and forth. Marcus started to walk out twice and each time Simon called him back but demanded extra numbers. Eventually they ended up with an up-front cost of one hundred mana, plus five mana per message and a monthly fee of fifty. Then they went through the same business for the translation service, with Marcus checking both scrolls, his and mine, to ensure they were identical before saying numbers back and forth with Simon. It went on a lot longer than had the messenger service numbers-growling, long enough that Bjorn had given up paying attention and was leaning against the wall reading a small book that he'd had in his vest. Marza never moved from her position, although she did occasionally lean close to Marcus and say something in her whispery voice. By now I had realized that yes, she could speak Ozurdati, but she couldn't produce enough volume to be heard from more than a few inches away. At least, not by puny human ears. Still, even with decent canine senses I couldn't make out her words from more than three or four feet.

"Accepted and done," Simon said at last, his temper visibly frayed, "I will need your signatures and then I can issue you your imps."

"Hold up," Estelle said. She had been reading the translation contract while Marcus and Simon argued. "What's this bit?" She turned it around and held it out so that Simon could see, one finger indicating the passage in question. "'Representative will provide maximally-accurate available translation of Customer's intent'?"

"Hm?" Simon asked, jolted out of his focus on Marcus. "That's a reference to the quality of our service. Our imps provide native-level—"

"Why is the word available there?"

"PortalCo offers what we call the 100/100 guarantee: Your imp will have native fluency in every language spoken by every unified cultural group of one hundred or more people who live within a hundred leagues of this shop as of the moment you sign the contract. We can't guarantee availability of translation for every Talos, Mongo, and Beelzebub you might run into that just Patched in from some backwater reality, or for groups that arrive after signing."

"And what about the 'maximally-accurate' part?"

Simon pursed its lips. "How many languages do you speak, ma'am?"

"One. Ozurdati."

"May I suggest picking up a few more? Ozurdati is widely spoken in this region but if you add Farban and Harambic you'll have much better coverage. We offer linguistic implantation services, if you're interested. It's a modest fee and you'll be able to speak—"

"Don't weasel. What does 'maximally-accurate' mean?"

"Well, every language has its own idioms. Even within a language, different dialects can have a significant impact on humor and other subtleties. Sometimes there isn't a word-for-word correspondence between what the customer says and what the listener can understand. In those cases the imp will provide a best-fit translation that conveys as much as possible of the customer's intent, but we can't guarantee every nuance will be available."

Estelle and Marcus exchanged looks.

"This is a bad plan, boss."

Marcus shrugged. "We aren't making our tun if we can't communicate." He picked up the quill. "Where's the ink?" he demanded of Simon.

"Oh, we don't use ink for this," Simon said, smiling widely. "Please stab your left hand with the quill."

"...You're kidding, right?"

"Of course not. How did you think you were going to sign a contract with the Infernal? Don't worry, the quill is extremely sharp and has a minor Pain Reversal enchantment on it as a courtesy to our customers. It won't hurt a bit and we provide free courtesy healing afterwards."

Marcus stared at Simon for a moment, then examined the tip of the quill. Finally, he set the quill against the heel of his left hand and pressed.

He stopped immediately, his mouth gaping open as he moaned. He had to lean on the counter to hold himself up.

"What the Deeps was that?" he panted.

"The Pain Reversal charm, obviously," Simon said, sounding confused. "Weren't you listening?"

"You said it wouldn't hurt. You never said it would feel...good."

"Merely a courtesy to our customers, sir. I'm afraid you'll need a little more blood than that. Please hold the quill in place until the shaft is fully sanguinated."

Marcus pressed the quill back into his hand and held it there, shuddering in what definitely did not look like pain. It took several seconds for the shaft of the quill to completely fill up; when it finally did, Marcus seemed to remove the quill from his hand only reluctantly.

"Thank you," the demon said, smiling happily. "If you'll just initial here, and here, and sign here...thank you, now for the translation service...thank you." It blew carefully on the signature while absently waving one hand towards Marcus; the small wound on Marcus's hand closed up in seconds, leaving only unmarred skin behind.

The demon turned to me. "I presume you will have some difficulty holding the quill, my good dog, but that's not an issue. The blood is simply an embodiment of intent and the quill an extraction mechanism for the mana." He picked the quill up and fiddled with it for a moment, then held it out with the tip up. "Please prick your paw on this and then make your mark on the scroll."

I studied him, eyes narrowed, but he didn't move and the smile didn't go away. Finally, with great reluctance, I reached out and placed my right front paw on the quill. As thick as my pads were I had expected I would need to press hard, but in fact my flesh offered no more resistance to the quill than would a pool of water.

I'm not sure what Marcus had experienced, but the quill did not have the same effect on me. It felt like the claws and teeth of the wolves all over again, but now they were inside me and chewing their way out through my foot, my leg, my shoulder—

I howled in agony and yanked my paw back, holding it off the floor and glaring at the demon while my blood dripped in splotches on the hardwood.

Simon's thick eyebrows had climbed towards his hornline. "My, how interesting! Two miracles in one day...one who is nothing but matter with no spirit and one who is spirit and matter with no division. Fascinating!" He spoke in the tongue of Ozurdati, the one that our entire group could understand.

"Wait, what?" Marcus said, frowning. "'Spirit and matter with no division'?"

"Hm? Oh, apologies. Just me getting caught up in my little hobbies. I'm quite the student of physicality, you know. Fascinating how you mortal creatures choose to wallow in that...flesh." His lip crinkled briefly as though he'd smelled something horrible. "In any case, if—Athos, I believe it was? If you would please place your paw here...?" He unrolled the contract on the counter for me.

I huffed in annoyed distaste, then thwapped the thing hard enough that the counter cracked. A spike of ice shot through me as I touched the contract and a hemisphere of my pad vanished, scooped out like Dad scooping Rocky Road. Blood flowed freely for several seconds, meaning that my pawprint slathered over most of the scroll and trailed off the edges; Simon had no objection to the messiness of my 'signature', even smiling to himself a bit. He rolled the scroll up and tossed it and both of Marcus's over his shoulder. They vanished before hitting the ground.

"And now for your imps." Simon raised its hands dramatically like those guys that Mom used to like to watch on the noisybox, the ones who dressed like penguins and waved dramatically at musicians. "Spirits of the Netherworld, come forth! I summon you to service by the power of your Name! I conjure you, I bind you! Come forth, Zabazel! Come forth, Murray!"

"Heya," the little imp said as he appeared with a poit. He was human-shaped, fat-bellied, ten-ish inches tall, with tiny wings that flapped furiously until he landed on the bridge of my snoot. "I'm Murray," he said in Ozurdati. "I'll be ya translation imp. I jes need ya to say a couple dozen woids sohs I can get ya native lingo pinned down."

I blinked cross-eyed at him. I wasn't entirely sure how comfortable I was having the thing sit on my snoot but it seemed rude to throw him off and I didn't get the same horrible sense off of him that I got from Simon. {Hello,} I huffed. {I'm Athos. It's nice to meet you. I'm looking forward to being able to talk to my friends.}

He listened to my huff, watched the tilt of my ears and tongue-loll, and then slapped his hand on his face and turned to Simon.

"Oi! Simon! Ya stuck me wid a customah whose lingo is somatic-primary pre-sophontic? What the balls'd I evah do ta you?!"

"Go douse yourself, Murray!" Simon snarled. "Challenges are part of the forsaken job. Stop whining and do it."

"I sweahz to the Three, I'ma get you fah dis! I got friends in low places, Simon. You'll see."

"Wah wah wah. Shut up and do the job, Murray. And don't screw it up—your performance review comes up at the end of the century."

Murray grumbled but turned back to me. "Arright, Boss. Dis'll be a little tricky. You good wid Ozurdati, right?"

I nodded.

"Right. Okay, I'm gonna use your lingo as much as possible but dere's a lotta concepts that Dog don't got. You got any uhdda languages you can talk fo' me?"

I shook my head; I understood English perfectly well but I couldn't make the sounds. Simon had gone back to his newspaper but the rest of our group, including the imp now sitting on Marcus's shoulder, was watching me and Murray in bemusement. The imp was speaking Ozurdati so everyone was following along with the conversation.

"Okay. Heah's da deal: I can't read ya mind but I can unnastand whatevah you sez because I'm readin' dah meaning right offa yah spirit. I can't do dat in revoise—can't just make nobody unnastand me, I gotta actually talk out loud. Dah translation contract says I gotta maximize customah communication, which is a fancy way o' sayin' I need to make sure youse unnastand whatever de odda' person is sayin' and dey unnastand you. Usually dat means usin' yah native lingo, but dat'll be a problem heah cause, like I sez, Dog's gotta weak conceptual framewoik. It cool wit' you if I use Dog where I can an' Ozurdati where I can't?"

{Sure!}

He took off and hovered face-down in front of me. Proper canine ears sprouted from his head and a tail shot out of his butt.

{Neat!} he said, raising his ears and curling his tail in accentless Dog. {Let's do this!}

{Yayyy!} I replied. I looked over at my friends and barked, leaning down with my front paws so my chest was on the ground and my butt was wiggling in the air.

"Hi everyone!" Murray translated, his voice becoming a gentle tenor. "I'm Athos and it's great to be able to talk to you at last! I'm so excited to be here with you!"