Chapters (60)
- DAW Books Presents
- HAPPY HOURINHELL
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Dedication
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- prologue
- one
- two
- three
- four
- five
- six
- interlude
- seven
- eight
- nine
- ten
- eleven
- twelve
- interlude
- thirteen
- fourteen
- interlude
- fifteen
- sixteen
- seventeen
- eighteen
- nineteen
- twenty
- twenty-one
- interlude
- twenty-two
- twenty-three
- twenty-four
- twenty-five
- twenty-six
- twenty-seven
- twenty-eight
- twenty-nine
- thirty
- thirty-one
- thirty-two
- thirty-three
- thirty-four
- thirty-five
- thirty-six
- thirty-seven
- thirty-eight
- thirty-nine
- forty
- forty-one
- forty-two
- forty-three
- forty-four
- forty-five
- forty-six
- forty-seven
- forty-eight
- epilogue
The Sinners’ Market is about as nice a place as it sounds. It’s largely held under the roofed perimeter of a ruined and ramshackle stone coliseum, although during my visit the huge open area in the middle was being used as well. What was sold in the market was . . . well, sinners, to be used as slaves.
Most of these shackled damned were already slaves, and would go from one kind of specialized slavery to another. But just because these were valuable possessions—many of whom had been trained to do specific jobs or even physically altered so they could do them better—didn’t mean they were treated well. I had been seeing how the ordinary folk of Hell treated each other, and it was truly horrifying, but now I was seeing what organized cruelty looked like, and the sheer weight of Hell as an institution suddenly became clear to me. I would see worse things in Hell, and God knows I’d suffer worse things, but nothing ever stepped on my spirit as badly as those first few minutes in the clanking, begging, wailing, and roaring of the Sinners’ Market. It was like coming to the end of some very long scientific article and then finding the summary: The universe is shit.
We asked around about Riprash, and at last got an answer from a cold, cat-eyed female creature whose slaves all looked like children or other small, innocent things; as I walked past, they set up a pathetic wailing from their cages, pleading, barking, mewing. As the she-demon impatiently told me where to find Riprash, I couldn’t help noticing that Gob was keeping his eyes very focused for once, watching me and nothing else. Maybe the bruised and bleeding children in cages hit a little too close to home.
Halfway around the lopsided stadium bowl, we found the large stall the cat-thing had described. A crude sign declared, “Gagsnatch Bros., Dealers in Offal and Slaves.” I guessed that the Gagsnatch Brothers must be the single obese body with two arguing heads that were bickering with each other and several other demons at the rear of the stall. I didn’t want the owner, though, just his overseer, so I made my way through the crush of stinking bodies, doing my best to ignore what was actually going on as I looked for Temuel’s contact. It was kind of like a spy movie but with a lot more human feces.