He gave me a look of calculated irritation, but didn’t fold me up like a dirty hankie, which is what he looked like he wanted to do. “So talk.”

“I think . . .” Nobody seemed to be paying attention to us, but if my message wasn’t as innocuous as it sounded, I wasn’t certain I wanted to take the risk of anyone even seeing me deliver it. “I need to speak to you in private.”

His thick lip curled. “Piss on you, my lord. If you’ve got a bribe to offer, talk to my master, not me. I won’t cheat on him, not for all the treasure and cooze in Pandaemonium.”

“No, no!” I said. “It’s not a bribe, it’s a message. And not for Gagsnatch. For you.” I did everything but waggle my eyebrows like Groucho to help him get the subtext. “I just think it would be safer . . .”

I was interrupted by shouting from behind me, voices raised above even the roar of Gagsnatch Brothers ordinary chorus of bellows and howls. As we turned to look, a scrawny demon dashed toward us from the nearest knot of workers, his batlike ears laid flat against his skull in alarm.

“Boss says look sharp, Master Riprash! Make sure everything’s on the up!”

“Why?” Riprash didn’t seem to have many other facial expressions besides Annoyed and Dangerous.

“The Commissar’s showed up of a sudden. He and his lot are poking their noses in all over. They’re going from stall to stall looking for somebody.”

“Commissar Niloch?” The ogre clearly wasn’t happy to hear it, and now I wasn’t happy either. The bat-eared minion skittered away to spread the word to other parts of the large establishment. “What in the name of Astaroth’s swinging udders is he up to? Old Flaps and Scratches usually doesn’t make a show of himself until later in the season when he comes for his tribute.”

Now the stir had become more general as a few helmeted Murderers Sect guards came swaggering into the stall at the far end. When I quickly turned away again, Riprash was looking at me. He must have seen the panic in my eyes.

“You don’t want to be seen by Murder Sect, do you?” His remaining eye roved from me to little Gob and back again. “Not a friend of the Commissar’s, I take it?”

I didn’t dare say a word, because almost anything I could say suddenly struck me as potentially the wrong thing. Heavily armed demon soldiers were shouldering into the stall in bunches now. The slavers and even the slaves had fallen silent, nobody wanting to attract attention, and there was no way I could walk out again unnoticed. This wounded giant had my immortal soul in his huge hands, and there was nothing more I could do.