“I’m not from here,” I said, looking attentively at his massive feet. “I’m from . . . somewhere else. Do you know what I mean?”

Riprash made a low noise. “Could be,” he said at last. “Could be I don’t. Say what you got to say.”

“A friend asked me to find you and give you this message. He said, ‘You are not forgotten.’ That’s all. Just that.”

Nothing happened, or at least nothing that registered down in the area of Riprash’s size sixty-three tootsies. I looked up. Not all at once, but I did it.

He was crying.

I’m not joking. He was. A single glowing tear like a streamlet of lava had made its way down from his good eye across his cheek, and now dangled like maple sap from his chin. “All thanks,” he said, almost whispering. He sagged forward like an ancient redwood collapsing, and to my astonishment he landed on his knees, then lifted both massive arms above his head. “All thanks. I am lifted.”

You can guess what I made of this, which was nothing useful. Riprash stayed that way for a while as more tears dripped from his face and made bright little splashes on the floor before they cooled and faded. I was beginning to feel less terrified than embarrassed, he was so clearly in the grip of something deep and personal. Since he hadn’t smashed me into jelly over the message I’d just delivered, he was still the closest thing Gob and I had to an ally, so I sat tight as it went through him like a storm and made him shake all over. At last it was done. Riprash wiped his good eye with the back of a massive hand then climbed back onto the rock again.

“Ah,” he said. “Ah. That was good to hear. All thanks to you—” He paused, his brow fissuring as he realized. “I don’t know your name, master.”

“It’s Snakestaff.” This was the first time I’d told my demon cover-name to anyone but Gob, and I was watching to see if it meant anything. I only had Temuel’s word (and Lameh’s silent memories) that it hadn’t been used before. But the ogre didn’t seem to find it either surprising or familiar.

“My thanks, then, Snakestaff. May you be lifted.”

Which sounded better than most things that had been happening, so I nodded. “Okay, now what?”

He looked at me like a man woken up too quickly. “What? What do you mean?”

“I mean, do you mind if we get on our way? My servant and me? Thanks for hiding me from the commissar, but I have other errands I need to do in Pand—in the Red City, and that’s a pretty long walk.”

“Other errands?” He looked interested, but not in the cruel, hungry way you usually see demons look interested. “Others like me?”

“No.”