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 Ministry of Justice, also known as the Chancery, was in the deepest, most overbuilt section of the Red City, a crooked maze of close-leaning towers and guarded doorways behind Dis Pater Square. I had been praying I wouldn’t have to see Chancellor Urgulap again, the hideous giant-beetle-thing that had interviewed me back on Earth about the death of Prosecutor Grasswax. Luckily, as a member of the minor gentry Snakestaff of the Liars Sect was far too unimportant to get a meeting with the chancellor, and was instead fobbed off on a (literally) very sharp young woman, who seemed to be made entirely out of scissor parts. Urgulap was present only in a portrait that hung on the wall, watching over the dark office, his shell buffed to a gleam and his inhuman face frozen in a glower of determined leadership.
“We cannot give you that information, Lord Snakestaff,” the Scissor Sister told me. “The chancellor has not completed his investigation, which he will present to the Senate and Council soon.”
“That’s okay,” I said, trying to imagine how reckless a guy would have to be to go to bed with a woman whose thighs were sharpened blades. “I just need to do something with this thing.” I tried to hand her a piece of vellum, but only managed to knock several of the files off her desk. She gave me a look of shiny distaste, then her metal surfaces rasped as she bent to pick them up. When finished, she examined the writing on the piece of stretched, smoothed skin. “What is this? Some sort of debt?”
“That’s right,” I said. “Grasswax owed me almost two weights. Gambling debts.” (The real Grasswax had indeed liked a wager, and lost pretty frequently from what I’d heard. But not only hadn’t he lost to me, I didn’t even know what contests or games he liked.) “So, could I get, I don’t know, paid out of his estate? When the investigation’s over?”
“Doesn’t your sect allow you to pursue these matters out of Grasswax’s redenture?”
I did my best to look embarrassed, which wasn’t that hard since I had no idea what a redenture even was. “Yeah. They sort of . . . kicked me out. I’m not in the Liars Sect any more.” I shrugged. “I caught on with the Thieves.”
She rubbed one of her blades down her nose, which was also a blade. Skrrkkkkkkk. “All right,” she said at last. “Fine. Leave this with me, and I’ll put it into the files. With an explanation.” She frowned, which looked pretty odd, I can tell you. “But don’t expect too much.”
I stood. “Why would I? This is Hell.”