“Easy now,” said Mammon. “Don’t draw lines in the sand you’ll just have to back over. I’m not signing on to a venture as risky as this one without some assurance of the possibility of success. You’re a fine negotiator, boy, and you can fight well enough, but in the end, you need my support, so here’s what we’ll do: You’ll conduct me through the crowd, which you’re right that I need you to do, and I’ll take you back into the Far Country, which you know as well as I do that you can’t manage alone. Once we’re through, I’ll take you to Lord Dantalion, Master of Whispers. We have very old and very strong treaties, the two of us, and if there’s any possibility of success in what you propose, he’ll know of it.”

“And then?” said Yehuda Leib.

“Well,” said Mammon, “it depends on what Dantalion has to say. But if you truly plan to make the attempt one way or the other, then I’ll already have assumed much of the risk of supporting you just by bringing you through.”

Yehuda Leib clenched his jaw.

This was not the outcome he’d wanted.

But it was hard to argue with Mammon’s logic.

“So,” said the smiling demon, extending a small, clammy hand. “Do we have a deal?”

—

It was undignified, but there was no better option. Yehuda Leib had to be the one to move Mammon through the crowd, and so, with bare minutes remaining in the hour, Yehuda Leib pushed Lord Mammon out into the street in a baby carriage.

There he was, the great evil one, swaddled in blankets, his ears stopped up with wadded cotton, bouncing along over the snowy cobbles.

He was just about the right size for the pram, too.

It was a little bit perfect.

But Yehuda Leib’s amusement fell away quickly. People did their best to move aside, but there was so little space in the crowded street that moving aside rarely made way, and he had to angle and nudge and excuse me for all he was worth. And, to make matters worse, Mammon had started to moan slightly. Yehuda Leib couldn’t be sure if it was nerves or if the roiling psalms had started to affect him, but either way, Yehuda Leib wanted to get through the crowd as quickly as he could—he needed Mammon, and what was more, he needed Mammon’s goodwill.

And then, cutting through the sound of the psalms like a heavy cleaver through bloody meat, he heard it.

“That’s the boy,” said a rough voice. “Long hair, cap too small, old knapsack—just like she said.”

Yehuda Leib swung his head back over his shoulder, and his gut knotted up tight in fear.