Butcher Bird

Cornelius stood up and moved with delicate, almost mincing steps until he'd positioned his enormous body properly on the uneven floor. Four of his metal legs scrabbled in the wreckage and pulled the book free. When it was secure against his belly, metal jaws clamped down on it, allowing him to lower his legs. He turned and went outside, a bit slower than when he'd entered, weighed down by the book's bulk.

They followed Cornelius out to the plaza and one by one climbed onto his back. Lucifer stood below in the palace portico looking up at them through the cherry-colored dome glass he held before his right eye.

"The good thing about glass is that we can melt it down and use it again. This marble is a total loss, though. Maybe I'll have some bankers dig it out with their teeth." Lucifer bowed deeply to them, waved once, turned on his heels and strode back inside his palace.

Spyder and the others held on tight as Cornelius loped through the wreckage of Pandemonium, out across the plains of Hell to one of the impossibly high walls that were the boundaries of the underworld. Then, they began to climb.

Fifty-Eight

Roll Me a Smoke, John Wayne

"Eight legs good! Two legs bad!" Lulu shouted as they strode across the desert.

They were making good time. Cornelius never needed to rest or slow down, even when walking straight into a sandstorm. Spyder told him to head for Berenice and he started straight across the desert without hesitation. A trip that had taken days on the way out, they now covered in a few hours. Around midmorning, when they caught sight of the city of memories, it was strangely reassuring.

"One step closer to home," said Shrike.

Something was happening around Berenice. Even at a distance, they could see it. A dozen airships were in port on the south side of the city. Spyder wondered if they should turn and head back into the open desert, then flag down a boat when they hit the coast. He didn't like the idea of going up in one of the airships again, and he was reasonably sure no one else did. But there was no telling when anything larger than a local fishing boat would come along. They had to go to Berenice.

"Damn," said Spyder. "I should have asked Lucifer for some of those jewels back on the ground in Hell. We don't have a penny to buy a ride."

"We'll be fine," Shrike said.

"You think?"

Shrike leaned against Spyder, running a hand through the hair on the back of his head. "The Count was right, you need to think bigger."

They caught sight of the first lookout a couple of miles from the city. The boy had been asleep, and his loose dun-colored robes blended into the sand. He awoke suddenly and screamed as Cornelius nearly stepped on him.

The boy ran ahead for a few paces, shouting excitedly to them before stopping, raising a pistol over his head and firing off a flare. Cornelius never broke stride and the boy ran after them.

"You don't think they're a lynch mob, do you?" asked Spyder. "For me doing over that memory?"

"I don't think so," said Shrike. "But if anyone does anything stupid, Cornelius can run us to the coast."

Other lookouts popped out of the sand as they approached the city, gawkers, too. It all made Spyder nervous, and he kept his hand on his knife, but each group smiled and waved at them as they passed. No one seemed upset to see them and better yet, thought Spyder, none of them looked like cops.

A group of twenty or more robed men and women met them at a wadi just outside the city walls. Dignitaries. Local bigwigs, thought Spyder. They had that self-important air about them, like the kind of crowd back home that gave a million dollars to the symphony just so they can get a plaque and their name in a newsletter. What the hell did they want? He slipped Apollyon's blade behind his back and kept his hand on the hilt. Shrike touched his arm.

"Relax," she said. "They're friends. They'll probably give you the key to the city."

"We'll see," he said.

However time and space moved in the underworld, on Earth there had obviously been enough time for word to spread about what had happened below.

"I don't guess it would take Sherlock Holmes to figure it out," Lulu said. "There's a hole the size of Dallas in the middle of the desert."

Just to make sure no one got frisky, Spyder had Cornelius stroll right up to the Berenice officials. The dignitaries looked a bit nervous by the proximity of the giant spider, but they all smiled and applauded as Spyder and the others climbed off. A gray-haired man with fierce Maori-style facial tattoos, clearly the head of the delegation, embraced each of them as they came down. With his hand on Spyder's shoulder, the tattooed man turned to the other dignitaries and began a quick speech in a flowing, melodious language.

Spyder looked at Shrike. "You got a clue what this guy's saying?"

"He's speaking Ubari. It's an old city-state built in the First Sphere. I haven't heard it spoken in a long time," she said. "He's calling us the 'Saviors of Light.' 'Defenders of Light.' Something like that."