“Troll!” someone screamed from down below, followed by a cacophony as Alice ran towards the stairs, hand going inside her coat for a club. The floor underh her shuddered as something ripped through the wall below, r.

  The window o the stairs shattered, gss spraying inside as a Wat leaped inside, revolver in their hands. She veered away, making for a door only for two more windows to shatter, awo Watch bursting inside.

  They moved to block off her escape, clubs of their own at the ready, one of them sneering as he stared down at her.

  “We got a little one-”

  She swung forward, swinging the club. People always uimate the small ones. Maybe that’s why they kept oing shocked by dwarves being able to throw puhat could knock out humans.

  Alice had gooe to toe with dwarves who’d wandered into the Quarter, looking for anything not nailed down and that the empire wouldn’t care about. She’d won more often than not.

  Solid oak swung upwards, ramming into the guard’s nose. He screamed, hands going up for it while one of his buddies closed in.

  Alice’s tail ed around her ankle, and with a yank, the wata crashing to the floor. One advantage of it being that rge, it was strong.

  Alice grabbed the edges of the wat’s breastpte, swinging him to cover her from the gun of the third, then bit into his face.

  He screamed as teeth sliced through flesh, cut into bone, and she could taste the blood and the flesh. The bite went deep, and she could feel an optierve cut as she bit down.

  He fell to the ground, screaming, hands pressed to his face as she spat his eye down on him.

  The wat fired, and agony shoved its finger into her shoulder. She rushed forward, yelling, club swinging as he desperately pulled the hammer back. Pain sprouted in her arm again, and she dropped the hammer, but her jaws tched onto his throat.

  Teeth bloody and lips crimson, she ripped the flesh off, tearing a k out. She spat it out while he colpsed. Alright, where was the st-

  Something smashed into the back of her head, and she fell down, hitting the wood of the floor with a painful thud.

  Alice tried to get up, only for the Watch officer’s ko go into her back, f her back down to the floorboards. Hands ed around her neck, squeezing and she tried to move only for the sed ko e down.

  Alice growled, tried tle, reach back with her hands, but she couldn’t reach, and her desperation grew as the strangling tihe watch officer shifted, and her knee was on the back of Alice’s head.

  Alice tried to scream for the others downstairs, but no words came out. Nothing came out as she tried to fill her lungs that were burning.

  The pressure on her nely grew.

  Malvia Harrow came up the stairs.

  Malvia’s expression was furious as bck fmes coated her hands, the only expression besides the careful rality Alice had see. She sprinted across the room towards the two of them, Alice’s view fading as the hands around her ightened.

  All she could see was the angry snarling faalvia lunging at the watan.

  Malvia shoved a pair of burning fingers into the watan’s eyes. The woman’s scream made Alice wihe grip on her neck loosening. The loosened grip let air ba her lungs, and Alice breathed in, the breath ing out as a series of choking coughs. Each breath hurt, but she could breathe again even as above the Watan screamed, Malvia’s finger up to the sed knuckle in her eyes. Alice turned over, moving as fast as she could, clothes tearing on the broken-apart fl as she got away.

  She made it five feet away and spun to see Malvia over the Watan who had slumped to the ground, smoke p out of y eye sockets. The skin all across her face was charred, ks fking off to reveal the bone underh as her face disied. Malvia looked down dispassionately, flig gore and ks of eyeball off of her fingers.

  “Are you alright?” she asked coldly, idly kig the fking flesh of the watan with her hoof. Ashes filled the air, swirling about as they fell off the bare skull.

  It took a sed for Alice to repose herself. “Course I’m fine! You didn’t have to step in. I bloody had her.”

  The er of Malvia’s lips twitched. “Certainly. The true sign of a victory is when your oppo has them on your back with their hands around your throat. I appud your strategy.”

  Alice scowled. “I’m sorry. Who’s the one who killed two of them before you even bothered to show up? Big talk from someone hiding behind devil magic.”

  “I’m not doubting your abilities,” Malvia said. “But also, you did lie. You’re bleeding from your shoulder. Hold still.”

  “What are doing?” Alice said, looking on in bemusement as Malvia took her jacket off.

  The other Infernal rolled her eyes. “You’re bleeding now. I’m not wasting time trying to pry metal off one of the dead Watch members. Sleeve from my tunic should hold till the infirmary. Hold still?”

  The other Infernal tried to pull on her jacket and Aliarled, whipping around.

  Malvia stared bnkly back, unintimidated. “It’s either this or you bleed every step of the way back. Holy, afraid of baring a little skin?”

  Alice shrugged, then shucked her jacket herself, pulling her sleeve up her wounded arm, ign the pain as fabric dragged across her skin.

  She could feel the other Infernal’s fingers probing, and she felt pain fsh across her shoulder bde.

  “How many times did you get shot?”

  “Copper plugged me twice. Terrible shot.”

  “Hrrm. Well, the good news is there is a wound for both bullets,” Malvia said, and Alice could feel a fresh spike of pain that made her wince. “Don’t move. Going to this tight, you’ll get looked at whe bad hopefully sewn up.”

  Alice was about to respond whean’s skull moved.

  The watan’s skull broke, little cws tearing bone apart as it broke free of its corpse-prison. It nded on the ground, tiny cws at the ends of far too many limbs to t bang it. Alice couldn’t tell if it was bone or just skin stretched on top of bone, limbs extending every which way from a tral body that looked like a spider hiding in an even smaller skull.

  The thing skittered through the open window, ung itself on membrane-like wings into the night.

  Mouth dry, Alice looked at the watan’s corpse, waiting for more to e out. “The fuck was that?”

  “Someone else’s problem,” Malvia replied. “e on. It sounds like the fighting had died down, so best to ascertain if we’ll be aiding in -up to get back to the Quarter by ourselves before the night is over.”

  Alice followed, one eye still on the headless body when she heard something, a light whisper on the wind that made her freeze.

  Bah. Take the corpse, eat it, you spineless coward of an apprentice.

  “Did you hear a voice just then?” Alice asked, looking around for the source of the whispers.

  Malvia froze and turned. Her expression was still that same bored look, but something lurked underh it in her eyes, something that made Alice’s word stop oongue.

  “A voice,” the Diabolist said ftly. “Curious. What did it say?”

  Alice met the gaze unflingly. Had to really, diabolist or not, she couldn’t afford to fear any of them. Nothing that could show.

  “Food. It suggested eating the watan, which holy given how low food is-“

  “ibalism is never an option,” Malvia interrupted. “It’s a sign of a weak mind when the Nover is there and usually overflowing with fish.”

  “Fish that are likely to burn your mouth when you bite into them,” Alice replied acidly. “Besides, it’s not like its ibalism. We’re different!”

  “Not enough to t,” Malvia said. “I shall never partake, and that’s beeablished long since you came here. We’ll talk ter about the voice, though. That is important.”

  Alice froze, sidering the other Infernal. Crap, was she about to bee ingredients in some kind of diabolic spell? Shit, and she’d been ging her mind about this stuck-up fner after she’s saved her life.

  “I will not use you as fuel for some spell,” Malvia said.

  Alice blinked. Had she just read Alice’s-

  “I ’t read miher,” Malvia said irritably. “Everyone assumes when they hear the imp, it means yoing in some kind of pot. You are not. You have a talent that Versalicci finds useful, so no, I will not shank you. Now, we o check downstairs.”

  There had been little noise from down there.

  ***

  Maria’s body y at the bottom of the stairs, head crushed like a grape, blood and brains still leaking from where it had split. o her y the culprit, the Troll Wat, the entire front half of his body charred and still sm.

  Alice spared a gnalvia, whose face had goony once more.

  “Stay close,” Malvia warned. “I deal with others like I dealt with the troll, but my aim isn’t very precise.”

  Alice spared an the charred troll. His skin eeling back, exposing flesh charred aen away, bed bone exposed.

  Yeah, very close.

  The room had three more corpses. The bookish trainee, blood leaking out of half a dozen holes in his chest, two Watch officers with precise holes stabbed right into their eyes.

  Voiow, familiar ones, ing from the celr. Malvia held her hand up for Alice to stop.

  “Golvar?”

  He was alive. Him, Morder, Machti, and Mitu. And oher.

  ***

  They’d made it to the little building they’d ehe underground with. Alice’s shoulder had protested every step of the way, as had the ohey’d brought with them. Now the red-haired Wat grunted as the gag was finally taken out of his mouth.

  He screamed, loud and shrill, for help but maybe also his leg being broken in two pces.

  “You scum! Yoing to swing! The rest of my unit will have tracked those tunnels you took by now and you’ll-”

  “Nah, you ain’t here officially, are you?” Golvar sneered, pressing down on the broken leg and earning another scream from the Wat. “Not when it’s only six of you. Got a little too ambitious, maybe struck a private deal to get yourself some live Bck Fme captives to give your bosses and not have some superior steal the credit? Should have brought more than that, copper.”

  Golvar put even more weight on the broken leg and the scream rose in volume, eg ihe house.

  “If you keep doing that, someone is going to notice,” Malvia noted drily.

  “Oh shut yer gob,” Golvar snapped. “Firstly, boss to you little Miss fire-hands. Sed, the day someone’s rea to screaming in the Infernal Quarter is trying to get the Watch or worse, actually trying to help the poor sucker, I’ll y horns and go sign up with that pack of pond scum myself. Third, I ain’t even leaning too hard on him.”

  “True as that might be, boss, the professor has a point,” Machti said with an exaggerated yawn. “Sure, no one is gonna risk their necks to help someone. Now to potentially sge from the aftermath of a fight a maybe some good boots, a knife, a-”

  “Alright, alright,” Golvar said. “They’d e in, see me, and realize they should be elsewhere, but are right, this ain’t for nothing but satisfaorder, Mitu, grab the copper. And don’t be gentle. As long as he ain’t dead, it’ll be fine. Gag him, throw a cloak on him so no one realizes we got a copper. Time to head all the way back.”

  ***

  Once again, Alice found herself i. They’d e here, Malvia taking the Wat down a different corridor while she found herself put here along with the other three, pced right in the middle. Soon after, a noise had keehrough the halls, loud and ragged as the Wat screamed.

  The screaming hadn’t stopped sihen.

  Alice didn’t have the ce to ask what they were doing in there while more members of the gang arrived, most of them peering down to where they all waited in the middle of the sand-filled pit. She could hear their urmurs as they talked, and with each minute, more came to take a gander.

  The fact there was seating up there, and no one who came failed to take a seat, wasn’t filling her with fidence.

  “You’ll see the boss soohan you think,” Golvar told her. “Soon as the interrogation is done.”

  Her eyes flickered over to the corridor where the screaming came from. “Are they…t him? Seems to be taking a while.”

  Golvar snorted. “Torture ain’t an effective tool fing answers out of people. Besides, this close, we’d hear him babbling if that was the case. Little copper didn’t seem to have that much iron in his spine. Nah, they’re dragging the answers outta his bones.”

  That sounded like magid from what she’d seen Malvia do to the Watan, she could guess which kind.

  “I was just saying, if they need a hand,” she offered with a sweet smile.

  Golvar chuckled. “You’d be more of a hindrahan a help. Three different diabolists in the same pce are already too crowded, then you add in the boss, and you step between any of them you might find yourself ash. Nah, just stay out here.”

  There were several entrao the pits aal gates. The screaming stopped, aually, they brought out the Wat.

  Half his face was bloody and raw, skin peeled ba spots surrounding a bck abyss that had repced one of his cheeks. It seemed to sink into him to an impossible depth, something glinting at the bottom.

  The rest of him was even more a wreck, skin hanging loosely off in the pces where it was still attached. Skall watched, trying to keep the ing iomach calm and disgust off her face. How was he even still alive?

  “How do you even mahat?” She whispered to Golvar. The elder Bck Fme member seemed in a good enough mood to answer questions.

  “Why do you want to know?” He whispered back.

  “I know some people I wouldn’t miing a simir treatment,” she said, and his grin grew wider.

  “Aw, that’s adorable. Got some old enemies you want to get the diabolic equivalent of peeling like a potato? I don’t know, and if you know well enough, you won’t bother anyone about it. Who are diabolists are is o know, although I’m guessing you know at least once.”

  Aliodded. “Bit of a strange duck?”

  Golvar scoffed. “Putting it mildly. Don’t let her fancy words or stuck-up attitude throw you off. She’s as much a street rat as you are. If it wasn’t for her being devil-touched, she’d be little more than a pickpocket.”

  Alice cocked her head. Perhaps, but that fire when she’d charged the watan had been…well, something to think about.

  Giovanni Versalicci walked down the rows of seats.

  Alice had seen him before, the thick-horned green-skinned Infernal. Never uood what the big deal was and never listeo him.

  It felt different when nearly four hundred people went silent wheered.

  He walked over to a podium set in the walls of the fighting pit, the crowd of Infernals who’d gathered parting in front of him.

  “Ms. Dason, could you please fetch me our records of the city ws?” Versalicci asked, and a short-horned Infernal rushed away. Seds ticked by, seds where the only sound was the Watch officer moaning in pain down there i with them.

  Half a mier, she returned, another minute as Versalicci leafed through the book. Alice thought about something, but her mouth was suddenly dry. As if breaking the silence would be death, to add any sound but the rustling of pages and whimpering already there.

  “It is not illegal uhe ws of the city to move through the underground unless it is through specifihat are important to Imperial Military operation,” Versalicci said, leafing through the thick book, the rest of the room silent enough you could hear the rustle of pages wheopped talking. “Nor is it illegal to enter a house that is unoccupied as long as you do not o break anything to enter, steal anything inside, or do so with provable malicious iowards its owners. In short, Corporal Kershaw, your little effort tonight was frand total of the crime of my people being Infernals outside of the Quarter.”

  The pageantry she could uand, trying to show off for his followers, a show with a victim everyone here would hate to show his power on, but the ws? Why?

  “Of course, that w is in pce food reason. Trainee, you tell me the reason?”

  Alice stiffened, not expeg to be called on to talk, let alone answer a question in front of four huhers.

  “Her Most Profane Majesty isn’t it?” she said. “To stop that from happening again?”

  Hissed displeasure from four huhroats, and she scowled, ready to snarl defiance, when Versalicci held up his hand, cutting it off.

  “Like any of you thought different when you came here? With a few exceptions. No, not you Machti, do not look so smug. No trainee, if you are tress in this anization, I would suggest not listening to priests or city officials for those reasons. No, we are stuck here because they need someoo hate. Someoo fear. Someoo bme for all their ill lud misfortune. Someone who they shoot and club and not feel any guilt for. Isn’t that right, Corporal Kershaw?”

  The wat tio groan, which Versalicci took as a response.

  “Of course, you didn’t a your own, Corporal. You had help, did you not? From someone who prized something beyond his own race, didn’t you?”

  The only sound was the whimpering now. No one so much as moved, waiting.

  “It’s your mess, Morder,” Versalicci said as the pitiful thing that Wat had beoaned. “At least have the on courtesy to this part up yourself.”

  Every head turo the suddenly raitor, whose face cycled through a variety of expressions. Terror, fear, anger, and sorrow, all appeared, then disappeared again before it settled .

  Morder moved towards the wat, pulling a long straight knife from his belt. He k down, muttered a few words Alice couldn’t hear, then slit his throat.

  “Mitu, kill him.”

  Morder whipped around, but in those preoments, the giant at Alice’s side sprang into aoving across the sand without a sound beyond the thud of a hoof into the sand.

  Morder snarled as he spun, then lunged forward, knife in hand.

  Mitu waited till it was inches from his throat before moving. It should be impossible, someohat rge moving that fast as he ducked, the bde going over his head.

  Morder spat a curse out, and tried to pull back his blow. Too te. Mitu’s hand hammered into his stomach, driving the air from his lungs. Morder’s knife fell as Mitu’s other hand rammed underh his , driving him back.

  Morder filed and fell onto his back while Mitu grabbed the knife. Morder scrambled back to his feet just in time to avoid the first blow. Then the sed, the third, the fourth, but each blow drove him further back, and there was only so far he could go. His back hit the wall, and Alice forced herself to not react as Mitu stabbed at him.

  Morder’s hand moves to grab Mitu’s wrist only for the ko stab right through his palm. Morder screamed but still twisted out of the way of Mitu’s fist.

  Boards shuddered as that sledgehammer hit them, and Mot his hand off the knife in time to move further away. Those meaty fists might be more deadly than the knife, Alice thought. A blow to the head from them might end the fight faster than the bde.

  “Fug shoot me!” Morder screamed up at Versalicci, who didn’t so much as twitch. “Just shoot me, you sadistic little shi-”

  He was interrupted by a wide swing with the knife, and lunged forward, jaw opening to bite Mitu’s wrist, slito flesh and -

  Mitu’s fist rammed into Morder’s face, ah flew as Morder rocked back. Alice could see at least one knife-like e nd on the ground. Morder tried to backpedal, tears in his eyes, blood streaming from his mouth, Mitu pressing closer-

  The knife swung down, cutting deep into Morder’s thigh, slig right where it met the hip. It sank deep, and Aliew this fight, already decided, was finally firmed.

  Morder colpsed to the ground, grasping at his thigh as it gushed blood.

  “End it! End it, you fug paw-”

  Mitu’s fist smmed into Morder’s face again, then again, then twice more before he went back to the knife. Morder’s head hit the sand, not a noise ing from him. His jaw hung at a strange angle, and Mitu furthered it with another cut.

  Each cut came slower tha, flesh tio be sliced as Morder bled out onto the sand, a sptter of red on the pure white. He whimpered, broken jaw trying to form a plea, and instead, all that came out was a high-pitched whistle that grew higher as Mitu sliced into his calf.

  Everyone remained silent as Mitu tinued his butchery, slowly cutting his way through skin, muscle, and tendons. No oered a word, not as Versalicci stared down from above. Even as the whimpering stopped and the struggling faded, the white sand turned more red than white now.

  Alice stood, staring at what must surely be a corpse by now. The blood had reached her cheap boots by now, staining the bottoms, but she would not be the first to move or tear her gaze away. There was that sehat it would be a weako be the first to look away or move.

  “Enough Mitu.”

  Mitu paused mid-cut, knife half done slig through the sole of Morder’s foot.

  “I think Morder has learned his lesson,” Versalicci said, gesturing down to Morder’s corpse. “Now, he will provide us with some st use in repayment for his betrayal of the people, but no one o see that. The Watch sees us as nothing but carrion, bottom-feeders, below everyone else in this empire, traitorous little curs. Morder proved them right today, by selling his people out for whatever they offered him. Perhaps gold. Perhaps a life as some example of one of the few good Infernals, the ones who know their pder the heels of everyone else. Of course, they would still think of him as a carrion, so that is what he’ll be treated as. Food, although for things much deadlier than bckbirds. Ms. Skall?”

  She jerked as her name was mentioned and faow turo her, but she gnced up to stare Versalic the face, gl and defiant.

  She had nothing to fear. Best to present a good face that made sure she wouldn’t have anything to fear.

  “My friends call me Alice,” she said, f words past that relut knot f ihroat. “That slippery little bugger who told me father I o live in the Quarter called me Ms. Skall. You’re her.”

  Shit. As soon as Alice finished, she worried she’d pushed that too far, but Versalicci chuckled good-humoredly.

  “No need for hostility, miss,” he said. “I just wao gratute you. Only survivor and acc to what I was told, two Watch deaths on your hand. Teeth bloody. Good show. We have things to discuss, but first, e out of the pit. You do not want to be in there when our allies eat.”

  A rope dder was desding, Golvar, Mitu, and Machti already heading towards it, the st pausing only to spit on Morder’s corpse. To her shock, it twitched in response.

  Ign that as best she could, she moved towards the dder, heart pounding. She could hear gears moving, and part of the pit all moving as she got her boots on the rungs, scrambling up the dder.

  Behind her, a gate into the pit opened, and something came down that corridor.

  It hissed, floating above the sand, three heads dotting its back, one of them bristling with teeth that bit into the first corpse, the other two bthering in a nguage that Alice couldn’t uand and made her ears hurt.

  “Great Basand, how good it is to grave us with your presehis evening, us your lowly children,” Versalicci said, and her mind tuned out the rest.

  It was a devil. They had a devil they’d summoned into the material pne?

  Ihey were all insane. She watched as it devoured Morder’s still twitg body as Versalicci spoke about injustices itted by the Watd those who aided them. But they would mean food, pay, and maybe a ce out of the quarter. Lunatid monsters.

  Hells khe Quarter was surrounded by plenty of those, just waiting to e in and end as many as possible. Maybe they needed some of their own, she just o not bee their prey.

  Alice would just have to be more ihan the rest of them. That’s fine. She knew how to do that.

  You 't get bitten if you're the one who bites first.

  Saithorthepyro