“Oh, nothing important. Where’s Lutigan?”
“I should presume the ruffian is off stabbing someone. Run off and look for him if you’re that interested. Perhaps he will stab you.” Harik waved a hand to shoo the puppy. Krak had set Dominion down onto the table, and the creature was lapping from Harik’s goblet.
Fingit’s neck tingled as Cheg-Cheg’s distant roar shook dust from the tavern’s rafters. “Sorry, Lutigan. Time to go, everybody.” He heaved the hammer above his head one-handed. Krak stumbled back a step, and Harik raised one arm against the blow. Fingit thought about Unicorn Town, snatched the puppy’s tail, and twisted it hard.
A tidy package of subtle explosives detonated within the miraculously lifelike mechanical puppy Fingit had constructed using a few drops of his remaining power. None but Fingit would have expected the explosion to produce so little destruction inside the tavern. Also, no one else would have expected it to liquefy a divine being’s organs into goo in such an efficient manner.
When they reached Unicorn Town, Fingit’s puppy-dog ploy earned Fingit a snort and an approving whack on the shoulder from his father. Then Krak growled and smacked Fingit’s other shoulder for failing to bring Lutigan and Gorlana. Fingit rubbed his numb arm and composed himself for a day of lurking above the world of man like an immortal vulture.
Sakaj had already arrived, and as his first item of business, Krak demanded that she share the secret of returning home. After several minutes of argument, equivocation, threats, and tears, she told everyone how to do it. It wasn’t that hard. Metaphorically, it was comparable to pulling on your trousers inside out and backward, while remembering there’s an invisible third trouser leg you have to tie to your wrist. Fingit admitted that he probably never would have figured that out on his own.
Krak stood tall and scowled. “I must return home. I don’t see any other way to test whether you’re lying about all this, Sakaj. I’ll be a drooling worm on the other side, so I won’t be back today. I’m trusting you—all three of you—not to screw around like some damned lower beings. I can trust you, can’t I?” Krak clenched his fist, in which he had years ago held the impossibly searing light of the sun. That light had flickered out, but the other gods hadn’t forgotten, and they nodded assurances.
That left Fingit alone with Sakaj and Harik. The three of them began sniping and bickering over who got to control the window onto the world of man.
“Gorlana.”
Fingit looked around. “What?”
“What?” Harik said. Sakaj just frowned.
“Oh, Gorlana…” came a voice from someone who wasn’t in Unicorn Town.
“Mother stab me in the heart! Somebody wants to trade!” Fingit said.
“That’s the Murderer!” Harik pushed past Fingit and knocked him down, although the voice wasn’t coming from any particular direction. “He’s mine! Stay away!”
Fingit stood up, glanced at Sakaj, and shrugged. “Sure.”
The Murderer began materializing out of the darkness above them.
Whenever humans came to trade, they saw nothing. It was as if their bodies didn’t exist. The gods had created the trading environment that way ages ago. However, gods could see humans perfectly well. It gave the gods a nice little advantage when the bargaining became heated. In Unicorn Town, the window lacked most of the style and refinements the gods had enjoyed in their usual bargaining arena, which had burned down, collapsed, and been swallowed by the earth. However, Unicorn Town did possess all the necessary functions.
The Murderer at last arrived, a thin, ragged, middle-aged man. His neat beard and longish hair showed more gray than red. Weather and strain had lined his face, but he exuded a surprising amount of vitality.
And that’s the Nub arriving next to him! Balding, freakishly huge cheeks, clean-shaven, young and fit, but unexceptional. Oh, now I see, he’s bleeding to death. His leg’s just about torn off. Well, that ought to give me a little leverage in negotiations.
The Murderer was speaking, apparently to the Nub. “There are no good deals. Right?”
The Nub nodded. “Right.”
“Hush now.” The Murderer didn’t hush at all when he said it. “I sense a bunch of assholes approaching.”
Harik said in a deep, painfully rich but clipped voice, “My dear Murderer, is that an appropriate greeting for an old acquaintance, absent these many years? One to whom you are obligated in such an overwhelming manner?”
“My apologies, mighty Harik. I amend my observation. I sense a bunch of squabbling, grasping assholes with the morals of back-alley drug addicts approaching. Your Worship.”
“You might cause me to forget how profitable our little discourses have been, Murderer. Be thankful I remember the profit and choose to allow your continued existence.”
The Murderer smirked. “Pretend I said thank you until you blushed, Harik. Was that you creating hell and confusion with all the fog just now? That was a lot of hard work just to get my attention. Do you like me that much? I like hemorrhoids more than I like you.”
Sakaj whispered to Harik and Fingit in the divine whisper that the humans would never be able to hear. “Why do you take such abuse from this sad package of meat? I didn’t think my opinion of you could fall any lower, Harik, but I believe it has.”
Harik whispered, “What do I care for his opinion? I use the fool as if he were one of Fingit’s grimy hammers and no more.”
Fingit raised his eyebrows and whispered, “Wait. He said fog. Harik, what fog?”
Harik looked mystified, and then he smiled. “I silently wished confusion upon mankind earlier. My unparalleled intellect and power manifested that wish as fog to inconvenience my property, the Murderer.” Harik looked up into the distance as if waiting for someone to carve a statue of him.
Sakaj and Fingit stared at Harik for a few seconds until Sakaj shook her head.
The Nub spoke again, and his voice quivered a
