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captured. They’d left Spauling in the middle of the afternoon, though that didn’t necessarily mean they’d arrived in Hell at the same time of day. And, really, did it make a difference? Some of the denizens of Hell were sure to be awake around the clock.
    When she heard the click of the hounds’ claws on the stone floor, Batanya got ready, though her hands were not steady and sweat was already trickling down her back.
    “I fucking hate dogs,” she whispered, but Clovache heard her.
    “Have you reached in your pocket?” Clovache asked.
    “Your outfits don’t have pockets,” Amelia said.
    “We brought our own,” Batanya told her.
    After a particularly successful mission, their client had given Clovache and Batanya a sizable bonus. Clovache had wanted to take a trip to Pardua and go to the famous male whorehouse there to see the dancing, but Batanya had persuaded her to visit a special medical technician instead. Batanya had a false wall in one cheek, prepared with careful and expensive surgery. In that secret thin pocket, she’d stowed a small flat blade. It was sharp enough and long enough to open a vein, whether her own or someone else’s, but it was strictly an emergency option.
    The time had come to use it.
    Clovache had a similar false pouch on the underside of her arm, high up near the pit. A very thorough search would have uncovered her pocket, and possibly Batanya’s, but they hadn’t been searched very thoroughly, proof of the fact that the worst soldiers got prison guard duty in Hell. Clovache stepped to the front of her cell at the moment Batanya did.
    “Narcissus,” Clovache said. The young man stopped examining his fingernails and looked at her. “Don’t be upset,” she said steadily. “I promise you they’ll heal.”
    “Good luck,” Amelia said, very quietly, as the hounds entered the jail corridor. Their massive black heads swung from side to side, as if they were considering who would taste best. Their red eyes glowed like burning coals.
    The Britlingens held out the bits of meat they’d saved, for the hounds’ inspection. They were standing as close together as they could get at the juncture of their cells. Noses twitching, the two beasts approached cautiously. Clovache’s hand was just within the bars, and the hound sniffing at her meat shoved his head closer. It was much too broad to fit between the bars, but his nose extended inside the cell. While Clovache’s left hand fed the hound, her right hand slid between the bars to grip the broad studded collar, and then her tiny blade scored the hound’s skin at the neck. A gush of blood told her she’d struck the best spot, and that blood sprayed on the bars of the cell as the hound reared back, baying and shrieking.
    The blood also spattered on Clovache’s hands.
    Batanya’s hound turned slightly to leap against the bars at the juncture of the cells in an attempt to get at Clovache, and as he reared with his chest and stomach exposed, Batanya’s bladed hand darted out to rake the hound’s skin. She’d had the presence of mind to pull off her tunic and hold it to the dog, too, which was a good thing, since she didn’t get an arterial spray. Pulling the soaked tunic back through, she immediately rubbed the bloody cloth over the metal of the bars. She stuffed the tunic down at the bottom of the bars, so the blood remaining in the cloth might do some good. This left her standing bare-chested, but she pulled the blanket from her bed and draped it around her shoulders. She hoped they wouldn’t notice the absence of her tunic.
    A group of guards rushed in to investigate the dogs’ commotion, and it took everything the Britlingens had to look stunned. Though Narcissus had flinched when the dogs were hurt, he was silent, at least for the moment. Amelia provided a great distraction by screaming up a storm, and since the guards looked at her and the hounds first, Batanya and Clovache had the chance to slide their thin blades into