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against the demon’s forehead and then, twisting the barrel so that it drew its flesh into a tight circle around the muzzle, said, “Everyone be quiet.”
    The silence that fell was brittle, fragile, and Fool thought that the demon might not have much life. Speaking quickly, he said, “You’re not stupid, you know I’ll fire if you keep attacking me, don’t you?”
    The demon nodded, the gesture cut short by the force with which Fool was pushing the gun against its head.
    “When my men let you go, stay calm or I’ll kill you. Do you understand?” Another nod.
    “Then we’re doing well,” said Fool. He stepped back, still keeping the gun trained on the Evidence Man, feeling rather than seeing Marianne step to his side, gun also outstretched, and then motioned his Men away. They let go of their captive carefully, each of them moving out of the thing’s reach as soon as they had let go of it. It clambered to its feet, eyes never leaving Fool, its chest rising and falling in ragged anger, breechclout swaying. It raised a hand to its nose, ruined and pouring blood from the impact of the bag Marianne had swung, and then bared its huge teeth at him, bloodied spittle dribbling down the ivory curves and spattering to the floor. Fool kept the gun pointing at it and, over his shoulder, said, “Marianne, put your gun away.”
    “Okay,” said Marianne, and Fool risked a brief glance over, seeing her holster her weapon. Marianne’s voice was shaky, and at the sound of it the Evidence Man tensed further, one long-nailed hand rising to its twisted nose.
    “No,” said Fool, voice low and careful. “She is an Information Man, one of mine, and if you move against her I shall see it as a move against me, and I will kill you for it. Do you understand?”
    The Evidence Man glared at Marianne a few moments longer, as though memorizing her for future consumption, and then finally nodded and deliberately turned its back on Fool and his troops, going to its fallen companion and gathering the body in its short arms, snarling as it did so. It snapped its teeth together, growling, and tugged its dead companion into a clumsy lift and then, half carrying, half dragging it, backed out of the factory. No one got in its way and no one spoke as it went. The last Fool saw of it was its shadow, stretching down the table toward him, and its silhouette in the factory’s doorway and then it was gone.
    The tension didn’t lessen with its leaving. Instead, the Information Men began to tighten into two ranks, human on one side and demon on the other. Fool watched as claws unsheathed, mouths opened, hands dropped to weapons, and then he stepped between the gathering lines.
    “Does anyone think what I did was wrong?” he asked. No one replied, but he could feel the hate coming at him from the demons, another mark against him, a human who commanded demons, who killed their kind.
What have I done?
he thought, and hoped the fear he felt didn’t show in his voice.
    “It killed this man without provocation,” he continued, pointing at the mangled corpse, still bleeding on the floor in front of them.
    “It said he was guilty,” said one of the demons, sullen. It was long-faced, its mouth a curve that took up the lower part of its head filled with a mass of square, gray teeth below a snout that flattened back to huge black eyes that had neither iris nor cornea.
Orobas,
thought Fool, mind flickering over names, lineages, wishing again that Gordie was alive, Gordie with his memory and his understanding and his knowledge.
I’m sure it’s called Orobas.
    “He’s not,” replied Fool. Even a few months ago, he could have said,
Humans don’t kill humans,
and it would have been true, but now? Everyone killed everyone, it seemed, in the new Hell.
    “How do you know?” When Orobas spoke, its teeth clacked together with a sound like dropping plates, punctuating each word, breaking it into pieces. Its ears were curling points reaching up from its flat