“Markus, let’s make a deal.”

With a puff of black smoke, a tablet appeared in Markus’ palm and a stylus in his other hand. The haures grinned to show his fangs. “I’m listening.”

Before I could begin, Volce hovered in between us and shouted, “Time out, time out!”

“Little deuce, I respect your desire to protect your precious human,” Markus said in condescending tones, “but I’m sure he’s more than capable of managing this deal.”

“Well that depends on your definition of ‘capable’, mister one name.” Volce flew to me and leaned an elbow my shoulder. “Capable of coming out on top? Out of the question. Capable of getting screwed over because he doesn’t have the time or patience to read the fine print? About as likely as Enzi flopping her tits out before the Culling is over.”

The enepsi glanced over to me and shrugged, as if to say that Volce had a point. I just shook my head.

“Just say what you want and get it over with,” I told the deuce.

Volce glanced at Markus, back to me, then templed his fingers. “Algier, when you were pooped out of your mother’s baby hole, did your foot end up where you brain was supposed to be? Because you’re about to put your foot in it!”

I shook my head. “Well at least you got one idiom right.”

“Algier, he may be crude but his point is agreeable.” Enzi touched the fingers of her good hand to my arm. “Dealing with a one name haures is a terrible idea.”

“So you wouldn’t?” I quizzed Enzi. “You two seemed pretty chummy the first time we met him.”

Enzi’s dark brows furrowed. “All demons have a history, Algier.”

“And all humans are reckless fools that get themselves killed long before their time is up. One of those foolish things we do is take everything for ourselves.”

Really, the only reason they were objecting was because they wanted Markus out of their tussle over me. It was ridiculous, given that we ought to have been putting aside those differences in order to suppress Markus. But there lay the problem with demons: they sought to step over each other even when surrounded by enemies. The situation with Markus had become comfortable enough for them that they’d begun to focus on easier wins, such as suckering the human over to their side.

Even Toll participated in this game from time to time by incessantly prodding me to ask questions. For now they were silent, choosing instead to watch from their perch on tall tree. However, if I asked the balaam a question, then rather than offer a sign of good will and refuse to answer, they would accept the answer, piss me off, sully my trust of them, and make it easier for Markus to exploit those hostilities. It makes no sense for a human to do that, but for a demon it’s a no-brainer. Because they’ll never trust each other anyway.

So how do they even work together? Rarely, if ever. Usually, demons only find unity in situations where no relative advantage can be gained or the opportunities provided by cooperation are certain.

For example, take a number of demons working in an office. They’re all tasked with writing and filing reports for their employer. The difficulty of these tasks is equal and no demon is assigned more or less work than the other. In this situation, they all work at their fastest pace in an attempt to be recognised as the most competent employee.

The employer, however, is unhappy that some demons are working too slowly. One day, they decide upon a new incentivisation structure: if one demon falls behind, all will be punished. Knowing the situation is equally dire for all demons, they’ll all choose to pull each others’ weight. They’ll organise themselves in such a way that each demon does an equal amount of work and not a second more. However, since they’re limited by the pace of the slowest worker, the consequence is that less work is done overall.

The weird part isn’t that, rather than decide upon this course of action via committee, they do it without any discussion whatsoever. When given rigid inputs and outputs, a demon won’t come up with unique conclusions like a human would, as we usually make decisions based upon past experiences and teachings. Rather, they follow the same logical path and reach the exact same conclusions.

In this situation, the demons were still thinking themselves in competition with each other, not realising that Markus had set a fail condition on all of them. If they were unable to overcome him, he’d crush them all. This was the Ring of Betrayal, after all.

I put the demons’ pointless objections out of mind and faced Markus. I was confident in my abilities. Maybe too confident.

“Let’s get this started. I want a healing item from you, one which is useful for a human. And if you don’t have one, I want the next one you find.”

Markus flashed a grin. “Well spoken, human. Now let me see.” His expression went blank and his fingers flashed across the screen. “Hm, yes, strict conditions you offer. There will be a steeper price for that.”

“Information about Silica.”

Markus mouth twisted wryly. “Oh, that. Well, it had better be good information.”

After I’d finished tapping the dirt out of my shoe, I stuffed it back on my foot. “I asked her two questions, but Toll only had me give the answer to one.”

The haures looked up from his tablet with his eyebrows raised. “My, that’s interesting. And, pray tell, what question did you ask of her?”

I pulled my tie out of my inventory and started wrapping it around my leg to make doubly sure the wound the digresser had given me on the very first day didn’t open. Again. “Do we have a deal?”

Markus raised three fingers. “I want to hear the question, the exact answer she gave you, and then your interpretation. No lies.”

He was brilliant, I must admit.

There are some weird quirks to the way a valax answers questions. They all lack the ability to speak, but nothing stops them from simply writing out the answer. Still, they prefer to speak through the use of their power, by manipulating the world around them into the semblance of an answer. Demons usually cannot understand a valax’s answers when given this way, but humans can with startling accuracy. Of course, there is still room for error. The process is similar to divination, much like a balaam’s power, where the answer just kind of appears in a human’s head. However, in order to interpret the answer correctly, a human needs to understand the context of the valax’s answer. If they both approach the question from different understandings, the answer cannot be intuited properly.

In this case, I knew exactly what Silica meant. Markus didn’t know that so he was being cautious and asking for the answer verbatim. That way, he could determine the accuracy of my interpretation, for all the good it did a demon.

“Agreed,” I said. I knotted my tie sharply so that it wouldn’t fall off again.

“Now hold on,” Markus said, holding up his stylus. “Before I accept, I need to explain that, while yes, you’re offering some good information, it’s… not quite equivalent to something that could potentially save your life. But I think if we were to go for a block trade, I could lower the price a little. In fact, I’d be willing offer you a rabdos, assuming you put something good on the table.”

I stared at him blankly. After ten or so seconds of silence, Markus slowly lowered his chin to his sternum.

“In exchange for information about your mother.”

“No,” I said thickly. My hand went to my knife which was tucked into my belt.

“Alright, then forget about that,” Markus said, waving his stylus dismissively. “I didn’t wish to startle you. Instead, how about you throw yourself in my way the next time Silica tries to attack. She didn’t seem to want to hurt you, so I figure this might save me the trouble of having to deal with another horde of digressers.”

“Absolutely not.”

Markus let out a sigh. “Fine, I guess you desperately want to see me erased. We can work with that. How about you let me ask two more questions—which you must answer truthfully, of course, with no blanks filled in—and we call it even. But there’ll be no rabdos for you, unfortunately.”

“No.”

The haures shuttered his eyes and opened them slowly. “Very well. One question, not about your mother.”

“Stop haggling. Either take the deal or don’t.”

Markus clicked his tongue. The look he gave me was almost sympathetic. I found it laughable. “Listen, Algier. I have this nasty habit of helping humans, so I’m going to offer you some advice. When you’re cutting a deal with a haures, you must always haggle. The haggling can lead you to discovering valuable information about the nature of your deal and you can use that to your advantage.”

“Why do you think I’m not talking?” I asked dryly.

“Because you want to be eliminated?” he insinuated, cocking an eyebrow.

“That is a possibility,” answered Toll.

Without the slightest change in expression, Markus stuffed his stylus in his right hand and shot a blast of flame at Toll. The balaam leapt out of the tree and disappeared into the forest. Then Markus snapped his fingers and the flames died down after a few seconds. A couple of small branches fell to the floor, but otherwise there was little damage.

I had to stifle a grin. Toll really had it out for Markus. If they weren’t a demon, I would have assumed they were getting cocky now that Markus had just eaten a shot from Wrongtonk. But in reality, they were just trying to sabotage the deal.

“Fine,” the haures said, going back to typing maniacally on his tablet. His fingers tapped so quickly that I couldn’t distinguish the pat of individual taps. “So long as the quality of your information is good, I accept your deal. Now, please sign on the line here.”

He handed me the tablet and stylus. The screen showed a print so fine I had to squint to read it. I gave it a quick scroll and noticed hundreds of lines of text had been punched out in the short time we’d been talking, riddled with overwritten jargon such as, “Upon the act of supplying a signature along or near the input field marked S14, the contractee shall be obligated via the Law of Hell to supply the contractor…”

Markus grinned. “Ah, you are a wise one. The contract is laid out in excruciating detail. But I assure you, there are no extraneous terms, no extra conditions, nothing you need concern yourself with, aside from the usual haures jargon. All that text is written in a way to prevent either of us from exploiting any loopholes. I’m keeping this one simple.”

Enzi stepped closer and spoke low. “Algier, are you sure you want to do this? The demon you’re trying to contract with is Markus, after all. Even though he says it’s a simple contract, who knows what tricks exist within it. At the very least, we can find another haures to pour over the terms and see if there are any—”

Not wanting to hear her complaints any further, I signed before Enzi finished. Enzi stared at me like I’d just grown horns. I let her worry. It helped to sell my act.

As I scratched out my signature, another signature etched itself onto the screen beside it, one that was outrageously fancy with curls and swirls and ticks and embellishments that excessively padded the name bared within: the most ridiculously intricate “Markus” I’d ever seen.

The moment Markus’ signature finished drawing itself on the screen, my whole body felt hot, like a heat was radiating from the core of me, burning everything up. I began to sweat, to breathe more heavily. My breath tasted like sulphur. I clutched at my chest in the hopes it would soothe the burning, but it was fruitless—the sensation was inside me. If I had to explain it, I’d say my soul was burning away from me, but I know how ridiculous that sounds.

As soon as it arrived, the feeling fled and left a bitter chill, like I’d just stepped out of a warm shower and into a freezing bathroom on a winter’s day.

Fearing the worst, a popup appeared to answer my questions:

New condition acquired!

[Deals struck]

Markus: A somewhat fair trade* (one healing item** for one revelation***)

[Corruption] increased from 6 to 7.

I mentally tapped on one of the stars and was lambasted with a wall of text. I vaguely recognised a couple of lines as the terms outlined in the contract Markus had typed onto his tablet.

The haures poofed away his tablet and stylus and threw his hands wide. “Well, congratulations, Algier. You just struck a deal with a one name haures, and not a terrible one either. You must be so excited.”

“Just give me the damned item,” I said, shaking my head.

“Now now, the contract is sealed and signed, and if you turn to clause three hundred and thirteen you’ll note that you are contractually obligated to reveal the information first and, if it is not of insignificant value to me I have a number of clauses—from three hundred and twenty-seven through three hundred and forty-four—which I may or may not invoke in order to render the contract null and/or void.”

Enzi’s jaw dropped at the mention of those clauses. “But you said that it was a simple contract!”

Volce leapt onto her shoulder and sneered at Markus. “Yeah, what Enzi said.”

“But it was!” Markus insisted, raising both hands defensively. “I could have easily doubled—no, tripled the length, plus thrown many more clauses in to help me wiggle out.”

“It’s fine,” I told the bitter demons. And it was.

I’d expected something like this. Markus didn’t have a reputation for playing fair, after all. He’d hinted as much when he’d stressed the need for quality information before we’d signed, so I figured such a clause would exist in the contract.

I also knew that the information I was about to provide was too good for him to wiggle out from, even under the most generous interpretation of “value”. It was very significant to him.

“The other question I asked her,” I began, “was, ‘Who are you?’”

The corner of Markus’ mouth twitched. “Algier, don’t tell me this was all some bluff that you were too prideful to back out of. If you seriously asked—”

“The answer she gave…” I tucked a hand under my shirt and pulled out my mother’s locket. It felt warm to the touch and I was immediately comforted by its familiar dents and scratches. The haures’ face went blank. “This belonged to my mother. Silica had cupped a hand around this, while it was pressed against my chest.”

“I see.”

I stuffed the locket back under my shirt and fixed a hard gaze on Markus. “The meaning of that answer is as follows: ‘I am someone who cares for your mother’s legacy.’”

Enzi and Volce both gaped at me, showing more expression than demons ought to. Toll had returned and they peeked out from a tree trunk, fixing me with an acute stare. As for Markus, if you were to place a rock next to him it would show more expression. I couldn’t help but flash the smuggest grin.

I held out a hand. After a few seconds, Markus’ eyes shifted down to it.

“Huh,” he uttered. “It’s been a while since that happened.”

He flicked a finger through the air beside him, then pulled a ceramic bottle from a fold in the universe. When he placed it in my hand, my eyes lit up.

Patch-me-up, Class 1. Designed after the quintessential healing potion from your favourite game, once this rabdos is consumed it accelerates the natural healing process of your body. For a human, the process goes exactly as you imagine: cuts and wounds will heal up rapidly, but broken bones will need to be set first. For demons, however, it’s a little less effective and therefore of lower value than a Rise and Shine.

In order to “heal” a demon’s corporeal form, they need to absorb the flames of Hell itself. That means that their natural healing process requires a bit of Hell. Given that rabdoses are, for all intents and purposes, unfortunate demons that have been forged into conveniently useful items, the only source of recovery for demons is literally the demon that had been diced up, processed, and shoved inside of a Patch-me-up.

In other words, Markus gave me something that had little value to him, but plenty to me.

Also, if you’re wondering about the ethics of chugging down a whole processed demon, don’t. They’re demons; they have no ethics.

I held the potion out to Volce. “Hold this for me, and if you lose it, I’ll rip your horns out.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” he grumbled. He hovered over to me and reached out. “Seriously, all I’ve done this tournament is carry people’s smelly baggage.”

“Oh, wait, Algier,” Enzi piped up.

I turned to her with the bottle shared between both mine and Volce’s grips.

Putting her hand to her chin, Enzi continued. “I think it might be best if I held onto it. Volce is rather—um, excuse the pun, but—volatile.”

I narrowed my eyes and let go of the bottle. Volce took it and stuffed it in his inventory.

“Fucking volatile,” he mumbled. “I’ll smack your horn off so you’re no longer lopsided, you volatile bitch.”

And they were back to arguing.