Must Love Hellhounds

how she’d felt after the other meals she’d eaten.
    “Fine,” Amelia said, astonished.
    At last Clovache took a mouthful to see if the food was drugged, since that was the job of a junior. The Britlingens waited for a few minutes.
    “I feel fine,” Clovache said, and without further ado they dug in. There was a hunk of bread in the bowl, too, and it was fairly good. No vegetables; she guessed those would have been hard to produce underground. Not a healthy meal, but it would supply the energy they’d need.
    “Save a bit of meat,” Batanya said.
    After they’d eaten and rested, the two Britlingens exercised. Amelia and Narcissus were interested, Amelia because she was obviously a normally active woman and because she was bored, and Narcissus because he thought exercise might improve his body. Amelia showed them how to do “jumping jacks,” which amused Batanya. They ran in place, lunged, squatted, punched at the air in jabs (Amelia called that “shadow boxing”), and completed a hundred push-ups (at least, Clovache and Batanya completed a hundred). After a few more exercises, they all took a nap, for lack of anything better to do. The guards didn’t reappear for at least four hours, and then when they opened the door at the end of the corridor, it was to push the cart through again, so it was time for lunch . . . or maybe supper. Possibly breakfast?
    Batanya was ashamed that she’d lost track of how many hours they’d moved through the tunnels before they’d been 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,