Free Waywalkers: Number 1 in Series by Catherine Webb

excelled in the snow, their summer cousins thrived in the burning desert. With such an obvious line drawn by evolution, Sam couldn’t understand why the demons were constantly warring. If frost demon couldn’t live comfortably in sand demon’s territory and vice versa, why so much war?

    Because they are demons
, he thought with disgust.
And, for all that I’ve done, they’re still warring primitives who understand nothing outside their own armoury and ambitions. And Time help me, I gave them half the weapons they call their own. I taught them about walls and sieges and craft and cunning, thinking they wouldn’t war any more. And look what happened. For all my services, I bet half of them would still be willing to stick a knife in my back.

    Climbing a flight of stairs he marched past stony walls hung with tapestries to keep the heat in, towards a wing of the huge Gehenna fortress where the fires always burnt. The tapestries depicted frost demons doing various things to their enemies that Sam didn’t want to look at. He was familiar with them, and they still sickened him.

    He came to a large wooden door guarded by two demons, strode up to it and hammered loudly. It opened immediately.

    Of the two people in the room, one was very old, one quite young. The elder lounged in a padded chair by a fire, wearing a mild smile that never waned. He’d been playing cat’s cradle, relentlessly patient, moving in and out of shapes with the concentration of a master craftsman. His long blue robe was frayed around the hem, and he wore fluffy slippers over a pair of outrageously coloured socks.

    Sam, as he entered, was fixed with old demon’s unchanging smile, and the same ancient eyes that never showed emotion. This demon’s voice never rose in anger. This demon had never desired the bloodlust of slaughter or killed his own wife for disobedience. This was the necessary demon, who filled the unsung post that the silent thinkers of the world – the children who never wanted to play the violent games in the playground or who invariably handed in their homework on time – always fill: civil servant. Court Vizier. Old Beelzebub. The power behind the throne.

    No one knew he embodied such a power, but Sam knew. And Beelzebub knew. They could read the knowledge in each other, through each measured nod, and in each level word that revealed nothing save what it left unsaid.

    The younger demon was in every way Beelzebub’s opposite. He didn’t even look up as Sam entered, but continued pacing round a map laid out on a table. Sam saw little wooden blocks with flags in them, and sighed inwardly. A child was playing with his toys again.

    This younger demon wore long blue and white robes with trailing sleeves and lavish embroidery that, for all that they made him look regal, also gave the impression of a boy playing with his mother’s wardrobe. Nevertheless, this was the same Prince who had intimidated many a baron into submission and had won his crown by slaying his brothers in duel after duel. He radiated energy as always, brow crinkled in a frown and fingers drumming up and down his sword.

    And yes, he was a good Prince
, thought Sam. The kind of Prince who knew when to bribe, or when to call in the services of his all-too-eager soldiers to drag a confession screaming out of some innocent’s lips, which he could wield against a guilty man who’d become too big for his boots. A ruthless Prince. Therefore a good one, for all he wasn’t a good man. The distinction had to be drawn somewhere between the two, and Sam had drawn it long ago. He admired the Prince. He disliked the man. He suspected that the feeling was mutual.
One day
,
he thought sourly,
you’re going to decide that I’m not necessary. And you’re going to be so high on your own glory that you think you can succeed where countless others have failed. Poison me in the night, send assassins. Maybe even challenge me to a duel. But you don ‘t know how to kill me. You