We had opened a second office a few miles from this one, our original location. When the lease on the remote site was up in a few months, we'd vote on what to do with it. At the moment, it was used for private meetings with clients who didn't want to be seen entering the narrow tent in the Bazaar at Deva that was well known as the home of M.Y.T.H., Inc. It also was a home away from home for Buttercup, my war unicorn. In the Bazaar, owing to cramped conditions, a lot of establishments opened out at the rear into extradimensional space, extending them as far as the host dimension would allow. This tent backed onto a gloomy, low-magik dimension called Limbo. By contrast, the secondary office occupied a piece of Ombud, a pleasant and pastoral dimension mostly populated by farmers and low-technology craftsmen, not unlike Klah, where I grew up. Buttercup occupied a field behind the farmhouse that was our small tent's presence in Ombud. I almost wished I was there at that moment, lying in the sun in the grass, with Buttercup here in my place, prodding the Imp with his single, well-sharpened horn to make him get to the point.

"So what kind of business proposition is it?" I asked, no longer bothering to be subtle.

"Profitable," Samwise declared, with the lift of an arched black eyebrow. If a red-skinned Deveel—Deveels were the natives of the dimension in which M.Y.T.H., Inc., operated— made the same gesture it might have come across as elegant or menacing. In Imps, a smaller, lighter-hued race, it came across as supercilious. Even their horns and pointed tails didn't hold any menace. "But I wouldn't expect a Klahd like you to understand an intricate arrangement like this one."