Chapter 13

"Into the eternal darkness, into fire and into ice. "

- Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

I didn't go straight to The Broken Shoe. For a good half hour I walked around contemplating what to do. Soon the craving for a drink won and I entered a different pub near Hackney an hour later. The Broken Shoe was hidden between the small alleys in Brixton, and it served a different caliber of customers than the one I had chosen tonight. I was hoping to speak to one of the guards from the palace. He had a tendency to hang around here a while back. The pub was called Six Bells and there was a mixed crowd in here: a few drunk humans, mongrels and a demon who sat at the back with a pint of beer.