by Liz Williams
Next, he was taken outside under a long colonnade, heat struck him with a spicy rush and fountains played in the gardens below. Something arced and golden hissed up into the shadowed ceiling of the colonnade: a small winged snake. Below, running through ornamental stands of hibiscus, were a herd of black antelope, spotted with red. They were singing as they went, with voices like off-key dulcimers.
Beyond the gardens, he saw mountains, Himalaya-high, but their snow-swept summits were crested with palaces carved of ice. There seemed to be something beyond that, another mountain wall, high and higher yet, but he could not see it clearly. He could smell the wind, though, the snow-breath that carried with it cardamom and sherbet.
“Come along,” his captor said, and tugged not-gently at the leash. She pulled him through a door at the end of the colonnade and here, all was darkness.
“I’ve brought him to you,” his captor said, into shadows.
“Oh good.” Another female voice, silvery as bells, and a lamp flared up.
The badger thought: I have seen you before. I have smelled you. Golden-eyed and tiger-striped, she still had her human face, but as it came into the circle of light cast by the lamp, he saw that it was not the same woman.
The last time badger had seen a tiger demon in her Hellish shape, it had been in his own houseboat home, in the arms of Zhu Irzh, in Chen’s borrowed bed. Husband had not been pleased, when informed of this indiscretion. Jhai Tserai, industrialist, schemer, demon-who-could-not-be, at least under the poorly understood laws of Earth. Jhai had taken suppressants to conceal her tiger stripes, her tiger tail. Now, the badger stared. Yes. You are the same kind, if not the same woman.
“Oh, he’s adorable,” this person gushed. “Look at his little paws! And his little nose!” She stretched out a finger.
“I really wouldn’t—” his captor began.
Moments later, badger found out what tiger flesh tasted like. Surprisingly gamey, but then, they were carnivores.
The tiger demon hissed and swore, clutching the stump of her severed digit. The lamp went out, the room became magic-black. Badger’s ears rang with the sudden power of a spell. “That’s better.” Whole again, she looked down at him, flexing the renewed digit. “Do that again, you stripy piece of shit, and I’ll be walking on a badger-skin rug.”
15
Go did not know where he ran to. He dimly remembered stumbling through the garden, blundering through shrubs and bushes—his clothing was torn and full of twigs—expecting at any moment the rip and roar at his back. Then out into the street, out of the quiet suburb which had provided, through his own and Beni’s folly, no sanctuary at all, and sprinting now down to the main street, not really thinking at all, just needing to get away. Sirens screamed out; he’d seen flashing lights, heading for the blazing house behind him. He remembered the swerve of a car, distant shouts. His hands were skinned; he must have fallen at some point and this, too, was a vague memory, the sudden shock of hitting warm, gritty stone, rising, running on.
Now, he was at the port, end of the line with the sea an oily blackness under the rocking lights. Everything that had been opaque before he stopped was now hyper-real: the lights, the slap and hiss of the sea, the smell of petrol and weed and rot. His heart slammed against the wall of his chest; his lungs burned.
Beni, he thought, Beni is dead. Lara killed him, ripped out his throat. They had known the danger of what they had brought to the world, summoned up from Hell, but somehow—despite the final, disastrous ritual and the reasoning that had led up to it—he had failed to take that danger on board. Lara, with her tiger teeth and her terrible temper, had still seemed somehow controllable. Face it, he thought. You underestimated her because she’s a chick. A demon chick, true. But female and therefore not quite the threat that, he now realized, she should have been. And now she was after him. Knowing Lara, she wasn’t the type to believe that revenge was best served cold. Piping hot, with a side order of chilies. Maybe poor old Beni was better off dead.
Then it occurred to him that Beni, though dead, was still around; at least, his soul was presumably intact, and where would that be now? Waiting to enter Hell, probably. He mouthed a silent apology, much good that would do Beni. Wherever he might be, his co-conspirator was no longer in a position to be of any help at all. Go was on his own. And that left the question of what the fuck he was going to do now.
He couldn’t go back to the studio; Lara might be waiting. The house, with his possessions, would be a charred, flooded ruin by now. He had very little idea of the penalties involved in conjuring, then banishing, demons in this part of the world. Did foreign demons count? If a forensic team investigated the house, they were likely to find the mortal remains of Beni. Would they think Go had killed him? Go was suddenly thinking very coldly and clearly, shock draining out of his numbed brain. Lara was after him. The police might well be, too. What it boiled down to was: Who was he most afraid of?
Well, that was easy. An hour later, Pauleng Go walked into the station house of Harbor Precinct and turned himself in.
The person he needed to speak to, so the desk clerk informed him, was one Detective Inspector Chen.
“But he’s not here at the moment,” she said. “He’s out on a case. I’m afraid you’ll have to wait.”
“Can you put me in a cell?” Go asked, hating the note of desperation in his voice. The clerk stared at him.
“Whatever for?”
“Someone’s after me. Someone really dangerous.”
The clerk frowned. “You said this individual is of supernatural origins.”
“Yes. Indian supernatural origins. And very, very angry.”
“Does he know you’ve come here?”
“She, and I certainly didn’t tell her. But she might be able to find me. I’ve no idea, to be honest. I don’t know what her capabilities might be.”
“I can put out a call on her. Do you have a name?”
Thank God she was taking him seriously, at least. Somehow, he’d expected ridicule, disbelief. “Yes.” He paused. An ensuing conversation unrolled, movielike, in front of his inner eye. There were some advantages to being a scriptwriter, it seemed:
“Her name’s Lara Chowdijharee.”
“Your pursuer has the same name as a film star?”
“No, my pursuer is a film star.”
“I thought you said she was a demon.”
“She is. We summoned her up from Hell and turned her into a star.”
The clerk’s eyebrows rose so far that they nearly floated off the top of her head. “Lara Chowdijharee—the movie star—is a demon. And she’s after you, you say? Was instrumental in burning down your house? Tore her agent’s throat out with her teeth?” Stealthily, under the desk from a different camera angle, Go watched the desk clerk’s hand move toward a panic button, the one reserved for visiting lunatics.
Back in the real world, Go said, “Uh. I mean, no. She said her name was Cherry. But I don’t think it was her real one.”
The desk clerk nodded. “All right. I understand what you’re telling me and we do take this kind of threat very seriously, you know. I won’t put you in a cell, because we might need it later on, but what I will do is put you in the interrogation room. It has no windows and the door can be locked from the inside. Would you like some tea?”
With heartfelt gratitude, Go replied that he would.
16
When Chen went back outside to await the arrival of the forensic team, he found Inari sitting on a low wall near the car in the company of No Ro Shi.
“What happened?”
No Ro Shi looked at him. “Could I have a word with you in private, Comrade?”
With a sinking heart, Chen told him that he could.
“Your wife’s a demon.”
“I’d noticed.”
“Does Captain Sung know?”
That was a rather more conciliatory statement than he might have expected from the demon-hunter. Perhaps No Ro Shi had mellowed.
&n
bsp; “If he does, I haven’t told him. Look—”
No Ro Shi sighed. “This makes things very awkward. I respect you, Chen. Your wife, despite her origins, seems to be a decent woman.”
He had mellowed.
“I’ll tell him, unless you plan to. Now, can you tell me why she isn’t in the car where I left her? What are you doing here?”
“A while ago, this would have been unthinkable,” No Ro Shi said, as if no question had been asked of him. “But now, things have changed, in this city, in China. Your partner isn’t human. Where is Zhu Irzh, by the way?”
“That’s the problem.” Chen explained. No Ro Shi stared at him. “We have two officers—effectively—missing. And both are demonic.”
“Both of them can be trusted,” Chen added, rather more sharply than he intended. “And both were investigating the same case.” He told the demon-hunter what he and Ma had discovered in the basement of the warehouse. “The forensic team is on their way. Meanwhile, I’ve ordered a search of the area. Now, about Inari.”
It was his turn to listen to an explanation.
“There was a—here. A demon shaman, with a luring rattle. He was trying to snare her. From the look of things, he was succeeding.”
“Even though Inari is, as you helpfully point out, herself demonic?”
“Shamans from Hell wield a great deal of power,” No Ro Shi said. “It does not surprise me that he was able to gain a hold over her, especially as she was not expecting it.”
Chen sighed. “I have you to thank for saving her, then. I’m afraid this kind of thing is not all that unusual. Inari has—family—in Hell. The marriage was not popular.”
“I understand,” No Ro Shi said, with more sympathy than Chen might have anticipated. At this point, Ma came panting up, looking troubled.
“What’s happening?” Chen said. His gaze kept drifting toward Inari: he wanted to go to her, but duty kept him where he was.
“Three drug dealers, a pimp, and some smuggled goods,” Ma informed him. “But no sign of Zhu Irzh or your furry friend.”
“All right,” Chen said. “Keep looking. I’m going to be occupied with the forensic team for a while anyway. If we don’t find any trace of them in a couple of hours, take the team back to the station.”
When Ma had gone, No Ro Shi said, “You mentioned your in-laws. Is there any other reason why a demon might come after you or your wife?”
“Not that I can think of,” Chen lied, and felt a twinge of conscience at it. A police inspector might not attract all that much attention, even if he did liaise between the three worlds. But the Emissary of the Celestial Court of Heaven was another matter entirely.
It was close to dawn, with a gray veiled shimmer over the port, by the time that Chen, Inari, and the team got back to the precinct. There had been no sign of Zhu Irzh or the badger, and the forensic unit was still investigating the contents of the cellar. Chen thought that they would be there for some time. The captain had not yet arrived for work, so Chen was at least spared the discomfiting task of informing him about Inari; he was not certain how much of an issue this would prove to be. He installed Inari in the waiting room with a cup of tea, which she accepted gratefully. She had not said much since her ordeal at the hands of the shaman, and Chen was not sure why this might be: weariness, the aftermath of a magical attack, shame? He could not tell and this worried him.
“Are you sure you’ll be all right here for a bit?” he asked, for the third time.
Inari said, “Yes. I have my tea. Thank you.” Her face was very pale, even granted that her complexion was usually that of rice flour. But there was no color at all in her cheeks, and her eyes, behind the dark glasses, looked strained. Chen squeezed her hand.
“I’ll try not to be too long.”
It had occurred to him to send her home, but they could not spare the personpower at the moment and the badger was missing. She had already been subject to some kind of assault and Chen felt as though his worst fears were being realized: a nagging instinct told him that this whole affair was concerned with Mhara’s recent offer, and if hostile forces—who?—were trying to attack Chen, they might well choose to do so through Inari. He left her sitting in the waiting room and his heart felt as heavy as lead.
He had barely reached his desk when a call came through from the duty clerk.
“Detective? There’s someone waiting to see you. He came in last night and, well, he’s got a problem.”
“He and a thousand others,” Chen said. “What kind of problem?”
“He says a tiger demon is after him.”
“A tiger demon?” Oh gods. Jhai Tserai. If someone wanted to strike at Jhai, an earlier line of reasoning asserted itself, they might well do so through those close to her, too. He was not sure how much of a secret Jhai’s nature was at the moment: she had ruthlessly suppressed both nature and information regarding it, but there were a growing number of people who knew. Perhaps this person was one of them?
“His name’s Pauleng Go,” the clerk said. “He’s in the interrogation room.”
“Why? Have we booked him? Oh,” Chen said, realizing. “Security, of course. I’ll have a word with him.”
Maybe it wasn’t anything to do with Jhai. Chen tapped his rosary, for luck. Maybe this individual was simply nuts. It happened. It would be nice to have an ordinary lunatic to deal with, for a change.
Pauleng Go’s lunacy was not, however, obvious, apart from the fact that he was barefoot in winter. Coming into the interrogation room, Chen saw a slight, rather fey young man, the sort whom women would probably find appealing, although it was difficult for him to tell. Go had an alarmed air rather like a nervous horse, a sort of eye-rolling, about-to-bolt quality. But his clothes were clearly designer gear, even to Chen’s unsartorial eye.
“Detective Chen?” A reasonably cultured voice.
“That’s me. Mr Go, I believe? And you’re having problems with a tiger demon.”
“Let me start at the beginning,” Pauleng Go said.
“Go ahead.” He had the feeling that this might take some time.
Pauleng Go certainly knew how to tell a good, concise story, which Chen supposed to be an attribute that came in handy if one were a scriptwriter. His tale was unlikely, and yet to Chen’s experienced ear, it had the ring of truth. He had never seen one of Lara Chowdijharee’s films, but for a time her face had been plastered over every billboard and hoarding in the city and he thought he remembered seeing her on some late-night chat show or other. A tiger demon? Well, one of the city’s premier industrialists was, so why not a movie star? And it even had a warped kind of logic: the movies required glamour, and tiger demons certainly had that. Besides, it would be a simple matter to check Pauleng Go’s identity.
“Do you have a background in magic, Mr Go?”
“No. Well, yes. In a manner of speaking. My father was a professional exorcist. I grew up in Kuala Lumpur and then we moved to Delhi when I was in my teens. I saw a lot of shit. But I didn’t really have the gift, you know? And I wanted to be a writer, so I told the old man that I wasn’t prepared to follow him. We were estranged for a while but he’s cool with it now. I picked up enough to be able to do a basic summoning. And my friend—the guy who Lara killed, Beni—he and I had a great idea for a film, but it needed a really great leading lady.”
“Surely there are scores of young actresses just waiting for their big break?”
“We needed more than that. Certain qualities, you know?”
Chen was not sure that he did, but Go seemed to have some kind of artistic principle in mind: he was making hand gestures which seemed too abstract to be a representation of the female form. “One night, we’d been drinking, and Beni and I thought it would be a cool idea to summon up a demon. Dad had to do it in Delhi—I saw a tiger demon once, only for a few seconds, but man! Impressive.”
“They are,” Chen agreed, thinking of Jhai. “And you were successful.”
“Yeah, until she started freakin
g out on us. Making demands, threats …”
“I can imagine,” Chen said. Unfortunately, he thought he could.
“So we decided to get rid of her. We actually summoned her up but something went wrong—I told you, I’m not that experienced. I know it was stupid.”
“Also,” Chen said quietly, thinking of Inari in the waiting room, cradling her cup of tea in both wan hands, “also somewhat unfair. Demons aren’t ciphers. It’s not a video game.”
Go looked at him and he could see that the young man already knew. “I know. She had every right to be pissed off. I can’t blame her for what she did, but I need help now.”
“We’ll do what we can,” Chen said.
Go’s head went up and, for a moment, Chen thought that the young man’s spirits had revived. Then he saw that the look in Go’s eyes was one of fear. “Shit,” Go whispered. There were footsteps coming along the passage. “Lara.” The name was a breath. Go’s face was ashen. “I can—I can smell her.”
“Stay there,” Chen commanded, unnecessarily, and rushed for the door, which was unlocked. But he was too late. The door swung open and a woman stepped inside.
“Hello, Detective,” said Jhai Tserai.
17
Seijin left the Temple of the Emperor of Heaven shortly before nightfall and decided not to return to Shadow Pavilion. Hospitality at the temple had been offered, of course, but Seijin had declined. The Dowager Empress had already departed for her Celestial home and Seijin did not fancy the prospect of a night in a temple to a dead, failed god, surrounded by nervous servants. But there were temples and temples. Singapore Three was not all that distant; there was certain to be lodging there. Besides, male self had come up with an idea.
Seijin chose to travel swiftly, rather than merely to step between the airs. Standing still, female self brought the world to them, wrapping woodland, folding the small trickle of a river. Seijin stood still while the golden leaves whipped by, tasted water on a breath, watched as the lights of the city burned closer.
