by Liz Williams
“My Lord,” the demon said, “you are a god and you know what gods know. Do you have an opinion on why I was taken to the Hunting Lodge?”
“Yes,” said Krishna. “As a matter of fact, I do.”
37
Seijin had meditated upon the matter and was ready to try again. But in the meantime, he found himself confronted with an angry client, and that was something that very rarely happened. Male self would take some time to get over this.
In fact, the client interrupted the meditation session. Seijin had begun by absorbing the warrior’s spirit, after feasting upon his flesh. The man had been shadowed, as though maroon veins of anger and spite had run between sinews and muscles, but Seijin did not mind that. It lent piquancy to a vital essence, chili-pepper hot. The Lord Lady took these aspects and set them in their correct place, within Seijin’s own spirit, where they burned for a little time, like candles. Then, the assassin settled down to watch within. Coming so close to Mhara had provided an insight into the Celestial Emperor’s movements: the images were imprecise, seen through a dark glass, but substantial enough for Seijin to be able to tell where Mhara had been and was going. Female self dutifully noted Mhara’s descent to the realm of Earth, to the little temple where Seijin had been so short a while ago, and having been there, the Lord Lady was able to reconstruct the image within the memory of the building.
There was Robin, so grounded, so certain of her place even though she understood its precariousness. Seijin had not objected to the little human ghost. A toughness there, a certain fibrous quality which could be respected. And that could be felt in these other folk: one male, one female. One human, and one demon. Seijin felt a faint twinge of regret: these could almost be the Lord Lady’s own parents. Children of such unions were rare, but obviously they did exist, otherwise Seijin would not be sitting here now. Perhaps—and here the Lord Lady allowed a small measure of daydreaming—perhaps a child might one day result from these two, born on Earth like Seijin had been, and perhaps it might be stolen, brought here to the Shadow Pavilion, raised as a successor.
Happy thoughts. But these were enemies, male self was quick to remind Seijin. Any child of an enemy is one’s own foe.
Times change, Seijin reminded male self.
But not by much, male self reminded back.
Anyway, these were thoughts for another day. There was work to be done, and with this in mind, Seijin watched as Mhara entered a discourse with the demon and the human and the ghost. It lacked clarity and it was impossible to hear what was being said even though Seijin had cast a small and hopefully undetectable spell within the room. It seemed that this was not working and this, almost more than anything else, gave the Lord Lady an insight into the intrinsic power of the Celestial Emperor.
And then the Gatekeeper came in.
Seijin was unaccustomed to being interrupted, but the reaction was immediate. A raised hand, a flick of the long sleeve, and the Gatekeeper was sent flying against the wall.
“Lord Lady! Forgive me, forgive me, I did not mean to intrude—”
“Then why did you?” Seijin spoke mildly.
“There is someone here to see you. The Dowager Empress, she—”
Seijin rose and gave a low bow. “It is I who should be asking for your forgiveness, Gatekeeper. You were right to disturb me, for such an august visitor. Please show her in.”
“Here?” the Gatekeeper asked.
Seijin glanced at the remains of the night’s meal, the shattered ribcage, the remnants of organs. “Perhaps not. In the guest parlor? I think that would be appropriate, don’t you?”
“Eminently so, Lord Lady,” the Gatekeeper quavered. “Shall I show Her Highness there now?”
“Yes,” Seijin replied. “I shall see her shortly.”
The Dowager Empress was livid, and this disturbed the calm airs of the Shadow Pavilion to a distressing degree. Seijin could feel them all the way down the stairs, coiling around like serpents. Female self said she would be glad when they’d done with this bitch. Male self agreed, more vehemently. Seijin reminded them that this was a client, and as such, must be tolerated. A contract had been agreed upon and must be honored with propriety until it was complete. Both selves subsided, muttering, as Seijin walked with a smile into the visitor’s hall.
The Dowager Empress rose in a rustle and hiss of robes. Her face was, as always, serene, as masklike as before, but as soon as she set eyes on the Lord Lady, she spat, “You failed!”
“Madam,” Seijin gave a deep bow, so that hair brushed the floor. “It was not that I failed, only that I have not yet succeeded. This was a skirmish, nothing more.”
“A skirmish! My son is alive and well and stalking the ways of Heaven and Earth as if nothing more had befallen him than an unexpected shower of rain!”
“Madam, I would remind you that you are not a warrior. The mettle of an opponent must first be tested.” Better not tell her about the missing hairpin, female self counseled, and Seijin agreed. “I have now undergone that test and I know what awaits me, what I must do to defeat your son and carry out your wishes.”
“What if he finds out?” Ah, this, then, was the crux of the problem: the Empress feared being found out; she had been indiscreet. Seijin gave an inward sigh. Clients always managed to screw things up for themselves, and he supposed that this might be especially true of Celestials. Guilt at wrongdoing undermined them, no matter how ruthless they believed themselves to have become.
And then they blamed you, of course. Seijin gave another bow. “Madam?” Spoken with great sympathy, an invitation to confession.
“He knows I’m up to something.”
Seijin feigned concern, leaning forward with furrowed brow. “Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure!” the Dowager Empress snapped. Seijin wished that her facial expression would alter, even a little, to reflect her feelings. “He followed me.”
“What had you done, Madam, that your son felt it necessary to follow you?”
“I was obliged to eavesdrop upon him,” the Dowager Empress said. Was there a hint of discomfiture behind that bland countenance? Perhaps, but only perhaps. “He was proposing all manner of absurd plans to the Court, suggesting—no, insisting!—that some of them should put themselves through hardship and trauma, travel to Earth, if you please, and assist the so-called helpless.”
“You do not feel that folk are in need of Celestial assistance?” Seijin spoke mildly, aware of a slight surge of the newly consumed spirit within, the protest of one who believed himself to be a victim.
“These people choose their own paths,” the Dowager Empress said, looking amazed that this should even be open to question. “It is their karma, for wrongdoing carried out in a previous life. Or perhaps they choose their earthly lives, in order that they might experience suffering and pain, discomfort and woe.”
“Do people make such choices?” Seijin asked, genuinely puzzled. The Dowager Empress gave him a narrow look.
“I should have thought that you might have remembered.”
Seijin gave a gentle shake of the head. “Why no. I have only lived one life, Madam. I have no karmic history.” By virtue of an otherwise dubious heritage: there were some advantages to being of such mixed blood, at least, though this had not been so evident in youth.
“Maybe you are accumulating karma to come,” the Dowager Empress said, beadily.
“Maybe.” Seijin’s voice remained placid. A hundreds-year-old assassin, slayer of Celestials and demons and men, had surely plenty of accumulated plenty of karma, most of it murky. But Seijin had already taken steps, dwelling on these briefly, and in the deepest part of the mind, swiftly borne away and hidden by female self. Seijin was not sure how much the Dowager Empress could read of other people’s minds. The Lord Lady had no intention of coming back as anything, of coming back at all.
The Dowager Empress seemed to be waiting for more information and she appeared a little put out when this was not forthcoming. “The fact remain
s,” she said, “that my son must be stopped in this ludicrous reform effort—reform! Revolution, more like, and most unwelcome. Some of my husband’s oldest courtiers have come to me, expressing their grave concern—poor things, they do not know what to think! The Emperor guided them in their every notion. How long do you think they would survive in the maelstrom of Earth?”
Seijin knew what she wanted to hear, even if it was insincere. “Surely not so long,” the Lord Lady murmured.
“Exactly! And what, might I enquire, do you intend to do about it?”
“I intend,” Seijin said softly, “to make a killing.”
It took time and energy to get the Dowager Empress out of the Shadow Pavilion, and Seijin begrudged the effort. It might even be necessary to swallow the life of another warrior, in order to keep up one’s strength. Seijin hoped not, as the hunting of such took up more energy … and there you were, locked in a kind of spiral. Yet it could not be denied that the Dowager Empress had a point: time was passing, during which Mhara was already, or so it seemed, in the process of making sweeping changes within the infrastructure of the Celestial Realm, and the longer this dragged on, the angrier and more frustrated the Dowager Empress would become. Seijin was not concerned about the matter of personal reputation—this would hold, so male self was firmly told, in the face of some protest—but experience informed the Lord Lady that clients tended to panic, to try to take matters into their own inexperienced hands, and thereby create no end of a mess. The Dowager Empress might be a scheming old bitch, but Seijin doubted whether Her Celestial Highness had ever actually had anyone killed before. Although one never knew. She seemed the classic example of a soul gone quietly hollow, rotting in its ancient shell. And so she was panicking, insisting on action which might not be entirely appropriate. Seijin decided to sleep upon it, and duly went to the uppermost chamber, to take uncertain refuge in dreams.
Morning rolled slowly over the lands of between, appearing first as a distant fire in the sky, all around the horizon. Seijin was awake before this happened, standing at the window and watching the ghosts of the night-hunters flit between the rocks. Something with great shadowy wings and a forlorn cry drifted overheard, brushing the window with its pinions, leaving the smell of blood and cold air in its wake. Then the sky crimsoned and Seijin watched the spirits stop in their tracks, freeze, and fade. Today would be the day of the second attempt.
Seijin opened the window and dismissed the view. That would return soon, but for the moment, the air parted like water, as though Seijin had cast a stone into a pool, revealing a glimpse of a different world. The Lord Lady looked down onto Earth, to the small temple that was Mhara’s place of worship in the human realm. Like infrared, the temple gleamed white, then glowed a patchy blue to reveal the divine presence within, and other shapes, more shadowy. His Celestial Highness had company, then. Seijin looked out at dim stars: it would be the middle of the night in the city beyond. One of those shapes, the one closest to the Emperor, must be the ghost, Robin; the others—one tasted familiar, but the wards were too strong and Seijin could not see beyond them. Interesting. But the truth of the matter would be discerned soon enough, and it didn’t really matter if someone got in the Lord Lady’s way.
As dawn touched the sky, Seijin lifted a hand and spat a single silver sphere into the waiting palm. This was the distilled essence of the human warrior, a necessary sacrifice. Seijin breathed upon the sphere until it became too hot to hold, smoking in the hollow of the hand. Gritting teeth, Seijin carried it to the box containing the single remaining pin and bound the glowing, molten thing into the shaft. The spirit, bound, shrieked as it was further tied, and Seijin gave a small smile of satisfaction. Then the pin itself was taken and strapped in to make the point of a long arrow, formed of a demon’s thigh bone. Like the Lord Lady, indeed: human, demon, shifting, all manner of wrong.
Seijin held the arrow. One shot, one chance. That really lifted the stakes and the spirit with it; these days had been missed, with so great a chance of failure. The ruination of the previous attempt had been invigorating, and Seijin wanted to capitalize on that, strike while the fire was still hot. A curious metaphor under the circumstances: for between was even colder now, the flames of the smith’s forge had still not returned and Seijin did not intend to suffer that immortal presence in between again. No betrayal—the smith owed Seijin nothing except a grudging tolerance—but all the same, chinks in the armor must be closed.
And speaking of armor … Seijin dressed with even greater care, summoning mist and curdling it into silver gray, hard as iron yet not as brittle, conjuring cloud from the wreaths above the mountain peaks and casting it over a shoulder. Holding the bone arrow, and a long curved bow, won in Genghis’ horde so many years ago, accompanied by a scimitar in its sheath, Seijin once more set foot upon the world of Earth.
38
“You see,” the Blue God said, as they walked through the forest, “Agni has always had ambitions. It was why the Lords of All gave him the Hunting Lodge in the first place, to keep him occupied. And so far, this has worked.”
“But now,” Zhu Irzh remarked, “Agni wants—what?”
“Lands,” Krishna said. “Territory. Perhaps he always planned this, to keep quietly to the bounds imposed upon him until the time was right, then make his move.”
“But what does this have to do with me?” Zhu Irzh asked.
“You are engaged to be wed, are you not?”
“Yes, you knew that already, My Lord. To Jhai Tserai.”
The badger thought he had an idea where this was going, but he waited nonetheless. It was neither politic nor polite to interrupt a god, and besides, these were matters of the humanoid world. There was also enough to take note of around him: the plants with their ever-shifting colors, the drift of the wind through the trees. A pleasant place, if foreign.
“Indeed,” Krishna said. “To the lovely Jhai. I met her mother once, you know, when she was young and lovely herself, one of the jewels in the crown of the Keralan court. But she fell in love and ran away, years long now. As for Jhai herself, I have seen her only in dreams.” Here, Krishna gave Zhu Irzh a sidelong glance, which the demon seemed not to notice, or pretended that he did not.
“She’s a great girl,” Zhu Irzh said, although the badger did not think that he sounded completely convinced.
“And a rich one, too.”
“She’s certainly wealthy, yeah. Given how much Paugeng actually owns. I mean, I’m sure it’s not so much in your terms, My Lord. Gods have much greater resources than the human world, naturally. But in earthly terms, it’s not bad.”
“And in demonic terms?”
“Well, yes, not bad at all. One can be quite impoverished in Hell, you know.”
“But presumably this state does not apply to you? If I may be so impertinent.”
Zhu Irzh laughed. “You can be as impertinent as you like. You’re a god, after all. My family was always well off but then my parents got divorced and now my mother is, well, on course for being Empress of Hell. She’s marrying one of the Ministers. I suppose you heard about the recent unpleasantness?”
“Yes, I heard. You are a prince of Hell now.”
“I always think of myself as just a seneschal,” Zhu Irzh said, clearly uncomfortable. “I’ve never had political ambitions—load of hassle and grief, if you ask me.”
“Yet, whether you wish it or no, you are a prince of Hell, marrying a wealthy and powerful woman of demon heritage, on Earth. A woman who, even if she chooses not to make much of it, is Agni’s cousin.”
Zhu Irzh was silent. A golden bird, fire-feathered, flew across their path and a single blazing pinion fluttered down, to land at the demon’s feet. After a glance from Krishna, Zhu Irzh picked it up; it had become quite hard, the badger noticed, a gilded jewel. “I can’t say I’d actually put this into words,” the demon said at last. “Haven’t had time. But it had crossed my mind.”
“The question we should ask is not: Why you?” the
blue god said. “But: Why now, and what is the aim of it?”
“Well, being a detective,” Zhu Irzh said ruefully, “I’d say either my murder or my kidnapping is the likeliest.”
“And which of these options do you consider to be the most probable?”
The demon gave a wry smile. “You’d make a good police officer, you know … Given that I was put in a hunt, I’d have said murder. But the issue of what would happen once I actually died presents problems.”
“Presumably Agni would have some way of trapping your spirit. Couldn’t have you simply reappearing in your own Hell. There are ways of doing that, but you have quite a lot of innate power, now, you know. Not because of what you do, or have, but because of what you are. One attains powers, as one’s roles change.”
“I’ve a certain amount of magical ability,” Zhu Irzh said, with a doubtful glance. “Not much more than that, though.”
“That you know of. As I say, your abilities will be changing. But Agni might also have simply been amusing himself prior to your actual murder and any subsequent binding. And kidnapping is indeed an option.”
Zhu Irzh said, “If you think my mother would shell out a ransom payment … ! The mean old cow would probably pay to leave me there.”
“How did she react, when you told her that you were marrying Jhai? Was she angry?”
“Mum? Gods, no. Actually Jhai told her that we were getting married.”
“Without, as I remember,” the badger said, “asking you first.”
The demon gave him an icy stare. “There is possibly an element of truth in that.”
The god was good enough not to smile. “So she was not angered?”
“She was delighted! Started planning the floral arrangements within minutes of being told. All right, Jhai’s a foreigner. But she’s rich. And she lives on Earth. Mother’s been looking for ways to expand her power base all her life. She could have given Machiavelli lessons. For all I know, she did.”
