by Liz Williams
“And there,” Krishna said, standing still and turning to face the demon, “is your key. Your mother approved of Jhai because of what she is. Agni will have had similar thoughts. If he is the one to wed Jhai, he gains access to the human realm, by honor of marriage.”
The badger could see that Zhu Irzh was thinking about this. “So why didn’t he ask her before?”
“Maybe he did not think she would wed another. She had girlfriends before you, did she not?”
“She’s … adventurous, yes.”
“Perhaps Agni did not think that there was anything to be gained by approaching her. And then you appear, a bridegroom-to-be. That must have changed Agni’s views.”
“So, say Agni wants to wed Jhai …” The demon absently broke off a flower from a cascade of azalea. It gave a small scream. “Sorry! What was I thinking?” He dropped the blossom, which became a butterfly on the way to the ground and fluttered erratically away. “But I’m in the way. So he sends someone to get me, someone who captures the badger as well—we were both in the same place, the badger was effectively bait. He sends me out to be hunted, which is taking a chance that I might escape—but I think Agni’s the sort of bloke who likes taking chances.”
“Quite so,” Krishna agreed. “Also, he might consider it sporting.”
“In a warped kind of way … I think they underestimated the badger here, too.”
“People,” the badger spat, “think I am sweet.”
“I do not think you are sweet, creature of earth,” the blue god murmured. The badger stared at him with great suspicion, but could discern no hint of irony on Krishna’s indigo countenance.
“Anyway, yeah, he’s not sweet and he’s not just a cuddly animal, either. I don’t suppose they thought he’d be able to escape on his own. And if one or more of the harem got hold of me, I’d probably be in a pretty bad way even if I wasn’t actually killed. Too debilitated to think about trying to find a way back, certainly.”
“That may well have been the idea. With sport along the way. They would not have done this had they planned a ransom demand, I think, and besides, there would be terrible ramifications if an Indian Prince of Fire kidnapped a Chinese Prince of Hell. You’ve no idea—sorry, you probably do—just how difficult these political situations can be. Once Vishnu found out, that would be it for Agni: confined to a jar or something, I expect. No one here wants trouble with the Chinese; we keep ourselves to ourselves, for the main part.”
“This is making more sense,” the demon admitted. “So they snatch me, take me down to Hell, make sure the only potential witness is off the scene, and bind me in some manner. No one knows where I’ve gone. I’m sure Chen—that’s my partner—will be thinking in terms of some underworld scenario. With my home Hell, I mean. Who’d think that I’d been snatched by the Indians?”
“And you would in any case be hidden in the realm of the Hunting Lodge. It’s vast, you know; I don’t expect you saw more than a fraction of it. But those jungles go on for lands and lands.”
“Then, with me off the scene, Jhai’s own cousin, whom she hasn’t seen for years, shows up to do his familial duty, comfort the grieving girlfriend. Or the furious girlfriend, more likely. Jhai’d probably think I’d run out on her. What could be more natural than the cousin offering her his protection?”
“And marry her. And gain all those things that such a marriage would bring.”
“What a scheming bastard,” Zhu Irzh breathed, eliciting little gasps of horror from the ladies of the court following behind. “Sorry. I’m really not suited to Heavens, you know.”
Krishna shrugged. “It doesn’t matter to me. But not to worry, Zhu Irzh. You have some answers, now. And I will do my best to send you home.”
“You said that when we left the temple,” the demon remarked. “Where are we heading, by the way?”
“To the pillar.”
“Ah.” It was clear to the badger that Zhu Irzh did not know what this was, but the blue god had spoken with a serene confidence. He strode ahead, now the color of a summer sky, and flowers sprang in his path to welcome him. Zhu Irzh and the badger followed, with the soft laughter of the court women behind, and no one saw the thick black shape that slid through the trees in their wake.
39
Inari woke early at the temple. They had stayed the night, for it had been late when their final conversation had wound to a close. It was still dark outside, with that heavy pre-dawn expectancy, and rather than wake Chen, she wrapped herself in a borrowed robe and went into the little kitchen of the temple to make tea.
The simple act of placing the kettle on the stove reminded her painfully of badger. They had rarely been separated, and perhaps never for so long. Although the badger had traveled through Hell and back, possessing a solid, silent reliability, Inari still worried about him: she knew he would have come back if he could, and that he had not done so hinted at dire possibilities. She had not thought, either, that she would have come to worry so much about Zhu Irzh. When she and the demon had first met, his intentions had clearly tended toward the amorous. Inari sighed at the memory, an old exasperation coming to the fore. It would be so much easier to be plain. But she had inherited all the beauty of that long-ago courtesan grandmother, a human snatched down to Hell. Inari knew she resembled this woman, with a demon glamour besides, and look at all the trouble it had led to. But if it had not been for her appearance, perhaps Chen Wei might not have rescued her. Then again, had it not been for her looks, he would not have had to …
Since those early days, and the arrival of Jhai, Zhu Irzh had treated Inari like a little sister—affection, respect, combined with some teasing—and she was surprised, now, to discover how much this meant to her. Her own brothers had thought of her as no more than a tool to be used where it would benefit the family most, even if this had meant marrying Inari off to a scion of the Ministry of Epidemics.
And Jhai—who had never shown any jealousy of Inari, who had always treated her with courtesy—must be worried sick.
The kettle was boiling. Inari took it from the stove and made a pot of tea, which could be reheated if anyone else woke up and wanted some. The sky was lightening a little, but it was still night, and Inari took her tea into the main hall of the temple, sitting on a small bench to drink it. She took one of the limited selection of sacred texts (“People generally don’t bother with those,” Robin had remarked. “I certainly don’t.”) from the wall cabinet and read it, or tried to. Such flowery fulsomeness! Praise to the late Emperor cascaded from the page, in a prose so extreme it formed an almost tangible perfume. No wonder Robin didn’t bother with this kind of thing. It made a marked contrast to the simple approach taken by Mhara, to the calm serenity of the temple’s interior. Looking around, Inari saw that although the big bowl on the altar was filled with prayer slips that people had left, there were no icons, no gilded statues. The braziers glowed, embers only, and there was not even a lighted candle.
So if there was no candle, where was that smoke coming from?
Inari, frowning, went to investigate, still clutching her cup of tea. The thin thread of smoke was twisting its way through the room. It appeared to be coming from the annex, which led, in turn, into the little courtyard that stood just beyond the annex door. Within the courtyard, on a plinth, set a large bowl of sand. And in front of the plinth was a box containing the thick crimson sticks of incense, of varying sizes and prices, that Robin kept topped up for the faithful to light, that their prayers may be carried up to Heaven with the smoke. In fact, this was not strictly necessary, since Mhara heard most things anyway, but it gave people hope and empowerment, Robin had explained, and it was a tradition with which folk connected.
Inari’s frown lifted: how stupid of her! Of course, someone must have lit an incense stick, either late last night, or on their way to work this morning. But the smoke was trickling beneath the door—shouldn’t it just dissipate outside, to be borne away on the early morning wind?
Inari f
elt the need to check. Cautiously, she opened the door to the courtyard—and relaxed. There, indeed, was the stick of incense, smoldering in the bowl of sand, its tip still glowing orange against the shadowed wall.
But surely there was too much smoke, from a single incense stick, and it was pooling about the base of the plinth like seafoam—then Inari knew where she had previously felt this chill across her skin, where the terror that now gripped her had last been experienced.
The assassin Seijin, the Lord Lady of Shadow Pavilion, stepped forth from the cloud, congealing and condensing, smiling gently all the while, and before Inari could turn and run, Seijin drew the scimitar in one sweeping, cloud-dispelling curve and struck off her head.
40
Go and Jhai stared in silence at the hole in the plexiglass wall. The cell in which Lara had so recently been confined was now empty. Go did not want to look at what lay behind them, at what had once been a man. Go’s own voice sounded very loud in the ringing quiet of the room.
“I thought you said this was secure.”
“No one’s ever got out of here before. Well, apart from one. Zhu Irzh, in fact. He’d been given a drug, he wasn’t himself.”
“So it’s not as secure as you thought.” Hard not to sound accusatory and Go didn’t see why he should be too bothered about Jhai’s feelings right now.
“No,” Jhai said shortly. “It isn’t.”
“There’s no point in getting Chen over here, now.”
“No. There isn’t. But he’d better know. We’ll need help in tracking her down.” Jhai frowned. “I wonder if she’s headed for Hell.”
“She’ll have it in for you, now,” Go said, trying to keep too-obvious a satisfaction from his voice. From the look that Jhai shot him, he thought he probably hadn’t succeeded.
“Yeah, she will. This won’t help family relations, that’s for sure. I ought to get in touch with Agni, as well as Chen, tell him what happened.”
Go looked at her curiously. “How easy is that?”
“He’s on the phone, Go.”
But before she could contact her cousin, and bring him up-to-date, someone called Jhai herself. It was Chen.
41
Seijin stepped over the demon’s body. Her head had flown across to the other side of the annex, not far from her shattered teacup. The Lord Lady picked up the head and studied it. The huge red eyes were wide with surprise, the small mouth a little “o.”
“Well, well, madam,” Seijin said. “I thought I recognized you.”
Last seen near the forge of between, in the company of that disreputable shaman. Who are you? Seijin wondered. Some local necromancer, probably, although it was strange to find such a demon outside Hell. Women like this often used their looks to their own advantage, however; this one had no doubt gulled and glamoured some credulous local into taking up company with her. Seijin had probably done the man a favor. Placing the head gently on the floor once more, Seijin sent a tendril of shadow into the main temple and encountered resistance. The wards outside had been hard to avoid, hence the use of the incense stick, evaporation, and reincorporation. In here, the magic of the Celestial Emperor was even stronger; Seijin had to struggle against it.
The main room was empty. Seijin headed further into the temple, sensing a solitary presence in a small room on the far side. No need to disturb this person, Seijin thought. Male self reminded, with a laugh, that the person would be disturbed enough once he woke up and discovered the carnage. A low jest, female self thought, in reproof.
But here was the target, still sleeping. Seijin was now struggling more than male self wanted to admit, the clear magic of the Emperor beginning to tangle up, to snarl the Lord Lady in its infinitely intricate web. Seijin thought of spiders, not a happy metaphor. Not long now. Here was the door—reach out, careful, careful, through the congealing threads of the magical weave, gliding soft as smoke. Open it, step through, still with care, notch the arrow, with the faint and gratifying sense of that spirit bound to the ancient power of the pin, liminal substances all, made by a liminal warrior. Raise the bow, take aim at the sleeping figure, outlined with sky-blue magic, make certain of the aim, and in that final moment of distraction, become aware that someone has stepped up behind with silent rage and plunged a knife in between the seventh and eighth vertebrae of one’s spine.
Seijin kept hold of the bow, but the arrow flew wide across the room, burying itself with a shriek in the wall.
“No!” male self cried, sensing the loss of the second pin. Seijin spun around, just in time to see the figure on the bed shimmer and disappear, not real at all, no more than illusion. Turning, the Lord Lady saw the man who had stabbed him, stepping back, humming with a cold and dangerous magic that was entirely human and wholly unfamiliar.
“I believe,” this person said, very quietly, “that you’re the one who just killed my wife.”
Seijin tried to draw the scimitar but it would not come free. Numbly, the Lord Lady looked down and saw that the sheath had become entangled in the weave of blue, with a dark, sinuous red running through it, securing the sword.
“I do not make apologies,” Seijin said. “Nor excuses.”
“Just as well.” The Celestial Emperor of Heaven stepped between the human and Seijin, holding the captured pin. “Let’s see what happens.” He thrust the pin forward, striking Seijin in the eye. Female self, blinded, screamed in agony and confusion. The Lord Lady, consumed in pain, began involuntarily to disperse and this was what saved Seijin from capture. Diffusing, dispersing into mist and smoke and cloud shadow, seeping everywhere at first, to a shout of “Keep it in one place!”
Too late. For the heat of the braziers, rising, was carrying Seijin’s essence upward, into the rafters and through the cracks, out into the skies of the dawning Earth.
Seijin fled through the dim upper air of Earth, barely noticing when the world changed and the Lord Lady was seeping through the clouds of between. Was this what people meant when they spoke of coming home, this half-blind flight from power and pain? It had been a long time since Seijin had suffered serious injury, so long, in fact, that it was barely remembered. You can have too much luck, for too long. It makes you weak, this forgetting.
I will take on more pain, Seijin promised. Now, I have to. It was not an easy admission to make and it made female self spit and wail. Too late for her: if the injury could not be healed, she would have to look out upon the world through the eye of male self, if permitted. Seijin recognized, but only distantly, that she might not be.
Back in the Shadow Pavilion, flying past the astounded Gatekeeper, Seijin sat before a cloudy mirror, looking within. The pin had penetrated to the very back of the eye, causing a thin trickle of blood to crawl down Seijin’s cheek. It looked like decoration on a mask. The eye itself was filled with a scarlet pool and nothing Seijin could do, no magic that the wounded female self could conjure up, was able to heal it. Perhaps with time? But Seijin knew, deep inside, that this wound was permanent.
The degree of pain was quite remarkable. Learn from this, Seijin instructed the various selves, but male self was no longer listening. He raged, splitting apart from Seijin and leaving the wounded assassin to sit before the mirror like a languishing courtesan, while he stormed up and down the chamber.
“At least the demon is dead!”
“It makes no difference,” Seijin said wearily. “The demon is no compensation, surely you must see that. It was only that she got in the way.”
“Something has been slain!” male self exulted, slamming a spectral fist against the window frame with such force that the window burst open, letting in a cloud-drift of air. And that was the moment when Seijin realized that the plastered-over fractures of the last few decades could no longer be sustained, that the splits between the selves had gone too deep for healing.
42
“I’m so sorry,” Jhai said, for what must have been the tenth time. Go lingered by her side, staring down at the demon’s body. Not a tigress, not th
is time, yet how he wished it had been. But this demon had been beautiful, too, and Chen’s wife. Jhai had insisted on coming over as soon as she got Chen’s message, and Go wasn’t leaving her side; he felt, however irrationally, that Jhai was still the only one capable of protecting him. Some kind of tiger-to-tiger thing, perhaps.
Chen spoke with a calm that, Go realized, was in itself a response to shock. “Thank you, Jhai.” He’d thanked her the other nine times, too. “What we really need to do now is to work out where Inari is now.”
Jhai took Chen to one side, though Go could still hear her. He stayed where he was, at the side of the “deceased” demon. She had been lain on a table in the middle of the temple, her head placed neatly above the severed neck. From this angle, she looked merely as though she wore a thin red necklace. Her body would undergo no decay or mortification, Chen had explained, still with that unnatural calm. Mhara had enspelled it, and besides, demons’ bodies behaved differently when they were killed on another plain. The spell sparkled blue around the demon’s corpse: Go took care not to get too close.
He heard Jhai say, “Can’t Mhara just restore her?”
“Apparently it doesn’t work that way. He’s not omnipotent.”
“Honestly, what use are these deities?” Jhai sounded as though she were about to sack an incompetent employee. “Emperor of Heaven and can’t even restore the spirit of a minor demon.”
“She’s not under his jurisdiction,” Chen said. “We’d need the Emperor of Hell for that.”
“Yeah, Chen—the Emperor of Hell, who owes you one. Big-time.”
“That’s true, but it takes time for messages to get to Hell’s Emperor these days. If Zhu Irzh was here, he could just call his mother and explain, but I’m not sure she’d listen to me.”
“She might listen to me,” Jhai said. “I’m about to be her daughter-in-law, after all.”
