by Liz Williams
“Who the hell are you?” Go asked, then remembered. The tiger prince, no less. Agni’s gaze was predator-cold.
“I might ask the same of you. Are you the man who stole my Lara?”
“I didn’t see her protesting much.”
“Agni, this is my career we’re talking about!”
The prince gaped at her. “What career? You’re a tiger spirit. You don’t need a career.”
“Jhai has a career.” Lara began furiously tucking stray hair back behind her ears. “This is the trouble with you, Agni. These are modern times and you think all women want to do is kill things and fuck.”
“Everyone else seems perfectly happy with that!”
“Oh, that’s what you think, is it? My sisters spend half their time plotting against you, Agni.”
The prince laughed. “Is that supposed to worry me? Of course they do. They need their little hobbies. They never manage to do any real harm, do they?” He gestured toward Go. “Anyway, if a career is really what you want, you can have one. I don’t hold grudges, Lara”—and I’ll believe that when I see it, Go thought—“and I’ll give you a role in the hunting party. Come on, it’ll be fun.” His teeth glittered. “Like old times.”
“I don’t think so,” Lara spat, and she turned and ran. Go had never been so pleased to see anyone leave.
Agni, smiling, swung around to watch her go, and that was when Go also took to his heels, barely able to believe that he had cheated death once more. But as he ran he heard laughter, soft as a cat’s feet, and the voice of Agni saying, “Well, you’d better go after them, hadn’t you?”
All Go’s courage had evaporated like water through a sieve. He ran desperately, glancing up at the rudimentary exit signs to find his way, banging into stalls and stumbling on the spilled produce. Maybe by now, someone would have alerted the authorities to the fact that there was another tiger incursion within the market; maybe police marksmen would be waiting—but then Go reached the side exit of the market and it was locked. He rattled the metal door, kicked out, but the door opened inward and he ended up hammering on it with useless fists. The authorities—or someone—had indeed responded. They’d locked everyone in.
Behind Go, somebody screamed. Go swiveled around and saw Lara, still in human guise, backing toward him. He wasn’t sure if she’d even realized he was there. The tigress in front of them, however, almost certainly had. Lara’s form rippled as Go stared, hazing with stripes, a phantom tail switching briefly before disappearing into the air. She was trying to change, he realized, and could not. Ahead of her, the tigress came ever on. Lara’s fists bunched with magical effort; her body contorted, and still nothing was happening. The tigress licked whiskery lips.
Go turned back to the wall and started kicking it, more out of panic than anything else. But the old market building responded. A panel of corrugated iron collapsed, letting in a square of daylight. Go threw himself into it, scraping hands against the sharp edges of the ruptured metal and not caring, because he was finally free. He rolled out into steamy heat and found himself in an alleyway, buildings on one side, the market wall on the other, and at the end of it, the port.
Can tiger demons swim? Who cares? Go thought. He sprinted for the line of sea, hearing, behind, something battering its way through the hole in the metal wall. Someone else was shrieking, an indication of agony that—even though it was probably produced by Lara and was therefore a good thing—made an arctic sweat break out across Go’s brow and dissipate the heat of the day. It spurred him on; he reached the edge of the harbor and hurled himself off the edge.
Down and down, a surprisingly long way to fall, into the sudden green shadow cast by the harbor wall. Go hit greasy water with a splash and a gasp, went under, kicked out, and came up again. He supposed he should try to rid himself of his shoes, but they were only sneakers, and instead he struck out, swimming in a confused mélange of styles that just about avoided taking him in a huge circle. He glanced back, once. A striped head was peering over the harbor wall, teeth gleaming in the sun, eyes full of fire. The sister who had visited him, or someone else? Go did not care. He hoped the lot of them were hunted down and killed; he would have no more to do with magic after this, no more spells, even if it meant starving in a garret …
He was free. He continued swimming strongly, heading for the middle of the harbor, planning to find a boat and haul himself aboard. But that was before something grabbed him by the ankle and hauled him down.
Go swallowed filthy water and choked. The thought struck him, even in these extreme circumstances, that if he didn’t drown or wasn’t eaten, he’d probably die from some vile disease communicated by the revolting waters of the harbor. A lot went into the port; it was closer to soup than sea. He kicked downward, trying to dislodge whatever it was that had hold of his ankle, and squinted through the murk. He was in the shadow of a ship, now, but the kick propelled him and his assailant out into a shaft of sunlight. Go, half-drowned, found himself staring down into the fierce face of Savitra.
Tiger demons aren’t always tigers. As a woman, Lara’s sister evidently possessed Olympic-standard diving skills. Her grip on his ankle was unbreakable, a steel fetter, she dragged him down. Go sank through green shadows, dimly aware that the boat above him was receding, to be replaced by winding, curling shapes. Snakes, he thought. Snakes, and I am dying. It didn’t seem to matter anymore, wherever he ended up. The water around him was brilliant, green and gold and shining, radiant as the sun, and instead of the oily warmth of the city harbor, it tasted of mud and weed.
Go’s vision swam and pressure laid a huge, heavy hand upon him. And then, just as forcefully, Savitra was dragging him up again. Go broke through the surface with a spluttering shout. He gasped for air, wheezing, trying to keep afloat.
Everything had gone. The boats, the city skyline beyond, had disappeared. Go was looking up into dappled emerald shade, elephant-ear leaves fringing down over a mass of roots into the water. Everything was hyper-real, etched and edged in gold and flashing darkness. At first, Go thought that it was just his vision, affected by a near-death experience, or an actual death experience, whichever it had been. He felt very much alive, if the burning in his lungs was anything to go by. His ears were ringing, and that gradually resolved into the screeching of birds and something else. Monkeys. Which Singapore Three did not have, unless one counted the zoo.
“This is India,” Go said, wondering, aloud, and someone behind him answered. “Not quite.”
50
“You’re not coming,” Chen said, for perhaps the eleventh time.
“C’mon. You need me, you know you do. I’m invaluable.”
“It’s not that I don’t appreciate it. And yes, you are very useful, Zhu Irzh. But this isn’t Hell. This is between.”
“How different can it be?”
“And besides, you’ve just got back from someone else’s limbo.”
“That’s not the same. Anyway, so has the badger.”
“It’s the badger’s job to go with me. If it was just Jhai who needed you here, Zhu Irzh, I’d say—then come with me. But it isn’t, it’s the police department. Agni’s harem is roaming the city—the market manager at the port had to seal off the building earlier and who knows what’s happened over the last hour or so. You and Jhai are the closest we’ve got to experts. And Mr Go, except that he seems to have had an attack of nobility and disappeared.”
Zhu Irzh sighed in frustration. “I suppose you’re right. All the same—”
Chen clapped the demon on the shoulder. “I know. I’m not trying to get rid of you—I wish you were coming. But someone has to deal with this in my absence and I’d rather it were you and Ma and Jhai. The badger and I will be fine.”
Husband understood things, the badger thought. During the course of this swiftly conceived plan to go to between, Husband had not, at any point, tried to dissuade the badger from accompanying him. Nor had Husband’s superior, on learning of what had happened, tried to prevent
him from going. The badger, as a magical creature, knew when the flow of events was carrying people along with it; he could feel the snap and sing of it, and there was nothing now to do except to be taken by its wake. Humankind often did not seem to understand these things, however, and it was refreshing to note that Husband had such a good grasp of affairs.
“When do we leave?” badger said now. Husband turned to him.
“As soon as Lao’s ready.”
“I’m not sure I’m up to this,” the departmental exorcist said from across the room. Lao was squatting on his heels, meticulously delineating a circle in red powder around him. “This is a bit more than I usually have to cope with. Talking of which, where’s your Celestial friend?”
“In Heaven, as far as I know. He’s got a lot to sort out. An assassin, for a start.”
Lao grimaced. “If you run into this character—how are you going to handle it?”
“I have no idea.”
“Chen, that’s not reassuring.”
“Look, Lao, Seijin is a legend. He—she—is one of the great assassins of all time and, moreover, killed my wife. I don’t know what I’ll do but whatever it is, it won’t be the wrong thing to do.” Chen held up the pin. “Mhara has one of these. I have the other. Mhara has already injured Seijin. The assassin can be killed, I’m sure of it.”
The badger gave a quiet grunt of assent. Husband understood things, for certain.
“When will you be ready?” Chen said now.
“Give me a few minutes.” Lao straightened up, groaning. “I need to make an appointment with an acupuncturist. Back’s killing me.” He handed over a small pouch. “I’m using an adapted spell—it’s an old one, for traveling between the worlds, and the only reason I’m doing that is because it’s one of the few spells that mentions between. But you have to remember: it’s untested. I don’t know of anyone who’s used this. This—” he pointed to the circle on the floor “—is the stuff from the pouch. It’s your path back here. If you run into trouble, and need to get back, or if—” he amended this hastily at the sight of Chen’s expression “—when you find Inari, you activate it with your own blood and it’ll get you back. I’ll need a blood sample now.”
The badger watched as Husband held out his hand and submitted it to Lao’s needle. A drop of blood oozed out and dripped to the floor. The red powder hissed, flaring with a light that made the badger turn his head away. Lao had cleared a small gap, through which he invited Chen and the badger to step, so that they were encased within the circle. Then Lao sprinkled more powder into the gap, closing the circle.
“Remember what I said. Your blood.”
“I’ll remember,” Chen said. He turned to the badger. “Are you ready?”
“I have always been ready,” the badger replied.
“All right, then,” the exorcist said. “We’re good to go?”
A spell scroll fell to his feet as he began the incantation, a quick, sibilant thing that lodged in the badger’s skull like a swarm of wasps. The badger reflexively shook his head, but the swarm was growing, shutting out the distant sounds of the city, blurring the sight of the temple beyond the rising red wall of the circle. Then the earth shuddered and shook beneath the badger’s paws; he knew enough of earth magic to realize that this was not the world itself that was moving, but Husband and himself, starting to shift as Lao’s incantation brought between closer and closer yet.
It was not like journeying to Hell, nor did it bear much similarity to the journey down to the Hunting Lodge. In essence, the badger understood, they were not moving: rather, between was coming to them, a thin finger of another realm drawn down by Lao’s antique magic, gradually enveloping them in a bubble of elsewhere. In the shimmering red air, Husband turned to the badger, who gave a quick bob of the head: I am all right. Then they were snatched and away and moving fast, ripping up through all the realms that were: the badger glimpsed the bright shore of Heaven and even thought he saw the towering white cone of the mountain from which he had been born, but perhaps that was wish only and nothing that was real.
Husband said something, or so badger thought, but his words were swallowed by the vast interstellar wind. A thousandfold stars spun by and the badger heard something huge and lost crying out. Then the familiar glitter-black of the Sea of Night fell away below and they were tumbling in a red-tinged mist down a stony hillside.
“Well,” Chen said, a breathless moment later. “We’re here.”
An hour or so later, the badger was certain that they were being followed. He said as much.
“You could easily be right,” Chen said, casting an uneasy glance over his shoulder. “We’ve no idea what lives here, after all. Apart from the ones we’re looking for.”
The badger looked back along the stretch of hillside down which they had recently come. The red thread stretched behind them, thin and almost invisible, but if the badger turned his head at a particular angle, he could see it: a shine of magic, binding them to Earth. He would have found that reassuring, if he had been able to place any faith in Lao’s spells, especially, since the exorcist himself did not seem confident about this arcane piece of conjuring.
“Where do you think this thing is that’s following us?” Chen asked now. “Did you actually see it, or smell it, or … ?”
The badger gave a frustrated hiss. “I did not. I only sensed it, but I am sure it is there. It keeps moving, in between the rocks, now here, now there.”
“This place must be full of spirits,” Chen murmured. “Let me know if you notice it again. I can’t tell what’s here, it’s as though someone’s thrown a blanket over my head.”
“I know the feeling,” the badger said. But he had advantages that Husband did not—and the reverse, no doubt—and the strongest of these was his sense of smell. It had stood him in good stead down in the world of the Hunting Lodge, and he intended it to stand him in good stead now. He kept casting about, searching for any traces of Mistress, confident that he would pick them up no matter how slight they might be. She might be dead, but to the badger, this had become a minor inconvenience.
“Anything?” Chen asked. Husband knew what he was doing and had put up no argument with it, letting the badger get on with his job.
“Not yet,” the badger said, but a minute later, he had the lie to that. It wasn’t the scent of Mistress herself, the smell of her skin or hair, but the perfume that she wore: the odor of flowers, frangipani and ylang-ylang. The ghost of her scent, just as she herself had become a shade in this gray-mist land. The badger raised his head.
“I have her, Chen.” It was the first time he had called Husband by his proper name; it had seemed disrespectful before now.
“All right,” Chen spoke with a concentrated ferocity that surprised the badger not at all. “Then follow.”
It was good to be focused again, good not to be dithering about. The end was closer in sight now and when he looked back, the red thread seemed to have grown stronger, more secure. This all gave the badger hope and he scurried on, skirting the larger boulders down into a narrow valley.
“It would make a certain amount of sense,” Chen said, “if we’d come in at the same point as Inari, even if it was by different means. We left Earth at the same place, after all.”
The badger thought about this and cautiously agreed, although he knew how unstable these connections could be.
“No footprints,” Chen went on, “but then, one would not invariably expect them. Under the circumstances.” He spoke tightly and the badger did not reply, deeming it unnecessary. Badger scented on, searching for further traces, but the line was narrowing now, as if Mistress had wandered about for a time and then suddenly made up her mind where to go. He headed after it, with Chen close behind. It led between the stones and boulders and then out into a long valley. At the end of it, stood a building.
“She is there.” The badger spoke with absolute conviction.
“That is the Shadow Pavilion,” Chen said. They stood still, s
taring. To the badger, the Pavilion hummed with spirits, as busy as a hive. He could see their dim forms, wheeling around the tottering summit of the pagoda. They were not like birds, their forms ragged and changing from moment to moment, and occasionally fragments separated and drifted down to the ground like pieces of a torn veil.
Chen was peering at the Pavilion. “There’s something around it.”
“Yes,” the badger said, and told him.
“I can’t see them very well,” Chen said. “They look like shadows. Perhaps that’s how it got its name.”
But the badger disagreed. “No,” he said. “The thing is made of shadows. Can you not see it? To me, it is clear.” To the badger, it looked as though bits and pieces of long-ago structures had been welded together: the ghosts of imperial pagodas, fragments of lost palaces, whispers of ancient fortresses that were now lost beneath the sands of Western China. And Chen said, “Yes. Now you tell me this, I can see it. Seijin has raided the world for the spirits of buildings, ransacked and taken.”
“Perhaps it was not Seijin,” the badger amended. “Sometimes, so I have heard, these things grow.”
Chen smiled. “Like mushrooms.”
“Just so,” the badger agreed, not seeing anything amusing in the remark.
“You still have Inari’s scent?”
“I do.” It went in a straight line from where they stood, to the Pavilion itself, as far as the badger could see. He checked back. The red thread was still there, but very faint.
“We need to think about this,” Chen said. He squatted down on his heels and looked toward the pagoda. “We can’t just walk up to it. And unless I’m greatly mistaken, it’s not long before dark.”
Studying the sky, the badger saw that Chen was right. The light was fading in the smoky heavens and he could smell twilight, an odd, sour odor.
“We’ll need to find somewhere safe before then,” Chen went on. “What about that presence you sensed?”
“It’s following us,” the badger informed him. “Do you wish to challenge it?” He was hopeful.
