The Iron Khan (Detective Inspector Chen Series)

by Liz Williams

  Behind him, Li-Ju said, “Ready?”

  “Ready.” They dropped down onto the deck, landing with more noise than Chen was comfortable with. He drew the sword and ducked behind the side of the wheel-house, with Li-Ju close behind. They waited, but there was no sound from within. The silence was beginning to give Chen the creeps, as though there was no one at all on board, the boat traveling under its own volition. Then Li-Ju nudged him.

  “Look!”

  Another ship was edging its way up the inlet. Chen thought it was the vessel he’d seen earlier, heading out into the open sea. It was hard to tell, as the ship’s sails were furled. The mast brushed the treetops, but only by a few inches: this boat was made to fit this world. It was being rowed, the creak of the oars and the splash as they hit the water were the only sounds he could hear.

  Next moment, he dragged Li-Ju back into the shadows of the wheel-house. A figure strode past: black-armored, with a high plait of red hair.

  “That’s — ” Li-Ju started to say, then bit it off. There were footsteps overhead, clattering down the steps. Three more figures, of near-identical aspect, ran past Chen.

  “Who are they?” Chen whispered.

  Li-Ju was frowning. “They’re the Empress’ guards.”

  “They don’t seem to be doing much guarding.”

  Peering round the corner of the wheel-house, Chen saw that the new arrival was bearing down fast on the Empress’ ship. Its sails were still furled, but its oars had stopped their motion and Chen could not see how it was still coming on. Magic? No doubt.

  As the craft approached, one of the guards gave an ear-splitting scream: Chen had never heard a more obvious war-cry. The guard drew her scimitar; moments later, a man dressed in blue with a cutlass between his teeth leaped over the side from the oncoming ship and hit the deck with legs braced. More men followed him and soon the deck was filled with fighting, struggling crew members. But it was evident to Chen that the struggle was unevenly matched. One of the Empress’ guards struck off the head of an attacker and Chen winced. The head, grinning, flew through the air, but before it could strike the water it disappeared in a plume of fire. At once, it was back on the neck from which it had been so recently severed. The guard went down under a swift stroke of the cutlass and vanished, but she did not reappear.

  “Sent back to her own place,” Li-Ju said.

  “Which is?”

  “Another Heaven. They were hired from there.”

  They did not, Chen thought, seem to have been very effective. But he was wasting time, watching a battle in which he had little part. He had someone to find.

  With Li-Ju close behind, he ducked into the empty wheel-house. A narrow flight of steps led down into the depths of the ship. Chen dropped down the steps and found himself in a passage.

  This had clearly been a Celestial vessel. Once upon a time, anyway. Now, the wooden panels were eaten and eroded away, covered in cobwebs and a curious black film. Chen touched it, cautiously, and it came away, staining his fingertips like soot. Yet it felt soft, not at all gritty.

  “If you ask me,” Li-Ju whispered in his ear, “that’s what the Empress has exuded.”

  “Exuded?”

  “Yes. The evil that she contains, breathed out into the air so that it does not stain her soul. Or so she hopes.”

  That was a lot of evil. Never mind, Chen thought grimly. He’d met worse.

  Hastily, they searched the ship as the fighting raged overhead on deck. There was no sign of Inari, Miss Qi, or the badger. But one of the doors showed signs of abuse, as though something had tried to break through it. A badger’s claws? Chen was willing to put money on it. And attached to a splinter in the wall was a single long strand of pale hair.

  “Miss Qi,” Chen murmured. More than the signs of hair and claw, however, was the twinge that told him of Inari: a flutter across the surface of his soul. “She’s been here.”

  “Not here now, though,” Li-Ju said.

  “No. So where is she?” The emptiness of the vessel, the presence of the possessed or manipulated guards, was beginning to get to Chen. And there was something else, as well. Something waiting.

  “This way,” he said, and they sprinted down the rotting passageway.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  With Miss Qi and the badger, Inari clung to the Roc’s back as they flew onward toward Earth. The bright gap in the sky was widening and she could see land ahead.

  “Singapore Three,” the bird said over its shoulder. Miss Qi craned her neck.

  “I can’t see it.”

  “This is where we are headed,” the Roc said.

  “It might be where we’re headed,” Inari replied, “but where is it?”

  No towering apartments were visible. The red Jaruda symbol of Jhai’s company, Paugeng, no longer lit the sunset sky. The harbor was there — a wide muddy inlet — and Inari could see a huddle of huts on the banks of a river. But the dome of the Opera House, the mass of government buildings, the temples, and avenues — none of these were there.

  “Where is it?” Miss Qi asked, blankly.

  “Look!” Inari said, pointing. “There’s the Night Harbor!”

  It had never been a place for which she had held any affection, being the gateway to both Heaven and Hell. But now the sight of its oblong black form made it feel like an old friend.

  “I thought this was a city?” the Roc said.

  “It was. Where have you taken us?”

  “This is Earth!” the Roc said, clearly as surprised as they were. “You can feel it.”

  The bird was right. If Inari reached into herself, her core — further even than the child that swam, dreaming, in her womb — she felt Earth there, the pull and weight of the human world. It was more than instinct; it was knowledge.

  “But where’s the city?” echoed Miss Qi.

  Clinging to the Roc’s metallic feathers, they circled the place where Singapore Three had been. It was definitely the right location; Inari could tell this from the underlying geography. But something — not just the lack of the city — was different.

  “Magic,” Miss Qi whispered.

  “Yes, but what kind of magic?” Looking down from the Roc’s back, she could see the air sparkling, a fine dust permeating the atmosphere, but visible from the corners of the eyes, not when studied directly. Inari knew it for the aftermath of magical work, on an immense scale. She’d seen such work before, but only in Hell.

  “Yes,” Miss Qi said, when Inari pointed this out to her. “Someone must have stolen the city.”

  “Or destroyed it.” Inari could still feel Singapore Three, but it was like an echo, or a fading dream.

  “I don’t think it’s been destroyed,” Miss Qi said. “I can sense it, but it’s in the wrong place. That’s what made me think it must have been stolen.”

  “But who would steal a city? And why?” The main problem with Miss Qi’s hypothesis, Inari thought, was who would want it.

  “I grow tired,” the Roc said, and soared downward toward the little hummock of an island.

  “Wait!” Inari commanded. “Land on shore. Please. We need to find out what’s happened.” This new shore might prove to have unknown dangers, but they stood more chance of discovering the truth about the changes if they weren’t marooned.

  “I could just turn around and take you back to my Hell,” the Roc pointed out. “Since there appears to be little for me here.”

  “You said you wanted land of your own,” said Inari. “Maybe this is your chance to take it.”

  “Yes,” said Miss Qi, with a cunning that Inari had not expected in her. “There might be new prey.”

  The Roc did not reply, but their comments had evidently given it food for thought, because it glided over the islands and headed for the coast. Inari looked down as they passed above the harbor: no boats now rode at anchor in the bay, nor was there any sign of the typhoon shelter.

  “There’s a plane!” Miss Qi said, suddenly. Inari looked ahead. The Celestial
warrior was right: a jet was streaking across the sky, leaving a vapor trail behind it. With the Roc still circling, they watched as it headed downward to a flat piece of land close to the bay. This was not, Inari knew, where the airport was situated in her own day.

  “That doesn’t look like a fighter plane,” Miss Qi said, frowning.

  “It isn’t.” Inari didn’t know much about aircraft, but she recognized this one from the red symbol emblazoned across its fuselage. It was one of the Paugeng jets; Jhai’s private craft. She leaned forward in excitement.

  “The woman who owns that plane has a lot of power. She’s the one I was telling you about. Can you land us near it?”

  “Very well,” the Roc said, in slightly more conciliatory tones now that there was a chance of getting what it had come for. It headed inland, toward the rudimentary landing strip. The plane had landed now and was slowing. The Roc took them down to a slight rise and Inari scrambled gratefully from its back. The badger shook himself. Miss Qi took Inari’s arm.

  “Are you sure that Jhai’s in there?”

  “I can’t be sure.” Inari looked around her at the desolate coastline. “Things have altered so much…”

  But she had to take the risk. Leaving the Roc ruffling its feathers on the rise, they headed for the aircraft, which had now taxied to a halt. It was with considerable relief that Inari saw the door open and Jhai herself swing down a ladder to the ground.

  •

  “Inari! What the hell?” Jhai spotted her Celestial bodyguard. “Miss Qi! And what’s that bird doing there?”

  “We were kidnapped. Ended up in someone’s Hell. Got rescued,” Miss Qi said. Jhai appreciated brevity, Inari knew.

  “Oh. Sorry to hear that. I’ve just been working, out West, then in Beijing. Had to leave Zhu Irzh — he got involved in a case. Left Beijing airport earlier and as we were halfway here, something happened.”

  “The city’s gone,” Inari said, feeling that she was stating the obvious.

  “Let me tell you, it’s not the only thing that’s disappeared. The whole of China’s changed. One minute I was looking out of the window at urban sprawl, the next, it wasn’t there.”

  “Is this really Earth?” Miss Qi asked. “Or some kind of parallel world?”

  “That would seem to be the obvious explanation,” Jhai said. She looked up, to see a passenger jet heading over the hills. “Anyone up in the air seems not to have been affected, though. I’ve tried to get hold of Zhu Irzh but I can’t reach him.”

  “And Wei Chen?” Inari faltered.

  Jhai shook her head. “I’m sorry, Inari. No sign of him. But this world isn’t entirely empty. As we flew in I saw villages — even some little towns. So it isn’t completely unpopulated.”

  And as if to punctuate her words, her cellphone rang.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Zhu Irzh watched the stars as they flew, galaxies whisking by. The city was speeding up, taking him into the past: he could feel the years rolling back, affecting him at the cellular level. This was not the subtle transition that he’d experienced when he’d first slipped into the Tokarian village, but was swift and brutal. It took him a moment to realize that the city had stopped moving, and then he felt windswept and breathless.

  “Are we nearly there yet?”

  The city did not reply. Instead, it began to fade, the stars flickering out one by one, the walls folding down into themselves. It was a calm process with an air of unstoppable authority about it: Agarta had done this before. It reminded Zhu Irzh of watching a computerized image slowly dismantle. When it was over, he stood alone in the desert, a bright sun golden above him and the scent of incense on the light breath of the wind.

  The demon followed it. Whereas the southern part of the desert had featured those huge dunes, this terrain did not: it looked more like another planet. Black grit crunched beneath Zhu Irzh’s boots and a line of old red hills broke the horizon. Then he heard singing. It was so unexpected that Zhu Irzh stopped dead and listened.

  It wasn’t human. He could tell that much. And it was coming from above. The demon looked up. Overheard, perhaps at a height of some thirty feet, a group of women soared in flight. Their long, trailing garments floated around them as they flew in brightly colored streamers and each one wore a conical hat, like a small beehive.

  Then one of them spotted Zhu Irzh. She gave a scream and a second later, all of them were drifting down to cluster around him.

  “Ladies, ladies,” the demon said, not displeased. “There’s no need to be quite so enthusiastic.”

  “But what are you?” There didn’t seem to be any linguistic barrier, although Zhu Irzh could tell that he was not speaking, or hearing, his native tongue.

  “I am a demon. From Hell.”

  One of the flying women frowned. “I’ve never heard of such a place.”

  “I can assure you it exists,” Zhu Irzh said, conscious of some unease. Perhaps it no longer did, in this timeline, or perhaps its gateways were much less clearly marked than they were in his own world. “And you — you are akashi, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.” There was twittering, and a certain amount of giggling. “How did you know?”

  “I’ve — met your kind before.” But he was not sure whether this was really true. None of them looked quite like the akashi he had encountered, and so maybe none of them were. Could the spell alter appearance in addition to — well, everything else?

  The akashi laughed behind their hands, which were slender and clawed. “Are you going to visit the Enlightened One?”

  “Who is he?” Then Zhu Irzh hastily amended, “Or should I say she?”

  More laughter. “He lives in the cave. Over that ridge.”

  Well, why not? It wasn’t as though he had a clue what he was doing, after all. “I’ll go there, then,” the demon said.

  The akashi rose into the air in a flock, like birds, their streamers fluttering around them. Zhu Irzh watched them go with a faint regret. Maybe they’d come back later. In the meantime, he might as well see who this Enlightened One was.

  Over the ridge lay a grove of acacia. Wherever he was in this timeline, he didn’t think it was where he’d been previously. He could see what were clearly caves: a long, high line of rock, interspersed with dark hollows. But the air was sparkling. A crystalline stream ran between the trees.

  It felt like Heaven. And that made Zhu Irzh nervous. He kept walking toward the caves and as he did so, he became aware that there was someone within. He was being watched. At the foot of the cliff face, he paused and looked up.

  “I am here,” someone said.

  “Are you the Book?” Zhu Irzh asked with some trepidation. He wasn’t sure that he could give an account of himself to that particular entity.

  “Which book is that? We have many books here. Come and see for yourself.”

  “How?” The cliff face rose sheer before him.

  “Step upon the air,” the voice said. Frowning, the demon did so and found himself hovering a foot or so above the ground.

  “I’ve never done that before!” Perhaps this was how the akashi managed their flight: an invisible staircase. Experimentally, he continued to climb and found himself standing in front of a narrow ledge, some hundred feet up the cliff face. He stepped onto it and said aloud, “Where to now?”

  “Here.” There was a cave entrance some few yards along the ledge. Inside, it took the demon’s eyes a moment to adjust to the dim light. Then he took a step back.

  The face was huge and golden, the eyes elongated. It was smiling.

  “Buddha?”

  “One of My avatars.”

  “Wait a minute,” Zhu Irzh said. “You were a living being, weren’t you? And as far as I remember, you weren’t contemporary with the Tokarians — they were much earlier.”

  “That is so. But in fact, my spirit has always been around, staking a claim on certain places. This visage you see before you is not me as I truly am, but only the face that humans have put upon me.”r />
  This was something that Zhu Irzh understood. He nodded.

  “You, however,” the Buddha said, “truly do not belong.”

  It was said courteously, but with a query. And the divinity had not known about the Book. Zhu Irzh decided to explain.