The Iron Khan (Detective Inspector Chen Series)

by Liz Williams

  Then — not black anymore, but red. In his last instant of vision, Omi saw the figure riding up behind the Khan on his rust-red horse — Tamurlane’s spirit: the pointed helmet, the glaring gaze, teeth sharp as a tiger’s; his eyes were gold. He brought down his scimitar and struck off the Khan’s head.

  Warlords don’t like competition, was Omi’s last thought before he passed out. And they don’t like being forced to do someone else’s will. The Khan should have remembered that — and then there was nothing more.

  •

  “We’re trapped,” Roerich said. Chen looked back and saw a second wave of the clay warriors riding up behind. An archer drew a bow and let the arrow fly: Chen shoved Roerich to the ground. From a grove of trees to the left of where Mhara’s temple stood, a Celestial fired back, but the arrow burst into flames as it flew and crumbled into ash.

  “Stay down!” Roerich yelled, and he and Chen flattened themselves against the earth as the wave of cavalry leaped overhead. A sword cut downward; Chen cast his rosary upward and shouted a spell.

  He did not expect it to work. The rosary struck the sword halfway up its length and the blade shattered, then the hand and arm that wielded it, and then the body of the warrior. The horse was the last to crumble, covering Roerich and Chen with dust. Along the ranks of the cavalry, horses and warriors were following suit.

  Roerich spat soil. “Chen! What did you do?”

  “I don’t think I did anything,” Chen said, rising shakily to his feet. He looked across the mounds of broken pottery, where horses and soldiers had been so brief a time before. An ifrit fell from the skies at Chen’s feet. A second followed, but high amid the main flock the ifrits were turning to ash and blowing away on the wind.

  “I think the Khan’s finally dead,” Chen said. At the portal, there was no sign of Zhu Irzh. Chen swore.

  “Where’s he gone now?”

  •

  Omi opened his eyes. Everything was white, swimming with sunlight. His head felt as though it was about to burst. Hands reached down and placed something wet and cool and sweet-smelling over his brow. The pain receded.

  “He’s coming round,” a voice said.

  “Concussion,” someone else said, calmly. Omi’s eyes opened wider and he sat up.

  “Grandfather!”

  The old spirit smiled. “Omi. I thought it best to leave you to find your own way for a while. The old tend to think that they always know best.”

  Omi grimaced, remembering mistakes. “In your case, you usually do.”

  “That is very gracious of you, my grandson. But I am as much to blame as you. I failed to foresee certain contingencies.”

  “If you’re all right now,” the demon said, “I ought to be getting back.” Zhu Irzh, still in his long coat, was perched on the side of the bed.

  “Where are we?” The room was whitewashed and simple, with a small window and thick walls. Rushes lay across the floor. Omi lay beneath a handwoven blanket.

  “This is the village of the Tokarians,” Raksha said. “When you passed out, the crane came to sit by your side. It tells me that Tamurlane saw only a bird and a human, who would soon be dead. Not worth his while, so the crane waited while he rode away, back into the Hell which he now rules.”

  “What’s happened to his army?”

  “They are all gone. The clay warriors have returned to dust, without their captured spirits. The others have returned to their original times. The ifrits are in Hell, along with the Khan. His spirit is under Tamurlane’s rule now. Omi, you are welcome to stay as long as you wish. Your grandfather has spoken to the spirit — the one you call Buddha. But the work of your family is done.”

  “It is for you to choose,” Grandfather said. “Stay here, or return to Japan and the present day.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Omi said. Looking up at Raksha, he was uncertain. There was a connection, but he did not know yet what form it would take: learning, under the shaman’s tutelage, or something else? And he knew that at the end of it, he would be going home. The family’s task may be done; his ancestors were avenged and the Khan was dead, but there was still work to be carried out in the world and Omi thought he would like to be part of it.

  •

  The Emperor of Heaven was as close to annoyed as Chen had ever seen him. “It’s not so much missing out on the action,” he told Chen and Robin, “as not being able to help.”

  “This is my fault,” Chen said. One could not let the Celestial Emperor lose face, after all. “At least, partly.”

  “No, it’s mine,” Inari said anxiously. “I’m carrying this baby, after all.”

  “Your child would seem to have significant abilities,” Mhara said. Chen was not sure that the Emperor approved. “Perhaps I should make it my godchild, when it finally makes its entrance into the world.”

  “When will that be, Inari?” Robin asked.

  “It’s due in another couple of months. Seven weeks, as far as the midwife can estimate. Demon gestation is — oh.” Inari put a tentative hand to her stomach.

  “Inari? Are you all right?”

  “I don’t — oh dear.” An expression of alarm crossed Inari’s pale face. “I don’t think it’s going to be another couple of months after all.”

  •

  “It’s not that I mind you borrowing the jet,” Jhai said, sitting by Zhu Irzh’s side as the expanse of the desert once more unscrolled below. “It’s just that I’d quite like to know where we’re going.”

  The demon smiled. “Surprise.”

  “I could just ask the pilot myself, you know.”

  “You could. Take a look out of the window.”

  Jhai did so. Zhu Irzh followed her gaze and saw icy summits, impossibly high against a blue sky. Somewhere close, an invisible sentient city floated, thinking about its mistakes.

  “That’s Tibet,” Jhai said.

  “Yes, it is.”

  “So the nearest airport in China is probably — ah. Kashgar.”

  “That’s right.”

  They touched down around midday and took a taxi to their destination. Zhu Irzh clutched the spell in his pocket as they drove through the hot dusty streets. Roerich had been extremely helpful, but he had admitted that this was not his area of expertise. The demon was not sure what he was expecting as they approached the Khan’s villa. Perhaps his journey would be unnecessary — after all, the other spirits that had been ensnared by the Khan were now free.

  But as soon as he got out of the car and walked into the grounds of the villa, he knew that this was not the case. There might not be the same sense of hideous oppression — that had gone with the death of the Khan. But the place was still warped and haunted and filled with a terrible sorrow. Zhu Irzh stepped up to the door and went in.

  “Foyle?”

  There was no reply. Zhu Irzh waited for a moment, then took the spell from his pocket. Roerich had translated it into Mandarin: the demon read it carefully aloud, sending it forming into the air. No bloody incantation, this, no iron spell of death, but something calm and quiet and peaceful. Zhu Irzh watched as it hung in the air for a moment, then the words faded to a single point of light. The demon took a step back as the light started to grow.

  It was a portal, but to a very different world than the one which the Khan had opened. Zhu Irzh saw a green lawn, a terrace with topiaried shrubbery in pots. The air smelled of roses, and a yew hedge grew, dark against a bank of trees. There was a sharp clicking sound from behind the hedge: a croquet mallet, perhaps. On the lawn was a table and around it sat three women, blonde-haired and wearing long, full dresses. They were drinking tea.

  As the demon stared, one of the women looked up and waved.

  “Rodney! Where have you been, dear? We’ve been waiting ever such a long time for you!”

  “We saved you some cake,” one of the other women said.

  “Coming, Mother!” Beside Zhu Irzh, Foyle’s ghost had stepped out of the wall. Other shadows followed him, passing swiftly throu
gh the light to other destinations. Foyle paused, to seize the demon’s hand and pump it. He felt quite solid, apart from a slight chill to the flesh. “Zhu Irzh, old chap! Splendid job. Knew you’d come back, though some of the other lads had their doubts. Knew when you’d got rid of the Khan, too.”

  “That wasn’t me, actually.” Zhu Irzh was rarely overtaken by modesty, but something in Foyle’s manner seemed to bring it out of him. “Glad to help.”

  “Marvelous! Well, mustn’t keep the mater waiting.” And with that, Foyle was through the gap and walking across the lawn to an afterlife of polite teas and cucumber sandwiches. He’d earned it, Zhu Irzh thought, and watched until the portal closed and he was standing alone in an empty, echoing old villa on the outskirts of a desert town.

  •

  “At least we’ve made the most of it,” Zhu Irzh said a day later, as he and Jhai walked up the steps to the airport. They’d had a holiday of sorts, even if it was only a twenty-four-hour break. But the phone call telling the demon that Inari had gone into labor was enough to bring both of them home.

  “True. I’ll be back at the end of the month, though. The chemical plant’s going into production then. It should be — ” Jhai hesitated, eyes narrowing.

  “What is it?”

  “Those guys at the end there,” Jhai said in an undertone. “I’ve seen them somewhere before.”

  Zhu Irzh looked over at the neatly clad Chinese men. There were three of them and Jhai was right, they did look familiar. “Just suits,” the demon said, but it wasn’t until he was walking up the steps of Jhai’s own aircraft that he remembered where he had set eyes on them before: during his rescue attempt in the plane to Kashgar, when the pilot had locked himself out of the cockpit. The suits had seen him then and he was pretty sure that they’d spotted him this time, too. Just airline security, or something more? Time will tell, the demon thought. Time will tell.

  The Lesson

  The schoolroom wasn’t like Chang’s own school, with the smartboard and the overhead projector, the clever simulations of numbers or historical events or plays. This schoolroom was old-fashioned, with a blackboard at its head, and high windows that were almost too dirty to see out of. Perhaps that was a good thing, Chang thought, because the sky that lay beyond them did not look good. It was stormy, often stained with red, and it gave him a terrible, sinking feeling whenever he looked at it.

  So he did not look. Like all the other children — row upon row, extending into the endless distance of the schoolroom — he kept his head down and tried to concentrate on the page in front of him. But the page never made sense. Numbers and characters blurred, drifting into one another, the red and black symbols running like water or blood across the page. However hard Chang tried to focus on them, however hard the schoolmaster banged his cane down on Chang’s desk, they would not stay still. Sometimes a character would rise off the page altogether, on spindly legs, running down the side of the desk like a beetle.

  When this happened, Chang would drag his gaze away from the page and watch the beetle-character go. Sometimes, his eyes would meet those of the boy sitting next to him, a boy of about the same age, thirteen or so, with whey-colored skin and hollowed cheeks. Somehow, Chang felt, it was like looking into a mirror. And one day, he forced his lips to move.

  “My name is Chang,” he whispered.

  “Jeng,” the boy whispered back. It felt momentous at the time, as if a spell had briefly been broken, but that night they all shuffled off to the dormitory as usual, to the narrow, hard beds and the dusty floor and the smell of old socks, and next morning Chang did not see the boy again. He clung to the memory, however. It felt important, a barrier crossed.

  I still know my name.

  But he did not really remember who he was. Faint impressions crossed his mind: a woman with a drawn face sitting by his bedside. A feeling of intolerable pressure, a weight in the head that could not be borne and could only be lessened by — something. He could not remember what, but he had the feeling that it was huge. And a sudden constriction, the sense that the air itself was turning blue like fog.

  All of these things came to Chang in the wakeful, restless nights. Around him, he could hear other pupils tossing and turning, but still no one spoke.

  Then one night, Chang had a dream.

  It was a real dream. He remembered it from the days when he’d been able to sleep, childhood nights when a voice had sung to him and he had been borne away on a gentle tide. He dreamed of a cherry tree, the blossom thick and puffy and white beyond a window. The window was open and from it, through the branches of a tree, Chang could see a street. Bicycles wove in and out of traffic, hurtling along, and the sky was an evening blue. The air smelled of fried food and exhaust fumes and blossom. Chang had a sense of deep contentment; he could hear someone moving about in another room and this felt safe and secure. He knew that this was home.

  Then it changed. The sky darkened and rain began to splash across the street in huge heavy drops, casting up puffs of dust. The cyclists became more hunched, hurrying home, and soon the street was empty. Chang tried to pull the window closed against the sudden rush of colder air but it remained stub­bornly wedged open. Drifts of blossom began spiraling down to the street in the rising wind. A voice shouted, “Why aren’t you at your studies? Don’t you have homework today?”

  “Yes,” Chang heard himself say, his voice unfamiliar and rusty. “I’ve been working, I — ”

  “It isn’t good enough!” And now he realized that it was his mother speak­ing. Her voice was not soothing, as it had been when he was a small child, but harsh and shrill.

  “Leave the boy alone.” An older voice — Grandmother? He searched for the memory and could not find it. “Look at him — he’s tired.”

  “He’ll have time to be tired when he’s older, and successful.”

  “Life’s not just about work, Li.”

  “How can you say that, Mother? When you were his age, they’d put you to work in the fields.”

  “Things aren’t like that now. That’s all long gone and good riddance. Things are different. They may not be perfect, but they’re better. There are opportunities now.”

  “Opportunities that he won’t be able to take up unless he’s got the grades.”

  Her voice went on and on, until Chang felt that he would do almost any­thing to get away from it, but then the guilt would begin. His mother had done everything for him. She worked her fingers to the bone, as she so often told him, and it was up to him to graduate, get those grades, get a university place, get a good job and look after her. Dimly, he was aware that she had not always been like this. Perhaps before his father’s death… But that was hard to say and they were stuck with the present, weren’t they?

  So he had worked. He did his homework every night, for hours, and the extra work that his mother insisted he do as well. At the back of his mind, Chang could not quite make the connection between the work he had done, and the work he was now doing in the schoolroom. Were these his exams? They seemed endless and he couldn’t see how he was going to pass them, not with those shifting, altering words. Besides, surely he and Jeng would have got into trouble, if they’d really talked in the middle of an exam? And who was the schoolmaster? Chang had never been told the name of that spidery someone in the long black gown. Now that he thought about it, he could not even remember the man’s face, only the bony hand that wielded the cane.

  •

  Next day, the schoolroom seemed different, as if the memory of the dream had sharpened things. Chang took care to look around for Jeng, surrepti­tiously, in case they were being watched. Now that he was able to focus more clearly, he saw that some of the other boys in the class were dressed differently to himself, wearing old-fashioned clothes, robes and round hats rather than jeans and sweatshirts, or a school uniform. This struck him as peculiar but he could not really grasp why it should be so odd. After all, wasn’t this the place where — but at this point, Chang’s mind got stuck and
couldn’t break free.

  The characters on the page swam up, floating and foaming in air. They made Chang feel sick and queasy — a sensation that was only too familiar. It had been like this at home — and suddenly another memory jolted back. He was sitting up in bed, too tired almost to see. His books were spread out on the table, faintly illuminated by the glow of the computer. He could hear his mother and grandmother speaking in low voices in the next room. Above him, the light fitting was a thin line of shadow, the naked bulb switched off. His vision contracted until there was only the light fitting, that strong twist of wire looped through a hook set in the ceiling — and it was gone. Red light filtered through the window of the schoolroom.