“Find us more, Fool,” said Rhakshasas. “You are proving a more useful worm than we anticipated, and we are pleased. We may have rewards for you if you carry on performing so well, burrowing so sweetly. Find us more about the Man, about these murders.”
Fool thought of the bones again, of the mouths that rose up and opened and closed, about the Man’s voice and the way he writhed and grew and ate, about bodies with their souls ripped from them, and said nothing. What could he say? He was Hell’s Information Man, one of only two, and he had a trail to follow. Turning, he left the archdeacons as they turned toward each other and began to talk, their conversation sounding like a coarsened version of the trading delegation meetings he had attended, and left them to their work.
It was late, too late to keep investigating; the streets were unsafe. Even on his short walk between Assemblies House and the Information Offices, Fool could sense the danger. Of course, danger was a constant in Hell, always there, always hovering, but at night it became more distinct. At night, all but the heaviest of industries stopped working and the workers were free to come to the Houska. Some, those who had something to trade, would come and drink; others would simply hang around, hoping to steal or beg or borrow drinks. Some demons would buy drinks for humans in exchange for minor bites and brutalities before finding a Genevieve to use more harshly; others would simply take what they wanted by fist or claw or tooth. Even here, in the relatively quiet streets of the Bureaucracy, things held themselves in the shadows, shapes that beetled in patches of darkness and followed, waiting to see if a chance presented itself. Fool walked with one hand on the butt of his gun and hoped that he would not have to draw it.
The offices were quiet. Summer had gone to bed but was not asleep; he could hear her through the door, crying. For a minute he stood by her room, fist raised to knock, wondering whether he could comfort her somehow. He caught a glimpse of himself in the small mirror that hung in the hallway, its glass warped and dark, his battered and lined face a mess of bruises and scratches, his hair short and partially stubbled where the orphans’ flames had touched him, and thought, What comfort can I give? He let his hand fall and turned away, retreating to the main office.
Despite having cleared them earlier in the day, there was already a pile of new canisters on the floor below the tube. Fool, sighing, sat at his desk and started to open them, stamp them, and return them. After a few, however, he stopped and stared at the battered metal containers. Each one was a crime, each one a flat record of pain and fear and loss, sent by Rhakshasas and the other archdeacons, a never-ending tide that Fool could neither stem nor prevent. He thought of his face in the mirror, older than Gordie’s, and wondered how much longer he might last. Another day? A month? A year?
Leaving the canisters, he went to his room, stripped, and lay on his bed. Sleep came quickly and he did not dream.
17
Crow Heights was Hell’s oldest habitation, so the rumors had it, a huge walled enclave in which the oldest, most powerful demons resided. It was, besides the wall between Hell and the oceans of Limbo outside it and the Mount, on which the tunnel to Heaven sat, the highest point of Hell’s topography. Fool had never been farther than its gates.
Rumors; there were always rumors, passed like currency from person to person, always bad so that atrocity layered upon atrocity until the truths, if any existed, were lost. Black transports crawled Hell’s streets, it was said, picking up stragglers, bringing them to the Heights; demons drove the transports, minor ones, and once they delivered the humans, those people were never seen again. The Heights’ inhabitants had retreated there when Hell had drained its lakes of sulphur and doused most of its fires, disgusted with the changing approaches to the punishment of the Sorrowful, and no one and nothing, besides the black transports carrying the humans intended as food for those oldest and most powerful of Hell’s demons, ever entered or left the Heights. The buildings at the center of the Heights were permanently afire, flames boiling inside blackened walls; Satan himself lived permanently in the flames, never leaving, burning and watching and grinning all the while.
Of course, most of these rumors were nonsense, Fool knew. The delegations from Heaven sometimes stayed in the Heights, in vast decaying buildings not far from its main gate, and both food and documents were delivered here and waste removed by large gray transports driven by humans with demon escorts. Fool had accompanied Elderflower here several times, and although he had never been allowed to enter the place itself, he had seen through the gateway when the wooden barriers, black with age and filth, were opened. In those short moments, the Heights were revealed to him as a series of muddied streets disappearing between buildings constructed of damp and crumbling stone. Curls of mist rose from the mud, filling the streets with wraiths. With the exception of Elderflower and members of the delegation, he had never seen anything besides the mist move inside Crow Heights.
Before approaching the gates, Fool walked some distance around the Heights’ perimeter. It was early, still dark, and he had brought a lantern with him. Its flickering light showed him things he had looked at before but never truly seen. From a distance, the wall that encircled the Heights looked huge and solid, but closer to it Fool saw signs of slow decay. Plants burrowed through the mortar and wrapped themselves around the rusting metal spikes that topped the brickwork like a rotten crown. Moss, green and gray, furred most of the great blocks, and those that were still uncovered seemed to sweat moisture like anxious flesh.
In at least two places, Fool found that the wall had collapsed, leaving jumbled stone on the ground and gaps through which he could see more of the Heights’ silent streets. These were also rutted and muddy, and the buildings that hemmed them old and collapsing and black. Mist curled across the ground and up to the buildings in long, probing fingers. Nothing else moved.
The problem was, Fool didn’t know what he was looking for. Some grand demon, wandering the Heights’ streets and picking flesh from between its teeth? Dressed in flame, the Man had said, and black. Surely there were hundreds of demons like that, older ones at least; they rarely came into view but he knew they existed, even as he knew that Hell had once been a place that clothed itself in fire. Some of Hell’s rare older human inhabitants claimed to have memories of those times, when terrible things with horns and claws and eyes that were segmented and black moved among the humans and Solomon Water burned and all was repetition and pain, but it had not been that way for years. Elders were thought to be grotesque, but in a world of grotesqueries, how could he tell the difference? One of the archdeacons had been surrounded by flame, he remembered.
How could he know anything?
Most of the demons Fool came into contact with were small, spiteful, and violent and claimed ancient bloodlines but were not elders themselves. They lived together, carrying out the tasks assigned to them and dreaming, so Fool had been told, of being allowed to rise up to the human worlds beyond, of being summoned to serve in the places that came before Hell. They dreamed of slipping among humans, terrifying them and gorging themselves on their bad dreams, of living enough millennia to become something ancient and powerful, just as the humans dreamed of escaping Hell’s reach, of being Elevated. Everything dreamed of somewhere else, everyone dreamed of something different.
There was nothing here, nothing he could see anyway. What did the Man expect him to find? Even if he saw some flame-wrapped elder, he would have no idea whether it was the elder he was looking for; standing outside the Heights was like standing on Solomon Water’s shore and peering into its black water and hoping to understand what was in there. He would have to enter or forever be ignorant, and he was not allowed into the Heights and never would be.
Only, he wasn’t sure that was true. Elderflower had once used a word, jurisdiction, saying that the Information Officers had jurisdiction over the whole of Hell. Fool hadn’t paid attention at the time, merely filing the comment away in his head and trusting that Gordie would understand it and be able to expla
in it if that was ever needed. Didn’t jurisdiction mean he could go anywhere?
Did it?
He took a step onto one of the scattered blocks. It moved slightly under his weight and his foot slipped on the damp surface before steadying. Another step and he was up on its top, balancing, holding his lantern out ahead of him. A third step, and he was on another block. Am I doing this, he wondered, really?
No.
No, not because I think I should not, but because if I go in, I will not do it like a thief, creeping in through a hole in the wall. If I go in, I will go in through the gates, because I have the right, because I am one of Hell’s Information Officers and I have jurisdiction.
Standing on the blocks gave Fool elevation, allowed him to see a little more. The Heights’ streets rolled away in wide, straight lines, and as far as Fool could make out, its buildings were uniformly shabby and deserted. In the distance, some of the structures were larger, darker, shadows against the slowly lightening sky. Swinging his lantern, Fool gazed back along the rutted road toward the main entrance. A light flickered briefly ahead of him and then went out; somewhere, a guttural howl rose and fell away again. Crow Heights was no worse than any other part of Hell that Fool had seen. In some ways, he thought, it was better; quieter, certainly. Stepping down from the blocks, he returned to the track around the walls and went back to the main entrance.
Fool hammered on Crow Heights’ gate with the butt of his gun three times. The hammering left pale crescents etched into the rotting wood and sent dull echoes thudding into the air. For a few seconds nothing happened and then a hatch opened in one of the gates, clanging back to reveal a patch of pale shadow. It was above head height, a square a foot long on a side, seven feet or so from the ground. In the light from Fool’s lantern, the patch shifted and swayed; he had the impression of eyes at its center, staring at him, although whether human or demon he could not tell.
“Tradesmen around the side,” said a voice.
“I’m not a tradesman,” said Fool.
“Then fuck off,” said the voice and the hatch started to swing shut.
Startled, Fool stuck the barrel of his gun up into the space so that it couldn’t shut and said, “I need to come in.”
“Fuck off,” said the voice again. The hatch banged against the gun but Fool didn’t withdraw it.
“I have questions,” said Fool.
“And the only answer available here is ‘fuck off,’ ” said the voice, and Fool felt that fire again, the one that had sparked in him after shooting the demon in the bar. He tilted the barrel, pointing it downward inside the hole, and said, “Open the gate.”
Something inside the gate laughed, disbelieving, and Fool let the fire blossom inside him and pulled the trigger.
The sound of the weapon’s discharge was muffled by the thick wood of the gates, the flash filling the hatchway and scaring away the shadows. Fool’s hand jerked up from the recoil, the barrel banging into the top edge of the hatch, and then he leaped back from the gates. He expected something to happen, but nothing did. He retreated another few feet, holding his gun up, and waited as the reassuring weight of the new bullet formed.
“Open the gates or I fire again,” shouted Fool, and he was surprised to find he meant it, was almost looking forward to it. There was a heavy thump behind the gates and then a sound of something wet sliding, and they began to swing open.
Whatever fury Fool had expected to emerge form the gateway, eyes blazing and smoke pouring from its mouth, didn’t come. Instead, he faced a small demon, its face almost human. It was dressed in a too-large tunic covered in torn brocade, the stitching trailing threads and with a smoking hole low in one flapping lapel, and beside it was a large box; it saw Fool notice the box and tried to move in front of it. There were footprints on top of the box.
“What do you want?” asked the demon, and Fool recognized its tone of voice. It was one he’d heard humans use, heard them use all the time, had used himself; brittle, trying to project confidence when you were scared, unsure of yourself, putting up a front.
“To come in,” said Fool.
“No one comes in,” said the demon, tugging at the hem of its jacket. What Fool had taken for thicker cords of frayed material was part of the demon, he realized, dangling extremities of fur and skin and scale twisting slowly around each other.
“I am an Information Man of Hell, and I am coming in,” said Fool and walked past the demon into Crow Heights.
It screamed.
Fool had never heard anything so loud; it was a volume that had mass, weight, edges, was more than mere noise, and it slammed into his ears and sent him to his knees. He managed to look back over his shoulder, twisting his neck painfully around. The demon had its mouth open, its neck extended, its tongue stuck out and waggling back and forth so that the sound trilled. The dangling pieces of itself had tightened and lifted and Fool saw that each had a tiny mouth at its end, and that each mouth was contributing to the cacophony. Did you think it wouldn’t have weapons? he thought as the sound tore at him, and it seemed to be Gordie’s voice he heard. Did you think it wouldn’t be able to protect itself? Little overconfident Fool! His teeth gritted of their own accord and his hand opened. His gun fell to the ground as he raised his hands to his ears to try to block the sound. It didn’t help.
Keeping his eyes open became painful, as though dust was blowing in his face. He managed to blink away tears, eyelids flickering, and saw movement from the buildings ahead of him. Shapes slipped from the doorways, stooping as they emerged and then straightening, long ripples of darkness and redness that came across the earth toward him. They blurred, the sound vibrating his head, his eyes losing their focus, but he managed to make out flame and claws and horns. Something roared, audible even over the terrible scream. Fool’s bowels clenched, his stomach muscles tightening. He reached down, fumbled for his gun, and found it. It was thick with mud, slippery in his hand, but he raised it anyway. He couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t smell anything except dirt and flame and the stench of rotting flesh.
Crow Heights’ inhabitants were coming.
18
“What is this?”
The scream stopped suddenly, a new voice cutting through it. Something took hold of Fool’s shoulder and hauled him upward. He came upright, managing to get his legs under him and feeling the earth beneath his feet but then carrying on rising, finding himself lifted into the air. He tried to focus but his eyes were still loose in their sockets, feeling slack. He spun, blinked as his focus caught, and then was lost again before something large passed across his vision. It was holding him with a single long tentacle and it appeared and disappeared in his view, and he turned.
“An intruder,” said the little demon from the door. The sides of Fool’s face felt wet and he wondered whether his ears were bleeding but decided it was probably just tears and mud; now that the screaming had ended, the pain had also gone.
“Intruder?” said the second voice. Fool felt himself jerked farther up, the thing around his shoulder tightening. Something else slipped about his waist and another curled around his wrist. It dug in sharply and his hand opened, letting the gun fall for the second time. He had a brief view of it spiraling down, away from him, and then he was face-to-face with the demon holding him.
It looked like one of the smaller inhabitants of Solomon’s Water made large, a huge mass with no obvious limbs except for tentacles and something that might have been a set of wings but could equally easily have been fins. Its eyes were black and watery, the size of dinner plates, and its mouth was thick-lipped and full of needle teeth.
“Intruder,” said the thing as though tasting the word for the first time, and Fool knew that the only thing keeping him alive was that he had intrigued it, that it was wondering about him. The feeling wouldn’t last long, he didn’t think. He had to act now.
“My name is Thomas Fool,” he said, “and I’m an Information Man. I work for Hell. I have questions for you, for anyone h
ere who can give me answers.”
He was briefly weightless, falling, and then shock leaped through Fool’s body; the thing had dropped him and only the mud, thick and slimy and accommodating, had prevented him from being injured. He lay on his back staring at the morning sky, seeing the gray clouds wheel above him, shot through with streaks of whiteness from the distant gleam of Heaven, and then he rolled, scrabbling for the gun. After a frantic moment he found it and pulled; it came free from the mud with a sucking noise. Around him the demons were gathering.
They did not attack, but simply formed a tight semicircle about him. The entrance to Crow Heights, now also his exit, was behind him and he tried to slither crabwise toward it. He had gone only a few feet when his back banged against something solid—the little demon’s box.
“So this is him.”
The voice came from somewhere in the crowd. Light flickered beside him and Fool saw his lantern lying on its side in the mud, one of its glass panes broken but astonishingly still alight. The illumination it gave was uneven and dirty, producing as much smoke as light, but he grabbed at its handle, fearful of attack. Still none came. He lifted the lantern and the gun, sitting up to try to regain his balance. His stomach muscles protested, tautening painfully. He tasted mud, smelled it, felt dirt against his teeth. Spat.
“It is,” said another voice from in the crowd.
“Fool,” said a third.
“It is,” the second voice repeated, and even through the high-pitched whine of pain and fear in his ears, Fool recognized it. Something was moving through the demons, pushing past bodies that were myriad colors, furred and scaled, smooth and adorned with twisted outgrowths of hardened skin.
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