Fool breathed, deep, drawing Heaven into himself and feeling its cleanness fill his insides. It made him feel lighter, less grimy, yet strangely sad. He wasn’t Elevated, hadn’t earned the right to enjoy the cleanness, knew that it was finite and that soon he’d have to relinquish it and return to the place of filth and pain and heat and fear, yet enjoyed it anyway, holding it to him, not knowing how long he’d be allowed to experience it for.
“Will we be arriving soon?” demanded Catarinch.
“Soon, yes,” replied Benjamin. “The journey is a useful one, allowing you to acclimatize yourself to Heaven. Please do not worry, Catarinch, we will arrive at our destination soon enough and the work can proceed then.” Fool wondered if Catarinch would complain at the use of its name, saw the demon lean forward and then back, obviously thinking the better of it. Benjamin was smooth, felt curiously unassailable, and Fool suddenly understood; this was another power play. The journey didn’t need to be this long, it was being made deliberately so to keep Catarinch and Wambwark and, presumably, him and the scribe, unsettled. As if to confirm it, he glanced ahead in time to see the road move, curving away from the sea, changing its shape, stretching and rippling and creating new loops for them to travel. Wambwark, facing the road, saw it as well and spat out maggots in a spray of foul odor to express its displeasure.
Benjamin simply smiled and the transport carried on its unhurried way.
Beyond the sea was a city, but not the city in the sky that Fool saw from his lowly place in Hell. Where that was all gleaming spires and towers that pierced the clouds above them, their feet lost in Hell’s own atmosphere, the cityscape they now approached consisted of smaller buildings, low and made of simple brick. Nothing in it appeared to be over two stories tall except a central hall that had four layers of windows. The transport threaded through streets whose pavements contained yet more near-motionless humans, heads down or up, sometimes swaying, occasionally walking. Were they going anywhere? No, Fool saw. Now that they were closer to the humans, hemmed in by the narrowness of the streets, he saw that all of them had their eyes closed. Wherever they walked to, it was a movement led by instinct or dream rather than sight and intention.
What was this place? It wasn’t the Heaven that Fool had imagined; that place had been filled with the sounds of fun and enjoyment, of conversation and interaction and friendship and laughter, but this place was silent except when he closed his eyes and heard the music, and the people looked as distant from each other as they were in Hell.
Above them, angels flew in great swoops and whirls, back against the sheet of the sky.
“We have arrived,” said Benjamin as the transport came to a halt in front of the larger building.
“Good,” said Catarinch. “At last. To work.”
—
The meeting had been long, and Fool had understood little of it.
It had taken place in a room on the top floor of the large building, which Benjamin had told them was called the Anbidstow, with Catarinch and Wambwark and two angels who had not been introduced to Fool. Just as he had in almost every Elevation meeting in Hell, Fool stood by the room’s windows and looked out, keeping an ear half open for the sounds of the meeting behind him in case they called upon him. Benjamin stood beside Fool by the window, silent and smiling continuously.
The view was of a vast tract of farmland, with no sign of the sea they had traveled past earlier. The space was split by thin green lines that he thought might be hedges or fences, creating a patchwork effect that fell back into the distance.
“Why does it change?” Fool eventually asked Benjamin. “Heaven, I mean. There was a sea before, we passed it, but it’s not there now.”
“Isn’t it?”
“No. I can’t see it, anyway.”
“Then it must be gone, or at least, moved away. Heaven changes according to what its residents dream about. Before they were dreaming about the sea. Now they dream about something else.”
“I don’t understand.”
“No. Do you need to?”
“Yes.” Yes, because that’s my job, that’s what I have to do, I have to understand.
Benjamin turned to face Fool, and for the first time, he wasn’t smiling. “Heaven is of the dreams of its inhabitants and the places they feel safest and happiest. Before, people dreamed of the sea, and some still do, but many have moved on and they think of other things.” He gestured at the view beyond the window.
“Now they dream of rolling fields and warm summers.”
Fool closed his eyes again, trying to understand, and immediately his head was filled with music.
“Can you hear it?” asked Benjamin.
“Yes,” said Fool, and opened his eyes. The music stopped. “What is it?”
“The sound of Heaven,” said Benjamin simply. “It jolts you because you are not of Heaven.”
“How do I stop it?”
Benjamin reached forward, and stroked Fool’s cheeks with both hands; his touch was soft and cool. “If it bothers you, I can ease it.”
“Please,” said Fool, thinking that if he heard the sound every time he shut his eyes, he’d never sleep, might eventually go mad. Even when he blinked, he caught slivers of it, tiny sliced fragments of the sound, pure and delicate and maddening.
Benjamin removed his hands from Fool’s face and licked the tips of his forefingers. He then pushed the spittled fingers into Fool’s ears, rubbing the warm liquid around the edges of his ear canals.
“Close your eyes,” said Benjamin. Fool did so; the sound was gone.
“Thank you.”
“It was my pleasure, Thomas Fool. It is an honor to assist you. If you wish to hear the music again, simply rub away the barrier I have placed in your ears.”
They turned back to the window. The view was still farmland, but Fool was sure that the arrangement of the lines, the edges, had shifted, creating a new patchwork. I’ve held a feather from an angel’s back, watched one fall and burn, and now I have one’s spittle in my ears protecting me from music that I should find beautiful, that I do find beautiful but that’s also oppressive. It’s Heaven, he thought, how did I ever think I would understand it? Concentrate on the thing you can understand, on being Fool, and on the job. Concentrate on the Delegation.
Catarinch was doing most of the talking, although Wambwark was making occasional injections in a low rumble, the smell of which reached Fool at the window a second or two later. The angels seemed to understand Wambwark well enough and replied to whatever it had said or asked. The discussion ranged around, but concentrated most on something that Fool thought might have been a border dispute, about the edges of Hell and the edges of Heaven, rather than souls taken or given. Both the angels and demons had concerns and raised them.
None of the four referred to Fool except to tell him when the meeting was finished, and the angels didn’t come for him until later, when he was alone in his room.
7
Fool’s room was little more than a large cell, containing a bed with soft cotton sheets and a woolen blanket, a desk, and a chair. A globe of glass was mounted to the wall on a bracket, and it grew brighter as the day outside the small window grew darker. When Fool touched it, he found it was not hot, and he could make it dimmer or brighter by stroking it up or down.
In the globe’s light, Fool stripped and looked down at the tattoos that now snaked across his skin. Were they changed? Different from the designs that he had first seen? Hadn’t there been a spiral under his left nipple, where now there was a thing that might have been an ear? Hadn’t that stretch that looked like a branch been a series of linked circles? He ran his finger along some of the thicker lines, feeling them as a set of ridges under his skin, pushing out the scarring in a raised set of whorls and loops. They hurt when he pressed down, not terribly but enough so that the pain left its ghosts when he raised his finger and released the pressure. He sat on the edge of the bed, looking at the lines that wound around his legs and knotted across his thighs a
nd hips, and wondered if he would ever truly recognize himself again. He was born an adult, fished from Limbo, and given flesh and a role in Hell little more than five years ago, and although he had been scarred during his time as an Information Man, his flesh had always been his own when he looked at it before.
Now it was marked with something else’s design. He was owned, defined, and branded by Rhakshasas. He clenched his fists, tightened his tendons, and gritted his teeth. Owned Fool, he thought, little owned Fool, like cattle.
There was nothing he could do; that was always the endpoint in Hell. He was as helpless as ever, as controlled as ever, a man whose purpose and actions seemed always to be dictated by others. Best to try not to worry about it, he supposed, to carve out what little freedoms he could from the defined patterns of his life. Best to be Fool, his Fool, whenever he could rather than theirs.
He sat on the bed, the mattress relaxing under him, and wondered if he might be about to have a good night’s sleep in sheets that were clean and thick and soft. He reached out and turned the glass lamp until the room was a warm and dark cocoon around him. He lay back, feeling every ache from the last few days work its way out into his muscles, feeling his heart finally settle into a slower beat as he tried to put his thoughts in order.
The shadows spoke his name.
As the words emerged from the darkness, a mouth formed in the air above Fool’s head, the gloom shifting and twisting, creating a pair of lips several feet long. They reddened, taking on a cherry gleam, and then drew back, split to reveal a tongue and teeth that were white and smooth. They spoke again in a voice that rumbled and crashed, made Fool reach for his ears in pain. It was so loud, so heavy, and it pierced his covering hands and stabbed into his ears, through his ears and into his head.
“Thomas Fool, we apologize for the intrusion, but we have need of your skills.”
Fool rolled off the bed, reaching out for his gun but unable to find it in the darkness. His skin tightened, prickles rising across it as a pale, ghostly blue light flickered around the room.
“Do not be afraid, Thomas Fool. We are the Malakim, the messengers of Heaven, and we must ask a boon.”
Fool scuttled back, feeling behind him until he found the wall, and then pressed himself back against it. The mouthed darkness moved with him, hovering above him.
“My ears,” he managed to gasp. “Please.”
“Another apology, Thomas Fool,” said the voice, volume lowering, still loud but less painful now. “We sometimes forget ourselves.
“There have been…” and the voice paused, the mouth pursing before continuing, “incidents that we do not understand but that you may. We have been told of your skills. We asked for your presence in this Delegation specifically, Thomas Fool. We need your help.”
The voice filled the room and surely everyone in the building could hear it, surely the walls themselves had to be shaking at its crashing and roaring, even now, even at this lower level. Fool clamped his hands over his ears, spoke even though he couldn’t properly hear himself.
“You asked for me?”
“Indeed. We asked for Thomas Fool, the Information Man, and Hell obliged, for which we are grateful. There will be a price to pay in future dealings with the Delegations from the Great Enemy, we are sure, but we considered that the price was worth paying.”
“What do you want? How can I help you? I don’t understand,” Fool said, still scrabbling for the gun, knowing it would be of no use but wanting the security of it. Still it eluded his grasp.
“For you to be yourself,” said the voice, the mouth in the air coming lower, shrinking, its volume finally dropping to something like a normal pitch, becoming almost conspiratorial. The blue glow shimmered around them, painting the walls with ripples and darts of light.
“To be myself?”
“To be an investigator, Thomas Fool, to ask the questions that investigators ask.”
“Why?”
“There’s an irregularity in Heaven, Thomas Fool, the first of its type in an age, maybe the first of its type ever.”
“Surely you have someone who can investigate it for you?”
“We have soldiers, Thomas Fool, angels that guard against the return of the rebellious and the mistaken, but we have no investigators. Until now, we have had no need of them. This is a thing beyond our understanding, and we have need of you. We can learn, but it takes time. Please, Thomas Fool, assist us?”
He was being asked, not ordered. Did that mean he could say no, return to his soft bed and to sleep? Tell them to ask God, the all-seeing deity with a hundred hidden names, for the solution? Tell them that it wasn’t his problem, his problem was staying safe, returning to Hell, and trying to stay safe there as well?
No.
No, of course not, because he was an Information Man, once Hell’s only Information Man but now Commander of the Information Office, and it was what he did and what he was. He stood, watching the mouth, still several feet away, as it drifted across the room and came to a halt above his bed, the flickering glow shivering around the room creating shadows that swayed and turned.
“What do you want me to do?”
“You will help?”
“Yes,” he said.
“We are told that you had a feather once, Thomas Fool, a feather from an angel who served Heaven? That you held his feather and assisted him?”
“Yes,” said Fool, remembering the feather burning, the smoke of it greasy yet somehow clean.
“Then please, take this as a mark of our thanks and as a token of our respect.”
A feather fell from the ceiling above Fool, drifting down to land at his feet. It was long and nearly white, curved gently, and glowed with a light that came from within it, tiny streaks of gleam drifting from it like sparks. Crouching, he picked it up, and where its light fell on his arm his skin instantly felt soothed and calm.
“You have our gratitude. Your guide will arrive any moment,” said the Malakim, and the mouth dwindled, the shadows untwisting, becoming simply shadows again. Fool raised the light in the room again by touching the globe, not letting go of the feather, feeling its clarity, feeling its purity, and dressed rapidly. He was just strapping his holster on when there was a knock at his door.
Thomas Fool, Commander of the Information Office of Hell, went to investigate a mystery in Heaven.
PART TWO
FLOWERS
8
The dead man was lying on the carousel platform at the foot of a wooden horse, calliope music filling the air around him.
Fool stepped up onto the slowly revolving platform, looking around at the other horses gently rising and falling on their brightly painted poles in a constant wave, and at the humans on the horses’ backs. A single angel moved among the riders, walking silently, occasionally repositioning a rider who had slipped or patting one of the horses’ wooden necks.
The angel had arrived at Fool’s door minutes after the Malakim had vanished, knocking on the door and waiting until Fool opened it before speaking. The angel was almost as tall as Mr. Tap, and it was burning. Its entire body was encased in bright fires, although no heat came from the flames, and at the center of the conflagration was the first female angel that Fool had met.
“Thomas Fool,” she said, and bowed her head. “I am Israfil, and I am sent by the Bureaucracy of Heaven.” Her long hair was hanging down, and the flames glittered and danced across it and played across her skin. The flames reminded Fool of the buildings in Hell, burning and glowing, the light of them a rich and moving thing. Israfil’s glow spread along the corridor outside his room and, as he stepped out, showed him Benjamin waiting, wings still hooked over his head, face still partially shadowed. The angel nodded at him but did not speak.
Fool put the feather into his jacket pocket, pushing it deep in to ensure he didn’t lose it, and said, “Shall we go? You can tell me about the mystery on the way.”
“Mystery?”
“I’ve been asked to investigate a mystery
.”
“We know nothing about a mystery,” said Benjamin. “We have simply been asked to act as your guides.”
“We do not need him,” said Israfil quietly. “There is nothing for the human to see.”
“Israfil,” said Benjamin, equally quietly. “We have our orders.” Dissent, little Fool, you’re already the cause of angelic dissent. Curiously, Fool found the notion oddly pleasing.
The angels hadn’t been told that there was a mystery to solve. Why? Fool wondered. Because the mystery was shameful? Because they weren’t senior enough? It was intriguing and Fool felt a first flicker of curiosity in his stomach. This, he thought, is going to be interesting.
The two angels led Fool through the corridors of the Anbidstow, down a flight of stairs at the rear of the building, and out into a small courtyard in which a transport waited. The vehicle was black, smaller than the one that had brought the Delegation to the building had been. It had no driver, and was roofed over with matte-black metal.
“I will not travel with him,” said Israfil.
“Very well,” said Benjamin, “meet us there.”
The angel and Fool climbed into the rear of the transport and, as Israfil unfolded her wings and flapped them, rising into the air, they started moving. The journey to the fairground was quick, the transport finding or creating a straight road down which to travel, moving faster than the one that had brought him from the gate to the Anbidstow. It made him think again that their first journey through Heaven had been one intended to make a point; much as Hell had put Heaven’s Delegation in the oldest and smallest transport it had, so Heaven had deliberately moved the demons and Fool slowly and through as many places as possible, showing them the sights, giving them comfortable traveling conditions, to prove who was in charge. He thought about it as they traveled, Benjamin silent beside him. Heaven is as capable as Hell of pettiness and one-upmanship, he decided. It’s all games.
The Devil's Evidence Page 9
