They came around onto a street that was pitted with the remains of old fires, some still smoldering, and that was littered with dead demons and angels. The burned remains of the Sorrowful were piled against the buildings, their flesh split and smoking, blue crackles still slithering across the piles as the vestigial remnants of their souls burned free to rise in the air like fireflies.
A single bauta ran out from a building ahead of them. It saw them running at it and shrieked, wheeling about and loping away, its head down, matted hair dragging across the dirt. As it reached the end of the street a spear of fire appeared from the clouds and impaled it, pinning it to the ground for a second before retreating and leaving the thing for dead.
Another street, another battleground. Here, the angels had come off worse and their dead outnumbered the dead of Hell, although chained remains of Sorrowful were plentiful in the debris. At least there’ll be a lot of space to take new souls out of Limbo, Fool thought darkly as they went past the mess of bodies and death. We won’t need Delegation discussions about that for a while.
Another corner, and they were at the top of the Houska now and the war was here, right in front of them.
A second train, this one still upright, had been driven along the Houska’s main street, blocking it. From its windows demons were attacking angels as the latter swooped and flew around them. Fool came to a halt and watched as an angel was caught by two demons, dragged in through the train’s window, and vanished from view. Fires, angelic and demonic weaponry, and the flames they brought into being crackled across the train’s engine compartment, smoke pouring from the vents that lined its sides, and its wheels ground over the dead and dying as it moved slowly forward.
The Man was there, sending his demon slaves to collect the still-living from where they fell, dragging angels and demons back into spaces and buildings, as Evidence Men scurried around the street, slashing with their tusks and claws, gibbering and capering. Mr. Tap walked through their midst, its angular frame and warped face dark, trying to marshal its troops to fight back effectively. An Estedea fell upon it but Mr. Tap grasped it, easily tearing into the angel’s wings, shredding them so that it couldn’t fly up from the street.
Before the bauta could reach it and finish what Mr. Tap had started, the Man had swallowed the fallen angel and stolen it away.
Fool and Gordie went along the Houska’s street, skirting the skirmishes and staying close to the buildings. In some, he saw hiding Sorrowful and demons, for once not attacking or being attacked, simply sharing the space and fearing for their lives.
Behind them the train veered across the street and crashed into one of the Houska’s brothels, grinding its way into the building’s interior, tearing brickwork loose, sending a cloud of dust and ripping, grinding noises out behind it. A moment later, the building’s roof collapsed, burying the front of the train. Angels flocked to its rear, the demons inside it still fighting, the Estedea still hovering above it all, occasionally swooping in to feed on the fallen and the damaged.
“We’re losing,” said Gordie.
They were. Even now, Mr. Tap had started to retreat, calling the bauta back to its side, the little demons forming a shield around it as it went. The Estedea massed above it, not attacking but not giving ground or air. Mr. Tap found a covered street between two buildings and disappeared into it, and the Estedea followed, and the horns sounded again, loud and triumphant.
“Come on,” said Fool.
With the Estedea following Mr. Tap, the battle moved away. Angels still clashed with the demons on the train, but the street itself cleared, leaving more of the dead and air thick with dust and the odor of sizzling flesh. An angel’s wing, white and feathered, lay against the wall in front of Fool and Gordie and they had to step over it to carry on. Blood trickled from the ragged stump that had, until recently, connected the wing to the angel’s back, and then the Man’s roots and stems slithered out from the building behind the wing and tangled around it, tugging it back in through the broken window. Feathers blew away from the wing as it vanished, and Fool remembered what the Man had said, that he’d be able to have all the feathers he wanted, and put his hand in his pocket. His own feather was still there, still safe, and he held it for a brief space, reassured by a cleanness and purity he could feel through his fingertips and palm even though he could not see it.
Another street, this one quiet. They made swift progress, wary, reaching the end without incident.
Another street, more of the dead, mostly Sorrowful here, a great chain of them, their bodies tangled together and blocking the path so that Gordie and Fool had to step into the road to go around them. On the far side of the pile was a Sundô, sitting and weeping. Gordie went to go to it but it looked up and hissed at him, its black face a mask of misery and pity and anger. They went around it and carried on.
The rest of the journey became a thing of pieces and segments and disconnected incidents. A building burning, demons on its roof throwing fire at angels flying around them. An angel crashing to earth in front of Fool and Gordie, its wings glaring arcs of flame. An Evidence Man leaping at them and Fool shooting it. He thought they might have passed along Solomon Water’s edge at some point and seen a creature as vast as anything he’d ever seen in Hell churning in the water, watching its sucker-covered tentacles lifting into the air and striking Estedea out of their flights as more angels hauled on ropes of fire to bring the creature up, sickly-smelling steam and smoke rising from the battle in equal measure.
Had he seen a swarm of Sundô carrying body after body aloft? Seen demons using the chained Sorrowful to flail at the flying angels? Heard screams and howls and the Estedea’s silences, felt the heat of flames and the ache in his muscles and tears on his cheeks, watched as the Man stalked through the chaos and took what he wanted, stealing the barely living away for his secret purposes? And, forming and reforming in the smoke above them, was that the face of Elderflower, grinning?
Yes, he thought, yes, and the memories were like curses in his mind, writhing and feverish and scorching.
The war ebbed and flowed around them and the dead filled the streets until it was impossible to see them, until it was impossible to take it all in, and they simply ran and they dodged and they hoped.
And Hell burned.
—
The war hadn’t reached the Flame Garden and it was quiet when Fool and Gordie arrived.
They approached along the wide road through the fields, walking in the center so that they were not too close to the Man. He’s everywhere, thought Fool as they came to the Garden, all over Hell. How can we hope to beat him?
Because we have to hope, because if we don’t then we may as well die now. Besides, he had the impression that the Man still wasn’t as absolute as he made out, that he was still limited, and that his attention was directed elsewhere at the moment. Fool was counting on it.
“You finally came,” said a voice from by the edge of the Garden. It was angry, thick, as though the speaker had a mouth of snot and mud. Fool looked around and saw the Archdeacons huddled by the entrance to the Garden. Beyond them, the flames reached up, staining the sky with swirls of soot and heat.
“We were summoned,” said a different voice, one that dripped with disgust and fury. “It thinks to summon us using the white thread of command, and then it doesn’t turn up to greet us.”
“I’m not sure if you’ve noticed,” Fool said, too tired to be polite or deferential, “but the streets aren’t exactly safe or quiet at the moment.”
“It dares to speak to us like this?” said the second voice, and a demon that appeared to be part pig and part cow emerged from the group, clearly electing itself spokesman. Its eyes blazed red and in its cloven hands it held what looked like a bell that it rang after everything it said, as though to punctuate itself.
“I’m not daring anything,” Fool said. “I’m trying to stop what’s happening.”
“And how would you do that?” Ding.
“How wil
l you, hiding by the Garden?” asked Gordie.
“The other little human talks!” Ding. “It speaks, little nothing that belongs to neither Heaven nor Hell. Be quiet, little nothing.” Ding.
“Shut up,” said Fool. The demon was startled into silence, its brown eyes flaring wide, its nostrils twitching open. One of the demons behind it, a thing dressed in dirty red and green rags and with long straggly hair covering its entire frame, simian and low, started to come forward, its legs scratching at the ground like a horse given to panic.
“Stay still and shut up if you want to live,” said Fool. “You’re losing this war, the Estedea are too strong for you. The only chance you’ve got is to trust me.”
“Trust you?” Ding.
“Trust me,” repeated Fool, “and stop ringing that damned bell. We have to persuade Heaven that the war isn’t just.”
“And how do we do that, little Information Man, little friend of nothing?” Ding.
Fool drew his gun and, before anyone could move, fired at the demon’s bell. It disintegrated, the bullet carrying on and punching into the demon’s side and shattering its wrist as it passed. The demon grunted and fell awkwardly to a sitting position in the dirt. “I said to stop ringing it,” said Fool. “Now, listen to me, and listen carefully.
“All of you, you need to go into the Garden and stay there, but stay where you can be seen from the entrance. Take the injured one and go, now. Stay on the path, stay where I can see you, don’t go too deep, and be prepared to fight.”
“And if we don’t?”
“Then stay here and hide, or go back and die. Kill me if you like, I’m too tired to care. Either you do things my way or I’m done and you can find yourself another Commander of the Information Office, find yourself another fool to toy with. War is here.”
Behind them, back toward Hell, light flashed in the sky and a column of smoke was rising up from somewhere in the Houska. The sounds of battle were getting louder and the shapes in the sky were growing larger. Another explosion shook the air, a distant ball of flame and smoke lifting and spreading and then flattening out against the low clouds before rolling away to nothing.
“And you, Fool? What will you do while we follow your instructions?” The demon in red and green, its voice the gruff and deep drone of flies and far-off machinery. It sounded scared, hopeful, desperate.
It almost sounded human.
Fool unbuttoned his shirt and looked at the bandage around his waist. The red bloom had dried to a dark maroon stain and the edges of the dressing had begun to curl over. Dirt had found its way under his clothes and smeared across the white material in black streaks. Fool found the pin holding the bandage together and undid it, unwinding the long strip and folding it carefully over his arm. His belly was a sunrise of bruises and scratches, the newest one the puncture inflicted by the Man, which had scabbed thickly. The lines of tattoos were just visible among the marks and the discolorations, and he poked at them deliberately.
“I,” he said quietly, “will be speaking to Mr. Tap.”
31
“What the fuck do you want?”
The tattoo Mr. Tap spoke tersely, its tone clipped, the tattoo less expressive than usual, the throat through Fool’s guts not opening to its usual depth. “I’m a little busy.”
Fool took a deep breath. Here it was. Here he went. “Busy hiding in the middle of your little men?” he said. “Busy running away?”
“What?” Mr. Tap sounded stunned at Fool’s reply, the tattooed face of it glaring, the eyes opening wide, and now the throat clicked open, now it was a hole deeper than Fool was thick, now it had teeth.
“I wondered how you were going to win this war if you kept running away? I saw you running. Elderflower saw you,” said Fool, invoking the only name he thought might scare Mr. Tap, Elderflower the cleric, Elderflower the unknowable thing. Further and further in, he thought. At least I have the consolation that whatever happens in the war, I’ll be dead anyway. Mr. Tap will murder me for this.
“You little shit, I’ll eat you alive,” said the tattoo calmly. Even now, even in the middle of all this, it can’t help but react, thought Fool, and then the face on his stomach grinned, wide, and its mouth opened. Teeth glinted behind the lips, and for the first time, Fool grabbed at his own split and splitting flesh. It felt like him and not like him at the same time, like himself and Mr. Tap overlaid, and it sent a shiver of wrongness up his arm. He placed one hand on the image’s lower lip, pushing it out to stop it biting at him, ignoring the bolt of pain the action caused. Another step, he thought, here we go, and with the other hand he punched at Mr. Tap’s eye. The tattoo blinked at him, startled by the blow that Fool felt as another throb of pain.
“I’m tired of being threatened by you,” Fool said. “You’re a coward.”
“I’ll eat your fucking soul, you little turd,” said the tattoo and gnashed at his fingers, trying to snap them away. If he managed, would the fingers be in my belly or its throat? wondered Fool. Where would they go when it swallowed?
Still holding the mouth apart, he said, “You’re not a coward? Prove it.”
“What game are you playing, Fool?”
“Do I have your attention, finally?” said Fool. He had it, the demon head of the Evidence, had it angry and concentrating on him, but it wouldn’t last. This was his opportunity. “I did my job, Mr. Tap. I went to Heaven and I was an Information Man, a proper one, not like your silly little demons or ghosts or whatever the bauta are. I did my job and now I can make my report.
“I’m at the Flame Garden. If you want to win this war, come here and bring the bauta, bring what’s left of the Evidence with you. We can end this war, demon. Surely you want that, or are you so confident that you’ll win? Come. After I’ve told you what I need to, you can eat me if you want.” Mr. Tap didn’t reply. “We’re at the end of things now; surely you want to be here in person?”
The tattoo stopped trying to bite at him and the lines of it sealed in from the edges, itching and burning as they did so. Before the mouth closed, Mr. Tap’s voice emerged from it a last time, muffled and dense.
“I’ll be there soon, Fool. I’m coming for you.”
“You’re not the only one,” said Fool quietly as the tattoo finished sealing. After the burn of pain had receded, he turned to Gordie and took the remaining pieces of the torn books from his jacket pocket and gave them to him.
“You know what to do?” They had discussed the plan before they arrived at the Garden. It was ill formed and unstable, but it was all they had.
“Yes.”
“Wait until you’re sure, Gordie. Wait until you’re positive.”
“I will.”
“Summer and Marianne and all the others, this is how we can remember them and honor them properly,” said Fool and held his friend’s gaze. He took the man’s hand on his own and clasped it tightly.
“I’m glad I had the chance to see you each again, you and Summer both.”
“I am, too,” said Gordie and then broke Fool’s gaze and grip and went to just inside the Garden. He sat at the edge of the wall, his back to it, careful to lean away from the flames coming up from the beds below, and then allowed himself to slip sideways, playing dead. The heat must be tremendous, Fool thought, but Gordie didn’t move. The Archdeacons, farther along the path and still huddled together in a protective clump, looked on, confused. There was only one more thing to do now.
It was time to call the Man of Plants and Flowers.
Fool walked to the edge of the field that ran close to the edge of the Garden. He removed his gun from its holster and pointed it at the earth, fired so that the shot tore into the soil and through plants. After the echoes of the shot had died away he said, loudly, “I want to make a deal.” As an afterthought, he took the feather and brushed it along the tips of the grass, carving a gentle figure eight in front of him.
There was a pause. The air popped with distant explosions and a hazy flash crawled across the sky over Foo
l and then the grass twisted up into a semblance of a person.
“The feather’s touch never gets old, does it?” asked Fool.
“What do you want?” the Man asked. “You burned me in the courtyard, you fight me, you shoot me, Fool, and I am not at all happy with you.” Fool stepped back. There were no branches here to force to grow into spears, but he was wary nonetheless; the Man had proved himself capable of attack in unexpected ways.
“I already said; I want a deal,” said Fool.
“I have my own feathers,” said the Man. “I don’t need yours.”
Fool, remembering the wing being dragged away, said, “I know. The feather isn’t on offer, it’s mine. What I’m offering, what I can give you, is the rest of the Archdeacons. I’ve already gathered them together for you.” He stepped farther back, letting the Man see the demons on the path through the Garden in case he had not already noticed them.
The Man paused, and when he spoke again his voice was quieter, friendly. “And you want?”
“I want some peace,” Fool said, and it was true, it was so true. “I ache. My body hurts. I’m so tired I can’t even see properly or think properly. I give you the Archdeacons, which means I give you Hell. In return you let me go, let me go and be somewhere quiet. I won’t bother you and you leave me alone.”
The Man paused again, longer this time, the sound of him the rustle of his thinking. Finally, he spoke again, and when he did his voice was even softer. “You’re more like me than you thought. You’re capable of coldness, Fool, coldness and betrayal.”
“You have your war, do what you want but leave me out of it.”
The Man thought for a long moment and then said, “Agreed, Fool. It’s a fair deal. Keep your feather and find your peace. I’ll take the Archdeacons and then I’ll take Hell and then Heaven.”
“They’re in the Garden.” It was so tempting to step aside, to let it play out that way, to be left to find some peace. “Come and get them.”
“No. Send them out.”
“If I send them out, they’ll know something’s wrong and they’ll scatter before you can take them in one go and then you’ll have to track them all over Hell. You’ll break our deal claiming I’ve broken my end of it, and I’m too tired and too hurt to play this game again. Come and get them. They’re waiting.” He stepped aside and gestured at the Archdeacons. “Yours for the taking. Do that, and Hell is without leaders, or at least, without leaders who have any grasp of what’s happening. By the time the ancient ones on Crow Heights have organized a replacement set, by the time Elderflower has decided what to do and done it, you’ll be in control of enough of Hell to be able to defend yourself.
The Devil's Evidence Page 40
