by Liz Williams
As the evening wore on, she bought a takeout and then made her way to the silent warehouses at the back of Shaopeng. You could lose yourself in here forever, if you were lucky: hidden among the little, private go-downs, the maze of back alleys. Robin did not know where she was going, only that as she walked she realized that she was becoming more herself. Every moment that she had lived, since childhood, she had been striving for something else: to better herself, earn money and security. She had molded her personality to make sure that she achieved these things, and now she looked back on the person she had been with a kind of wonder. Robin with the wealthy girlfriend, who only once had dared to criticize and say what she felt. Robin the loyal employee, who had acquiesced in someone else’s torment, administered it, lessened it in only little ways. Conscience was something that you had to be able to afford, and she had never been able to do that, until now. If I die tonight, Robin thought, at least I’ve been able to admit that I was wrong, and I did one good thing. I let Mhara go. Even if he was a demon. Her animal was dancing in front of her, Robin saw without surprise. She followed where it led.
15
Lights blazed from Paugeng, the whole place lit up like fireworks, lights exploding out across Ghenret and transforming the harbor into a puddle of flame. Jhai Tserai, just returned from Beijing, was on dyamentex to help her think, and it was making her grind her teeth, a sure sign that she’d got the dosage wrong. This annoyed her almost more than everything else. She’d invented it, after bloody all, and now she had given herself some ham-fisted quantity of the stuff. So, she thought, dragging her unruly thoughts back to the central problem. The control had escaped and now so had Robin Yuan, basically because Ei was too stupid to keep a hold on either of them. She did not blame Robin for the Geneva pills or the control’s flight, nor for her running from Paugeng, which had been an intelligent move. Jhai recognized the hand of Hell in this somewhere, the characteristic sulphurous reek. She was determined not to have to be rescued by Heaven at the last minute, however, no Faustus she. She wouldn’t rat her co-conspirators out. She would not deal, no matter what her contacts in Hell demanded.
The dyamentex stopped her from feeling the possible failure of her plans too deeply, but she knew it would hurt when the dosage wore off. She had instructed Ei to find the control and bring him back here; there was no need to do anything else just yet. They were supposed to find Robin, too, but she had not returned to her apartment, understandably. Tserai thought that she might head for Deveth’s old place. She was having that watched as well.
“We will see,” Jhai said to herself, and started grinding her teeth again. “We will see.”
The link rang and Jhai switched it on to find Ei’s grim visage staring back at her. “Colonel?”
“I think you should come downstairs, Madam,” Ei said. “We’ve had to take the detective into custody.”
“What?”
So Ei explained, and with growing interest, Jhai listened.
16
Apart from his arrest, the last thing Zhu Irzh remembered with any clarity was standing at the edge of the site. Then Roche had turned on him in a fury, and that was the last thing that was clear. He retained a confused impression of the man beneath him on the ground, his face bloody and contorted with rage and fright, and after that there was only blackness and silence. His arm stung, and his head felt thick and heavy. Ei must have drugged him when she bundled him out of the transport vehicle. Experimentally, he tried to move, and discovered that his limbs were restrained. His head seemed to be held in some kind of brace, and a strap passed underneath his chin and between his teeth, cutting into the sides of his mouth. They had muzzled him.
“He’s moving,” someone said, above him.
“Make sure he’s still tied, for God’s sake,” a second person—Ei?—replied. “I don’t want him breaking out in here.”
Zhu Irzh tried to shake his head, to reassure them that the episode was over, but this had the result of a tighter pull on the gag. They seemed to be passing along a corridor: there were a series of lights that illuminated a high, narrow strip of ceiling. He reached out and lightly touched the mind of the man at the back: a slow, stupid brain. It was like touching something stuffed with flock. The one at the front was a different proposition. He could see the back of a blonde head and the mind within was quick and subtle, as though he tried to catch an eel. That was Ei, then. The demon lay still and let himself be carried. He heard the hum of a door, and then was taken through into somewhere that smelled of water, rank and saline. They lowered the stretcher to the floor and moved away. The door closed again, and he heard a series of clicks. The bonds removed themselves from his wrists and ankles, drawing back into the edges of the stretcher. The gag remained. He lay still for a moment, flexing toes and fingers until the circulation returned, and then he stood up.
He was in a small, curved cell, the shape of a comma. He could feel the spit and crackle of warding spells, but not, he thought, terribly strong ones. Zhu Irzh grinned to himself. He loved being underestimated. In the bulge of the comma was a plexiglass opening, beyond which his captors stood, gaping at him like people in front of an aquarium. Ei rapped on the glass. “Can you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I want you to be aware of a number of things, demon. Firstly, you’re in Paugeng’s prison unit. Secondly, you’re being held for unprovoked assault, which carries an extensive sentence under local corporate law: three years, according to city statute. No remission, and no diminution. Thirdly, your employer has been notified and will be obliged to pay for your board. If they refuse, the money must be repaid within thirty days of leaving this building, otherwise you’re back inside. It’s not very fair, but you should have thought of that when you attacked Dowser Roche.”
“Have you spoken with Jhai Tserai?”
“Madam Tserai’s gone to Beijing, on business.”
“When will she be back?”
“I don’t know. That’s up to her,” Ei said primly.
“I see,” Zhu Irzh remarked. He sat down on the molded bench that extended from the wall. His new position had not yet sunk in; the remains of the trank still fumed within his brain. With an effort, he tried to get a grasp on the situation, but he was starting to fade and soon, they were all gone again.
Somewhere in the recesses of imagination, Zhu Irzh was distantly aware that he dreamed. He was floating deep in the airless, starry depths of the Sea of Night. Globes hung close by, like glowing fruit. Zhu Irzh thought they might be worlds. Warmth sang through his veins with the heat of a sun; its grip took him with a force beyond orgasm and he gasped. It punched him through the membrane between death and life, Heaven and Hell. He could feel all the worlds at once. A great red eye, many times his own height, gazed at him for a moment and then the crack through which it glanced closed up. The sound of his own blood beat in his skull like a drum. All was silence for a moment, then a wave was upon him. He stood surrounded by it, like a man on an island, and despite the roaring in his ears he heard the tinny clatter of metal. Looking down, he saw that the coins of the I Ching lay at his feet, scattered across a web of light. It was curiously familiar; bending down, he saw that it was a map of the meridians of the city, as faint and fragile as one of the skeins of silk that the spiders draped across the hibiscus hedges.
Then the vast rushing tide was gone. The demon turned. Out of the shadows a speckled, doglike creature padded, and looked at him with human eyes. The beast opened its mouth and exhaled a great sour breath of rotten meat.
“Look what I have become,” it said.
“What are you?” the demon asked. “What were you?” And the beast sighed.
“Only a human woman, but I wanted more. I risked everything,” the beast said, with a laugh like a hiss. “And I lost everything. I should be in Hell, but instead I am here, between all the worlds that are.”
Zhu Irzh remembered a crack, opening between the worlds, and a crimson eye, watching. Memory made him shiver a
nd Zhu Irzh, a demon after all, did not like this added humiliation. He crouched beside the beast and said, “What is happening, to this world and Hell? Can you tell me? Why should you be in Hell? What is this risk that you took?”
The beast gave its long lipless smile.
“Someone is gambling for high stakes. As high as Heaven itself. I was told that my help would buy that prize for Hellkind, the greatest prize of all. So that all the worlds would become one world, beneath the thrall of Hell. I was told that my power would be limitless. Instead, they killed me once my role was over.”
“Someone. Who?”
The beast said, “The goddess Senditreya. She who is the patron of dowsers. She has fallen, in Heaven. She is no longer one of the great ones. She wants her rightful place back again, even if it involves the betrayal of her world to Hell. And she has human help.”
“Who?” the demon said again, pressing.
“Myself, when I lived. Jhai Tserai, who lives now, but for how much longer? Tserai lied to me. She told me I was at her own right hand, that I would rule Earth alongside the demon and herself. She told me that together we would open a gate between the worlds and so we did, but the price was my life and my soul. Now she and Senditreya plot while I walk the waste between life and death. This was not,” the beast added pathetically, shaking its brindled coat, “what I had planned.” It glanced uneasily over its shoulder, as if something might be listening. “You can save the city, if you choose, demon. You who have less allegiance to it than any human.” It grinned, beginning to dissolve and coil into the air.
Zhu Irzh stepped hastily back and as he did so, he woke up. He was once more confined in the cell. His head beat like a giant, unnatural drum and his mouth tasted of ancient socks. He had been given answers, but were they even real, or simply the product of a monumental hangover? Well, Zhu Irzh thought grimly, there was only one way to find out.
The cell was dim and translucent, almost ghostly. He raised a hand, and summoned his strength in order to cast a spell. He was by no means sure that he would succeed, but he was damned if he was going to be confined here indefinitely. He’d had enough of being at the mercy of involuntary whims; it was time to take control. Taking a deep breath, he pressed the plexiglass wall and released the spell. The spells that had warded him gave way and then the wall itself shattered, soundless and slow. The demon stepped through. Time slowed in the spell’s wake. There was a man at Zhu Irzh’s shoulder, his mouth opening and closing in underwater languor, and as the black muzzle of the gun came up the demon swatted the man casually aside and strode through into the hallway. Voices whispered through the air. He could detect the familiar iron smell of blood, and it pulled him toward it, faster and faster until he was running down the corridor. Shadows streamed past him. Two carved double doors stood before him; he flicked them open and stepped through. Abruptly, the voices stopped.
As the demon stepped through the door, the guns came up to greet him. Time glided to its normal speed as the spell faded. Zhu Irzh did not raise his hands but stood watching the security detail as they looked nervously to their employer for guidance. Jhai Tserai was standing behind by a desk, mouth open. It was the first time, the demon thought, that he had seen her genuinely surprised. An interesting combination of expressions crossed her face: momentary fear, supplanted by confusion, and, unless he was greatly mistaken, a trace of guilt.
“How did you get out?” Jhai said.
Zhu Irzh shrugged. “I walked through the window.”
“The—? Oh, the plexiglass. You’re not supposed to be able to break that,” she said. She bit her lip in consternation. She suddenly looked about ten years old. “We’ll have to get that mended,” she added.
“In time for the next incumbent?” the demon suggested blandly.
“I’m not going to waste a perfectly good cell,” Jhai told him, then glanced at the ring of guns as if for the first time. “Oh, put those away,” she told the security detail impatiently. “You won’t need those.”
A brave gesture, Zhu Irzh thought, inviting trust, but he saw that her right hand remained below the level of the desk. Jhai was looking at him curiously. “I gather you had an—episode—of some kind?” She was giving him a chance to explain himself, which was, Zhu Irzh supposed, more than he deserved. He paused for a moment, considering. He could tell Jhai the truth: that it had been involuntary, atypical, inexplicable. But it sounded like a weak excuse, and perhaps it would not hurt for her to see him as a little dangerous. At the moment, she had him at a distinct disadvantage. He was a demon, after all, and Jhai was nothing more than a human girl. Time to regain some ground, Zhu Irzh thought.
“I’m afraid I lost my temper,” he said coolly. “I really must apologize. Inexcusable, but my kind are often like that. How is the unfortunate Mr Roche?”
“He’ll live. He’s not badly hurt. But I want your assurance that it won’t happen again.” She gave him a stern look, like a schoolteacher faced with a recalcitrant child. It was not how Zhu Irzh had expected to be treated. Jhai blinked innocently under his stare. He thought: What have you been up to, Jhai Tserai? What are you planning to do? If what the beast had told him was true … Everything seemed to lead back to Jhai and Paugeng. Zhu Irzh walked across the room, and as if the guards were not even there, he put a gentle hand to her cheek. She stared up at him, wide-eyed. The demon smiled.
“Only if you come and see me,” he murmured. “To talk things through.” And after a moment, Jhai nodded.
“I’ll ask Ei to take you home.”
Colonel Ei was clearly unhappy with this state of affairs. With her gun drawn, she accompanied Zhu Irzh to a vehicle waiting in a compound behind the building, keeping a narrow gaze upon him all the way. He could feel that gaze boring a hole between his shoulder blades, as though Ei had stabbed him with an icicle. He supposed that he could not blame her. Ei motioned to the vehicle, a long, black limousine, with the gun.
“Get in.”
“Thank you,” the demon said politely. He felt that he ought to make up for his earlier lapse. Ei’s face became even more pinched and sour, like a collapsing lemon.
“And shut up.”
Zhu Irzh started to say something, but nodded instead. He climbed into the vehicle and Ei got in behind, still with the gun pointed unwaveringly at the demon’s throat. She knew where to strike, then. And he was also sure that Ei felt herself to be good enough not to miss. The limo set off through the Paugeng compound and out into the port area. Zhu Irzh studied the vehicle with interest: it was certainly a fine car. He was tempted to play with the gadgets on display, but thought better of it.
There was a carton on the seat next to the driver, filled with sticky pink glop. Zhu Irzh tried not to concentrate on the insipid odor of warm shrimp congee that filled the vehicle. Zhu Irzh’s stomach contracted in longing. The muzzle of Ei’s automatic remained pointed at Zhu Irzh’s throat. Ei watched him with an impassive lizard’s gaze, and Zhu Irzh saw her fingers tighten rhythmically against the butt of the gun.
“We’re nearly at your home,” Ei said. “Don’t think that I don’t know already where you live. I know everything about you, demon. I have made it my business. I’ll be watching you.”
“Madam,” Zhu Irzh informed her as the limo slowed, “I wouldn’t doubt it for a second.” He suspected that Tserai had chastised her, but why? Why have him arrested in the first place, then let him go? Because Tserai knew that she couldn’t hold him? Or was there some other reason. Zhu Irzh was getting the distinct impression that Ei had acted on her own initiative, and that she was somehow not quite in the loop.
The door snapped open, releasing Zhu Irzh into the day. He decided that it would give Ei too much satisfaction if he watched the limo slide away, and so he turned his back on it and went into the local chophouse. Congee porridge, he thought, would do nicely for breakfast. Perhaps with a side dish of blood.
17
The hospital wing had fixed Paravang’s ribs and bound up the scores in his
flesh under a protective coating of synthetic skin. They kept him unconscious for a day or so, to let him mend, and woke him up on the following day. He was sore, but his ribs had healed and his worst afflictions were a severe itching and an unpleasant harsh taste in his mouth, soon removed by several cups of tea.
“You can go home now,” the nurse said. He smiled brightly at Paravang, who grunted in reply. They had sent round a car, and so he traveled back to Bharichay in comparative splendor. Once he was back in the safety of his small flat, he breathed a sigh of relief. Perhaps things would quiet down now. He spent a peaceful couple of days or so, reading and practicing Hsing-I to loosen his aching muscles. Paravang’s neighbor fed him throughout his indisposition, producing bowls of chicken breast soup and noodles on the hour. Paravang grinned grimly at the thought. She probably wanted something.
