by Liz Williams
“Mhara?” Robin asked. “Can you see the future?”
He sighed. “A little. But it’s never very clear, except for this one vision.”
“Can all demons see the future?”
“I don’t know.” He paused. “I am not a demon.”
She stared at him: at the long claws, the sharp canines. “You’re not human.”
“No. But nor am I Hellkind, Robin. My home is Heaven.”
“What?”
“I am a—member of the Celestial Court. My mother is Zasharou Selay, Lady of Mists, a maid of the goddess Kuan Yin.”
He glanced at her, and when she looked into the calm blue eyes, it made perfect sense. “But—what are you doing here? And—those.” Lightly, she touched his clawed fingers.
“I was captured. And changed.”
“Oh gods,” Robin said, in sudden frozen horror. “The drugs I gave you.”
“Yes. The drugs. All unwittingly, Robin, you have been the instrument of my transformation.”
She stared at him, aghast. Before them, the vaults of the temple stretched on, arching into night, and they could hear the river now, a limitless rush of water, its currents reaching out to snare the boat and pull it forward.
“Listen,” Mhara said. The sound of the river was growing louder, and the air was filled with dampness, a fresh blowing wind that bore rain. The little boat was sucked along the eddying current, spinning from end to end. Robin and Mhara clung on, and then the boat was spun through an open sluice and out into the wider stream. Robin caught a glimpse of the sluice gate, shattered on its hinges and hanging limply above the torrent. She could not see far around her. The mist that had hung over the water had thickened steadily, and now lay in a fog around them, despite the freshness of the air.
“Robin,” Mhara said, and his eyes were like lanterns in the dim light, “We are entering the space between the worlds. We are coming closer to the Night Harbor. And I will tell you frankly—I am afraid.” His mouth was tightly set. Suddenly the Paugeng troops, presumably still in pursuit, seemed the least of their worries. Robin reached out and rested her hand on his arm.
“Don’t worry,” she told him. “Don’t worry”—as if by repeating it she would reassure herself. Slowly the mist began to pull away, carried into the upper air by the river wind, and as it did so Robin realized that she could see the stars. They were the same fiery spiraling constellations that she had seen above the cemetery, and as she watched, one of them plunged toward the water, hissing as it fell. She leaned over the side of the boat and trailed her hand in the river. It was icy, no longer the tepid, chemical broth of the city, but something clear and dark and cold. It stung her fingers, and she pulled her hand away. The current was taking them quickly, but she couldn’t see the banks of the river, only a clouded darkness. Something wheeled above the prow of the boat, crying out in an empty voice, and Robin ducked in alarm. She felt Mhara’s arm around her, holding her convulsively close.
“It’s only a gull,” she whispered, and the white shape whirled up on the wind and away. “Mhara? Don’t be so scared.”
“I can’t help it … When they brought me here, it was like this then, between my world and yours. There was nothing there. It was not real, not a real place, and neither is this one.”
“Then where are we?”
“The Night Harbor,” Mhara said, so low she could hardly hear him. “Where everything changes.”
Light was growing around them, bursting from the cool moist air above the river. It was so dazzling that Robin cried out and shielded her eyes with her arm. Mhara’s grip tightened around her waist.
“They’re shooting at us!” she shouted, flinching against the expected pain, but although the sound grew louder, she felt nothing. She opened her eyes. The boat had stopped, coming to rest against the side of a weed-slick wharf, and above them the sky was ablaze with fireworks. Not gunfire, but firecrackers, and Robin remembered being a little girl and making the same mistake.
“Come on,” she said. They were three or four feet below the wharf, and without stopping to think Robin got a foothold on the wet stone and hauled herself upward. She caught a glimpse of Mhara’s tense face beneath her. She reached a hand down and helped him up.
“Where are we?”
The wharf was narrow, surrounded by a rickety nest of warehouses. It looked like somewhere in the city, perhaps Ghenret or Orichay. Fireworks spilled out into the night, chrysanthemum flowers sailing through the darkness, with the smell of gunpowder strong. From not far away, there was a shriek as a rocket soared upward, a moment of silence and then a ricocheting explosion, which rebounded from the walls of the buildings and was echoed a moment later by a burst of laughter. Robin and Mhara stopped. A woman was coming toward them. She had a dancing walk and her pale hair streamed down her back. As she walked, her hair was full of fire, flames trailing behind her, and her long and slanted eyes were empty except for its light. She held out her hand when she saw them and spoke, and the liquid syllables rushed away like water. Mhara’s grip of Robin’s hand tightened.
“Where are we now?” Robin asked, confused, and the woman smiled, fierce and gleaming.
“You are in the antechamber of Hell,” she said mockingly. Turning to Mhara, she made a sign with her hand and then she was gone, taken by the gunpowder air. Mhara took Robin’s hands in his.
“Robin, before we go any further, you have to know something.”
—and suddenly Robin was walking down Mherei Street, and the night was quiet. Ahead, someone paused, uncertainly, and Robin paced toward her, faster and faster, running now and the smell of fear hot in her throat. The woman turned and her mouth opened wide, Deveth’s dark face frozen on the surface of memory, and Robin reached a clawed hand up and tore open her throat. She caught the body as it toppled and dragged Deveth swiftly back, the blood very warm and heavy against her fingers and, curious, she reached down and ripped. The flesh came off in one piece, and even in the warm evening air, it steamed. She sat with the woman’s startled head in her lap, absorbed in her prize, and then there was a sharp hiss of air and the dart brought her down, falling over the ruined body, the blood wet in her dark, unbraided hair, warm against her cheek.
Robin looked at Mhara, dazed.
“You gave me the drug,” Mhara whispered, “just before you went home, the largest dose yet, and when you’d gone and I was under the long dream, Jhai Tserai took me out into the city. I don’t know what I did. I don’t remember what happened, only the fragments that you just saw. I escaped from them, the meridians drew me, I don’t know what else I might have done, who else’s life I might have taken. When I woke I was in the cot, in Paugeng, and it was morning and you were bending over me, so unhappy. Jhai used me, Robin. She used me to kill Deveth. But mine was the hand that did the killing. I am a Celestial being, Robin. Do you know what that means? I deserve to be in Hell. I cannot enter Heaven now, except by stealth. But it’s to Heaven that I have to go, to tell them what is happening.”
Robin turned and went to stand at the edge of the wharf. Beneath her, the water ran quickly, a haze of darkness dappled with the fireworks’ light. She could see nothing beyond.
“We killed Deveth, then, Mhara. You and I and Jhai.”
He came to stand next to her on the dock. He had wrapped his arms about himself and she saw that he was shivering, even though the air was warm. Robin said, as if to herself, “You see, there are so many causes … If I had not been so scared of losing my job that I gave up my principles for it, and so scared of losing my lover that I failed to challenge her, and that fear coming from being a child in a poor family and not knowing when or if we’d eat again—I have to set a point somewhere and say, this is where I could have acted, and did not. I can’t just look at all the causes and say ‘this is where it began.’ All stories begin in the middle. But I don’t think I’ve been making the right choices for a very long time.”
They looked out over the black, swift current separating worlds.
Mhara sighed and looked up at the gunpowder stars. The flowerburst was reflected in his eyes, and he was no longer shivering. From somewhere, she could smell the scent of thousand-flower, faint and sweet.
“I’ll come with you,” Robin said. “Wherever you go, in Hell or out of it.”
Mhara said, “Come, then.” He grasped her arm and drew her with him into the tangle of warehouses. He moved quickly through the narrow streets and although Robin could hear voices all around, in sudden snatches of conversation and laughter from the mild air, no one was visible.
“Where is everyone?” she said, as if to herself. Mhara’s long-nailed hand was warm and real in her own, but around them there was unseen life in the windows of the houses: a child crying fretfully, an old complaining voice hushing it still. At last, they came out into a square. The myriad dead crowded around Robin and Mhara. She felt hands lift her hair and stroke the collar of her jacket. She caught glimpses of their faces, the fleeting tilt of a smile, eyes catching the light. A girl’s long hair brushed her sleeve and the girl was gone into the air, drifting by. Robin turned her head wonderingly and a swarm of lights sailed up through the eaves; she saw a hand come out of the air and catch a handful. By the sudden blaze she saw a lantern full of fireflies and the patient face of a child, the jaw eaten away, and Mhara was pulling her on. She felt as though she were running through water, the dead flowing past her and then they were gone. The road curved round to a high, carved gate, and then she realized where they were.
“Mhara … this is like Ghenret.”
“What?”
“I know where we are. That was Hangsu Square, and there’s the Lion Gate.”
“The Night Harbor mimics the world sometimes. Just as Hell does.”
Sure enough, as they drew closer, she could see the ornamental carved beast high on its lintel, exactly the same as in the world of the living. Mhara put out a warning hand and caught her wrist. Before them, in the portal of the Lion Gate, was a familiar form. It was the non-dog no longer, but the indeterminate thing that had brought Robin to the cemetery.
“Well, Robin,” it said to her lightly. “So we’ve found one another again.” It made a quick sidling movement. “Don’t you feel it might be destiny, after all? Didn’t you always feel that it was meant?” and now its taunting voice had changed, rang familiar in her ears. “But maybe it wasn’t meant, after all,” the new voice said, sadly mocking. “Maybe we should end it here.” Deveth, sitting on the sofa, after Robin had uttered her one word of rebellion.
“It’s you,” Robin said. She felt a peculiar sense of anticlimax.
“Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do, haunt your murderer?” The animal shook its heavy, dull coat, and then Deveth was there, just herself, hawk-faced and wearing her old green jacket. “You went to see my mother, didn’t you? She still doesn’t believe I’m dead; she’s still doping herself up with her trendy sickness pills. And my dear friend Jhai’s making new friends, or so I’ve just seen.” Deveth’s face twisted and slid, dissolving into the air. “But I am dead. Your new friend tore me to pieces. At least it was quick,” she glanced at Mhara. “I suppose I should say thanks for that. And he’s prettier than I ever was,” she added, turning back to the transfixed Robin. “Well, Robin, aren’t you going to say sorry, that you never had the guts to stop tormenting some poor imprisoned thing and turning it into a killer? But you never let principles stand in your way, did you?” Her features slipped and slid once more, and she was half-Deveth, half-something other, shot with lights the color of illness.
Robin suddenly found that she was angry. She spat, “Well, fuck you. Don’t think I haven’t blamed myself enough. If you hadn’t treated me like some little trophy, maybe you wouldn’t be here now, so don’t get self-righteous with me. I think I prefer you, Dev, as a hyena or whatever you’re supposed to be. Maybe that’s more real.”
“Maybe,” the thing said softly. Deveth was gone, and so was the beast. The spirit rose up into the air, a whirling mass of color. Pressure built inside Robin’s skull, and there was a sharp bursting pain at the bridge of her nose. Automatically she wiped her upper lip: her nose was bleeding and she felt wetness trickling down her cheeks. Her heart hammered in her ribcage, great, slow beats growing louder and louder until all she could hear was her heart and a thin, high wailing. Through a pinpoint she saw Mhara, on his knees with his arms futilely raised. His face was streaked with blood and the swaying mass was beating at him, each lash laying open his arms and his ribcage. The silvery droplets of blood trailed slowly up into the air and floated away. Something was licking his face as it bled.
26
As the car pulled out behind the Pellucid Island Opera House, Zhu Irzh broke a long, tension-filled silence and said, “That—thing—that attacked me. You saw it, I’m sure.”
“Yes. Yes, I saw it.” Jhai shifted in the seat beside him.
“It was a Celestial being, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, it was.”
“I thought they were supposed to be nice?”
“They are.”
“Well, that one wasn’t. It tried to garrote me with its tongue.”
“There’s a reason for that.” Jhai murmured.
“And that would be?”
“The drug you were given via the virus is a neurological enhancer. It taps into aggression and anger. It acts as an override on normal states of consciousness.”
Zhu Irzh didn’t have a very scientific mind, but he was beginning to see where this conversation was leading. “You fed the drug to a Celestial?”
Jhai nodded. “Yes. A while ago, I was contacted by an old friend who had become versed in dark magic. She told me that she had found a way to break the seal between the worlds, an ancient and powerful summoning spell, to bring demonkind and Heavenkind through to Earth. Normally, as I’m sure you know, it’s easier to summon demons than the Celestials, but this spell worked admirably.”
“And that friend was Deveth Sardai?”
Jhai nodded. “That’s right.” She gave him a sidelong glance and he could see the flicker of gold behind her eyes. “We activated the spell. And we summoned a Celestial, who was already on Earth for some reason—I never found out why—and bound him here.”
“Do you know which Celestial?”
“He called himself Mhara. I don’t know the name, but then, I’m not very well versed in the hierarchies of Heaven.”
“No, I don’t expect you are.”
Jhai squinted at him. “And are you?”
“No, not really,” the demon was forced to admit. “I know most of the major players, of course. But there are a lot of Celestial beings and none of them are that interesting, frankly.”
“Anyway, we started experimenting. I told the lab staff that he was a demon, that we were working on ways to protect Earth from another invasion by Hell.”
“But, in fact, your plans were somewhat more grandiose,” Zhu Irzh said neutrally. “You’re planning to storm Heaven, aren’t you?”
She smiled. “You’re quick. Yes. But not with an army. The original plan was to infect the Celestial with the drug in a viral carrier, wipe his memory and send him back.”
“You can do that? Your technology’s that advanced?”
“Paugeng’s R&D division is cutting edge, Zhu Irzh.”
“So Heaven would become infected with an aggression drug, turn against itself, be thrown into chaos. And then—what?”
“Then the people who are paying me to undertake the research would move in.”
“And who are they?”
Jhai paused. “Let’s just say that they have unlimited funding.”
“It’s one of the Ministries of Hell, isn’t it? Which one? War? Th
ough it’s more the style of Epidemics, and they’ve certainly got reason to try and recapture some of the power they lost earlier in the year.” He glanced at her closed face. “You’re not going to tell me, are you?”
“I can’t. I’m under oath. It would literally kill me to tell you.”
“What happened with Deveth? Did she become a liability?”
Jhai grimaced. “She started asking for too much. Power crazy. She knew what I was. I couldn’t hide it from her; I started to change during the summoning, and she saw enough to guess the truth. She threatened to expose me unless I handed over control of the project to her. I couldn’t risk that, Zhu Irzh. Deveth had no managerial skills; she couldn’t have run a bath. So I tried out the Celestial’s new-found aggression on her.”
“What’s that Western expression? Killing two birds with one stone?”
“Exactly.”
“So,” the demon said, turning in his seat to look at her. He reached out and touched her cheek. “Why are you telling me all this? So that I can take you down to the police precinct and charge you with all manner of iniquities?”
“You think you could make any charges stick? It’s your word against mine, Zhu Irzh. You’re a demon from the realm of Hell. And I’m Singapore Three’s premier businesswoman. I could buy this city. In fact,” Jhai frowned, as if trying to remember where she’d purchased a pair of shoes, “I think I already have. If the police department gets too close, I might have to do something about that, but they haven’t so far and I’ve been all co-operation, of course. The Chinese government might have believed Deveth—her father has close connections to it—but I don’t think they’ll believe you. Anyway, why would you want to expose something that could be to your immense advantage?”
“Then what are you offering me?” Zhu Irzh asked. He did not want to seem dense, but he wanted to hear her say it.
“A partnership. You could be the next Celestial Emperor, Zhu Irzh, if we get this right.”
