by Liz Williams
“Wow,” the demon said, wide-eyed. “Jhai thinks big, doesn’t she?”
“And do you know who Tserai’s contacts in Hell might be?” Chen said to Robin.
“I have no idea,” Robin admitted, clearly frightened.
“And your Mhara. Who is he?”
“I don’t know. He’s a Celestial being, but I don’t know which one. I think he must be a minor scion of some Heavenly house.”
“But he is not,” a voice said from the doorway. Kuan Yin was standing in the opening, light streaming around her. Everyone stood up. “He is the son of the Jade Emperor of Heaven, and one day he will be one of the most powerful beings in all the worlds that are.”
41
Jhai was pacing up and down, a tiger caged.
“Are you sure?”
“They are even now on their way to the Celestial Shores,” the dogwoman said. She was in her purely canine form; as Jhai turned, the dogwoman raised a hind foot and scratched an ear. “I spoke to the girl, your servant.”
“She’s not my—well, never mind. What did she say?”
“She did not know who your escaped captive is. I am certain of that.” The dogwoman snapped at a passing bee zooming in over the hibiscus on Jhai’s balcony. “Then we had news that the goddess had left the port, in the company of a human and a demon.”
“Yeah. Wonder who they could have been.”
“The males took the two captives up to a cave, a secure place, and your transformed one went to attack the goddess. But they overcame it and we were deceived: the goddess’ party came to the village, and questioned us. Then, we do not know how, they found their way to the cave and released the boy and your servant. All are now aboard the boat and heading across the Sea of Night.”
“All right,” Jhai said. “Then that’s it. Might as well say that the game is up.”
“You made me a promise,” the dogwoman said.
Jhai nodded. A fleeting moment of spite suggested she should not honor it, but that wasn’t the way it worked and besides, she might have use for this creature another day. You just never knew. She went to the desk and, from a drawer, took out a small bag. “Here,” she said to the dogwoman. She hung the bag around the thick ruff. “These are the bones of the first founder of your village.”
“You have given me my rule,” the dogwoman said softly. “I won’t forget.”
“You did your best.”
“I wish you luck,” the dogwoman said.
Jhai gave a short, sour laugh. “I’ll need it.”
From a second bag, she cast a circle of black glittering powder around the dogwoman, who squeezed her eyes tightly closed. A muttered incantation activated the powder, which went up in a blinding flash. When Jhai opened her eyes once more, the dogwoman was gone and the bone bag with her, dispatched back to the Night Harbor and control of Bad Dog Village.
Jhai went out onto the wide balcony and rested her hands on the rail. She could see almost the whole southern half of the city from here: the sparkling line of sea, the islands … It would be hard to give this up, harder still to break it to Opal that they were going to have to bail out. An unhappy conjunction had occurred, like ill stars: Zhu Irzh, Robin, Mhara, Kuan Yin. The worst possible combination, Jhai thought. Heaven would know of her plans: the demon could not withstand the goddess, and besides, Robin had probably decided to do something stupid and pointless, like atoning for her sins. Even if both of them had kept their silence, there was, of course, Mhara himself.
Goddess, thought Jhai, and it was the image of great Kali who rose in her mind, and Durga the tiger-rider. How was I to know who he was? When Mhara had first been brought to her circle, summoned by Deveth, Jhai had assumed that he was a minor Celestial being, a runaway youth, rebellious, who wanted to experience the sins of Earth before settling down into an exemplary life in the Celestial plane. But no. It had been the dogs who had told her, though they would not tell her how they knew. The son of the Jade Emperor Himself, the heir to Heaven, who, like Buddha, apparently felt it necessary to experience Earth’s pain and suffering at first hand so that he might better assuage it when his father passed on the ruling to him.
And this had been the person whom Jhai had taken captive and experimented upon. Marvelous. She was determined to blame Deveth, but couldn’t quite manage it.
Jhai squinted up into the bright sky, anticipating thunderbolts. Heaven usually took a little while to act: they weren’t as quick off the mark as Hellkind. But she was surely in their sights and she had to get out of here, along with Opal. There was only one place she could think of to go, and it wasn’t Hell. There, she would be punished for her failure, and punished big-time. The Night Harbor was a possibility, but not an appealing one, and anywhere on Earth was definitely out.
That meant somewhere else entirely, and to Jhai, there was only one choice. Where better to hide from Heaven than in someone else’s otherworld? There were few histories of extradition between India and China. She would go to Kali, throw herself on the goddess’ mercy, and join the Royal Court. Opal would be delighted to see family and friends, she was sure. She could pass it off as a surprise visit for Opal’s forthcoming birthday, and tell her the truth later. True, then Jhai would be nothing more than just another deva, and probably one whose favors would be in demand, as a new girl, but it was better than an eternity of torment. There was something to be said for going home.
But in order to gain entry to that world, they would have to leave China. Jhai went back inside, left a message on her mother’s cellphone, and started packing.
42
“Of course, she wasn’t exactly a spring chicken when she died,” Paravang’s mother was saying. “But she couldn’t help that, it was an epidemic. And she’s been seeing a few gentlemen in Hell, but no one really suitable though, of course, she’d prefer a living husband. Everyone would, it’s such a cachet, so fashionable these days, and when I met her—it was at a local social event, they have these things, you know—”
Paravang thought that it was a good thing that his mother was already dead, because otherwise he would surely have slain her. She had now been resident at his little apartment for a day and the fact that she no longer needed to draw breath was severely evident.
“Mothe—”
“Quite a small woman, not exactly pretty, but very—”
“Mother, I need to talk to you about the money!”
This penetrated.
“What money?” asked Mrs Roche.
“The money I’ve been giving you all these years. The Hell money.”
She was staring at him so blankly that Paravang cracked and told her the truth. “Look, the situation is this. Things haven’t been going too well here lately. I lost my license—it’s only a temporary thing, I’ll get it back—and it was completely unfair. Some demon from your neck of the woods who’s working for the police department revoked the license. So, naturally, I had to take steps to get it back and I’m afraid that meant calling in the Assassins’ Guild—it wasn’t like killing a human, of course. All that would have happened would have been that this guy would have gone back to Hell and stayed there. But the assassin bungled it and died and now they want me to pay. It’s a lot of money and I can’t afford it. So I’m going to need the money back that I sent you.”
“But I don’t have it,” his mother said, blinking. “I’ve spent it.”
“Spent it? On what?”
“Well, you know. This and that. Things for the house.”
“Mother, you live in Hell! How much can you possibly need down there?”
“I entertain a great deal.”
“Dear God.” Paravang sank into a chair and put his hands over his face.
“But there’s really no need to worry, dear. After all, your bride will be bringing you a dowry, so …”
“How much?”
“Well, I suggest that under the circumstances you tell her how much you need, and refuse to marry her if she doesn’t produce it,” his mother said.
Her dead face hardened for a moment. “But I imagine she will. She’s really quite desperate. And I happen to know that in life, she wasn’t badly off—she took the very sensible step of converting all her money into Hell notes when she realized she was ill, and burning it. So when she got to Hell, she had it waiting for her, you see? And she lives very quietly.”
“I see.”
“I think you should meet her, dear. Talk it over. She’s a mature woman and she doesn’t have any family, so it would be quite in order.”
“When?”
“As soon as possible.”
That afternoon, therefore, saw Paravang once more knocking on the butcher’s door.
43
“The Jade Emperor,” Robin said, slowly and carefully, “is your father?”
“My father, yes.”
“So who is your mother? Wait, you told me. Zasharou Selay.”
“Yes, that’s right. But I don’t see so much of my mother. She lives in the moon.”
“In the moon.”
“Yes.”
“I see.”
They were sitting in one of the maiden’s cabins. The shore of the Night Harbor was far behind now, and Heaven lay ahead, somewhere across the ocean of night on which they sailed. Robin was having difficulty coming to terms with Mhara’s newly revealed status. She could just about cope when she thought he was nothing more than a kind of minor angel, but this … I’m in love with a god. The irony was that she had never considered herself to be particularly religious. Mhara had explained to her why he had come to Earth in the first place—he had told the truth about that—and of course it made sense. He would make a wonderful Jade Emperor when the time came, and naturally Robin was delighted that he would soon be safely home, but—
“Mhara, I have to ask this. What will happen to me?”
Mhara smiled. “I was hoping you’d stay. At least for a while. You might not like Heaven, of course. Some people don’t. It’s serene, but a little dull.”
Robin gave a small, choked laugh. “I don’t think the problem is going to be me not liking Heaven, Mhara. More like Heaven not liking me.”
“Robin, there were extenuating circumstances. And if I have forgiven you, then no one else in Heaven is going to gainsay that.”
“Really? And have you?”
“Of course,” Mhara said. He leaned closer, so did Robin, and then he kissed her. He tasted clean, of clear water and light. She did not know what might have happened after that, but the kiss was interrupted by a frantic lurch of the boat. Robin and Mhara were thrown apart and Robin landed on the floor. She scrambled to her feet to find the boat listing heavily to one side.
“What is it?” she cried.
“I don’t know!”
Mhara grabbed her hand and they made their way on deck, clinging to railings and stairways to keep their balance. Coming out of the main doorway, Robin cannoned into the demon.
“What the hell!” Zhu Irzh shouted.
A glowing form appeared high in the rigging and drifted quietly downward: the goddess Kuan Yin.
“Lady?” Chen asked, panting from exertion to stay on his feet. The badger was with him, its claws scrabbling on the deck.
“There is a disturbance,” the goddess remarked as the boat once more righted itself.
“You’re telling me,” the demon snapped. “I nearly went over the damn side.”
“What kind of a disturbance?” Chen asked.
“The foundation of the Sea of Night is shifting,” Kuan Yin told him.
Chen stared at her. “Is that possible? I thought that the Sea of Night was—well, night. It’s not water, even though it sometimes looks like it.”
“And behaves like it,” Kuan Yin said. “The Sea of Night connects all the worlds, this you know. And as such, it has meridians which travel along it, just as there are meridians of ch’i and sha beneath the land. This boat must travel along the path of those meridians. Anyone who wants to disturb the passage of the boat, this far out to sea, must also disturb the meridians themselves.”
“Who could have the power to do that?” the demon asked, adding, “Oh.”
“I see you have divined the truth,” the goddess said. “Senditreya herself, Lady of the Lines of the Land. Traitor and enemy.”
“She must be doing this from Heaven then,” Chen said.
“Unless she has already left,” Kuan Yin replied. “She would have been wise to do so. I sent a message to the Jade Emperor as soon as I could, telling Him everything. He intended to summon Heaven’s own kuei, the Storm Lords, to take her into their charge.”
“If she has fled, then she must be desperate,” Zhu Irzh said.
“Desperate enough to disrupt the meridians that hold the words together? If she causes enough damage, the worlds could fly apart,” Chen exclaimed.
“What happens then?” Robin ventured to ask, but she thought she already knew. Mhara’s vision, which she had shared: the city sinking into flood and ruin. Looking into the goddess’ ineffable eyes, she saw that Kuan Yin had read her thoughts.
“What can we do?” she asked.
“We sail on,” the goddess said.
As if by mutual consent, Robin went with Detective Chen and the demon, as well as the goddess’ handmaidens, to the main cabin to ride out the storm. Kuan Yin herself remained at the helm, steering her boat through the thundering waves of night with a palpable air of serenity with which no one was inclined to argue. Mhara stayed with her, lashed to the plunging rail; the goddess seemed to need no such supports. The main cabin had a porthole facing the prow and thus the occupants could see out if they chose. Robin took the seat nearest the porthole and remained there, welded to the view of Mhara and the goddess at the helm.
“If this carries on,” Chen said uneasily, “we’re going to have to find some way of strapping ourselves in.”
“Or a binding spell,” the demon said.
“I’ve no way of knowing whether that would work out here. Magic is different in different worlds, and here we are between them. Anyway, we don’t want to get stuck in case the boat goes over.”
“You and I have fallen into the Sea of Night before,” Zhu Irzh said.
“Yes, and nearly drowned, or whatever is analogous. I’d have died if it hadn’t been for Inari.” Chen sighed. “She must be wondering what’s happened to me.”
“The captain knew we were going to the Night Harbor.”
“Yes, but he won’t send anyone to look for us.”
“Ma might.”
“Ma? He’s terrified of the Night Harbor.”
“I think you’ll find a change in Sergeant Ma, Chen. He’s really been surprisingly helpful in recent weeks. He—”
But Robin, who had been paying little attention to this conversation, interrupted. “I can see something.”
Within moments, they were all clustering around her shoulder, looking at the bright line of the horizon.
“It’s Heaven!” one of the maidens sighed. “We are almost home.” She clasped her friend’s hands with joy.
“Thank the goddess for that,” Zhu Irzh remarked with some irony. They watched as the line grew stronger and brighter, but then the ship gave another great plunge and sent everyone staggering.
“Hold on!” Chen cried. Robin could see through the porthole that something was rising up from the surface of the Sea of Night. It looked like a huge spined porcupine, with a mass of waving tentacles and a billowing sail that spanned out behind it into a web of light.
“What,” Robin heard the demon say, with the kind of calmness that heralds screaming panic, “is that?”
Robin did not know. The thing made her sick to look at it. It was utterly wrong. The light was a visceral red, an intestinal shade, and moments later it came down to cover the boat. The cabin was cast into a crimson gloom and filled with a smell like old fish. One of the maidens began to gag, delicately, in the manner of a cat about to be sick.
“Please don’t,” Zhu Irzh said, eyeing her. Then ever
ything went black.
“It’s dragging us down!” Chen cried.
“But what is it?” That was the demon, the panic more evident than ever. “I didn’t think anything could live in the Sea of Night.”
“It is something from between the stars,” a maiden gasped. “The churning of the Sea of Night has brought it up.”
“So if it drags us with it, this boat will end up in space?”
“Yes.”
“I have to see what’s happening,” Zhu Irzh said, and over Chen and Robin’s protests, he threw open the door. A red fold of translucent flesh billowed up like a canopy, showing a field of stars. Robin had never seen anything so bright. Next moment, the air was ripped from her lungs as whatever atmospheric shield that had been protecting the ship was torn away. The teacups that had been rolling around on the floor floated upward. So did Zhu Irzh. Robin caught hold of the doorframe, clasped the demon by his ankles, and hauled him back, but her chest felt as though it was about to burst. Just before her vision went completely dark, however, she saw something like a huge hook flash across the star field. The boat shuddered and shook. Robin passed out.
She woke to brightness. Her chest was still sore, but the air felt fresh and clean, with a faint smell of the sea in summer. Robin sat up and found that she was lying on the deck with one of the maidens kneeling by her side. The boat, with a glittering tow-rope attaching it to a much larger craft made of pearl and silver, rested a little distance from the shore. Robin looked out onto a mass of flowering trees and artfully ragged cliffs. In the other direction, only a dark line at the horizon’s edge betrayed the existence of the Sea of Night, now far behind.
“Yes,” the maiden said, smiling. “This is Heaven, the Celestial Shores. Welcome.”
“God, I need a cigarette,” Zhu Irzh said, coming out of a cabin.
The maiden looked scandalized. “This is Heaven! You can’t smoke here!”
The demon gave her a disgusted glance. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”
