Snake Agent

by Liz Williams

  “See what you can do,” Sung told him. “Then go home and sort things out there. Is your wife still at her mother’s?”

  “Yes,” said Chen, lying once more. He did not dare think about the reparation he’d have to make to the goddess later; all this was costing him a karmic fortune in terms of his relationship with his patron deity. “I spoke to her this morning.”

  “It might be best if she stayed there for a while.”

  “I entirely agree,” Chen concurred hastily. Leaving No Ro Shi with the captain, he returned to his neglected desk and sat down at the flatscreen, where he waited patiently for the bioweb connection to establish itself. Nothing happened. The flatscreen was as blank as the silvery light over the sea. Frowning, Chen pressed the force-quit keys, and when this strategy accomplished nothing, he rebooted the machine, only to get a scrolling sequence of incomprehensible error messages. Giving it up as a bad job, Chen took out his cell phone and tried to access the web that way, with an equally negligible result.

  “System’s down again,” Ma said mournfully, looming over the partition.

  “What, not the whole bioweb, surely?”

  Ma nodded with the gloomy satisfaction of one who has never believed in technology. “Went down earlier this afternoon, the news said, then they booted it up again and now it’s crashed.”

  “What’s causing that?” Chen wondered aloud. “Solar flares, maybe?”

  “The news on the radio says it’s due to a problem with the—the biolinks. What they call the nexi.”

  “The nexi are human beings, Ma.” Chen said with a frown. He thought of the gherao dormitories he had seen on the tele­vision, each with its silent rows of motionless forms: people earning their annual salaries by dreaming the networks of the bioweb … What could go wrong with so many? It was a sinister thought, but at least the web crash gave him the excuse to leave the office and return home. He could contact the Night Harbor authorities later, by phone if necessary.

  Retrieving the noxious bag of laundry from his locker, Chen went back out into the chancy sunlight. It was just past six, and the sun was already sinking down over the port in a smear of fire. Chen boarded the first available tram, and stood in the midst of a packed crowd of commuters, noting the exhaustion that seemed to hang like a miasma over each figure. No wonder people seemed to have so little time these days to devote themselves to considera­tions of the afterlife, Chen reflected, and no wonder Hell was getting out of hand. Even twenty years ago it was still common to see the small shrines outside each door, and for the old people to speak of the gods as real, living presences. Now, paradoxically, the other worlds were closer than they had been since ancient times; with new technology to speed up all manner of communication, yet people seemed to take less and less interest in spiritual matters. Perhaps it was simply too much to bear, Chen thought; perhaps it was too much to ask of people to concern themselves with something other than the daily grind. Whatever the reason, it did not make his work any easier.

  The tram came to a halt and Chen got off. He walked the rest of the way to the harbor, hurrying through the gathering twilight. If he had not been so worried about Inari, it would have been a pleasant walk: the air mild and filled with the soft slap of water against the harbor wall. The houseboat was dark and quiet. Chen made his way across the decks to his own boat, but as he had expected, no one was home. There was a rusty smear at the entrance to the main door: blood, hopefully No Ro Shi’s. Turning on the lamp, Chen checked the voicemail. Someone had clearly been trying to leave messages, but there was only static. Chen thought through his options. This was one of the safest times of day for Inari to be out and about; her kind were best suited to the liminal times and places—dawn and twilight, shores, the heights of the mountains, caves. The shoreline seemed to be the obvious choice, since it was closest. The harbor shore itself was no more than a strip of shingle, but if one walked a short distance along the harbor road, one came to a widening bay, once the site of a peaceful string of fishing villages, but now just another of the city’s suburbs. Changing hastily into a dark jacket and his soft karate slippers, and checking the wards on the doors and windows, Chen returned to the harbor road and started walking.

  22

  High in the rafters of the derelict pier, Inari perched shivering in her ragged silk robe like a seabird blown in from the storm. She found herself constantly fighting the urge to return home, but what if the assassin was waiting for her? She looked down to see cold eyes in the shadows, and a haze of fur.

  “You cannot,” the badger-teakettle said, in reproof.

  “But I don’t know what else to do.”

  “Ask the coins.”

  “The I Ching? I haven’t got any coins—in case you haven’t noticed, I’m still in my dressing gown.”

  “Make them, then,” the badger said in its thick, impatient voice. Feeling foolish, Inari touched the tip of a talon to her wrist and drew three drops of blood. As she did so, she muttered a word: change. The red drops hissed as they touched the cold salt metal of the pier, and Inari reached down to snatch up three old worn coins.

  “Now throw,” the badger said, as though Inari were a child who needed instruction on the simplest thing. She threw the coins carefully into her silken lap, again and again, and studied the configuration that they made. She called the hexagram to mind: Twenty-nine. K’an. The Abyss.

  Inari sat back and looked mournfully at the coins in her lap. Abyss upon abyss: grave danger. But no indication of what she should do—go back to the houseboat, or yield to her fears and stay here. It was very difficult. The I Ching was like the polished surface of a bowl, revealing nothing of the contents within the Tao and reflecting only a transformed image. Sighing, Inari gathered up the coins in her lap, but as she did so, her hand closed convulsively over them. There was a soft, stealthy footstep from under the pier, a sucking sound like an eel vanishing beneath the sand. The badger’s whiskers bristled. Inari shrank back against the rafters and then, very cautiously, peered over the edge. Twenty feet below she could see something moving in the shadows under the pier. It was hunched as if old, it moved slowly, but thin dark tendrils shot from it in all directions, questing across the sand. The badger pressed against Inari’s side and she could feel it quivering. She watched in unwilling fascination as a tendril coiled around one of the struts of the pier and began to climb upwards like the fast-forwarded image of a growing vine. On the sand below, the figure was utterly still.

  “What is it?” she murmured to the badger.

  “I do not know. We must go, Inari. Now.”

  “But where?” Inari whispered. The tendril had reached the rafters and was snaking blindly towards her, its tip rising from time to time as though it scented the air. From where they were sitting, her only option would be to leap across to one of the neigh­boring rafters, then down. She clutched the protesting badger­ to her breast and stood up. The tendril shot forwards like a whip, but Inari was already in midair. Yet the tendril was quicker still. She heard it crack with released tension as it shot through the air, then something like a burning wire wrapped itself around her ankle. Inari, still clasping the badger, fell some fifteen feet towards the sand, only to be brought up short five feet from the ground. Her hip was jolted painfully as the tendril broke her fall, and she dropped the badger. She saw it bolt in a zigzagging blur over the sand. Spinning dizzily, she could see the tendril stretched taut across the rafter, and her inverted gaze met a pair of black dead eyes, as opaque as oil. The thing’s face was partly concealed beneath a hood, but what Inari could see was ominous. She caught a glimpse of pale, pasty flesh, peeling like the cracked glaze on an old jar. It held out a puffy, bluish hand. From above, a single red tear fell like rain, then another, and then another. Inari’s oracular coins had turned to blood once more. Raising its hand to its mouth, the being licked its palm with a thick, discolored tongue. A red stain welled out across the wet sand beneath its feet which, Inari noticed through a sudden wave of nausea, were
turned back to front upon its ankles. The stain paused briefly as it reached the waves, but then the whole of the twilit sea before her turned red and the sky spun crimson above her. The whip-crack grip on her ankle was abruptly released and then Inari was falling, but much further than the short distance to the incarnadined sand, much further than even the bloody smear of the waning moon above her head, all the way down past the ends of the Earth to Hell.

  PART THREE

  23

  Hell

  Lightning cracked the skies above Rhu Shu Street, briefly illuminating the signs of the demon lounges and apothecaries and bringing with it the smell of hot metal, like a blade through the humid air. Former Bloodmaster Tso walked slowly, bowed down with the wallowing weight of the blood-filled sack. He counted each step: three hundred and fifty-one, three hundred and fifty-two … only another two hundred to go. It was a long way from the loading dock to the end of Rhu Shu Street and the square where the Blood Emporium lay, and Tso’s feet hurt. They’d never been the same since O Ji had reversed them, so that the toes now pointed to the front—nothing more than a fit of malice, in Tso’s opinion, and an action which had had very little to do with his unfortunate family’s scandal—but it had caused endless hardship for Tso. He’d always been proud of his feet. Great-grandfather­ Tso’s feet had also faced backwards, and Tso himself had apparently inherited this prestigious gene; a legacy from some unimaginably distant ancestor of the Imperial Court. No one else in the family had backwards feet; not his brother Ghu, not his sister Inari … At this thought, Tso’s mind cringed from its own memories. If it hadn’t been for Inari, he’d still have his old feet, and come to that, he’d still have his old job: working behind the counter of the Ru Shu Blood Emporium, the respected proprietor instead of the lowliest delivery boy. But it was too late to worry about that now. Now, he was working for the epicene O Ji, whose august magnanimity had bought the Emporium from Tso to pay off his sister’s promised dowry, and who had re-employed him at a somewhat lower level … Tso’s thoughts spun in their familiar and depressing groove. Four hundred and ninety-two … He was nearly at the door of the Emporium, for the seventeenth time that day. With the utmost care, he levered the sack from his back and cradled it as he stepped across the threshold. The slightest drop of lost blood would, he knew from bitter experience, cost him a corresponding deduction in wages; O Ji might look like a languid fop, but he had eyes like those of the wu’ei themselves and he didn’t miss a trick. Tso waltzed the sack of blood into the back regions of the Emporium, where two gagged servants slaved above the steaming jars. Taking the sack from Tso, and nodding their thanks, they emptied the fresh consignment of blood into the sealed trough. Tso watched resentfully as it gurgled through the pipes to the filling mechanism. In his day, when he was proprietor, there had been no need to gag the staff. He had trusted the servants not to abuse their privileges, and if a stealthy tongue had snapped out to sample a taste of the delicacy on which the Emporium depended, it only made for a happier workforce. This was the trouble with aristocrats, Tso thought: they did not understand the basic principles of industry. Sighing, he turned and was about to make his painful way back to the loading dock when the door to the Emporium jangled open and O Ji stepped through.

  Tso immediately bowed low, teetering a little as he did so. The reversed feet made balance difficult, and he was forced to steady himself against the counter.

  “You may rise,” O Ji said, reeking of smugness. Tso did so, and saw with disgust that O Ji had treated himself to a new suit. He was resplendent in ivory silk, with collar and cuffs of some kind of thick, pale fur, which provided a rough match to his own carefully blond mane. A tracery of scarlet veins formed a labyrinth across his waistcoat. Tso suppressed a frown. O Ji was rich, it was true, and a slave to fashion, but Tso had never seen him looking quite so—well, expensive. O Ji’s smile grew as Tso covertly eyed the suit.

  “My latest acquisition. You like it?”

  “Magnificent,” Tso said, even more sourly because it was the truth.

  “It’s by way of a little celebration, I suppose. I have wonderful news, Tso. Would you like to hear it?” He spoke patiently, as to a child, and Tso inwardly seethed.

  “Sir?”

  “Today I signed a new contract for the Blood Emporium, Tso. One that will add to my already extensive coffers, and make us the envy of the district.” He paused, as if for dramatic effect, then continued: “We’re going to be the primary suppliers of blood to the Ministry of Epidemics. Isn’t that great news? On a regular basis, for a new project they’re developing. Science, my dear Tso, is truly a marvelous thing—but Art must take precedence. Our first order is for a consignment of delicacies—blood sorbets, candies, liqueurs, all the usual kind of thing—for the wedding.” O Ji floated around the reception area, flicking idle fingers in the direction of the display cabinets.

  “The wedding?” Tso echoed.

  “That’s right, the wedding. Between Lord Dao Yi of the Ministry of Epidemics and your sister.”

  Tso gaped at him. O Ji said kindly, “It seems your sister’s come home at last, Tso. And Dao Yi’s decided to forgive her. In a manner of speaking. Of course, it won’t be as though she’ll be First Wife this time, but still, you can’t have everything. What a pity you’re no longer manager here. I should think your family will be needing all the help it can get, what with the revised dowry and the penalty fees, after all. Perhaps,” O Ji said with a languid, glittering smile as Tso stood motionless in the middle of the room, “we should think about giving you a pay rise.” The smile widened. “Or then again, maybe not.”

  24

  Three hours after he had set out from the houseboat, Chen sat wearily on the side of the dock, dangling his aching feet in the cool, oily waters of the harbor. The moon had long since set, but any stars there might have been were blurred by the neon glow of the city. He had found no sign of Inari—not a note, not a sign, not a scrap of cloth or a drop of blood—and he had run out of ideas. He felt almost too tired to move, but at last he rose from the dock and made his way back towards the houseboat. It was dark and silent. Chen paused for a moment, letting his ch’i senses run ahead of him. He could feel nothing. His own ch’i perceptions were hardly infallible, but combined with the personalized feng shui wards which guarded the houseboat, they were good enough to give him some warning if anything menacing—say, a Maoist demon-hunter or a vice squad operative from Hell—happened to be lurking behind the door. Chen stepped unscathed onto the deck of the houseboat and into the kitchen. Something rattled. Eyes glowed red in the faint gleam of sudden transformation, and Chen’s heart leaped once, like a bird.

  “Badger?” He fumbled for the kitchen light and switched it on. The badger was a mess. Sand and salt matted its fur into short, untidy dreadlocks and its nose looked cracked and dry. Chen hastened across the kitchen and reached out a hand.

  “Do not!” the badger said irritably. “I will not be touched.”

  “Sorry. But where’s Inari?”

  The badger peered miserably up at him, and seemed to deflate. “It is I who should be sorry. I could not save her.”

  Chen felt as though the floor had fallen in. “Oh, goddess, is she—well, she can’t be dead, since she’s not really alive in the first place, unless that bloody demon-hunter has—oh, never mind. Tell me what happened.”

  “We were hiding. From the man with the sword. We did not come back in case he also had returned. We could not find you; we did not know where you might be and Inari did not have the speaking device. We left the boat too swiftly. It was my fault. I did not do enough to distract the hunter.”

  “It’s all right,” Chen said. “Don’t reproach yourself. You can’t think of everything, do everything.”

  “It is still my fault,” the badger said. Chen studied it as it sat on the kitchen counter. Bedraggled as it was, it still retained that semblance of otherness; the darkness of a creature that walked between worlds. Its eyes, black once more now that its t
ransformation was complete, were frosted with an icy haze, yet Chen could see the light of a different day within their depths. He said quietly, “You came from Hell with Inari when no one else would even look at her—not her mother, not her brothers, no one. And you have done your best for her this last year, in a place that is not your own and that has changed so greatly from the China you knew long ago that it might as well be another planet. It is not your fault. Now. What happened?”

  “Something came. Something from Hell. It snatched her like a bird in a snare and took her with it. I ran from it, but I turned back and I saw it go. It turned the world to blood and then the air opened up. I saw Hell once more—its storms, its iron towers. And my mistress was gone.”

  Chen sank down onto the nearest chair and rubbed his palms across gritty eyes. “I was right, badger. It isn’t your fault. It’s mine. If Inari had stayed on the houseboat, Hell might not have been able to touch her. If I hadn’t drawn attention to the Tang case, No Ro Shi wouldn’t have come here …” He could not seem to think straight; thoughts whirled and would not settle.

  “She could not have stayed caged like a cricket forever,” the badger murmured in its dark voice. “You could not have done other than you did. I heard what you said about Tang.”

  “What we have to do now is figure out who’s taken her, and why. The obvious candidates are her family, and whoever’s been running Tang. And one other party.”

  “The wu’ei.”

  “I’ve been trying not to think about the wu’ei,” Chen said, wincing from the thought.

  “They will not give up. They are patient, relentless, eternal.”

  “They are also vindictive.”

  “What else could they be? They are the instruments of the Lords of Hell, its iron fist. You know as well as I that Hell is a matter of strict hierarchies. Violation of those hierarchies, that structure, results in the payment of a price. Inari violated that order when she came here, and so did I. The wu’ei answer only to the Imperial Court, and that Court is inflexible in its dictates—however long it may take to implement them.”