Snake Agent

by Liz Williams

  Eventually the rain began to ease off, and shortly after that, it stopped. Chen and the badger stepped cautiously out into the wet world. The shack with the open door was silent, and Chen avoided it, walking instead in the opposite direction. This brought him out into a maze of dark alleyways, dripping with the recent rain, but when he looked up he could see a much larger building behind the shacks: a place with a red-lacquered roof and gilded eaves. The lacquer was tarnished, encrusted with the greasy substance that seemed to permeate so much of Hell, and the gilt was flaking like eczema, but Chen recognized it nonetheless. It was the counterpart of the temple of Kuan Yin: the version that lay embedded like a rotting pearl in the scabrous landscape of Hell. On previous visits, he had always come here, direct as an express elevator to the underworld, and the fact that on this particular occasion Chen had landed summarily in the back alleyway did not escape him. Despite the warm humidity of the air, he felt suddenly cold.

  “It is the temple,” the badger said, rubbing it in. “And we are not there.”

  “No, we’re not,” Chen said. “And I think we’d better avoid going into it unless we absolutely have to.” No point in testing the limits of the goddess’ tolerance, assuming he hadn’t already done so.

  “Where are we to go then?”

  “If that’s the temple, then I know where we are,” Chen said with a flicker of relief. “Just let me get my bearings.” He frowned with concentration, remembering. This part of Hell, this city, was after all the counterpart of Singapore Three, and the landscapes of the two places overlapped to a considerable, though not to an inevitable, degree. Chen had never been given to understand whether Hell lay alongside the everyday world, mapping its boundaries and distinctions with faithful regularity, or whether its representation was more complex. Certainly there were differences between the aspects of Hell: the afterlife of the Christian peoples seemed very far removed from this particular underworld, for example. Yet Chen suspected that Hell lay somehow contained in the group soul of a people, delineating its pathways in accordance with their dormant beliefs. If he entered Hell from one of the portals of Beijing, he knew that he would find an analog to that ancient city … But these speculations were simply distracting, an attempt by his weary mind to make sense of spiritual violation. Chen marshaled his thoughts.

  To the northwest of the temple lay the residential Garden District of Hell and the Opera House. To the southwest he would find the immense towers and ziggurats of Hell’s Ministries. To the east lay the mansions of the underworld’s elite, and in the centre of the city, like a great decaying heart, sat the Imperial Court itself: the hub of the wheel of Hell around which all else must spin in weary obeisance. But to the south was the commercial quarter and the docks; where souls disembarked from the boat that sailed the Sea of Night, and where all the dubious trades and practices for which Hell was so justly infamous were carried out. It was in this region that the correlate of Zhen Shu Island was to be found; it was here that the brothel lay into which the sad shade of Pearl Tang had been sold. And it was here, in the gloomy confines of Zhameng Square, that the most famous Blood Emporium in all Hell was located: the shop called Tso’s, which Chen’s brother-in-law had once owned.

  “Come on,” Chen said briskly to the badger. “Time to make a move.”

  “Where are we going?” asked the badger, in its slow, earthy voice.

  “We’re going to Tso’s.”

  36

  By late afternoon, or what passed for it beneath the eternal skies of Hell, Inari had made her way into the hills. The storms that circled the city so endlessly had succeeded in drenching her twice, but Inari had stopped caring. She plodded wearily on, climbing the narrow tracks that led through groves of bone-tree and spinewort, and threaded through rocks so laden with iron that they were red and rusty to the touch. Zhu Irzh’s fine silk dressing gown was nothing more than a limp rag; sartorially, she was no better off than she had been at the Ministry, and the brief respite of comfort and cleanliness at Zhu Irzh’s small apartment might have been nothing more than a dream. Unwillingly, Inari remembered the demon’s warm mouth against her own, and then she thought of Chen. A wave of weakness glided through her, and she leaned back against a nearby rock and closed her eyes. It was only now that she was beginning to realize, with dull horror, that she could never go back to Earth. She had caused her husband so much trouble, so much grief, and it just wasn’t fair to cause more. He had jeopardized his position and his life for her and she could not ask him to do it again. She would stay here where she belonged, in Hell, she thought drearily, but as she gazed out over the darkening towers of the city towards the limitless southern horizon, in the direction of the Sea of Night at which not even a demon might look for long, she could not repress a shiver. The rain was circling back; carried by the great mass of clouds through which lightning ripped. Inari sighed with admiration at the spectacle, but it was beginning to be born upon her that, storm lover though she might be, she had never been exposed to the elements for such a long time and here in the hills it was cold. Drawing the remains of the dressing gown more tightly about her quivering frame, Inari rose grimly to her feet and started walking.

  It was not long before the rain hit once more. At first, it was almost refreshing: warm, heavy drops saturating her hair and keeping out the chill, but then the rain grew harder and harder, until it was coming down like a wave of the sea and she could barely see her hand in front of her. Inari stumbled and slipped on the muddy ground: falling once and cutting her palms on the sharp, metallic stones that littered the track. Gasping, she scrambled upright, only to see something taking shape in the mud by her feet. It rose up from the track itself like the blind, questing head of a clam. It was a dark, mud-stained red and it took a moment for Inari to realize that it was forming out of her own blood, generating something in the hideously fertile earth of Hell. A tiny, narrow mouth opened to display needle teeth. Slipping, Inari scrambled backwards and the thing struck out. Teeth grazed her ankles, leaving a twinge of poison, and the scattered drops of blood began to grow and seek in turn. Inari backed away, but her foot caught in a razor-sharp coil of wireweed and she fell heavily to the earth. The growing things were hunting her, their blind heads snaking out in search of her warmth and the blood that had given them birth. They devoured one another as their twisting bodies met, until there were only four: curling five or six feet through the rain. Inari cried out as they crept closer, and struggled to free her ankle from the entrapping wireweed, but it tightened as she pulled and the blood-births were almost at her feet … Then she was seized by the arms and dragged backwards. Something bright and sharp cleaved down to cut the wireweed away. Her left arm was abruptly released. A bolt of heat hissed past her ear and the blood-births sizzled to ash, quickly dispersed by the rain. Wrenching herself free, Inari turned.

  A woman was standing by her shoulder. She held a long, curved knife in one hand. The other palm was upraised and Inari could see that it was marked with an intricate spiral scar, still smoking in the dying rain. She wore robes of gray and red, like the rocks from which she had come. Her head was shaved in the manner of a Buddhist nun, but her scalp and face were delineated by a further labyrinth of scars. She turned to gaze calmly at Inari, who saw with distant amazement that her eyes matched her robes. One eye was as serene and gray as the South China Sea at twilight, but the other was a fierce and fiery crimson, like old wine.

  “Who are you?” Inari whispered, feeling inexplicably small and shy.

  “I am called Fan. But I answer to other names,” the woman said. Her voice was very calm. She reached out a hand. “You should come out of the rain. Rain makes things grow and change, even in Hell, but growth isn’t always good … There’s a place of shelter not far from here.” Without waiting for Inari to reply, she turned and began making her way up the slope.

  “Wait—” Inari started to say, but the scarred woman was already vanishing among the rocks. In the rainy half-light, her bi-colored robes made
her almost invisible against the rocks and Inari was suddenly afraid of losing her. She took a deep breath and stumbled in the woman’s wake, only to find when she came through the narrow chasm between the stones that Fan was nowhere to be seen.

  “Where are you?” Inari called, noting with dismay that she sounded suspiciously close to panic. But the woman’s calm voice answered, “I am here.”

  Inari looked down to meet Fan’s strange eyes. It was as though the woman had disappeared beneath the earth; she seemed to be peering out from a kind of burrow. Inari, uncomfortably reminded of spiders, crouched down, then hesitated. She found herself instinctively trusting this curious person, and in Hell, that was a very bad move.

  “Come down,” Fan said. “It’s quite safe.” She reached out a hand and Inari took it. The woman’s scarred palm felt sandpaper-rough in her own, but it was a solid, somehow reassuring grip. “I’ll help you,” the woman added. Gently, she guided Inari through the narrow opening in the rock until Inari was standing beside her on dry earth. There was a curious, musty smell, as though this were an animal’s lair. The woman smiled at Inari’s dubious expression. “Not so fresh, is it? It wears off after a while.”

  “It’s not too bad,” Inari said, afraid of being tactless. In fact, now she came to think of it, the odor reminded her of the badger: dark and furred and earthy. It was a reminder of what she had lost, and Inari turned her face abruptly away. “Where does this go to?” she asked. “And what are you doing here?” Indeed, she thought, what are you? But it was not a question that one asked lightly, here in Hell.

  “I live here,” Fan replied simply.

  “Why?”

  “Because it is necessary. You asked me where this leads to. I’ll show you.”

  She stepped into the shadows beyond the slit of the entrance, and once more Inari followed, treading gingerly over the rough ground. Her night eyes enabled her to see with a reasonable degree of clarity, but she could make out little of the passage through which they walked. It had been carved out of the same iron-bearing rocks of the surface, but here they were dark and polished to the consistency of obsidian. Faces sprang out of their mirrored surface: Inari jumped at her own reflection, smiled at her own foolishness, then realized that the face had not been her own after all, but a visage that twisted and turned with its head to one side, looking at her before fading into nothingness. She could hear the sound of whispering, but it ceased whenever she turned to see where the noise might be coming from. None of this seemed to bother Fan, who strode calmly ahead through the darkness with a cat’s measured, silent tread. At last they came out into a wider space.

  Gazing up in wonder, Inari saw that it resembled a bowl carved out of the rock. A domed, ribbed ceiling stretched above her head, and the floor was cut from the same stone. Along one curve of this round room were set two immense holes in the wall, with a triangular doorway between, but there was only blackness beyond. She could see her own perplexed figure staring back at her, upside down in both directions. Fan glided around the room, igniting glittering lamps which threw refracted light into a thousand prisms.

  “Sit down,” she told Inari, over her shoulder. Inari found a rush mat of the kind used by peasants, and settled herself. It lacked the comfort of Zhu Irzh’s apartment, and Inari was by no means sure that this woman could be trusted any more than Zhu Irzh himself, but it was a relief just to sit down. She watched as Fan measured water from an earthenware jug and handed her a small stone cup.

  “Drink this. It has herbs in it; they’ll warm you up. And don’t worry; there’s nothing that will harm you in it.”

  Inari was not sure whether she believed her, but she drank the water anyway, and sighed as warmth spread through her.

  “Now,” the scarred woman said. “Tell me. What is the daughter of the Shi Maon family, runaway to Earth and wife of a man, doing here on the storm-driven hillsides above Zeng Zha?”

  “You know who I am?”

  “Oh yes. I know who you are, Inari. The question is, do you?”

  Inari stared at her. She was about to ask what the woman meant by such a query, but instead she heard herself saying, “I don’t know.”

  37

  The First Lord of Banking was keeping Zhu Irzh waiting, and this was not a good sign. Zhu Irzh had now been cooling his heels in the lushly appointed antechamber for more than an hour. It was like the Ministry of Epidemics all over again. Zhu Irzh studied his long, trimmed talons, and sighed. He knew very well that this was a message, the unmistakable odor of displeasure, and he did not have to look very far to find its source. However, it seemed his luck had held, even if he had temporarily misplaced the love of his life. Immediately prior to coming here, he’d checked in at his department to smooth things over with his superiors and there he had found the e-mail from Chen: sent some time before and carefully encoded. Zhu Irzh leaned back in his chair for a moment and closed his eyes. Surely this would please the First Lord; it was the very answer they’d been looking for. Consumed with the need to impart this information, Zhu Irzh fidgeted.

  “How long did you say he’d be?” he asked the secretary, a pinched person with a face like an old sour plum and thinning hair arranged in precarious strands across his pointed scalp. The secretary’s mouth disappeared inwards, as though his tongue had turned into a lemon.

  “I’ve told you already. The First Lord has a guest—an important guest—and is not to be disturbed. He will see you when he is ready.”

  “Who’s the guest?” Zhu Irzh asked, more out of a perverse desire to irritate the secretary than from any real need for information. The secretary was shocked.

  “I would not presume to expect such an august personage to make himself known to me. I suggest you follow my example.”

  Zhu Irzh bowed his head.

  “I’ll do my best,” he remarked with irony. The secretary opened his mouth to reply but before he could utter a suitable retort the door of the First Lord’s office slid open and someone stepped through. Zhu Irzh was unable to suppress a hollow twinge of dismay in the pit of his stomach. He did not recognize the person who stood before him, but it was pretty obvious where the demon had come from. The demon’s face was blotched and mottled, and it dragged down one side, revealing an uneven array of teeth. A wizened hand was tucked inside the left sleeve. The demon carried with him an overpowering smell of decay. He was dressed in a glossy robe of dark and polished skin; not a Westerner’s hide, but one of the African races. To Zhu Irzh’s mind, this meant that the demon was not of the highest echelons of the Ministry of Epidemics, but he was certainly high enough. A quick glance revealed that the demon’s feet were reversed: someone of moderate wealth and power, then—perhaps an Under-Minister or Deputy. The demon’s contorted smile froze when he saw Zhu Irzh. He rocked backwards on his back-to-front feet, and then he pursed his lips with difficulty and spat. The globule of spittle landed some way from Zhu Irzh’s feet, but immediately began inching forwards like a slug. Fastidiously, Zhu Irzh stepped back, and the demon’s smile grew mirthlessly wide.

  “You,” the demon said in a thick, mucus-filled voice. “You are to be dealt with.” Without another word he stalked past Zhu Irzh, in the mincing gait characteristic of the podially reversed, and was gone through the door. Hissing with disapproval, the secretary rushed forwards with a little brush and gathered the creeping spittle from the fine red carpet, just as the First Lord of Banking appeared in the hallway.

  “Who was that?” asked Zhu Irzh, forgetting titles and etiquette. For once, the First Lord did not appear to notice this lapse and it was only later that Zhu Irzh realized the depths of unease that this betrayed.

  The First Lord said, “That was a person named Ki Ti. I don’t need to tell you where he came from.” Sniffing, he extracted a heavily perfumed handkerchief from the depths of one sleeve and held it to his face. “I know it’s a mark of identity and commitment, but I do wish the Ministry of Epidemics would do something about the manner in which their personnel present t
hemselves. A really quite repulsive smell—worse than that aftershave everyone seems to wear nowadays. I know we abide in Hell but one has to have some standards … Anyway. Come in.”

  Zhu Irzh followed him through the door and into the office. The First Lord of Banking snapped imperious fingers and the secretary scuttled after them.

  “Windows!” Even the stuffy air of the world beyond was preferable to the odor in the office. “Now. We’ll come to my visitor in a minute, but first things first. This woman whom you so gallantly rescued. You said she had a secret. What was it?”

  “Lord, I think I know what the Ministry of Epidemics has been up to,” Zhu Irzh said, skillfully avoiding the issue of exactly who had imparted this information. He intended to say nothing of the e-mail from Chen. Let First Lord think it was the girl; it would save all sorts of problems. The First Lord of Banking swung round, his face a sudden paradigm of greed. “Oh? Tell me.”

  “They’re making a plague. Not just the usual sort of plague, but one which will affect perhaps millions of humans. They want human blood and innocent souls, to manufacture a drug.”

  “A drug? What kind of drug?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But I think I do. There have been rumors of a new drug, Zhu Irzh—a drug that will let demons into a place where we have been eternally forbidden to go—into Heaven itself. Interesting,” the First Lord mused, ignoring Zhu Irzh’s surprise. “It seems, Seneschal, that you have been rather more efficient than I’d previously expected. And this woman was certain that this is what the Ministry is doing?”

  “Yes, quite certain,” Zhu Irzh lied. He felt it necessary to add a little verisimilitudinous doubt to add weight to his case. “Of course, she might have been wrong.”

  “She might have been … and yet the Ministry is very keen to keep something quiet,” the First Lord of Banking mused. He tapped the edge of his ornate fan against his teeth. “Tell me, Zhu Irzh, what do you know about humans? How might this disease be spread?”