Snake Agent

by Liz Williams

  Zhu Irzh thought for a moment.

  “Sexual contact? The Ministry has had some real successes with those recently. Also poverty, and overpopulation. Crowded conditions allow diseases to spread.”

  “Perhaps. These methods, though—they’re old-fashioned, Zhu Irzh, and that’s what’s wrong with them. This is the constant criticism from the Imperial Court—we simply have to move with the times. Look at my Ministry, for example. There’s nothing old-fashioned about Wealth. We’re well up to date on the new technology, economic theories, manipulation of the earthly organizations with whom we’ve taken care to establish excellent relations—like the World Bank and the WTO. And that’s why the Ministry of Wealth has continued to move up in the world, whilst War and Epidemics and such are struggling to consolidate their power base. Take War, for example. They had an ideal strategy with the rise of nuclear power, and did they capitalize on it?” The First Lord of Banking swung round to face Zhu Irzh. Dutifully, the latter replied, “No, they didn’t.”

  “Absolutely right! They squandered the perfect opportunity to engage the world in mass destruction. No wonder the Imperial Court’s cut their funding. And look at them now—relegated to dealing with petty tribal conflicts in Europe, of all places, not to mention the former Soviet Union. And Epidemics is the same. A limited success with that smart STD of theirs—what was it? Can’t remember the name—”

  “AIDS?” Zhu Irzh supplied helpfully.

  “That’s the one. And that was only due to a short-term contractual­ agreement with the Ministry of Lust. Now that contract’s ended, what happens? Humanity finds a cure. Whereas the really virulent viruses—Ebola, Marburg—have never been properly supported. They haven’t been nurtured, Zhu Irzh, and I call that an inexcusable waste of resources.”

  “Lord, may I ask a question?” Zhu Irzh ventured.

  “I suppose so.”

  “What’s the relationship between Epidemics and your Ministry?”

  The First Lord of Banking sighed.

  “It’s never been easy, Seneschal. You see, we’re in the business of making money. Pure and simple. But diseases are not a lucrative business, if you look at them from the perspective of their field of operations. Where they are lucrative is in the matter of the drugs that are used to treat them. That’s why most of our work in that area is dedicated to the pharmaceutical companies.”

  “So,” Zhu Irzh said, frowning. “You’re actually in the business of helping humanity—of finding cures for the diseases that—literally­—plague them?”

  “I know we’ve often been accused of gratuitous altruism by those who know no better,” the First Lord of Banking said, rather stiffly. “But one has to understand the nature of these operations. By keeping the price of treatment drugs artificially high, and making sure that only those who can afford it have the opportunity of a cure, we’re actually supporting the work that the Ministry of Epidemics does. I mean, look at Africa and our liaison with the Underworld there. If it hadn’t been for us, human doctors would have been able to treat the entire population against a whole range of diseases, and Epidemics wouldn’t have enjoyed one of its very few success stories. I’ve tried time and time again to explain this to the Minister of Epidemics, but he doesn’t seem to understand it—typical B-stream civil servant, even if he does pretend to be an aristocrat.”

  “I see,” Zhu Irzh said slowly. “So would you say, Lord, that there’s a certain amount of historical resentment between Wealth and Epidemics?”

  “To put it mildly.”

  “And you mentioned to me that when you met the Minister of Epidemics at the opera he seemed to think that you were taking some interest in his affairs.”

  “Clearly so. Indeed, Seneschal, he was right. We were—we just didn’t know it at that point.”

  “So if the Ministry is planning to wage some enormous campaign against humanity in order to consolidate its own position and win renewed favor with the Imperial Court, what are the chances that it might be planning to take Wealth down with it?” Zhu Irzh thought uneasily of his rescue of Leilei from the depths of the Ministry of Epidemics, and wondered what would happen if the latter organization connected him with the First Lord of Banking. As seemed obvious, now that someone from the Ministry had seen him cooling his heels in the First Lord’s front office, and the crab-demon had tracked Leilei to his own home. He glanced up at his employer. The First Lord’s eyes were as cold as glass in winter.

  “That seems entirely likely,” the First Lord said. He gave a bleak smile. “You are correct in the supposition that has displayed itself so transparently upon your features, Zhu Irzh. No, you have not helped. However, given that your actions have resulted in a piece of information that, if acted upon correctly, might save all our skins, I am inclined to overlook your youthful enthusiasm.”

  “Thank you, Lord. Most generous.”

  “I know. Have you found any trace of the young woman?”

  “No.”

  “Has she outlived her usefulness?”

  “On the contrary, Lord,” Zhu Irzh said quickly. “I suspect she holds a vast store of information that can only be to our benefit. However, I was planning to question her further when I was interrupted by the crab-demon.”

  “I see. Well, if she’s that useful, you’d better find her then. But first,” the First Lord of Banking said with a ghastly smile, “I have an additional task for you.”

  38

  Tso’s Blood Emporium had not changed, Chen thought. The row of huge, sinister jars remained in the window, still covered with a patina of thousand-year-old dust. The banners that hung from the balustrade still swayed restlessly in the winds of Hell and the air smelled of iron, of meat, of the sour sweetness of death. Chen remembered the stench that used to emanate from the ventilation grates during distillation days, and grimaced. Shortly after his last visit here, he had brought Inari out into the bright, fresh air of his own world, and he had hoped never to set eyes on Tso’s Blood Emporium ever again. The badger sidled up against his legs.

  “Now do you know where we are?” Chen murmured. The badger twisted its head in the animal approximation of a nod.

  “This is Lord Tso’s property.”

  “Not any longer. I understand he’s been demoted to a more menial position,” Chen said grimly. The badger’s eyes were opaque and blank, and he realized that it was in a sense incapable of acknowledging such an upsetting fact. The badger-teakettle was a retainer, after all, one of the familiar spirits which had attended Inari’s family ever since the birth of their First Ancestor; their woes were its own. “Anyway,” Chen continued. “Tso might still be useful, nonetheless.”

  He stepped out from beneath the shelter of a balcony, only to leap back again as someone came around the corner into the square. Chen and the badger-teakettle had managed to weave their way through the alleys without meeting anyone; it appeared that their luck had now ended. Warily, Chen watched as the demon—an elderly woman with the clawed feet of a hen and a sharp, beaky face—made her slow, grumbling way across the square. She carried a bag, tightly clasped in both hands, which squirmed and wriggled: Chen did not like to contemplate what might be in it. At last the old demon disappeared into a basement entrance, and was gone.

  “Come on,” Chen said to the badger. “Quickly!”

  They slipped through the shadows cast by the tall buildings of the square, keeping close to the walls, and after a few fraught minutes they found themselves standing directly in front of the Blood Emporium.

  “There’s a back way in,” Chen mused. “We’ll have to be careful. Tso’s unlikely to be the only one around.”

  “How do you know he’ll be there?” the badger asked. “It is early.”

  “That’s why I expect him to be there. The normal distillation process takes place overnight, and it’s the task of the minions to oversee it. It’s a job that tends to get landed on the lowliest of the low and I don’t suppose Tso’s in terribly high favor, since he was the one who helped
Inari escape from Hell.” Chen smiled. “When Tso was running the Emporium, as I recall, he rarely rose before midday, but he’s not running it any longer … Well. We’ll see.”

  With the badger at his heels, Chen crept around the corner of the building and found a pair of wide double doors. A metal ramp led up to them, and its surface was scuffed and scratched.

  “This is where they bring in the blood-barrels, I remember … I don’t want to go in here. Let’s try further on.”

  At the back of the building was a small, pinched doorway. The door itself was ajar, and Chen could hear voices coming from within. This seemed promising, and he cautiously put his ear to the crack of the door and listened.

  “—was perfectly in place last night!” a voice protested. Chen smiled. The voice was thin and self-pitying, conscious of great and constant injustices perpetrated upon its owner. Tso may have fallen from favor, but it didn’t seem to have made any difference to the way he spoke. He’d always sounded like that, no matter what the circumstances. And yet, Chen reflected, Tso wasn’t really a bad sort, as demons go. Self-pitying he might have been, and he was certainly an inveterate sycophant, but at least he had found from somewhere the courage to help his sister escape from a marriage which she had no wish to make.

  “—all over the floor now! Look at it! Half a pint, quite wasted. There’s a leak in one of the seals, only a moron could fail to see that. Now do something about it.” Chen did not recognize this voice. It was pompous and ill-natured, with a thick note of decadence beneath: typical of the aristocracy of Hell. Or anywhere, if it came to that.

  “But—” That was Tso. There was a sudden soft, brutal sound, as of a gloved fist meeting the back of someone’s head, and then a faint cry. Chen grimaced. It sounded as though Tso was having a hard time. He drew back into the shadows as mincing footsteps retreated into the distance. When he was quite sure that they had gone, he slunk to the doorway and glanced in.

  His brother-in-law was kneeling on the floor, muttering and clutching the back of his head with one grimy hand. The other hand was busily occupied in scraping a rusty red substance from the flagstones with a pallet knife, and depositing the resultant residue into a jar. Chen looked around, craning his neck to get a better view. He could see no one else in sight. Very softly, he called, “Tso!”

  There was no response from the figure on the floor. Chen called again. “Tso! Over here!”

  This time Tso looked up. He glanced wildly about him for a moment, then saw Chen peering in at him through the open doorway. Chen gave a little wave. Tso’s mouth dropped open into a perfect O of astonishment. His small, red eyes darted in all directions, like red-hot marbles. He made anxious flapping motions with both hands, dropping the pallet knife. Taking the hint, Chen stepped back from the doorway. After a moment, the door creaked and Tso stood teetering on the step.

  “What are you doing here? I thought never to see you again. Don’t you know how dangerous it is for you to be here?”

  “I know,” Chen said. “I didn’t have a choice. Look, Tso, I need to talk to you. It’s urgent.”

  “But I don’t want to talk to you,” Tso said petulantly. “You’ve caused me enough trouble. Go away.”

  There was movement from the shadows and the badger’s elongated monochrome figure glided forth. It bowed its head in obeisance as soon as it set eyes on Tso.

  “What’s that creature doing with you?”

  “That’s one of the things we need to discuss,” Chen said, meeting Tso’s red gaze. The demon drooped. “More woe, I suppose. I finish my shift this evening, not before then. It’s nearly three now. I’ll see you later. But not here.”

  “Where, then?”

  “There’s a place not too far away. I sometimes go there, they have private rooms, spell-guarded. It’s the only place we can talk without the risk of being overheard. I’ll take you there when I come out, but no one must see you.”

  “What shall we do then? Stay here?”

  “No! Someone might smell you. You’d better wait in the dray,” Tso said. Hurriedly, he took them around the corner to the back of the Emporium. A cart stood in the uncertain light, packed with barrels. Something stood patiently in the shafts and Chen recognized the heavy haunches and sinuous, twitching tail of a ch’i lin; one of Hell’s most common beasts of burden. It turned as Chen hoisted himself up among the barrels, and he glimpsed a hot eye and a row of needle-teeth beneath the thick spiral horn protruding from its forehead. It grinned at him for a moment with malign intelligence, and then its long tongue flickered out to impale one of the myriad buzzing flies.

  “Stay here where it can’t smell you,” Tso instructed. He picked up the protesting badger and heaved it into the dray on top of Chen, then tottered backwards.

  “Are you all right?” Chen asked with some concern. “You don’t seem very steady on your feet.”

  “And whose fault is that?” Tso hissed. Turning, he hobbled back in the direction of the entrance, and Chen saw then that the taloned toes of his brother-in-law’s feet, instead of pointing backwards in the ancient and regal manner of respectable demons, were directed in a more human direction. Chen looked down at the badger in his lap and met an unfathomably dark gaze.

  “Worse than I had thought,” said the badger-teakettle softly, and Chen could only agree.

  39

  Inari had now been in Fan’s strange home for over a day, and she still knew nothing about her hostess. The scarred woman seemed to spend most of her time in solitary contemplation; either within the polished hollows of her underground cavern, or outside on a narrow ledge of rock that overlooked nothing but a gorge filled with honewort and stones. Inari knew the values of meditation, so she did not interrupt Fan during these periods. However, when the woman returned to prepare food for their evening meal, Inari ventured a question.

  “How long have you been here?” she asked tentatively.

  Fan smiled.

  “For a long time, I think. But I’m really not sure. It’s hard to measure time here, isn’t it? Or perhaps you don’t find that.”

  Something about the manner in which she said this gave Inari the impression that Fan was not a native of Hell, but it was hard to tell whether this was the case. The scarred woman did not smell human, and with her red and gray eyes she did not look like one, either, but neither did she have the characteristic presence of demonkind. She was most unlikely a celestial entity; what would a goddess be doing in Hell? Inari had never heard of such a thing; the Celestial authorities did not work that way, being fastidious about where they spent their time.

  “I don’t know,” Inari said, in reply to Fan’s question. “I’ve lived most of my life in Hell, so it doesn’t seem so strange.”

  “And yet you chose to leave,” Fan said quietly. She turned to face Inari. It was unsettling to be confronted with those eyes, the one so fierce, the other as tranquil as a cloud.

  “I said it did not seem strange. I did not say I liked it.”

  “Demons do not generally choose to leave their world, not for long. You must love that human of yours very much to have given up everything for him. Or perhaps the fact of it is that Hell gave you up? It is difficult to know the truth about you, Inari. I hear many conflicting stories.”

  “You seem very interested in me,” Inari said nervously.

  “I find you interesting, that is why.”

  “Listen,” Inari said. She stepped close to Fan and laid a hand on her sleeve. The woman’s arm felt warm, as though she was radiating an unnatural degree of heat. Fan looked down at Inari’s hand with a slight smile, as though she had never expected to see such a thing.

  “Yes?” she said.

  “Fan,” Inari said timidly. “Can you help me? I have to get a message to my husband. I have something important to tell him.”

  “What is it?” Fan asked mildly.

  “I—I’d rather not say, if you don’t mind.”

  Fan looked up. She was still smiling, and her strange gaze se
emed suddenly to encompass Inari’s own: red and gray like the skies of Hell, whirling her up and up into a vortex that encompassed all the worlds in one. And then Inari was floating down, pulled by the duality of the woman’s eyes; a leaf blown down the walls of the worlds. She heard her own voice saying far away, “Because I’m leaving him. I’m not going back to the world of the humans. I’m staying here.” And inside her there was a quick, sharp tug of utter anguish that brought her hand to her mouth like a broken doll. Fan steadied her, and the woman’s fingers felt like bands of iron. It was then that Inari realized dimly that Fan was far stronger than she was, even though she was a demon and the scarred woman was—well, what? She stared dumbly into Fan’s face and heard the woman say, “It’s all right, Inari. Something has changed, that is all. Sit down and I’ll get you some medicine.” She helped Inari settle against the wall, and folded her hands in her lap. I am nothing but a puppet, Inari thought, my strings are cut. Numbly, she looked down at her own hands: noting the long fingers, the gilded talons. The varnish was wearing away now, chipped by flights and battle, and she could see the thick ivory surface of her nails beneath. That is me, she thought, I will be worn down until there is nothing left but bone; not the pretty doll of my mother’s house, nor the ornamental human wife on the houseboat … I cannot walk on the earth of Earth; my feet burn as though they are bound. I carve vegetables into pretty shapes; I smile at my husband and go to the market in the morning. I am bound by my culture as surely as any wife of ancient China and yet I am a demon, a supernatural thing, a creature to terrify and fear. And if I stay in Hell, where will I go?

  “You can stay here for the time being,” Fan said in her quiet voice, as though answering the question that Inari had not asked aloud. “Until we work out what path we are going to take.” Inari looked up. The scarred woman was holding a bowl, filled with bitter herbal tea, and her face was devoid of expression. She reminded Inari suddenly of the badger-teakettle: swift to help, curiously loyal, yet keeping its own mysterious counsel. Inari had never received any impression of affection from the badger, and never expected to. That was not what it did; that was not what it was. It moved in its own strange path like a moon around the world that was herself, and she had the same sense from Fan. Except that this time, Fan was the world, and Inari the moon: passing into its dark phase, hidden, eclipsed.