Snake Agent

by Liz Williams

  “So you are refusing to comply with my authority?”

  “I most certainly am!”

  The Minister of Epidemics motioned to the Imperial warriors, who now surrounded the house.

  “Bind it!”

  The warriors who stood closest to the balcony raised thin, spidery hands. A tangle of wet, black silk shot forth and clung to the lacquered underside of the balcony. The First Lord of Banking hissed like a viper, and stepped from within the protective spell. A bolt of light shot from his hand, severing the sticky silk with explosive force. Fragments of charred cobweb rained down upon the garden. The First Lord of Banking seized a metal staff from a shadowy associate and sent it spinning through the air. It howled as it flew towards the Minister of Epidemics, who hastily erected a protective spell of his own. Deflected, the staff whirled away and struck the Minister’s coach with a resounding report. The coach fell neatly into two halves. The dragon-horse reared and bolted, dragging the wreckage of the coach behind it as it fled through the gardens, leaping the ponds and bridges with ease. The Minister raised a gloved hand and sent a meteoric bolt of light into the nearest pond. The flailing golden bodies of carp were catapulted into the air as if dynamited, and the entire garden began to smell pervasively of fish.

  “My carp!” the First Lord of Banking cried, enraged. “Do you know how much those cost?”

  “Doubtless more than your miserable life!” replied the Minister. “I’ll see you in the menstrual pits for this!”

  As if on cue, the Imperial warriors raised their hands, and silk shot from their palms to form an immense web that hovered over the mansion for a moment before settling down upon the roof. Chen heard the First Lord of Banking give a single, muffled cry before the black threads began to weave a swift and complex cradle around the building. The Minister raised a hand. There was a dark bolt of lightning, the signature of a reversed spell, and the figure of the First Lord toppled wailing from the balcony to land in the seething waters of the pond below. Soon, the mansion of the First Lord of Banking resembled a huge insect: trapped in the mesh of a vast web and ready to be sucked dry. The Minister of Epidemics gave a soft snort of laughter, and wiped his wet mouth. He snapped his fingers in the direction of the Imperial Guards, four of whom trotted forwards and picked him up. Borne on their bony shoulders, the Minister of Epidemics was carried swiftly back down the drive, leaving the silent cocoon of the mansion behind him.

  45

  Fan’s messenger spoke an ancient dialect called Gei-lo-fang, with which Inari was barely familiar. She listened carefully, trying to understand, as the messenger slurred and whispered into the scarred woman’s ear, but she only caught a few words that she recognized. “Danger” was one of them, and “grave” another. Inari found this less than reassuring, and she did not like the closed, watchful expression on Fan’s face. She could not help remembering the wu’ei, drifting vast as clouds above the city, seeking her own small self, and she wished with a wave of immense longing that she was back on the houseboat, worrying about nothing more than whether her feet would burn if she went to the market.

  “Inari,” Fan said, and her face revealed nothing. “It seems we may not have to send a message to Earth after all. My messenger tells me that a human has come from that world, here to Hell. A man, not young, not old, who once had the favor of the goddess Kuan Yin. Your husband.”

  Inari felt herself struck by two conflicting sensations: terror, and relief. She whispered, “Chen Wei is here? When?”

  “Not long ago. He has been here for no more than a day. My messenger has made enquiries. Your husband visited your brother, and then he was attacked.”

  Inari stared at her, appalled, and Fan went on: “I’m sorry. That was tactless. He isn’t dead, Inari, or even badly hurt. He was set upon by a band of spirit-dancers, but someone saved him.”

  “Who?”

  “My messenger does not know. It says that he was saved by one of your kind, by a demon, but it is not clear who or why.” Inari noted that slip: your kind. So Fan was not a demon herself. What was she then?

  “Where is he now?”

  “My messenger does not know. Inari,” Fan said, and the warning note in her voice was unmistakably clear. “You told me that you would leave Chen, and stay here in your own world, no matter what the price, so as not to bring him to further danger. Do you still mean what you said?”

  Inari looked at her. The scarred woman’s face was as calm as a summer sea, but the depths of her strange eyes were fathomless. Inari felt suddenly as though the world itself hung on her answer. She thought of the houseboat, and the little life that had been her own for no more than a year: the breeze from the sea, the light that fell over the towers of the city in the morning, just before dawn. A complex, changeable, varied world unlike the perpetual storms and winds of Hell. A world where a person could be different, not bound by conventions as ancient and desiccated as old bones. Then she thought of Chen himself: all the images and memories that she had pushed away ever since she had returned to Hell. How he woke up slowly, was meticulous when preparing tea, was silent at the right times. How he never criticized her cooking, even when it was charred to a crisp and he was late getting home. He never made a fuss over things that didn’t matter. How things seemed inexplicably to strike him as funny—a comment on the radio, a bird diving awkwardly into the sea—and he’d sit silently shaking. In all the old stories of romance that Inari had devoured as a young girl, “funny” never seemed to come into it. Love was always dark, and serious, and mysteriously tragic: it was never ordinary. But her love for Chen was ordinary, Inari reflected now, and that was why it was special, and why she couldn’t put him through all this anguish all over again. He must go back without her, and find someone human, someone with whom he could live a normal life.

  “I haven’t changed my mind,” she said, in a voice that was no louder than the wind through the hollows of the cave. “I’ll stay here in Hell, and I’ll give myself up to the wu’ei if I have to.” She paused, glancing up into Fan’s unreadable face. “But I want to tell him myself. He mustn’t risk himself here. I have to find him. I have to send him home.”

  Somehow, Inari was expecting argument, but Fan only bowed her head. She grew as still as stone, so unmoving that the little blind messenger grew alarmed and plucked at her shoulder with restless claws.

  “Fan?” Inari said, and the scarred women looked up at last. Her face was filled with weariness, and there were tears in both eyes, the red and the gray. “What is it?” Inari asked, bewildered, but Fan only murmured, “It is nothing … Inari, if we are to find your husband, we have to go back to the city but we cannot return down the path by which you came. We have to find a way which the wu’ei will not readily discover.”

  “I don’t know of such a path. The only road I know is the one I took.”

  Unexpectedly, this made Fan smile and Inari was abruptly reminded of Chen. The scarred woman said gently, “I know. But I think I remember a way: an old path, little used. It leads into the city from these hills.”

  “Won’t it still be dangerous?” Inari asked, thinking of the coils of the wu’ei in the stormy air above her head.

  “Yes, dangerous, but not the danger you’re thinking of. This path leads underground, Inari, deeper and deeper yet. And it passes through the lower levels of Hell.”

  46

  The shrubbery of the First Lord’s midnight garden had given Chen a rash. The skin of his hands had broken out in a series of painful welts, and he felt hot and sick. Zhu Irzh, though sym­pathetic, was of little help.

  “I really am sorry,” the demon said apologetically. “I’m afraid I lack your healing skills—I’ve never had much call for them, to be honest. Perhaps it will go away.”

  Chen sighed. “Probably. Still, at least I’m still alive. I think.”

  After the debacle at the mansion, they had made their way swiftly to the nearest sanctuary, which took the unlikely form of a teahouse run by a small, dour demon
in an apron. Judging from the rest of the sparse clientele, this was an establishment that asked few questions. Zhu Irzh procured a booth at the back, away from the windows and facing the door, and ordered a pot of gunpowder green tea.

  “This is most unfortunate,” he murmured. The tip of his tail tapped unhappily against the iron floor like a ticking clock. “I hadn’t bargained on having my patron’s very abode trussed up like a holiday chicken … certainly not with my patron inside it.”

  “Just like Tang’s. Kidnapping buildings seems to be a trademark of the Ministry of Epidemics,” Chen said, taking a swallow of hot tea. Its bitterness reminded him that he hadn’t eaten for more than a day, but it was always risky to consume food in Hell. Thoughts of Inari ricocheted through his tired mind. He hadn’t realized he’d spoken her name aloud until he glanced up and saw the demon staring at him.

  “You’re thinking of your wife,” Zhu Irzh said.

  “You know her name?”

  The demon nodded. “You must be aware that you made a great many enemies when you stole her from Hell.”

  “You heard about that,” Chen said, with a kind of gloomy satisfaction. He had rarely met anyone who hadn’t, at least in the lands of the dead.

  “You must admit, it was something of a cause celebre,” Zhu Irzh remarked. “I must say, I greatly admired your audacity. For a human to steal a scion of the Shi Maon from the very bosom of the family home—quite a feat.” He shook his sleek head in brief awe. “I wondered where you knew Tso the blood-dealer from. Her brother, of course. I hope she doesn’t share his looks.”

  “For the record, she’d already fled from the family home by then, and I didn’t steal her, she came of her own accord.”

  “Even worse. I’m surprised they didn’t send someone to bring her back once the fuss had died down.”

  “They tried. At least, her parents did. The rest of the family disowned her. Her father sent her brother after her, but we—well, we managed to talk Tso out of it. No, the only reason why I’m not strung by my heels on a hook in Hell right now is because the Celestial authorities—under whose protection I currently reside, as you know—” he added, with a pointed look in Zhu Irzh’s direction “—called in a number of favors.” And then withdrew their patronage.

  “You know, of course, that there’s a price on your head. Yet you’d still risk your immortal soul in performance of your duties, or for love,” the demon said, curiously. “Your wife must be a remarkable woman. Is she beautiful? I’ve never seen her.”

  “Yes,” Chen whispered.

  “You’re a strange man, Chen Wei. There is an adage about bravery and foolishness being part of the same package. It is a description that you would appear to fit.”

  “That remains to be seen,” Chen said bleakly. For the first time he allowed himself to consider the dreadful possibility that Inari really was lost to him, that he might never see her again. It was as though an abyss had opened up beneath his feet. The demon sighed.

  “Love’s never easy, is it?”

  Something about the way he said it made Chen look at him more closely. Zhu Irzh’s handsome face was drawn, and he looked more unsure of himself than Chen had ever seen him.

  “It sounds as though you’ve been having problems of your own,” he said. Zhu Irzh rubbed a taloned hand across his brow.

  “Yes, you might say that. Demon meets girl, demon loses girl … that sort of thing.”

  “Was she human?” Chen prompted gently. From the particular Gweilin word used by Zhu Irzh, it wasn’t clear whether the lady in question was mortal or fiend.

  “No, she was a demon,” Zhu Irzh said. “And guess where I found her? In the Ministry of Epidemics.”

  “What?” Chen said, blankly. On the seat beside him, the badger’s ears twitched.

  “She was shackled. Some official had decided she was going to join his harem, but she didn’t seem to fancy that, so I rescued her.”

  “That seems uncharacteristically chivalrous for a member of the Vice Division. Or did you have ulterior motives?”

  Zhu Irzh grinned. “I always have ulterior motives, Chen. It just depends what I do with them … On this occasion, however, I was the soul of gentility. I took the lady home, gave her a bath, and I even lent her my bed. Without me in it, which is uncharacteristic, I must admit.”

  “So where is she?”

  “We had a visitor in the middle of the night. Something from the lower levels, a crab-demon, almost certainly sent by the Ministry. My beautiful guest chose to flee through the garden and I haven’t seen her since. I intended to look for her, but things intervened.” He grimaced, flexing the fingers of his healed hand.

  “And—just out of interest—what was her name?” Chen asked cautiously. Possibilities tugged at the corners of his mind like the ripples of the Tao.

  “Leilei,” the demon said.

  “I see.”

  “She could have been lying, of course. People do, when they’re not sure of their circumstances.”

  “They do indeed,” Chen said thoughtfully. He drained his tea and poured some more into the bowl for the badger. “So. What do we do now?”

  Zhu Irzh caught his lip beneath a glittering fang. “No idea. I think going back to my place is out; it’s probably been gift-wrapped by now. There are almost certainly assassins on my trail, and we know there are assassins on yours. My department has probably disowned me. Your brother-in-law seems to have shopped you to your enemies, and all in all, the Ministry of Epidemics is out for our blood. What do you think we should do?”

  “If the Ministry’s looking for us,” Chen said, taking care to catch the demon’s gaze, “then I think we should go to the Ministry.”

  Zhu Irzh smiled. “And when we get there?”

  “Then,” Chen said, “we will conduct an investigation.”

  INTERLUDE

  Earth

  No Ro Shi parked the car some distance from the gherao dormitory, behind a high razor-wire fence that would, Ma estimated, render it invisible from the gherao. This, combined with No Ro Shi’s maniacal Beijing-trained driving, made Ma even more nervous than he was already, and the grim set of the demon-hunter’s countenance did not lessen his unease.

  “What happens now?” Ma ventured. No Ro Shi turned to look at him and Ma was appalled at the bleakness in his eyes. It made the demon-hunter’s previously dour demeanor seem almost jolly.

  “This is where it begins, Sergeant,” No Ro Shi said softly. “Welcome to the end of the world.” With that, he slid out of the car and began walking quickly along the fence, without waiting to see if Ma was behind him. Ten out of ten for style, Ma thought with uncharacteristic irony, but several minus points for team work. Or, indeed, explaining things. He got out of the car, making sure that the doors were locked, and followed the demon-hunter.

  At the end of the fence, No Ro Shi stopped and crouched down on the ground. Taking a thick pallet of incense from his pocket, he scratched a small hole in the dry, dusty earth and inserted the pallet into it. Then he passed his hand over the half-buried incense and murmured a word that made Ma’s head ring. The incense began to glow, and the demon-hunter stood up, dusting his hands.

  “That should hold us,” he muttered. After his brief period working with Chen, Ma knew better than to ask what he meant. No Ro Shi turned to him.

  “Sergeant? I want you to stay here, keep an eye out for anything untoward. I’m going to take a look at the dorm. Call me at once if that—” he pointed to the incense “—changes color, or if you see anything.”

  Ma nodded, in some bewilderment. “All right.”

  “Good,” said the demon-hunter, and loped swiftly in the direction of the dorm. Ma tried to watch him go, but No Ro Shi was suddenly difficult to see: there was only a long shadow, perhaps a gull’s, moving fast across the dust and the scrub. That was a neat trick, Ma thought, scared and impressed. He craned his neck around the fence, trying to see where the demon-hunter had gone, but no one was in sight. Ma looked ou
t across the port, which lay basking in the late afternoon light, thinking how peaceful it all seemed. The only sign of activity were the long necks of the warehouse cranes moving at the far end of the wharf, loading cargo from a ship with a Macau flag. A gull sailed high overhead and cried out, making Ma jump. He sighed and squatted down by the fence. He glanced at the incense, but it still had the same cold glow, almost lost in the afternoon light. Idly, Ma watched the cloud shadows drift over the sea, dappling the water so that it was first dark, then mirror-bright. Sunlight sparked from the chain links of the fence, gleamed off distant warehouse roofs, flashed from a window on the far headland. The light dazzled Ma: it seemed to spin and turn, locking him into a world where suddenly nothing was substantial anymore, there was only sunlight and shadow, unweaving the world itself until there was nothing left …

  The shriek came from high above his head: as cold and malign as the cry of a bird. Something flashed through the falling light, a blade made of darkness that cast the world around him into nightmare midnight and beneath it, something fell squealing. Ma rocked painfully back against the razor-wire fence but a hand caught him and hauled him to his feet. He gaped down at the thing that lay twitching at his feet, its mantis features dissolving into acrid light.

  “You were lucky, Ma,” No Ro Shi said harshly, sheathing the black blade. “It nearly had you.”

  Ma stared at him, trying to process an overload of information. “I didn’t see anything,” he said, aware of how feeble it sounded.

  “I noticed. If it’s any comfort, Sergeant, the zu’a have crept up on better men than you.”

  “Zu’a?”

  “Sun-demons, Sergeant. Someone must be controlling it; they’re woven from light. Temporary creatures, but dangerous.” He poked the mound of dust in which the incense was buried with the toe of his boot: the little light was ashy dead. “Now. I’ve been taking a look at the dorm. Something’s horribly wrong.” He put a hand on Ma’s arm. “Come with me.”