Snake Agent

by Liz Williams

  “I can hear something,” Inari said fearfully. Chen listened. He heard a snapping, crackling sound, just beyond hearing, but still familiar. Then he realized. It was the sound of fire. Zhu Irzh brought up his sword and stabbed frantically at the wall, releasing a shower of musty plaster. A crack of daylight appeared between thick, impenetrable beams; peering through, Chen saw the motionless figure of the Minister of Epidemics, leaning on a smoldering brand of incense the size of a quarterstaff and smiling with buttery satisfaction. Beside him stood the chilly, mutilated form of Inari’s former fiancé Dao Yi.

  “The bastards are trying to burn us out,” Zhu Irzh shouted. He turned on Chen. “Can’t you do anything?”

  “What makes you think I could do something?” snapped Chen.

  “She’s your goddess. It’s Her temple. Can’t you send up a quick prayer or something?”

  “I told you. I’m not her favorite person right now.” Smoke was beginning to creep beneath the door, making him cough. The ancient straw matting that covered the floor would go up like a torch, and there was nothing they could use to force their way out.

  “We’ll have to break the door down,” Zhu Irzh shouted, eyes streaming.

  “You’re joking! With what?”—and then, with an icy shock of realization, Chen knew what they could use. Crying, “Zhu Irzh! Give me a hand!” he ran to the statue.

  This time, it was Zhu Irzh who lingered. “Hold on,” he said. “You can’t use Her image as a battering ram. I mean—she’s a goddess.” It was then that Chen’s last shred of loyalty to the deity who had demanded, albeit merited, so much finally snapped.

  “Zhu Irzh,” he rasped. “I don’t give a fuck.”

  Zhu Irzh’s elegant eyebrows shot up, but he said no more and assisted Chen in hauling the statue down from the altar. Indeed, Chen thought, it was just as well that Zhu Irzh did not have further objections because the statue, a life-size piece of jade, was extra­ordinarily heavy and the demon’s more-than-human strength was a considerable asset. With Zhu Irzh at the head and Chen at the feet, they paused at the foot of the now-empty altar. Smoky sweat rolled down Chen’s face like tears. The smoke was thickening; Inari was no more than a wraith.

  “One,” said Chen, gritting his teeth and praying that nothing would rupture before they reached the door. “Two! Three!”

  Stumbling and cursing, they ran the statue at the door, managing to strike it directly on the lock, which shattered. The door split down the middle and flew open. Chen and Zhu Irzh dropped the statue, which shattered. Sword and rosary drawn, followed by a choking Inari, they staggered out into the courtyard. Neither the Minister nor Dao Yi were anywhere to be seen. There was a roar from behind as the temple roof gave way, sending a shower of glittering sparks up into the air. The cloud of sparks grew and grew, until they formed a curtain of fire, and through the curtain fell No Ro Shi, the demon-hunter, accompanied by Sergeant Ma.

  Chen turned, but then he saw a mottled, reversed foot disappearing behind one of the great iron incense holders. With a cry of pure rage he bolted after it, seized it by the scruff of the neck and dragged it, spitting and snapping, out into the courtyard. It was Dao Yi.

  “You!” roared Chen. “And now you’re going to answer to me!”

  Across the courtyard, from the corner of his eye, he saw the First Lord of Banking dragging the Minister back through the gate. The First Lord’s long tail was wrapped tightly around the Minister’s plump throat, and the First Lord’s face was incandescent with fury. Chen shook Dao Yi like a rat.

  “Chen,” Zhu Irzh said from somewhere behind him.

  “Not now!”

  “I think you’d better take a look, actually.”

  “I said, not now!” But then a voice that was much, much more than human spoke:

  “Chen,” it said, like the voice of the sea. “Put him down.”

  Chen turned. The fragments of the shattered statue were flowing out into a pool and then together, extinguishing the flames as they rose until an immense column of liquid jade towered over the courtyard. Slowly, it began to coalesce, reforming into the familiar figure of the goddess Kuan Yin, the Compassionate and Merciful, She Who Hears the Cries of the World.

  Released by the First Lord of Banking, the Minister of Epi­demics fell to his unwieldy knees, Dao Yi by his side.

  “Sanctuary!” he implored. “Sanctuary for your unworthy servant, under Statute 12 of the 1472 Theological Reform Act!”

  The goddess looked down at the Minister with arctic eyes.

  “You burned down my temple. You assaulted my servants. You attempted to engineer mass destruction upon innocents, and now you demand sanctuary. You’ve got some nerve.”

  “Maybe,” Dao Yi said, and his gaze was suddenly no longer that of a supplicant, but as fixed and cold as the eyes of the goddess herself. His hand darted towards the breast of his robe and then it was holding a dagger: black and iron and ancient, trembling with power. He threw. The dagger shot like a lance towards Kuan Yin’s breast. But Chen was already leaping forward, with reflexes he didn’t know he possessed, to snatch the speeding dagger from the air. From the corner of his eye, Chen saw a striped and sinuous form bolt from the temple gate and hurl itself at Dao Yi, knocking him backwards. The dagger struck Chen’s palm; in the moment before the blinding pain hit, he saw its point emerge from the back of his hand. Zhu Irzh lunged for the badger, but he was too late: its long teeth met in Dao Yi’s throat and Inari’s former fiancé crumbled into a mess of curdled flesh. Snatching the badger up, Inari buried her face in its bloody fur. The air blurred and changed; someone stepped out of it as if through a door. The Minister was still on his knees, staring up at the scarred woman who stood above him.

  “You!” the Minister said in utter shock.

  Fan nodded wearily. “Who else?”

  “Who are you?” Chen asked, bewildered. Kuan Yin stepped forward and looked for a moment into Fan’s mismatched eyes, then she nodded.

  “The Goddess of Plague. Xian H’si, also called Fan. She who walks the war zones, She who listens to the call of blood.”

  “Why aren’t you helping him then?” Zhu Irzh demanded, pointing to the Minister of Epidemics. Through a haze of pain, Chen heard the scarred woman say, “It is true that I generate the sorrows of the world, disease and death. But you must understand that such things are necessary, that I have the mandate of Heaven. The Ministry of Epidemics, which works ultimately beneath my jurisdiction, does valuable work. Plagues limit populations, generate movement and social change. Disease is necessary for human destiny to move forward.”

  Chen frowned. “Are you sure about that?”

  “Hush.” Kuan Yin reprimanded him.

  “But it seems my servants sought my overthrow, tried to curry favor with the Imperial Court. This planned plague, which I learned of only recently, would have been too great, its effects too widespread. It would have led to imbalance, and I took it upon myself to correct it. And now my servant must pay, for acting without my consent, for seeking imbalance.”

  Before anyone could say another word, she reached out, plucked the dagger from Chen’s hand, and cut the Minister’s throat. He dropped without a sound, thick, black blood seeping into the dust and ashes.

  Standing above the Minister’s form, Fan looked up into the middle distance. Something was coming. Chen could hear it humming and buzzing, and then he saw it, falling like an arrow out of the upper skies. It was a vast cloud of flies, which swarmed over the Minister’s body, filling his mouth and eyes. Then, slowly, tottering from side to side, the mass of flies took off, carrying the Minister with them. Chen took careful notice of their flight through the stormy air, and saw that they were heading north, towards the Imperial Court.

  “And now,” said the Goddess of Plague, folding her hands into the sleeves of her robe and bowing in the direction of Kuan Yin, “I must return to my Ministry. We will meet again.”

  “I don’t doubt that,” the goddess said, with a thin smile. The hem of Fa
n’s robes swirled the bloody ash into a sudden brief whirlwind, and she was gone.

  “Now,” the goddess said. She crossed her hands on her breast and bowed low. As she did so, Chen felt a disorienting, vertiginous shift, as though he were bowing over the very edge of an abyss. The pain in his hand ebbed away like a tide. He blinked. The world changed around him, and when he could see again, he was standing on soft grass, with a sky like illuminated dark glass above his head, filled with stars. Peach trees were growing all around, bearing heavy globes of fruit—or were they worlds?—yet at the same time thick with blossoms. Inari, Zhu Irzh and the First Lord stood some distance away, motionless as though frozen, but the demon-hunter No Ro Shi and Sergeant Ma were gazing around in wonder.

  Chen turned to the goddess. Her face was as cold and still as glass.

  “Chen Wei. Do you think you have acted with impeccability throughout this affair?”

  “Lady, I—”

  “Perhaps I should remind you. You consistently disobeyed My instructions. You came to Hell in search of your demon wife. You healed a demon from his sickness, aided and abetted others. You have lied, and stolen. Last but not least, you used My sacred image as a battering ram. Does that sound like impeccable conduct to you?”

  “Frankly, no,” Chen said, standing his ground.

  “Chen Wei, I will give you a choice. I will permit you to come under my aegis once more. But in order to do so, you must renounce your wife. I see from her thoughts that she was prepared to renounce you for your own protection—let us see if you can do better than a demon. Renounce her familiar also. Deliver these beings—” here she indicated Zhu Irzh and the First Lord of Banking “—to the Courts of Heaven and the Jade Emperor. And then you will be under my protection once more.”

  The merest whisper of a thought crossed Chen’s mind: They are demons, after all. They are beings of evil, whatever qualities they might possess, and I devoted my life to combating evil. But it wasn’t that simple, it never was, and Chen knew it. He looked up and met No Ro Shi’s steely gaze. The demon-hunter was watching him closely. There stands one who would never understand shades of gray. He turned back to the goddess, and simply shook his head.

  Astonishingly, there was no immediate outburst of divine wrath. Instead, Kuan Yin said, “Chen. Walk with me a moment.”

  Chen fell in beside her as she stepped delicately beneath the peach blossoms. She seemed suddenly smaller, not quite as tall as he. She walked until they were out of hearing and sight of the others and then she turned to face him so that he was looking directly down into her depthless, inhuman eyes.

  “Well?” Chen asked quietly. “What is my punishment to be this time?”

  “There is no punishment,” the goddess said, almost sadly. “Children grow up, after all, and never so fast as when they are pushed from the nest.”

  It took Chen a moment to grasp what she meant. Wonderingly, he said, “Then all that—the withdrawal of your protection when I married Inari, your anger, all that was an excuse?”

  “You were relying on me too much, Chen. It’s natural, with deities and mortals. You had a hard task to do, you could do it better without my safety net. You took risks, made your own decisions. Do you really think that I, compassionate as I am, merciful as I am, would turn aside my faithful follower on some arrogant caprice because you wouldn’t do what I told you? You are a man, Chen, not a slave.”

  “Are you telling me you thought I was getting soft?” Chen asked, momentarily outraged, and the goddess laughed. The sound of her laughter brought the peach blossoms showering down from the trees, again and again, so that soon she was engulfed in a cloud of petals, like snow.

  “Speak to me,” her fading voice said, as the petals swirled up. “You won’t be entirely on your own. I’ll still be listening.” The cloud of peach blossoms engulfed him with sweetness, filling his senses, and causing light to dazzle and sparkle before his eyes until it faded, and he was standing in the courtyard before the smoldering remains of Kuan Yin’s temple, with Inari by his side and the towers of Shaopeng gleaming in the late afternoon sun. Outside the temple, a voice drifted in from a radio in someone’s apartment:

  “Authorities report that the recent virus outbreak has now been brought under control. The Net Corps have issued a joint statement, saying that the bioweb has now been temporarily closed down, pending investigation. The causes of the recent near-disaster­ are held to be—” but then a window rattled down and the sound was abruptly cut off. Chen turned and saw that Sergeant Ma and the demon-hunter were standing nearby, blinking.

  “Glad you made it back,” Chen said. No Ro Shi, his face creased in bemusement, stalked off without a word. Ma just nodded, staring at Inari with wide eyes. But of Zhu Irzh and the First Lord of Banking, there was no sign at all.

  EPILOGUE

  Three Weeks Later

  It had been a peaceful enough day at the precinct—a haunting in Hsu Tan, reports of a ghost sighting in the north of the province—but Chen was nonetheless pleased to get home at a reasonable hour, after a couple of beers with Sergeant Ma. He wandered along the dock, absently kicking small stones into the glittering water, and gazing out to the golden place where the sun was setting over the South China Sea. Across the water, the houseboat rocked in the gentle breeze, the waves sending shimmering reflections along its flank. He could see Inari pottering about in the kitchen, the badger-teakettle scratching itself on deck.

  As he reached the end of the dock, however, the world rang. The golden sea turned dark. When his head cleared, Chen saw that someone was standing before him. The figure wore a long, silk coat, and a sword was slung over his shoulder.

  “Seneschal Zhu Irzh,” Chen said, shading his eyes against the sudden glare of the light. The demon bowed.

  “Detective Inspector Chen. Good to see you again.”

  “I’m glad you seem to have escaped Heaven in one piece,” Chen said, and meant it. The demon grinned. “Heaven, yes. Pretty place, I thought. Bit insipid.”

  “You may have a point. So what are you doing here?”

  The demon scuffed the toe of one boot in the dust; he appeared mildly embarrassed.

  “The thing is … Hell’s settled down a bit since the recent unpleasantness. They’re rebuilding the Ministry of Epidemics. The First Lord of Banking gave me a very favorable report, but my department felt that, what with the Imperial Court being involved and everything, that they really didn’t want me around for a bit. Political embarrassment and all that. So they’ve sent me here. On assignment.”

  “I see,” Chen said, momentarily lost for words.

  “They cleared it with your department. I’m to stay for three months. There was,” the demon cleared his throat, “some talk of my acting as your partner.”

  “Where are you going to live? Have they sorted out your accommodations?” If he concentrated on the practicalities and ignored the future for once, it made things easier. Zhu Irzh nodded.

  “I’m in a boarding house off Shaopeng Street. There are all manner of people in there. I like it. I’ve just come from there.” Looking carefully at a point past Chen’s shoulder, he added with studied indifference: “By the way, the Ministry of Wealth has unwrapped the First Lord’s house. I went to see him a few days ago, met his family. He has a daughter, very charming girl, who seems to have taken something of a liking to me … Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that there are possibilities.”

  “I see,” Chen said, smiling. “Well, I’m glad.” And rather to his surprise, he found that he was pleased, too, that Zhu Irzh would be around for a while. They worked well together, and it would be nice to have a colleague who didn’t regard him with manifest suspicion—though it was true that Sergeant Ma’s awe seemed to have diminished considerably since his own excursion between the worlds. Zhu Irzh interrupted his thoughts.

  “Thank you, Chen,” he said. “I hoped you might be.”

  “Since you’re here, you might as well come and say hello to Inari. Have you eaten
?”

  The demon brightened. “Not yet.”

  “Well, then, come to dinner.”

  Chen stepped from the dock onto one of the pontoons, and with the demon following, he made his way home, across the gilded, dappled water.

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Detective Inspector Chen Novels

  PROLOGUE

  The chinese inhabitants of Singapore Three say that August is an unlucky month. They say that it is called the month of the dead, for it is always during the endless burning days that the dead return, looking for the living, drawn by blood and breath. They tell their children: You do not know how it was when we lived in the suburbs of Beijing and Guangzhou, or the willow villages of Szechuan, in the ancient cities where people understand how to keep the dead at bay. But in this great new city of Singapore Three, where the entrances to the Hell are closer and the veils between them are fractured, we no longer live in a place when a story is only a story, told to frighten a child in the darkness. Nor do you remember when the demons and the hungry ghosts were only dreaming shadows in an ordinary life, until we left the old cities and came to the new, and found that during certain months and certain times, when the eternal Wheel of Life and Death grates on its spokes, the world changes.

  At such times, one can only prepare for the possibility of death as best one can.

  Deveth Sardai, stepping from a downtown tram, was not thinking of death. She was, instead, wondering how to extricate herself from the latest disastrous relationship. The policy of ignoring the girl was clearly not working: Sardai had not phoned her since the previous Monday, but a litany of messages, of increasing desperation, had been left on her answerphone.

  Sardai smiled thinly as she walked down to the retailers’ market, to wander, anonymous, beneath the girdered roofs of the warehouse shelter. The market was crowded with people on their way home from the production lines of Haitan. In fruit­sellers’ quarter Sardai nearly tripped on the vegetables that spilled out over the floor, squashed into mush across the dank concrete. She kicked aside a burst cucumber, turned the corner and found herself out of the fruitsellers’ street and into the meat market. The butcherei, mostly women, glanced at her incuriously as she passed. The mild-eyed heads of the black cattle, swinging on their racks, held more expression. Sardai stepped queasily between the remnants which littered the floor; the concrete was washed with a faint pink gloss. Nothing was wasted, Sardai knew. The cattle were reared in the derelict lots between the apartment buildings of Bharulay and Saro Town; genes acquired on the black market and manipulated to produce Indian cows, of a sort. The butcherei slaughtered them illegally, bleeding them dry in hidden locations among the back streets in a literal moveable feast. The traders brought the bodies here before sunrise. The horns and hooves would be the first to go, sold off to the herbalists to be ground into powder and marketed as fraudulent aphrodisiacs.