Precious Dragon

by Liz Williams

  “Wait!” the elderly gentleman wailed, but she was already beyond his reach. Pin could hear him shuffling forward as the door closed. They were in a lift. The demon’s taloned forefinger pressed the topmost button, and then they were sailing upwards, so fast that Pin found himself forced against the sides of the demon’s skull. Pin had not expected to encounter laboratories, but when they stepped out of the lift and into the upper reaches of the Ministry, he could see the rows of beds and equipment through every door that they passed. It reminded him of the stories that they told about Paugeng: the endless, secret dormitories where all the intricacies of the body were unravelled and revealed, documented and stored for alchemical transformation. A thought occurred to him. He said to the striding demon, “Those people in the hallway—the ghosts—what are they waiting for? Are they going to come here, to be tested?” He thought of his mother, so savagely and suddenly torn from life. Was she here, among the ranks of the patient spirits? He had not seen her, but perhaps she had changed, worn away by death and time. It was a dreadful notion; that even after the expiration of the body the suffering might not cease. The demon did not reply. She brushed aside the equipment: the silken nets of the drip feeds, the bronze crucibles and frosted tubes, as though they did not exist. The wards were empty. At last the demon reached the end of the long line of laboratories. They were in a small room, painted an unpleasantly institutional green. Outside the small window, the storms of the upper air continued to rage.

  As they stepped through the door of the last lab, Pin saw that there was a young woman sitting at the desk. She was wearing a neat black uniform and slippers, and her round face, though pasty and pale, was unmarked. She looked utterly dumbfounded to see the demon.

  “Can I help you?” she asked, mechanically. For the second time that day, the demon explained.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t think I can help. I—”

  “Perhaps this might change your mind.” The demon slid something into the woman’s hand, a crackle of paper.

  “Oh,” the woman said. She looked doubtful. “I don’t know if I should—well, all right then, I’ll try. But I’m only a technician; I don’t know if there’s anything I can do.” Turning to a nearby shelf, she took down a large leather bound book and began leafing through it, mouthing the characters silently to herself as she did so. At last she said, “Ah … Perhaps this might work. I’m not qualified to practice, you understand,” she added anxiously. The demon made an impatient gesture.

  “Just get on with it. I haven’t got all day …”

  Pin, eavesdropping on the demon’s thoughts, realised that this was true. The demon was running a considerable risk in coming here so blatantly; she was counting on a swift exorcism and then flight, to her home. Presumably, Pin thought uneasily, it was only a matter of time before the storm lords showed up.

  The woman was writing something assiduously on a long strip of paper.

  “Anyone can do this, really,” she said “But it needs to have the proper seals put on it … there.” She stamped the paper and leaned over the demon. As she did so, Pin glimpsed a name on the little badge that she wore: her name was Kung Mai.

  “Open your mouth,” Mai said to the demon. The serrated jaws fell open and Mai rolled the scroll neatly beneath the demon’s tongue. “Now. Close your mouth.”

  Encased in the demon’s jaws, the scroll began to smoulder and smoke. The demon shifted uneasily in the chair; Mai put a steadying hand on her shoulder. Pin began to be aware that the demon’s head was growing increasingly uncomfortable. Pressure was building within it like a migraine, and he was being forced against the bony interior of the demon’s skull. Then he was channelled into the demon’s bloodstream, flowing out into the hot echoing cavity of the demon’s mouth. Mai gave the demon a resounding blow between her shoulder blades. The demon’s mouth opened and Pin’s spirit shot out into a waiting flask. He glimpsed the demon rising from her chair. She had the face of an ancient skull, all bones and angularity, and her fur-collared robes were the colour of fire. She was, Pin had to admit, rather impressive. She said, in an immense whistling voice, “I will not forget this,” and sprang towards the window. There was a soundless blast as the window shattered and the demon was gone. Through the sides of the flask, he could see Mai’s distorted face looking back at him.

  “You come from the city,” she said. “From the living city.” Her voice sounded wistful; Pin wondered how long ago she had died.

  “Yes,” he said. “My name is—Pin.”

  “My mother is there,” Mai told him. “And now my son. I can’t reach my mother any more. Do you think you can help me?”

  “I don’t know how—especially at the moment. And anyway, why should I?” Pin asked, whispering against the sides of the flask.

  Mai glanced uneasily over her shoulder.

  “Because something terrible is going to happen, and that demon who brought you here knows what it is. I don’t. I only listen to rumours. Hell is in danger. And so is my son.”

  “Where exactly is your son?”

  “He’s with my mother. Her name is Pa Niang; she lives by the harbour.” Her head jerked up. “I can hear something. We must hide you—” and she thrust the jar hastily into a drawer. Pin tried to speak, but it was already too late. The world had gone dark.

  Much later, or so it seemed, the drawer was opened again. Through the glass wall of the bottle, Mai’s eye looked as vast as the sun. The eye was anxious.

  “Pin?” Mai said. “Are you all right?”

  There were a number of sarcastic replies to this, but the question was evidently meant kindly, so Pin answered, “I think so.”

  “I’m at the end of my shift. I’m going to put you in my pocket. Please keep quiet.”

  “All right,” Pin said. Light was abruptly snuffed out as Mai put the bottle inside her coat. Pin could feel the jolting sensation as she walked and there were a number of sounds around him. This seemed to go on for some time.

  At last the bottle was plucked free and he was set down on a table. Pin looked around him, seeing a small room lit by lamps. Patterned shadows danced across the walls and a young man sat in a chair by the fire, reading a book.

  “What’s that you’ve got there, Mai?” he asked. He had a light, pleasant voice.

  “Oh, just something I brought back from the lab,” Mai said. She went over and kissed his cheek; he too looked ill, Pin thought. “I’m just going to put it in the bathroom.” She picked up the bottle and carried it through into an adjoining room.

  “Now,” she said, holding the bottle level with her face. “Tell me everything.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Pin said.

  11

  Once Embar Dea reached the open sea, she swam quickly, surfacing from time to time to watch the wheel of the stars. She could hardly see them, but she could track their passage across the sky, and tell that she was still in time. The sea was calm, but she sensed the ripples beginning beneath the floor of the trench, and could smell the sand that was stirred up from the ocean bed, dirty with chemicals and the pungent odour of fire, strange so far beneath the sea. Embar Dea rode the waves with ease. Her fear had gone; she was no longer confined within the walls of the temple, and she was young again now, riding swift upon the currents and breathing the track that led her to Tenebrae.

  Night passed and the new day shone under the surface of the water, light curving and fragmented. She was coming closer to the cold waters, the ice seas of the north, and she breathed in the fresh water, snowmelt running cold along her dappled sides. A thousand words for water, the sea dragons had, describing the part of the world that was real to them, and Embar Dea sang them now: sweet water of the mountains, the acid salt up from the complaining ocean trenches, the rainwater from the forests which covered the hills of China, scented with earth and leaves, carrying fragments of the woods far out to sea. Someone was reached by her song, and Embar Dea rolled joyfully in the icy waves under the sun, thinking Not alone, no longer alone, coming
closer to Tenebrae. She swerved in the seas and turned towards the singer, but now something came between herself and the song, a barrier that broke the water, disturbed the carrying current. The dragon dived, straight downwards towards the safety of the seabed, and watched the ship draw above, covering the path of the sun. She saw the square hull curve up over the swell, then in a sudden patch of gentle water the ship cast its shadow over the hills of the seabed, and the guns lay like thorns along its sides. The distant song sang warning, and the voice of wisdom inside Embar Dea’s head told her: stay here, out of sight, stay still. Be silent, Embar Dea told herself; she was young again. She cried out, and the sound echoed off the ship’s hull, crackling through the sunlit water. The dragon sang, and the distant voice, suddenly cruel, joined hers. The ship’s radar would be swinging wildly now, uncertain of its path, easy to lead it, draw it singing on. Far below, Embar Dea sang, and watched as a cloud drew across the sun and the sea swelled up around her. She somersaulted in the water and turning swam before the ship, singing it on, and it followed her obediently, drawn on by the deceiving instruments into the path of the gathering storm.

  The arctic water was as green as a winter sunset, luminous with phosphorescence. Sea jellies, crusted with ice, drifted ghostly through the sea’s depths and a single seastar coasted among them, browsing on their trailing tentacles. Embar Dea ignored the life around her. She followed the path of the stars, the underwater current which followed what, on land, would become an energy line, and then at last through the glassy water she saw a great bulkhead looming up, a rotting hull beneath the ice. Along one side, the name of the tanker was still visible, Aluha: the first ship lured to these icy seas by the siren dragons to sink among the icebergs.

  12

  It was close to nine o’clock when Chen wearily stepped onto the deck of the houseboat; a sultry evening, with an oily, yeasty smell drifting up off the waters of the harbour. Inari came to meet him, ducking under the lintel of the kitchen door with a pan in her hand.

  “Darling! You’re home!” Some women would have made remarks about the time, questioned him as to where he’d been and what he’d been doing, but Inari was never like this. She always seemed delighted that he’d come back at all. “How was work?”

  “Boring,” Chen said, “And then exciting.” The one breach of official protocol that he ever entertained was to talk to Inari about work. In a sense, she was part of it: Hellkind, after all, even though her heart had never belonged to Hell, or to the vast, scheming clan which had sought to marry her off to a scion of the Ministry of Epidemics. Inari was a good person; death—had she been a mortal—would surely have qualified her for entrance into Heaven.

  So now Chen told her about Miss Qi, and her unexpected talent for violence. Inari’s crimson eyes widened as he spoke and her small face grew even paler.

  “She sounds—remarkable. But you know, there are warriors among the Heavenly Host and even Hell fears them, and the great swords that they carry. Heaven has its armies, just as Hell does.”

  “That’s true,” Chen said. He sat down on the bench that stood just outside the kitchen and accepted a bowl of green tea. Inari sat beside him, hands folded in her lap. The image of demure woman­hood, and yet he knew that Inari had on occasion been obliged to fight for her life, and done so fiercely. “I suppose it’s just that I haven’t come across them all that much.” Did he detect a slight note of resentment in his own voice? The feeling that he’d been forced to battle on, more or less alone, doing the Goddess Kuan Yin’s work in the world while the warriors of Heaven sat on their celestial backsides—

  “Darling, is everything all right?” Inari was gazing at him with some concern. “There’s soup if you haven’t eaten,” she added.

  Chen reached out and squeezed her hand. “I’m fine. Just distracted.” A life dedicated to Heaven’s behalf and yet the most support he’d had was from two of demonkind. He sighed. “I’ve got to go to Hell tomorrow evening. Zhu Irzh and Miss Qi and I have been put on this equal ops visit.”

  “Oh. All right,” Inari said. She looked momentarily downcast. “How long will you be gone?”

  “A few days. Not longer, I fervently hope, and if we can cut it short, we will. None of us want to be there, not even Zhu Irzh. Will you manage all right?” Inari could and did go out to the market on her own without being recognised as a demon, but Chen couldn’t help worrying about her.

  “I’ll be fine,” Inari said. As she spoke, something low and dark trundled out from beneath the bench and snapped at a moth. “I’ll have badger, after all.”

  “I shall look after her,” said her household’s ancient familiar, through a mouthful of moth. Chen rather wished that he could take the badger with him; the creature was a denizen of Hell, after all, and had proved useful in the past. But it was more important for it to look after Inari.

  “Will Zhu Irzh be taking Jhai?” Inari asked. They’d spent an evening at Paugeng, at a small private reception of Jhai’s. The industrialist had been charming, complimenting Inari on an admittedly beautiful dress and spending some time in conversation with her. Tserai herself had looked rather fine, dressed in a purple and silver sari with her huge eyes outlined in kohl and the faint tiger stripes of her own demonic origins just visible on her darkly golden skin. Chen could certainly see the attraction, but he would as soon have gone to bed with the original tiger. When they had emerged into the cool night air, the only thing Inari had said was, “Be careful. I don’t trust her.”

  “I’ve no intention of trusting her,” Chen had replied.

  Now, he said, “No, Tserai’s not coming with us. I’d be surprised if she ventured into Hell, quite frankly. She has—business associates there who won’t be too happy with her after the debacle a few months ago. She failed to give them Heaven, effectively.”

  “Do you think they’ll come after her?” Inari said.

  “I’m counting on it. But it won’t be just yet. Hell takes a long time to revenge itself sometimes. As you know. Anyway, Zhu Irzh didn’t seem all that keen on having her with him. I think he feels a cooling-off period might not be a bad idea. Says she’s started to take too much for granted.”

  Inari grimaced. “That one will always take too much for granted. She thinks she can buy people.”

  “The trouble is,” Chen said, “That she’s very often right.”

  He dreamed that he had already entered Hell. Zhu Irzh and Miss Qi were nowhere to be seen and neither was anyone else, but somehow, this did not seem to matter. He was walking along a promontory of scarlet rock, the cliffs tumbling down to a crashing, iron-coloured sea. On the horizon, the storm clouds were gathering and he could see the flash of the spears and eyes of the kuei, the Storm Lords whose arbitrary, capricious law is said to govern the affairs of Hell. But this did not matter either and Chen strolled on, admiring the view. But suddenly, there was a figure standing in his path with a hand upraised: a figure that changed as he looked at it, first a small boy, then an old man, and then something that was not human at all. It opened its mouth and gave a ringing cry. Chen covered his ears, but the cry went on and on, echoing from the scarlet cliffs until the world itself began to shatter and fall apart.

  Chen’s eyes snapped open. The sound was still going on, although now it was the telephone. When he groped for it, dropped it, and finally answered, with the dream still so fresh around him that he could smell saltwater, the demon’s voice said, “Chen! We’ve got a problem.”

  13

  The days had settled into a routine. Each morning, Mrs Pa and her new grandson went down to the market. Everyone made a great fuss over Precious Dragon. Mrs Pa had been hard put to explain how, after being married for only a few days and being, in any case, dead, her daughter had somehow managed to produce a two year old child with the demeanour and vocabulary of an elderly gentleman, but people seemed to understand. It was pretty odd, but then so were a great many things. Her neighbours appeared to accept it, at any rate, and walking through the market, the l
ittle boy was showered with candies, biscuits and trinkets, all of which he accepted with the gravity of a visiting potentate. After the market each day, Mrs Pa took her grandson down to the edge of the wharf, where they sat watching the boats from Teveraya. Once they had watched a tanker bound for Beijing, built to withstand the equatorial storms. It was an enormous thing, almost a mile long, and Precious Dragon’s mouth fell open when he saw it, nearly dislodging the pearl.

  Later in the afternoons, they would sit outside Mrs Pa’s house and receive visitors. Mr and Mrs Kung came, of course, hotfoot to see the little boy who was their grandchild too. All the neighbours came, bringing their own children. The house had been a focus of activity for days. Mrs Pa found that she was enjoying herself. The only cloud on the horizon was her inability to contact Mai. She had been trying to phone for several days now, but on each occasion the line had crackled and spat, finally settling into an electronic hum. Mrs Pa went to the temple and renewed the spells that allowed communication between the two worlds, but they still failed her. She tried to tell herself that this was no more than some occult interference, but the matter still worried her.

  Mrs Pa was washing the dishes when Precious Dragon came in, holding his toy tiger. He plucked at her dress.

  “Grandma?”

  “What is it?”

  “Someone’s in the outhouse.”

  Mrs Pa said, “How do you know?” Children, obviously, were fanciful, but it did not occur to her to treat this lightly.

  “I heard them. They were scuffling about. I don’t think we should go out there.”

  “Precious Dragon, if there’s someone messing about in the back yard, I’m not just going to sit here. And I’m not going to call the police.”

  “I don’t think we should go,” he repeated. He did not have a normal child’s stubbornness; this was a calm and reasoned statement.