The Devil's Detective

by Simon Kurt Unsworth

  How many had died in the building, he didn’t know; lots, probably. In one of the rooms he had seen a blackened tangle of bodies, still feeding the fires, the smoke pouring off them stinking of roasting meat and burned hair. Screams came from all around them, but which were human and which were the sounds of air expanding through rupturing and burning wood, he didn’t know. His journey had been mostly random, since he had no idea where the exits or entrances were, and he had been reduced to simply guessing. At least once, he had ended up in a dead-end corridor and had then struggled to turn his group of terrified followers around, to get them to go back. His memories were jumbled, fragmentary, and contradictory. Had he found a room filled with glass jars, the contents of which were boiling, sending the stoppers exploding out of splintering necks in clouds of spraying liquid and steam? Had he stepped over the corpse of a Mary that was already being feasted on by two tiny things, demons that were already burning but ignoring the flames in the scavenging? He didn’t know. He knew only that the Iomante was burning and that if he stopped moving, he would burn, too.

  Finding the exit had been luck more than judgment. A descent down a narrow, smoke-filled staircase had brought Fool to a wide foyer, its entrance doors smashed across the floor. With black air escaping from the stairway’s throat behind them, Fool had fallen into the air outside, gasping, and had vomited violently, spewing out smoke and not much else. People milled around him, some banging into him, as he thought about fire and demons and vomited again. His ribs hurt; his whole body hurt.

  Something in the Iomante exploded and sent a clenched fist of fire into the air. The hospital’s roof collapsed inward with a roar, the beams holding for a moment longer, outlined against the fires like a skeleton before they, too, buckled and crumbled. What was left of the building was mostly a framework of walls barely containing the flames within; the windows were ragged squares of orange and red and yellow and the doorway that Fool had emerged from was now filling with fire. Most of the Genevieves and Marys who had escaped the Iomante had run; those who remained had gathered into a crowd and were watching the building burn. More people joined them, coming down from the Houska, which was only a few hundred feet away. They reminded Fool of the Sorrowful, gathered watching and waiting and hoping, although for what, he had no idea.

  “This is the second uniform you’ve lost, Fool,” said a voice from his side. “You need to be more careful.”

  “Hello, Elderflower,” said Fool without looking around. Fool had expected Elderflower to arrive; the little bureaucrat seemed to have the ability to turn up anywhere, walking out of the darkness or the light with equally delicate footsteps.

  “What a few days you’re having, Thomas,” said Elderflower. “Chasing murderers, being attacked, quelling riots, and then rescuing a group of scared humans from a burning building. And you appear to have killed another demon, Thomas, not some street-dweller, no, an old one! There hasn’t been a human who’s done that in a generation, Thomas, in two generations or ten or more, so I’m told. Possibly it has never been done before!”

  “Should I be frightened?” asked Fool. “Should I be worrying about my safety, about more of them coming for me to take their revenge for my sheer fucking disobedience? I’m not. I don’t have the energy. Tell them that, tell them from me to send who they want, I’ll kill them or they’ll kill me. Either way, fuck them.”

  “You order me? Thomas, you forget your place, I think.”

  “I don’t care,” said Fool again. “I’m too tired to care, too hurt. If you have to punish me, then so be it, you can join the list of things that appear to not like me.”

  Elderflower laughed, a little indrawn giggle of breath, and dropped something onto Fool’s tented knees: a new uniform.

  “Dress yourself, Thomas. It does no good for Hell’s Information Man to be naked.” Fool opened his mouth to remind Elderflower that he wasn’t the Information Man, he was an Information Man, but then he remembered: Summer was dead. Gordie was dead. He was all that was left.

  He was Hell’s Information Man.

  There was underwear folded into the uniform, he saw, and pulled it on. He tried to do it while seated but couldn’t, so he stood, dressing wearily as Elderflower looked on. It took Fool a long time, and every movement hurt. There were no boots or socks in the small pile.

  “Here,” said Elderflower and took something else from the bag over his shoulder, holding it out to Fool. “A further gift from the archdeacons of Hell, a token of how much they value you.”

  It was a gun, a new one. The barrel gleamed blackly, reflections of the fires oily and thick along its length. Elderflower handed him a holster and Fool strapped it on, dropping the weapon into it and securing it. The weight of it was both horrifying and reassuring.

  “Don’t lose this uniform, or this gun, Thomas. If you heed any of my advice, heed that. Listen, Thomas, as well as look, and do not lose a third uniform. Rhakshasas and the others are pleased with you, despite the seemingly endless provocations you present them with, but their pleasure may not continue if you’re careless enough to lose another of their gifts.”

  “Fine,” said Fool. Hell was pleased with him. Which parts of Hell? he wondered. Not the inhabitants of Crow Heights, one of which had tried to kill him. Not the demon that had killed the Genevieves and Summer, or the Man’s killer, presumably the same, which had also tried to kill him. Who, he wondered, or what could possibly be pleased with him? “Who is watching me, watching us all? Just Rhakshasas and the other archdeacons? All of the Bureaucracy? And why me, and not anyone else?” he asked Elderflower, thinking, Perhaps I amuse them. Perhaps they like seeing this story unfold, like reading its progress in the bruises and wounds I carry. Perhaps I make them smile, little stupid pointless Fool that I am.

  “Why, Thomas, the whole of Hell is watching, and it is fascinated with you.” And with that, Elderflower turned and walked away.

  He looked down. One of the leaflets drifted past his bare foot, carried by the water running along the gutter, and a version of his own face peered up at him from the sodden paper. The humans thought he was fighting for them, something within Hell was pleased with him, all of Hell was watching even as its buildings burned, he had just practically interrogated Elderflower, and Summer and Gordie were dead.

  And something else had burned.

  It came to him suddenly that the feather had been in his jacket, hadn’t it? And his jacket had been burned when he was first brought to the Iomante. The feather had burned. He tried to think back; he had been holding it in the empty building before the demon attacked him. He hadn’t seen it in the locker when he went for his now-lost gun. Had it burned? Or was it still there, in the building where Summer had been strung up between two pillars and had her intestines torn from her belly? He hoped so, and hated that he hoped.

  He didn’t take the uniform off when he walked into the water, mindful of Elderflower’s advice. It made little difference anyway; it was made of some heavy material that became rapidly heavier as it got wet, was so soaked by the rain that wearing it into the muddy water could do it no more damage than had already been done. Fool held the new gun out ahead of him and tried to ignore the crowd at his back.

  He had picked them up, unwillingly, as he went through the Houska back to the demon quarter, an arrowhead of Genevieves and Marys that had formed behind him, individuals emerging from the bars and alleyways to trail after him making loud catcalls and cheering as they walked but stopping each time he turned around. He wanted them to go away but they didn’t, and he didn’t know how to tell them to. He didn’t know why they were following him.

  He assumed that they wouldn’t follow him into the quarter, but he was wrong. They did, quieter, though, more wary; they were in the Pipe, the home of demons, and although none appeared, the atmosphere grew tenser. This time Fool hadn’t been cautious but had walked up the center of the street, and again he had the sense that he, they, were being watched from behind the boarded-up windows, and he couldn’t
understand why nothing came out to challenge them. This was a direct affront, humans walking up the street in a demon quarter, in the Pipe, not because they were being herded for work or taken for sport, but because they had chosen to. Because they wanted to, as though they were free creatures and not the chattel that most demons considered them to be.

  When Fool reached the place where the water-filled alley split left and right, he took a last look back at the crowd. None had followed him into the water, but it didn’t look like any had left either. They were grouped around the alley’s narrow entrance peering after him and they reminded him of something, although he didn’t realize at first what it was. It was only as he lifted himself through the still-open window into the building’s interior, muscles complaining, that it came to him: they looked like the phalanx of demons that Elderflower had presented to him in the middle of the riot, looking at him expectantly. They looked like troops. The realization made him uncomfortable.

  Walking silently through the building was impossible; he sounded like minor rainfall, water dripping from his uniform and striking the dusty floor in a constant pockpockpock. If anything else was here, it would know he was coming. His new gun felt odd in his hand, its weight and balance subtly different from his earlier weapon, and he wished that he hadn’t dropped the gun he had become used to. Picky Fool, he thought and smiled to himself, and then he was at the place where Summer had been killed.

  Her blood was still there. It had dried to a thick black crust, the pool of it huge, stretching between the two pillars and out toward the far wall. In the dusty, gray light the floor looked like a frozen shell of swirls and streaks. Fool went to the wall and found the symbols of his earlier presence, gouges through the patterns here, there a handprint and boot print.

  Beyond them was the feather.

  It was lying in a rough circle of clear floor, the blood around it thick and rippled as though it had been pushed back and then dried. There were little dead things crumpled around the feather, curled upon themselves like flies. Fool stepped gingerly across to it, uncomfortably aware that his wet bare feet were stepping on Summer’s remains, and lifted the feather. It glowed at his touch, gentle blue light falling from it and making Summer’s blood shimmer. Carefully, he placed it into his pocket, feeling a heat spread across his skin under it. Steam rose from his jacket around the feather as the material dried.

  Later, back in his room, Fool sat on his bed and looked at the feather and the gun, one in either hand. He had arrived back at the office without incident, still being followed by the crowd, and was tired and thirsty. In the little kitchen, he drew himself a glass of water but it was lukewarm and didn’t so much quell his thirst as shift it, dropping it from his mouth to lower in his throat. Maybe I’ll never be able to get rid of it, he thought, looking at the glass of water. The glass was from the Flame Garden, was murky and warped, and the water it contained was a pale brown color. Maybe I’ll always be thirsty. Maybe the fire has dried me out so much I’ll be permanently like this, a little dried-up Fool.

  The feather and the gun, one in one hand, one in the other. There were hundreds of unopened canisters in his office, but he had ignored them. It didn’t seem important, not really. He placed the feather and gun on the bookcase, took another mouthful of water, put the glass on the bookcase alongside the shelf’s other occupants, and lay back.

  A feather and a gun and a glass of brown water. There was a logic there, a connection he was missing, he thought, but whatever it was could wait until the next day.

  Fool slept.

  PART THREE

  ELEVATIONS

  23

  The rain had stopped when Fool arrived at the Assemblies House the next morning. His uniform had dried into wrinkles overnight and smelled musty, but he had put it on anyway. He hadn’t wanted to initially, concerned that the uniform would separate him yet further from Hell’s other humans, make him more noticeable, but as he sat looking at it, it occurred to him that the uniform was his, in a strange way the only thing apart from the feather and the gun that actually belonged to him, that had been gifted to him. Wearing it was important because it belonged to him, and in some way he liked it and what it represented. Wearing it would be a symbol of something that he could not understand, could not make out the edges of but that he knew was there, too big to fully comprehend and too important to ignore. So he dressed in his uniform, put the feather in his inside pocket, and strapped his gun and holster to his leg.

  He was Hell’s Information Man, the only one there was, and he would not hide.

  Next to the angels, he still felt lumpen and imperfect.

  Elderflower and Adam were at the head of the procession, Balthazar and Fool were at the rear, and in between them were the first seven people due for Elevation. They had been rounded up that morning and were still in their sleep or work attire; one was naked, and all were ecstatic but trying not to show it. Behind Fool and Balthazar was a huge crowd of the Sorrowful, those not picked, following them up to the Mount. Ahead of them, the wall came into view; the entrance to the tunnel was already gleaming and blue. This was where delegations arrived in Hell and where the Sorrowful left it, where Fool’s back was set against Hell if he stood one way and turned against the walls to Limbo if he turned another, where lost and damned things crept in the shadows and called out in voices that were distorted and sly.

  This was the edge, the place where everything changed.

  Some of the Sorrowful were holding banners, but they held them down, were subdued and quiet. Elevation was Hell’s hardest time for those not being Elevated, when misery overrode jealousy and everyone’s thoughts, Fool assumed, were similar: It could have been me, it should have been me, why them and not me? Why not me? Why not?

  Why?

  The light falling from the entrance to the tunnel grew brighter as they grew closer, a gleaming blue that fell across the angels and those to be Elevated, casting their shadows back across Elderflower and the Sorrowful. When Adam reached it, he stopped; he would not enter the tunnel, Fool knew, but would usher the first of the humans into it. Even now, the naked man was pushing his way forward through the group, scrambling to get to the front. Adam’s smile was beatific as he held a hand out and calmed the man.

  “This is the time when your souls go free,” he said, “when you are called to the greater glories of God and released from the terrors of Hell. Go with our blessing.”

  Stepping out of the way, Adam let the naked man pass. As he stepped into the light, there was an incredible blue flash that rippled in the air above them. Fool blinked and the Sorrowful made a noise, a collective sigh that was part misery and part awe. At the heart of the light, the man’s silhouette was visible for a moment, a black shape burning free of its sin and cares, and then it was gone.

  “Next,” said Balthazar. He sounded bored.

  It took only a few minutes for the seven to be Elevated, to be gone from Hell. With each flash, the Sorrowful made their noise, that little tired exhalation, and the black shape at the center of the light disintegrated into pieces that tore to the edges of the tunnel but vanished before they reached the walls. Fool had never really watched before, never seen the things in the middle of the glare. He didn’t like it.

  “You’re beginning to see more clearly, Thomas,” said Elderflower. “Your eyes are improving beyond even my expectations.”

  “Are they dying?”

  “No,” said Elderflower. “They are being reborn.”

  “Into Heaven?”

  “Of course. Isn’t that what was promised?”

  “Tell me what Heaven is like,” Fool said, wondering how joyous it could be if you could get there only by having your body burned away in a cleansing fire.

  “How should I know, Thomas? I’m a simple clerk.”

  Fool looked at Elderflower, who was watching the last of the Elevations. “A simple clerk? No. I don’t know what you are, suspicious Fool that I am, but you aren’t that.”

  “No? Well, it
matters not, Thomas. We’re finished,” said Elderflower as the last of the flashes scoured its way across the sky beyond their heads, fading as it hit the clouds above them. “Come. There are more discussions to be had.” He turned and began to walk back down the hill; the crowd of the Sorrowful parted around him and left the path open for Adam and the Fool and Balthazar, the sound of the mass a low mutter as they passed. Fool couldn’t hear words, just a low rumble of voices, and he unclipped his holster so that his gun was easier to reach.

  The dead thing was lying at the side of the path.

  It was sprawled in the tangled and wretched bushes perhaps twenty feet to their side, and Fool saw it only because he was at the front of the crowd with Elderflower and there was nobody blocking his view. In a place ordinarily thick with darkness that conquered even the daylight but lit today by the crowd’s torches and the glow still drifting from the angels, Fool saw a clawed hand pointing to the sky. At first he thought it was simply another demon, one of the lurkers by the wall, something without even the intelligence to exist within Hell’s ordinary society, watching the procession, but it didn’t move as they came close to it. It was gray, the arm below the hand, and its fingers were curled down, the claws on their ends black. It rose from amid a thick knot of thorned branches that Fool thought were black but realized as he came nearer were actually bloodstained. The area smelled.

  Stepping off the path and onto the softer earth, Fool went toward the arm. He drew his gun as he walked, felt the angels and Elderflower and the crowd at his back stop and watch him. Little fool with an audience, he thought briefly, little watched Fool.