The Devil's Detective

by Simon Kurt Unsworth

  When Fool pulled the table away from the wall, he found that her hand was the only part of Summer that hadn’t been burned. The rest of her flesh was blackened and peeling, the surface of the table around her buckled. Her skin was split into a series of fire-torn grins, her head made bald and blistered by some intense heat. There was no soot, no marks more than a few inches from her body, no scars on the walls, no evidence that these had been human flames. Summer had been taken by the heat that lived in the demon flesh to stop her soul talking, to provide it with yet more food.

  Fool glanced around the rest of the room, hoping that Morgan had conversed with Summer before the demon arrived, that he had made notes. How lovely it would be to find a note that stated simply the demon’s name and where he could find it, all in Morgan’s neat hand, but there was nothing. Hope, thought Fool, and grinned humorlessly. I’m so helpless against it, I know it’s pointless but I keep hoping anyway. Little hopeful Fool. He realized he was crying and wiped his eyes, hoping to wipe away the pain and anger he felt along with the tears. Where did this leave him? Summer had been prevented from talking, his ally in the Questioning House killed and, he supposed, also prevented from talking; one look at the torn and wrenched flesh of the neck left Fool in no doubt that the violence of the death would have released his soul for the demon to eat. There would be a blue-ribboned canister with his details printed waiting for him back at his rooms, he knew, with orders to investigate. “I am,” he said aloud and angry, “I am.”

  With Morgan dead, the only Questioner Fool trusted had gone, and his chance of finding answers was slimmer than ever. He had a Questioning House full of equipment and not the first idea of how to use it. He had nothing.

  No, Fool suddenly remembered, not nothing. I still have a little nameless demon in a lake.

  27

  The bag swung against Fool’s leg as he climbed out of the transport. It was heavy, made his arms ache, and he swapped it from hand to hand to try to even out the effort. At least it’s stopped dripping, he thought, the puddle of blood on the seat beside him cracking and flaking as he lifted the bag. It left a stain on the coarse upholstery; he wondered what Elderflower would say about it and found that he didn’t care. He tried not to think what was in the bag, what was banging against his leg.

  About what he was going to do.

  Fool had returned briefly to the office after leaving the Questioning House. He found what he was looking for in one of the supply cupboards; a coil of rope, dusty and tangled, that he wrapped around one arm, lifting it from its place on the shelf next to spare sheets and notebooks and a box of cheap, thin pencils. Afterward, he went into his own room, but there was nothing there; everything of value to him, everything he owned, he carried. The feather was still in his pocket, his gun was snug in its holster, and he had his uniform. The Information Man’s Guide to the Rules and Offices of Hell he debated leaving but then decided against it, placing it into a pocket. They were his rules, after all, the rules of Hell as they had been given to him. This thing, this investigation, felt like it was moving now, but the movement was headlong, dragging him without control behind it. He had, somehow, to get ahead of it, to slow it down somehow, to take control. And then what? Fool had a grim sense that this might be the last time he would see this room, although where the sense came from he didn’t quite know.

  Actually, he did know, if he was honest; he could see the real possibility of his own death, not in the fearful way everyone in Hell feared their own death, but because of something concrete, something specific. He was changing, he realized, had already changed, had become something different. The old Fool was gone, burned away in the glare of attention and anger and a determination to solve this, to find the demon and make it pay. It was setting the trail for him to follow, he thought, and then trying to prevent him following even as he chased it, creating a mess of confusion in which new doors were opening and old, lost ideas were unfurling. It had killed Summer because she had gotten close to it, had managed to get within touching distance of it, but Fool had been close as well and had prevented it from taking her soul. It had made a mistake there, he understood, but it had not left it, had stepped ahead of Fool to finish the job and unmake the mistake. Poor Summer, he thought, destroyed not once but twice. And me? It could have killed me when it killed the Man and I was in his room, but it didn’t. Why? Because it wanted to see how far I could go? Because I amuse it the way I amused the Man? Because it didn’t think I’d survive the traps it set me and it wanted to see me suffer? But I did survive, and I’m maybe not so amusing now. Next time, it won’t hesitate.

  It’ll kill me.

  Following this demon wasn’t simply taking Fool to new geographies, it was forcing him into new shapes. He had shot demons, killed them, ordered them to do his bidding and been obeyed. He had seen spaces within Hell that he had never known existed, had walked further and further from the Fool he thought he was, and had further to go yet. He turned to leave, knowing that even if he came back, he would be changed even more, and wondering whether he would recognize himself at all by the time this was finished.

  Summer’s room was neat, almost sterile, the only sign she had ever been there the spare clothes hanging on the rail and the folded pants and bras stacked on the shelves of the bookcase. Next to them was a small pile of paper weighted down with a pencil. Fool picked up the sheets and leafed through them; they were sketches, he found, lots of them on each piece of paper. Some were of places or people he recognized; in several, he saw Gordie, and in others, he saw himself. In the sketches, Fool looked serious and Gordie was always smiling. The last picture in the pile was of the three of them, three faces, roughly penciled but still recognizable; Summer and Gordie and Fool, Hell’s Information Men, and now two were dead and the third was someone new. He folded the paper and put it in his pocket by his Guide.

  Gordie’s room was a mess. The walls were still covered with their paper adornments, stuck there with pins and tacks and, in one case, a fork. He read some more of them, intrigued despite himself, finding more cryptic ideas and thoughts (“Alrunes scream when endangered and predict the future,” “There are secret trades and secret trade routes”), odd snippets of geography, tiny, poorly drawn sketches of items and demons and buildings. Some of the pieces of paper that were linked by lengths of twine, Fool saw, listed some of the crimes they had not investigated or had investigated and failed to solve. Had Gordie started down this road before him, he wondered, down this recognition of trails and clues and possibilities and solutions? Probably; that was what Gordie had been like, always wondering and looking and trying to place things into some kind of order. The room was heavy with his ghost and Fool left it, shutting the door quietly behind him.

  The office itself was already growing a layer of dust like a new skin. In its corner, the pneumatic pipe descended from the ceiling, the floor below covered in containers, one blue-ribboned one in among the melee. Fool opened one or two, but not the blue one that he assumed was Morgan’s, and found they contained the usual mix of murder and rape and beatings, of bitterness and misery and pain. One of the metal canisters was wrapped in a white ribbon and he picked it up. Before he opened it, he took Summer’s picture from his pocket and smoothed it open on his desk. The three of them, caught as Summer practiced her drawing skills. The note inside the canister simply said, “MORE OFFICERS WILL ARRIVE SOON.”

  I have troops, and soon more officers, thought Fool. A new Summer and a new Gordie. More than that, maybe? He didn’t know, didn’t care. Soon, they’d take new souls from outside the wall and give them flesh and send them here. The last vestiges of Summer and Gordie would be removed, the bras and pants taken away, the pieces of paper torn down, and Fool would have new Information Men to train, to get to know. He looked down at his uniform, at the way the buttons gleamed, and stood. He put the picture back in his pocket, left the note on his desk and the catalog of crimes scattered across the floor in their separate containers, and left the office.

&nbs
p; The bag was thin cotton, its handles badly stitched, and Fool hoped they wouldn’t tear as he clinched the rope around them.

  The journey to Solomon Water hadn’t taken long. The transport, driven by its silent demon, had threaded its way through mostly quiet streets, although here and there groups of humans gathered, watching them in silence as they passed. The riots seemed to have retreated, as though Hell were pausing for breath, although once Fool was sure he saw a scuffle taking place far down an alley, but he couldn’t make out who was involved and they were past it too fast for him to see much. The ground was littered with the leaflets and they swirled up as the transport drove through them, setting the papers capering in the air. Some of them were larger, Fool saw, folded over so that they formed little booklets; they were covered in writing. He wondered about getting the driver to stop so that he could pick one up and read it, but didn’t. They were near the end, although what the end would be he didn’t know, and he wanted to get there and get it done.

  Once the rope was tied as tightly as he could make it, Fool began to swing the bag, initially back and forth and then higher and higher so that it was performing full circles around him, faster and faster. Finally he let it go, sending it arcing out over the water’s black surface, letting the rope run through his hand but not letting it escape.

  The bag hit the water, sending up a corona of spray, and even from this distance Fool saw the water soaking into the drying blood and freeing it, teasing it out from the bag and setting it loose into Solomon Water. Morgan’s face was recognizable for a moment as the wet bag’s side clung to the head it contained, and then it rolled and sank.

  It took only a moment. The rope in Fool’s hand jerked, first one way and then another and then forward, yanked several feet more out into the water. Fool clenched his hands around it and began to pull it in, feeling resistance but pulling anyway. The rope jerked again, tearing skin from his palms but he held on, wincing, and pulled. Wakes formed at the end of the rope, a larger central one moving back toward the shore as he hauled, surrounded by smaller ones darting in and out. Under the surface, a frenzy was forming about Morgan’s head, lots of Hell’s littlest things nipping and biting.

  Fool needed to get Morgan’s head to shore before the bag split; it was the only bait he had, and if the things in the water actually managed to chew into the flesh, they would realize that no soul remained in it for them to feast on. He didn’t know whether they were like their counterparts out of the water, but Fool had to assume that the majority of their sustenance was pain and fear and sour memories, the stuff of the soul, and that flesh was merely the carrier for this. The moment they tasted that the head was nothing but flesh, they would leave, and he needed them to stay. He needed them to gather, and in gathering to bring the larger things to them.

  As it came closer to the shore and the water became shallower, Morgan’s head began to drag on the bottom. The bag broke the surface, went under again, and then reemerged, the rope taut between it and Fool. He pulled on, the water around the bag rippling and splashing as things flashed in and out again, their backs breaching the surface for brief moments before disappearing again. There were already tears in the bag, its sides and handles fraying where the swimming things had bitten it. Fool pulled and the bag came on.

  When it was close enough, he reached out and lifted the bag from the water. He was just in time; a long rip had opened up along the bottom of the material and the stump of Morgan’s neck was already pushing its way out, dripping. Fool held the top of the bag and shook it, letting the weight of the head open the tear farther until it was long enough and wide enough, and then it was out and bouncing across the ground. Fool used his feet to prevent the head from rolling back into the water, positioning it instead by the place where land and water met. Morgan’s face peered into the sky, his features already looking less like his living self. Death and immersion had softened him, making his lips sag back and his hair trail from his scalp. Liquid spilled off the head and out of the mouth, trickling into Solomon Water, carrying, Fool hoped, the scent of death and of something that had once been in the lake but was now removed.

  Mist curled around Fool’s legs in pale tongues. What time was it? He didn’t know, had lost accurate track of the hour. The middle of the night, he thought; it had been early in the evening when he left to go to the Questioning House, had spent time there, and then returned to the offices before finally arriving here. Was it late the same day? Early the next day? He felt detached from it, somehow, as though time were something that happened to other people. Was there an Elevation today? Yes, he thought, later on, in the morning. Was he supposed to be there? Yes. It was the last full day of the delegation’s presence in Hell; he would be expected to attend to them and then the following morning he would have to escort them back to the tunnel when they left.

  Fool sat, the chill water seeping through the material of his uniform and soaking his legs and buttocks. He was cold, and beginning to think this was a bad idea. Even if a demon came, how could he be sure it would be the same one? Gordie had said it was a breed of demon that had been gifted the waters, not a single one. Were they a family? Or individuals? Did they work as a group or were they territorial and solitary? He didn’t know. There was so much he didn’t know, had never known, how could he ever hope to grasp it, to understand? It was overwhelming.

  “It is ours,” said a voice from by Fool’s ear. He started, scrambling away from the source of the sound, one hand going for his gun. Should’ve had it drawn, he thought fleetingly, and then he was facing one of Solomon Water’s demons again.

  It wasn’t the same one, he could tell immediately; it was shorter and squatter, its limbs less spindly and more solid. Its skinless flesh was dry, the shifting musculature cracked and flaking at points. It looked old, was crouched up the slope from Fool, its head tilted as it looked at him. It glanced at the head and its tongue emerged, flickering at the air, and then vanished. “It is ours,” it said again.

  “It’s yours,” said Fool, saying a silent apology to Morgan, “in trade for something.”

  “No trade,” said the demon and scuttled a little closer. “It is ours. Things from the water belong to us.”

  Something splashed behind Fool, a sound thick with cautious movement. Very deliberately, he pointed his gun down at the head, which was wedged between his feet, and spoke loudly and clearly. “If you or yours touch me, I destroy it.”

  “No! Ours!” the demon hissed.

  “Trade,” said Fool. The demon didn’t reply. Behind it, almost hidden among the trees, dark shapes moved. Fool glanced over his shoulder and saw several more of the demons emerging from the water, stealthy, painted in the night’s light and staring at him. When he looked back around, the one in front of him had darted closer, still crouched, its clawed hands digging into the mud a few feet from the head. Its eyes glowed redly as Fool shifted, his aim never wavering. “You’re their leader?”

  It nodded, tongue flickering in and out, tasting the mist.

  “You know me? What I am?”

  It nodded again.

  “Good. I need to talk to the demon that attacked me the other day,” Fool said. “Then you can have it.”

  “No, give it. It is ours,” said the older demon. Fool turned, lifted his gun, and pointed it at the demon closest to him in the water and fired.

  The sound of the shot boomed across Solomon Water’s surface, the flash seeming to connect Fool and the demon for a moment, and then it screeched and leaped back, spinning in the air. It hit the water awkwardly, sending up a spray of thick, foamy liquid, still screeching. Fool moved quickly, yanking the gun back around and pointing it at Morgan’s head. He had to finish this, and soon; they’d realize before long that if they all attacked together, he couldn’t fight them off. He had to keep them confused, nervous; humans never bargained, never attacked, never had authority. He must seem to them as demons did to humans, armed and angry and demanding.

  “Trade, now,” he snapped, �
�or I destroy it. Last chance.”

  “Wait, wait,” said the demon on the shoreline. “It is from the water, it is ours by right.”

  “It is mine,” said Fool, “to trade. Want it? Trade.”

  The demon made a sound that was somewhere between a wail of pain and a groan of acceptance and retreated, never turning its back on Fool. It made it all the way into the trees and then stopped. Fool moved, keeping his gun trained on the head at his feet and trying to look everywhere at once. The demons in the water had backed away from the shore. The one he had shot was standing but bleeding from a torn wound in its shoulder, thick ropes of dark liquid spilling from the exposed flesh and spattering down. When they hit the water, tiny curls of gray steam rose, darker than the mist. The demon hissed at Fool but wouldn’t look at him, its head lowered. More fear, another demon that would hate him not simply because he was human, but because he was a human who had dared to cause injury. I must be the most noticed human in Hell, he thought as he waited. Little visible Fool.

  Good.

  More shapes emerged from the lake, not coming close to shore but present nonetheless, visible mainly as ripples and shifts in the water forming around submerged heads and half-seen limbs. Turning farther, Fool watched as the shapes between the trees continued moving, slipping from trunk to trunk, gathering at the edge of the copse. Experimentally, he twitched his gun. The movement stopped, and when it started again, it was slower and at least some of it was away from him as the figures melted back into the shadows. They were, if not frightened of him, then at least cautious, the rumors they had heard about him thickened into a truth by his shooting of their companion and by the head he refused to give up. Good. Good.

  The mist thickened, looping curls of it all around him. Visibility was dropping, and no matter how frightened or cautious they were of him, if he couldn’t keep them in sight then the demons would kill him.