The Devil's Detective

by Simon Kurt Unsworth

  And a feather.

  He was holding it now, feeling the shimmer of heat and light emerging from it against his fingers. It had been with him since the beginning of this whole sorry, strange situation, since that night collecting the delegation. It had survived being taken by the Man, the riot in the Houska, the deaths in the square, being dropped in Summer’s blood and left overnight, and it was unmarked, unaffected. What had the Man said? That it was a thing of beauty and truth, a grace note in Hell’s music? Not that exactly, perhaps, but something like that. It had come from Balthazar, from the wing of an angel, from something that looked like a human but that was more, a thing of beauty and awe and terror.

  Something, there was something dancing just beyond the tip of his tongue, waiting for him to speak it into existence. Something about the first bodies, about the wounds; their severity, he remembered. They weren’t injuries caused by a human, they were demon in origin, were too extensive to be caused by a man. Hadn’t Morgan said so? He couldn’t remember, but he remembered how they had looked, torn and puckered and terrible. Not human injuries, demon-caused, but the thing from the lake had seen a man. A man, or a demon that looked like a man. But there were no demons that looked human; to look at a demon was to look at a warped and distorted reflection of a human, and besides, demons knew demons. So, if the thing from the lake had not seen a man or a demon, what had it seen? Something that looked human, looked like a man, was pale, that had the strength to tear the soul from the flesh and send it skittering into the sky. What had the demon said? Not just that it was pale, but that it was white. Pale and white.

  “Those souls weren’t consumed,” Fool said aloud, giving the truth shape with his words. “If they were eaten, there would have been no sign of them, but there was, there was a flash rising into the sky. The souls were rising up, flying away, free. Whatever it was, it didn’t eat the souls.”

  A pale, white man.

  White.

  “Oh, you idiot, you fool,” Fool breathed, suddenly knowing. There were no white demons, no white humans. Only one thing in Hell was white.

  Only angels were white.

  30

  If the thought that it was a man doing the killing had sent the world pitching under Fool’s feet, then the thought that it was an angel was like having the floor drop away to nothing. He managed to stand and back away from the table and then felt his legs give way, and he sat down on the floor with a heavy thump. His chair skittered away and ended up on its side against the wall, legs pointing at him.

  An angel, not a man or a demon.

  An angel.

  Fool felt sick, leaned sideways, and opened his mouth to vomit, but nothing emerged except a strangled choking sound. His throat constricted and then released, constricted and released, his belly clenching.

  An angel.

  Fool wanted it to be wrong but knew, knew he wasn’t. The only white men in Hell weren’t men, they were the angels, and they were supposed to be perfect, uncorrupted and incorruptible. It made a kind of twisted sense, he thought; Balthazar’s perfection and his disgust and rage at the things he had seen here spilling out, uncontrolled and uncontained. Fool remembered the angel’s anger at Hell, about its lack of perceived punishment, and thought that maybe Balthazar had taken it upon himself to inflict the kind of damage that he thought Hell ought to be delivering. He had become the Hell he believed should exist, had become retribution and torture, a thing of flame and pain and violence.

  Balthazar was his killer, the warrior angel with his savage weapons.

  How could Fool stop him? Bring him to account? Balthazar was brutal in his power, and worse, he was Hell’s guest, more distant than even the eldest of the demonkind from Fool’s touch. How could he accuse him? Arrest him? Did Fool’s jurisdiction even stretch that far? No, no, surely not, it couldn’t.

  Yes, it could.

  Fool finally sat up and then pulled himself to his feet, using the table for support. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the Information Man’s Guide to the Rules and Offices of Hell, flicking through its pages until he found the passage he was looking for. He had read all of it before, of course, but it had never meant anything previously because he had never tried before, never followed trails or clues or thought about making arrests, but there it was in black, slightly uneven print: “If it walks or flies or swims in Hell, it is cast over by the net of law and by the authority of the Information Man, whose feet may tread where they will and whose word is all-informing.” Which meant he could go anywhere in the pursuit of his aims, didn’t it?

  Didn’t it? Could he try to arrest an angel? Track Balthazar and require him to submit? He thought of that great curve of near-invisible fire dancing in the clearing, stretching from Balthazar’s hand up into the sky, thought of the lake demons falling in severed pieces to the ground in billows of steam and scalding scents, and tried to imagine Balthazar simply allowing himself to be taken, complying meekly. It wasn’t an image that would come to him.

  Where would he take him? There wasn’t a place in Hell that could hold an angel, Fool didn’t think. It was a fool’s errand.

  He had to try.

  What choice did he have? This was where the trail had led him, and he had followed it this far, leaving the bodies of Summer and Gordie and so many others as the markers on his path, detritus in his wake, and if he had had it wrong about some things, about one thing he knew he was right: he had to solve this and bring it to an end.

  Checking that his gun was still strapped to his leg, Fool pulled on his uniform jacket and left the office. This time, he didn’t look around before he left; he had no time left for questions, and no hope of success. Alone, Fool went to arrest an angel.

  His transport was gone. Fool stood in the street and looked toward the distant stain of Crow Heights, black against the thin night sky. It peered down on Hell, the highest point except for the surrounding wall, and the eyes behind its barricades were assumed to see everything. He thought about the black transports, the missing people, the rumors, and the sense that everything old and powerful and destructive lived in the Heights, and knew that Hell’s inhabitants were wrong. It was deep in the bureaucratic district, in the Assemblies House where the angels had their rooms, that the most terrifying thing lived. Fool touched his gun again and started walking.

  The train beetled along the wide road that ran out from the Houska. It was ahead of Fool and he ran to catch it; it wasn’t hard as it was moving only at the speed of a fast walk. At this time of the evening it was quiet, the night’s revelries not yet having swung into high gear. The train would take him to within a few hundred yards of the road to Assemblies House, but it would take a while, so Fool found a small carriage that was almost empty and sat. After a moment, though, he rose, unable to remain seated. Energy crackled in his arms and legs and his head was stuffy with thoughts, clustered together like sodden cotton wadding. Balthazar, with his flames and his anger, murdering Diamond and the others. He imagined him descending on the pit of the Aruhlians, his wings spread wide against the sky and his teeth huge in a face torn back into an expression of terrible joy, of him dragging the Genevieve down to the flooded cellar, his red gleam turning the water to a pool of blood, and Fool was frightened. He began to pace, swinging along the carriage and back again, using the straps dangling from the ceiling for support.

  “Are you him?” One of the two other people in the carriage. It was a woman, younger than Summer, with dirt ground into her skin. She had come from one of the factories, he presumed, was making her way back to her billet. If she was lucky, it would be a room with her and only four or five other women in it; if she was unlucky, she’d be forced to share with up to twenty or thirty. “Are you him?” she asked again.

  “No,” said Fool and kept on pacing. To the end and turn, and as he came back along the carriage, still thinking about Balthazar, unable to shift the angel from inside his head, where the thought of him had pushed everything else to the side, the person sitting next to
the woman, a man, spoke.

  “You are.”

  “No,” said Fool again. “I’m not. I’m no one,” and it was true, he was no one, just a man in Hell, an Information Man, but no one special. He was no one, was happy being no one.

  “You are,” said the man and held out a sheaf of paper. “You’re him. You’re Fool. We recognize you.”

  Fool took the paper. Papers, really; there were several sheets, their corners folded together to keep them in a bundle. Each page was covered in tight black print and pictures, all hand-drawn. On the first page, under a thick heading that read THIS MAN CONTROLS DEMONS, was a picture he thought might be of him. It was badly drawn and Summer’s image of him was better, but it was still him. The text below the picture was a list of things Fool had done, some true but most nonsense. All the sheets were variations on the theme, he saw as he leafed through them; details of his investigation, of deeds he had supposedly done, and of tasks he had apparently accomplished. All were at best exaggerations, at worst complete fabrications. On the final page, under the words MANY LIVES SAVED, there was another picture of him, or someone supposed to be him, outlined in flames drawn as heavy black lines and pointing as two caricatured demons slunk away, heads down. Underneath this image was the comment He Conquers Hell.

  “What is this?” Fool asked.

  “They’re everywhere,” said the woman. “No one knows who’s making them, but they’re in all the factories and streets. Demons keep clearing them up, but more appear. They’re everywhere.”

  Everywhere. That meant that people had read them, demons had seen them, were reading them. Were reading about him. He wondered what Rhakshasas thought about this and didn’t imagine he’d be pleased. He wondered who was making the sheets, whether he could stop them somehow, or get them to print something else, but knew that it was probably too late. Even if he did, another version of Fool had already been born in the paper, one that held little resemblance to the actual Fool. And even he’s not the same, because I don’t really recognize him anymore, he thought, and gave the paper back to the couple. He noticed that they were holding hands, their fingers tightly intertwined. He knew they wouldn’t have dared to do that a few days ago.

  Fool paced. When he reached one end of the carriage he turned and went back, along and along, and at each end faces peered through the quartered glass in the doors at him. At first he thought they were people who wanted to come in but then realized that they were simply watching him. He wanted to tell them to stop, to scream at them to stop staring at him, but he didn’t. Little noticed Fool, he thought, everyone’s watching you now. The train rattled and jolted, making its slow way onward.

  The square in front of Assemblies House was quiet. Fool walked to its center, wanting to be away from the alleys and shadowed doorways that lined it. If attack came, he wanted some notice and a chance to escape or defend himself. He drew his gun, felt strange carrying it out like that, and put it away again. The windows around him were dark; this was a district used mainly in the daylight business of Hell. The ground was stained with blood dried to the color of old mud and burned patches, and there were still torn and trampled banners lying around. Shredded and mulched paper had been trodden into the dirt, stained red and black and brown. Fool pulled himself straight, standing as tall as he could, and went to the gates. They were unlocked and he went through, going to the main doors and knocking.

  “What?” said a voice from inside.

  “I need to see the angels,” he replied.

  “Shit to that,” said the voice. “Who do you think you are?”

  “I am Thomas Fool,” said Fool. “I’m an Information Man of Hell and I have the right to enter and speak to anyone or any fucking thing I want. Let me in.”

  “Shit to that,” said the voice again. Fool dropped his hand to his gun, starting to flick off the straps, when there was a dull thud from beyond the door. Someone, possibly the owner of the voice, said “Sir” weakly, and then there was the sound of locks slipping and opening.

  “Hello, Thomas,” said Elderflower once the door was open. “I wondered when you might arrive.”

  “You knew I was coming?”

  “Of course. Rhakshasas informed me by tube of your imminent arrival a few moments ago.”

  Fool stepped into the hallway of Assemblies House, stepping over the prostrate figure of a man. He was shuddering, his arms tucked under his body and his hands cupping a face that was pointed to the floor. He was sobbing. Fool looked down at him and said, “What happened?”

  “I merely showed him the folly of standing in the way of an Information Man doing his duty. You are Hell’s man, Fool, and none should obstruct you in your path.”

  “I need to see Balthazar.”

  “Yes,” said Elderflower. “You think he has something to do with all this?”

  “Does he?”

  “How would I know?”

  “You know things about Hell,” said Fool, halfway between a question and a statement.

  “Do I? No, I think not, not I. And remember, Thomas, the angels aren’t of Hell. They are from above and beyond and without. Shall we go?”

  The corridors of Assemblies House were long and low once they were out of what Fool thought of as the “public” area. In his time in Hell, and always with Elderflower, Fool had been in several of the smaller meeting rooms and offices and the large ballroom but never behind them, into the Bureaucracy’s area. The ceilings were lower, causing Fool to duck his head slightly, although Elderflower was fine. The light was dank and guttering, inefficient gas lamps burning yellow and orange in brackets on the walls. The air was claustrophobic with the smell of flame and gas and things dead and dying.

  “These are their rooms,” said Elderflower as they came to a set of arched double doors. Symbols were carved in the lintel above the door and in the frames down the side of the doors. They seemed to move in the shifting shadows and light, writing and rewriting themselves.

  “A word, Thomas,” said Elderflower. “Beyond the doors is not, strictly, Hell but is an offshoot of Heaven, a little bubble of perfection in our sordid world. Whatever you plan to do, you have no jurisdiction or power beyond this threshold. Your gun will not work, and I cannot help or protect you. Bring the angels out and they leave Heaven and enter Hell again, and your power is restored. Do you understand?”

  “No,” said Fool truthfully. How could rooms in Hell belong to Heaven? He supposed it didn’t matter, not really. What mattered was all the dead flesh staring at him from inside his head, Summer dangling between two columns and Gordie lost under a burning, spastic mass of figures that were neither wholly demon nor wholly human, the Man slumping forward with holes torn in his back. What mattered were the dead.

  Fool took a deep breath, drew his gun, and, using its butt, hammered on the doors. After a moment, they swung open. A wash of clean, blue light fell out from between them, framing the small figure of the scribe. Or maybe it was the archive, Fool wasn’t sure.

  “I need to speak to Balthazar,” Fool said.

  “It is customary to say ‘please,’ ” said a voice behind the smaller angel. Balthazar stepped into the light, the shimmer of it across his flawless skin almost too beautiful to look at. “What do you want, Information Man? Come to give me instructions again?”

  “Yes,” said Fool and made a conscious effort to lower his gun. “We need to discuss one last piece of business. I need you to come to the ballroom.” Was this the way to do it? Fool didn’t know, had never had to do anything like this before. Was there a right way? A wrong? The trail had led him this far, but now that he was at its end, or near its end maybe, he had even less of an idea than normal how to act.

  “What business?”

  “Hell’s business,” said Elderflower, stepping forward.

  “It is not on our schedule,” said Adam, also stepping into the light. It was getting crowded in the doorway, thought Fool; the scribe or archive, maybe thinking the same, slipped back between Adam and Balthazar an
d out of sight.

  “No,” said Elderflower, “but it is important nonetheless. I must insist, Adam, that this be dealt with before you leave tomorrow.”

  “Very well,” said Adam. “Balthazar, bring the others. We have business.”

  31

  “What’s this about, Elderflower?” asked Adam.

  They were in the ballroom, Adam and Elderflower seated in the usual places, Fool and Balthazar standing behind them rather than over by the windows. The room was cold and dark, the only light the few lamps that Elderflower had ordered lit. If Elderflower’s servants were in the corners of the room, they were hidden by shadows.

  “Something has come to light,” said Elderflower.

  “And it will still be unclear and untrue,” said Balthazar, “as is everything in this place.”

  “You still don’t understand, do you, even after your time here?” said Fool, trying to keep his tone conversational. “Everything in Hell is true, even the lies, because they are believed. People see it all around them, see unjust, merciless punishment, and know that it is just because what they cannot remember, what they do not have, is the knowledge of their sins. The place is a curse made solid, a place where the truth is just as harsh and bitter as the lies are, and you should not underestimate the power of that.”

  “The business,” said Adam, steepling his hands and leaning back, crossing his legs.

  “Thomas?” said Elderflower. Fool tried to speak, found his throat had dried from speaking, swallowed a breath that was like sand, and tried again.

  “Balthazar, why did you kill them?”

  The angel did not reply, simply stared at Fool for a second, and then the sound of his laughter filled the ballroom, a dry rattle clattering up against the ceiling and swooping around the molded cornices.