Finally, Fool felt able to move and rolled gingerly over onto his back and away from the pool of vomit. After a moment of swaying, uneasy dizziness, he felt confident enough to sit, arms propped behind him, legs still weak. He let his head loll back, taking deep breaths, sucking the saliva from his teeth and spitting it out to try to clear the last of the taste from his mouth.
In spitting, Fool had turned his head, and as he did so something danced in the corner of his eye. He looked back around, unsure of what had caught his attention, the raging burn across his skin throbbing but fading, and looked to see what he’d seen.
He was tattooed.
Rhakshasas’s guts had left their mark across him, all across him, black swirls and lines and shapes inked across his legs and arms and belly. There were circles surrounding ragged triangles, ellipses joined end to end in an untidy chain, something that might have been a thorned branch or splintered bone, dots, a series of wavy lines laid over each other, a series of apparently unconnected letters and runes, a blot with uneven edges. He reached out, hand unmarked and shaking, and rubbed the skin of his thigh. The marks there, a complex interlocking pattern of ovals and rectangles, stung when he touched them, and did not vanish no matter how vigorously he rubbed. It was the same on his calves, his stomach, his cheeks, his forearms and shoulder, the same everywhere; his body was covered from his ankles up to his chest and down his arms to mid-forearm. There were even lines disappearing into the depths of his crotch and delicate new traceries across his scrotum and penis.
He’d been fucking tattooed.
“Get up and clean yourself,” said Rhakshasas, its outer layer of entrails now coiled back around it, moving silkily over its shoulders and in tightening, breathing loops around its chest.
“What did you do to me?” asked Fool, climbing unsteadily to his feet.
“Branded you,” said Rhakshasas, its tone unconcerned. “You go to Heaven as our man, as the Commander of the Information Office of Hell. The marks on your skin will remind you of a simple fact that you may wish to forget when you reach the place of gleaming spires and glittering perfections. You, Thomas Fool, are Hell’s. You belong to the Bureaucracy, to Mr. Tap or any other demon that wishes to possess you, to me, and not to anyone or anything else, not even to yourself.”
Fool stared at Rhakshasas, at the two demons of the Delegation, at the scurrying thing, and then looked around for his gun. He shivered, cold rather than sick, and saw his clothes lying crumpled on the floor in an untidy heap. They were covered in streaks of slime that dried as he watched, crinkling and flaking to a series of decaying silver trails. When he picked them up, he discovered that the shirt was torn and the trousers split down the center, legs held together only by a few threads of the waist. Another lost uniform.
His gun was under the dead clothes and he went to pull it from his holster. As it came free, however, a hand clamped itself over Fool’s and Mr. Tap said, “We find ourselves in this position for a third time, Fool. There will not be a fourth.”
Fool hadn’t heard it come in, was half bent and unsteady, tried to turn, but Mr. Tap pushed him, sending him easily to the floor. From Fool’s low vantage point, Mr. Tap seemed to tower, gaunt body a collection of angles and shadows against the ceiling.
“You have a regrettable habit of attempting to draw your gun against your owners,” said the demon. “Control your temper and remember your place, human. The next time you reach for your weapon in my presence, you will lose your hand. Are we clear?”
“Yes,” said Fool. His body ached, his head ached, his stomach muscles clenched when he moved, and his skin had been decorated, no longer felt like his own. He rose to his feet, little always falling-down Fool, wincing as he did so.
“You are leaving us, Fool,” said Mr. Tap, “but do not worry, I will look after your Information Men as though they were my own troops in your absence. I’m sure they and my bauta will get on wonderfully and will work together seamlessly.”
Fool didn’t reply. What could he say? He was caught, again, in one of Hell’s displays of power over its human inhabitants. I got noticed, he thought, and now we all suffer.
“Another uniform,” said Mr. Tap, nodding at a neat pile of clothing on the table next to Fool. They hadn’t been there before the attack by the intestines, but then, neither had Mr. Tap. Fool dressed slowly, each movement sending sharp pains through him. As his tattooed skin disappeared into the uniform, Fool thought about being branded, about being owned.
About being chattel.
“All clothed? Good!” said Rhakshasas. “Tell me, Fool, are you ready?”
“Yes,” said Fool, meaning no, biting down on the hope, on the fear, on the pain, feeling his newly inked scars rub against the fabric of his uniform, feeling small and helpless. “I’m ready.”
The Delegation left to go to Heaven.
They were taken to the courtyard of Assemblies House, where a transport, old and small and cramped, was waiting for them. Its driver was a demon with no arms but a host of tentacles, its face a moon surrounded by shaggy hair. It was wearing a peaked chauffeur’s cap that showed signs of having been burned, brought in through the Flame Garden. It gestured at them, opened the front and rear doors, backed away bowing and scraping its face across the rough ground until it reached its own seat and climbed into the vehicle.
Fool squeezed in the back between the rotting demon and the one he’d assumed was the scribe, having deliberately kept himself away from the larvae demon. Even so, the bugs that constantly fell from it crawled across the transport’s floor and seat, wriggling around his new boots, ripples surging along their fat, segmented bodies as they quested. Rhakshasas and Mr. Tap were in the front section of the transport, which was larger and roomier; Mr. Tap peered back at Fool through a glass panel in the dividing wall between the two sections for the entire length of the journey, its melted face split by a grin in which its teeth waggled back and forth as though gesturing greetings to him. Fool tried to ignore it.
Fool saw the glow before he saw the flames themselves, a red heartbeat reaching into Hell’s sky. Closer to and the movement became more discordant, fingers of flame leaping from the pits and clutching upward, falling back only to reemerge in a new shape. The transport drew to a halt and they climbed out, Fool shaking bugs from his feet, finding them in the creases of his trousers and knocking them out and to the ground. The demon, who had still not spoken, reached down and, surprisingly tenderly, picked up the bugs with fingers made of long sticks of tightly bunched, shifting creatures, and placed them back into itself. Fool didn’t know whether to apologize, and then did so anyway; it certainly wouldn’t hurt. The demon ignored him.
Rhakshasas and Mr. Tap joined them at the entrance to the Garden and began to converse with the stitched demon, listing things it needed to discuss and listening as it told them what it intended to do. Fool moved away, enjoying the heat of flames and the way the warmth drifted around him. Ash fell slowly from the sky in great lazy spirals, making the earth around the Garden dark and soft. Already, his boots and trouser cuffs were coated in the stuff, leaving gray streaks, and it was settling on his shoulders like flaked skin.
Beyond the gates at the Garden’s entrance a concrete path snaked through the flames, wide enough so that, if a human stayed at its center, the flames that curled around the path’s edges wouldn’t reach them and they would remain unburned. He watched, fascinated, remembering the burning buildings, enjoying seeing flames without wood and glass and human at their heart. They seemed free, somehow, unfettered, leaping and rolling, curling back across themselves, lifting up and then dropping down like the waves of some huge, simmering ocean.
“Fool,” hissed a voice. “Fool, come here.”
Fool looked around. The demons were still deep in conversation and ignoring him, although as he watched, Mr. Tap glanced at him and grinned again, licking its lips before turning its attention back to Rhakshasas.
“Fool!”
Still he could see no one, b
ut now he recognized the voice. “Hello,” he said to the Man of Plants and Flowers.
“Come out of there,” said the Man, “off the path.”
“Why?”
“Fool, come here, I have a deal to offer you,” said the Man. “Quickly. We haven’t much time.”
Fool remained where he was. The Man’s voice was different, weaker, less confident. Why? Rhakshasas’s presence? Mr. Tap’s? The demons, senior in Hell’s hierarchy, thought the Man was dead, and presumably he wanted it to stay that way?
“Fool, come now before our chance is lost!” said the Man urgently, and this time Fool responded, walking back along the path and out of the Garden. The Garden was separated from the farmlands by a swath of earth in which only discolored grass and twisted, low bushes grew. Close to Fool, two bushes were tangled together, bobbing in a breeze that he could not feel.
“Fool,” said the Man in a voice made of the sound of branches and twigs rubbing together. “Fool, come here.”
Fool went to the bushes, standing by them but not crouching, staring out over the farmland. If Mr. Tap or one of the others looked, he was simply looking out over the landscapes of Hell before he went on to Heaven, or up to Heaven, or however this worked.
“Fool, you’re going to where I have no hold,” said the Man. “I can’t make it to Heaven, but you going there gives me a chance that I simply cannot allow to go unused.”
“Yes?” Fool already knew.
“Tell me about it, Fool, interest me with the details of Heaven. What’s it like? How are the angels like demons? How are they different? What does it look like and smell like and taste like? How does Heaven feel ?”
“How to get there?”
“Of course, Fool, of course! You’re learning! Imagine: parts of me in both worlds!”
“Yes, imagine the fun you’d have,” said Fool. “Imagine how interested you’d be.”
“Yes! Yes! Find it for me, Fool? Find me a way?”
Find the Man an entrance to Heaven? Something rolled over in Fool’s belly, a tension that didn’t sit easy, refused to leave. “I don’t know what I’ll be able to tell you, or how,” he said, backing away from any kind of agreement. “Besides, what would be in it for me?”
“Ah, spoken like a true Information Man, Fool. Information, of course. I won’t stay dead forever, Fool. Soon enough, I’ll be back in Hell, different but the same, all over, hearing things, knowing things. You could use a friend, I think. Even now, Mr. Tap and his Evidence Men are taking over, and with you out of the way? It’ll get worse. You can do nothing, Fool, and when you get back they’ll be even stronger. You need me, Fool, need what I can offer. Information is leverage, Fool, information is strength.”
“And I’m an Information Man.”
“The Commander of the Information Office, Fool, the chief Information Man. I can help you stay safe, keep your men safe, keep the Bureaucracy from growing bored or tired with you.”
“Fool.” Not the Man but Rhakshasas, calling from the entrance to the Garden.
“I’ll tell you what I can when I get back,” said Fool, finally looking down at the twisting shrubs.
“No,” said the Man, “before then.”
“How?”
“Find a way, Fool, find a way.”
“I’ll try.”
“I have your word? Your promise?”
“Yes. I’ll try.”
“Good. And you have my word I’ll help you, try to keep your people safe while you aren’t here.”
A single branch emerged from the tangle, curled around into a shape approximating a smile, and then the shrub shivered and collapsed slightly. The Man was gone.
“Fool.” Again from Rhakshasas, this time louder and less patient.
“Yes,” said Fool and obeyed his master’s voice, little obedient Fool, and went to the demon.
“Fool, while you are in Heaven you will communicate with Mr. Tap to tell him how the Delegation is performing, and to answer any question he may have,” said Rhakshasas when Fool was standing back with the Delegation.
“How will I know how the Delegation is performing?” asked Fool, thinking of the complex and arcane discussions he had been party to between Elderflower and the representatives of Heaven in other meetings, thinking about how little of it he had understood.
“Simply give him your impressions. You will also give Mr. Tap instructions to pass on to the Information Men and he will deliver these instructions if he can.”
“No,” said Fool immediately, before conscious thought could inform his mouth.
“No?” asked Rhakshasas.
“No,” repeated Fool. “Mr. Tap may be in charge of the Evidence but he is not in charge of the Information Office, and I will discuss the business of the Information Office only with another Information Man.”
“You refuse a direct order?”
“No,” said Fool, and stopped because, of course, he had. Rhakshasas’s intestines were bulging, lifting from its chest likes snakes, swaying, beginning to move toward him in sinuous, aggressive waves.
“I will say it one more time,” said Rhakshasas.
“No,” said Fool, “the New Information Man’s Guide to the Rules and Offices of Hell states clearly that ‘no order may be given to an Information Man except by their senior officer, and no case discussed except with other Information Men and Information Officers.’ I will not discuss Information Office business with Mr. Tap because I am forbidden to do so by the rules of my office, as set out by the Bureaucracy.”
Rhakshasas paused, gestured back the approaching Mr. Tap, and then said, “If not Mr. Tap, then who?”
“Marianne,” said Fool without pause. “She’s the only one I trust to know what’s happening and to be able to do what I tell her to.”
“Very well, then,” said the demon, “have her keep investigating the fires. All canisters will be sent to her, and you will have regular contact with her.”
“Thank you,” said Fool, without letting his relief show on his face. The new Guide might well say something like that, but if it did he certainly didn’t know about it. It had been a gamble, an attempt to keep something back from Mr. Tap, banking on the guesses that Rhakshasas had not read the new Guide and that, although it was head of the Archdeacons, or at least the thing that spoke on their behalf, it was not properly senior in Hell. It was old, yes, had responsibility for the day-to-day Bureaucracy, lived in Crow Heights, but there were still older powers above it, and it wouldn’t risk going against their orders. Even you can be noticed, Rhakshasas, Fool realized. Even you don’t want Elderflower’s gaze turning upon you, do you?
“We’re done,” said Rhakshasas. Its voice was, if anything, colder than before, despite the Flame Garden’s heat. It didn’t like being reminded of its lack of total authority, and I’ve made another enemy, thought Fool, although he was unsure whether Rhakshasas had ever really been anything other than a threat, a risk to be managed. Little hated Fool. Maybe Heaven will be easier than this.
The Delegation went into the Garden, walking out along the path, the black demon ostentatiously walking along the stone ledge, letting the flames lick at its legs without apparent injury.
“How do we get to Heaven? Do we go to the Mount? Are we here to collect something?” asked Fool.
“Only the Elevated and the angelic host use the Mount to ascend to Heaven. We use the Garden.”
“The Garden?”
“The Flame Garden is the link between all worlds, Fool,” said Rhakshasas. “Heaven prefers to use light and brilliance to travel, but we in Hell are content with the movement of flames and heat.”
They had come to a platform sticking out into the flames. They were dotted at regular intervals along the path, were used as the tipping-off point for the flesh that died in Hell’s brawls and murders and accidents and rapes. The Delegation made its way to the far end of the platform, and the rotting demon, without pause, stepped off and dropped into the flames. After a moment, without looking back, th
e thing of larvae stepped out and dropped away as well, followed by the scribe.
That left only Fool and Rhakshasas and Mr. Tap.
Rhakshasas stepped close to Fool, hunched over him, pressed its face close to his, and said, “I have my orders much as you do, but know this, Fool: If you can, die in Heaven. If you return to Hell, the Evidence Men will take you from the street one night or one day and deliver you to Mr. Tap, Mr. Tap will bring you to me, and you will never be seen again.”
“Yes,” said Fool. Another threat, another promise, another thing to fear. Noticed Fool, put on notice.
“Now get out of my sight, little human,” said Rhakshasas. “Go. Fuck off to Heaven.”
Fool turned his back on the two demons and went to the edge of the platform. Here, the heat was terrible, sweat weeping from his pores and plastering his clothes to him, the flames moving the air around like a grumbling, toothless mouth. He could feel the skin of his face tingle, tighten, and start to burn.
“How do I do it?” he called back over his shoulder.
“Step in,” said Rhakshasas.
“Won’t it burn me?”
“You’re the first human to travel this way, we don’t know what it’ll do,” replied Rhakshasas, and then a hand that Fool somehow knew was Mr. Tap’s jammed into the middle of his back and thrust him forward. He tried to back away, instinct driving him back from the heat, but the push was inexorable. His feet crunched over the grit of the ground, met the lip, and felt space beneath his soles, and then he was over and falling, flailing down into the flames.
It was agony, and then it wasn’t.
The flames were all around him, so thick he could see nothing but the heated wall of them, and even as he was falling it felt as though they were carrying him aloft on waves of burning. He tried to breathe but the air scorched his mouth and lungs closed. He felt his hair spark and flame, his clothes catch fire, his skin shrivel back from muscles that were already contracting and thickening. He thought of the bodies in the buildings he’d investigated, thought about those tautened poses they had in death, fists held before their faces as though to protect themselves from their ongoing fate, felt his eyes burst and spray out and then dry, wondered how long before he became a hunched and blackened thing. Would they find him on the ground of the Flame Garden among the things that appeared there, ready to be harvested by the workers in their thick suits? Or would he simply be left to burn away to nothing? There was no air, just heat and burning and a thing that was beyond pain, and then he crashed into something hard.
The Devil's Evidence Page 7