The Devil's Evidence

by Simon Kurt Unsworth

  He turned his attention back to the information-painted wall. As he looked at what they’d written, Fool kept thinking about the thing that repeated, that kept coming up, a word that emerged again and again.

  Dancers.

  At least two people had described the murderers in Hell as “dancing,” and he’d thought about the way the thing that attacked him in that choked valley had moved oddly. It had wavered and twitched as it ran, pitching one way and then another, its arms and legs continually jerking and twisting. Had it not attacked him, had he simply been watching it, might he have thought that its gait was less of a run and more of a spastic gambol?

  Might he have thought it was almost dancing?

  Yes, yes, because its rhythms had been as though it was responding to pulses, to some beat that only it could hear. Fool hadn’t seen the things that attacked the workers in the Seamstress House, or the things that Marianne reported that people were talking about, but he had seen his own assailant, and the similarities, vague though they were, were clearly present.

  Very carefully, he wrote the word “Heaven” on a blank space on the wall and studied it for a minute. What else? Then, equally carefully in the gap between their massed information and “Heaven,” he wrote “tunnels.” Finally, with slow deliberation, he drew a long line between the map of the incidents in Hell he was creating and the word “tunnels” and then on to the word “Heaven.” There it was, there was the connection, it was finally revealing itself to him, fragment by fragment. There was where everything linked.

  The dancers. The dancers were attacking both Heaven and Hell.

  17

  Fool expected to have a conversation with Mr. Tap after he sent Summer and Gordie to bed with instructions to rest, but the demon did not contact him that night. It’s probably busy, Fool thought, taking over the Information Office and sending its squat, ugly troops out across Hell to disappear people and demonkind alike. How many had gone now? he wondered. How many shadows had swirled and merged, formed themselves into bauta, reached out and pulled someone back? And for what idiot crimes?

  And what could he do?

  Nothing. I’m helpless, he thought, helpless little Fool, sitting here in his third night in Heaven and worrying about his Information Men.

  But that wasn’t right, not really. Fool wasn’t worrying about simply his Information Men, he was worrying about everyone in Hell and, despite the hubris it meant he was showing, about Hell itself. Mr. Tap, tall and warped and toothy, was somehow growing at Hell’s heart. Its Evidence Men, little demons or ghosts or whatever the fuck they were, were creeping everywhere, were disappearing not just people but demons, were creating a new strain of fear. Before, Hell had been rumors and aggression and the hopeless feeling of lives worth nothing, but now? Now it was almost worse, it was accusation and punishment without justice, it was a binding of rules that were now applied so tightly you couldn’t breathe, it was the fear of the very shadows themselves, that they might reach out and steal you away. And we welcomed it, he thought. We thought it would mean Hell got better for us when the number of Information Officers went up, when there was more law, more order. We wanted it because we had the hope that things would improve, and now? Our hopes have been used against us to make us feel worse. Again. I wonder, are there people in Hell talking about how it used to be, saying that it used to be better?

  Yes, there are. I’ve not heard them, but they’re there, they have to be because we’re always looking, always wanting. We’re damned whichever way we look, forward or backward. We’re the Sorrowful, and we get taken or eaten or disappeared whenever something wants us. I thought I was making a change, but I’m not, not really. If anything, I’ve helped it get worse.

  And why not let it? Why not simply keep his head down, keep himself and those few he cared about safe, and let it happen?

  Because it’s not theirs, the thought came immediately. They weren’t there in the fire and the riots, they have no right to come in late and take over.

  “Listen to me,” he said aloud, “worrying about Hell, sitting in Heaven and worrying about Hell. Damned again, Fool, damned for a fool if nothing else. Hell is theirs, not yours.” And even as he said it, he knew he didn’t accept his own argument.

  The problem was, What could he do? And the answer seemed to be: very little. All he had were thoughts and suspicions, fires and the slaughters forming a pattern that he could see but seemed to be the surface edge of something much deeper, but what thing was it? And why did the fires and the slaughters feel like they were something new, something dangerous, more dangerous than the usual crimes and violence? He didn’t know, he just knew that this new Fool, the one that was still emerging, still being created, could see things differently, could see angles and segments that the old Fool would have missed, and in the seeing they became his responsibility.

  If he could go all the way back to when he had held an angel’s feather for the first time and it had sharpened him and allowed him to see that the corpse he found floating in the waters of Solomon Lake was so different from the countless bodies that came before it; go all the way back before he became this new thing, before he started down the path of murdered Genevieves and farmhands that would lead to him becoming the Commander of the Information Office of Hell and do something different, would he? Would he stay as he had been, head down and unnoticed and small?

  No.

  No, this was him now, and he couldn’t imagine being any other way. If the price he had to pay for this sharpened vision was worry, was a more accurate sense of Hell and how it worked and his space and his insignificance within it, then so be it. This was his life now, and he had little choice but to do his best with it.

  And the dancers? They danced in his mind, capering around claws and tunnels and dead Sorrowful and dead Joyful, and there was something there, something about, but he was too tired, too confused, and he let them dance away, knowing they’d dance back soon, knowing he couldn’t escape them for long. And then, despite it all, despite the pain and the worry and the stress and the thoughts that whirled spindizzy in his mind, or maybe because of it all, Fool lay back on his bed and lost himself in the collapse of clean white sheets.

  He slept well and dreamlessly, and woke to find food and hot coffee on his desk standing next to a bowl and a pitcher of steaming water. Although Fool’s hunger had again receded, he forced himself to eat and drink, chewing carefully and slowly so as not to tear his healing cheek, filling his belly, and then washed himself with the water. There was a bar of soap by the bowl and he spread its lather across his skin and head, enjoying the scent and the feel of it. The heat of the water eased the itch that nestled under the tattoos and having clean hair felt good, so clean it squeaked when he ran his fingers through it. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d ever felt this free of dirt; maybe he never had, not really. In Hell there was always a thin scurf of grime over everything, and even the water they used to wash with felt contaminated, dirty.

  Sleeping, eating, and washing had eased some of Fool’s aches, and dressing was easier than it had been the previous days. He sat on the bed to pull his boots on, enjoying the way the mattress gave under him, enjoying its softness. Don’t get comfortable, little soft Fool, he reminded himself. You’re going back soon, and then you’ll have to deal with Mr. Tap and Rhakshasas and the rest of Hell’s terrors. You don’t belong in Heaven, you’re as alien and warped here as Wambwark or Catarinch, and this isn’t your home.

  Strapping his gun on, then tying the holster against his leg, Fool wondered again about who was attacking both Heaven and Hell. There was a pattern, a structure beginning to be glimpsed among the fragments he and Marianne and Summer and Gordie had gathered and set out, but it was still so unclear and there was so much that didn’t fit. Why fires in Hell but the theft of the Joyful from Heaven? Where did the slaughters in Hell fit?

  Where did Mayall fit? What was he, orchestrator or observer or something less or something more?

  Fool moved
the bowl and pitcher from the desk, placing them carefully on the floor; even though they were plain porcelain, they felt delicate and old and precious and he didn’t want to damage them. Sitting at the desk, he took one of the pieces of thick paper, dipped the end of the feather in the ink again, and wrote his second report. As before, he was honest but did not include everything; he left out the Man’s information, presenting the idea of linked attacks on the two places as a thought based simply on a similarity of the crime scenes and the odd movement of the attackers. He formally requested that Summer and Gordie be included as official members of the Delegation, that they be seen as his equal colleagues. He also requested that they be armed, but had little confidence that this request would be granted. Finally, he dipped the end of the feather in the ink again and placed it on the parchment. Without thinking, letting his hand move without seeming to connect to his brain, he wrote in large letters, THESE WERE NO ACCIDENTS. He had just placed the rolled report up the tube in the corner of the room, when there was a knock on the door and Catarinch called, “Fool, come. You are needed.”

  18

  The walk to the Delegation’s meeting took them along the corridor with its pictures of the Estedea again, and Fool found himself looking at the turned figures as he went past them. Each one seemed to absorb light not only from the scenes around them but from the corridor itself, glowering in its own patch of darkness. Fool had the sense that each of the Estedea was tense, that under the shapeless robes were angelic bodies ready for movement.

  Were the figures closer, taking up more space in the pictures?

  Fool stopped, trying to remember. The day before, or whenever it was that he’d last looked at the paintings, the Estedea had been framed by images of Heaven’s rolling fields and forests and hills, a thick collar of pleasantry around the cowled shoulders and heads, but now that scenery felt more cramped, reduced, compressed into ragged strips. Surely paintings couldn’t change, painted figures couldn’t back toward the viewer?

  Could they?

  Of course they can, silly Fool, Fool thought. This is Heaven, anything can happen here. He walked on down the corridor and tried not to imagine that, behind him, the Estedea were silently approaching, coming after him.

  Fool could tell there was trouble as he came into the room. The angels of Heaven’s Delegation were standing on the other side of the table, their stance formal. The lead angel, whose name Fool still did not know, held out a scroll to Catarinch, who took it without comment. There was a long pause in which no one moved or spoke and then, finally, Catarinch glanced down at the rolled parchment in his clawed hand, and the string tying it into a tight tube burst into greasy flames that sputtered and died as the scroll unfurled. It was a parlor trick, the kind of thing demons did to make themselves appear impressive. The angels did not look impressed.

  “This is a formal complaint,” said the angel. “Your scribe has extended the remit of his Delegation. We wish to have it on record that this is unacceptable, and may affect our ability to bring these discussions to a satisfactory conclusion.”

  “Where is the scribe?” asked Catarinch. “Bring it to us.”

  “It’s dead,” said Fool.

  “Dead?” repeated Catarinch. Wambwark grumbled something, low and throaty, and Catarinch said, “Dead how?”

  “It was killed by an angel,” said one of the angels of the Delegation. “It was a just punishment for its transgressions.”

  “How dare you!” said Catarinch, its voice growing louder. “How dare you harm one of Hell’s Delegation? There will be repercussions, you sinless bastards!”

  “No,” said the head angel, his voice still calm. “By the terms of the treaty, we can act to protect our sovereignty. Once it stepped out into Heaven, your scribe was stepping out past the terms of this Delegation and past the boundaries set out in the agreements reached over eons between our two kingdoms.”

  “It was Hell’s,” hissed Catarinch, and its rotten frame shook with fury, the stains on its coat and trousers glinting wetly in the light. Wambwark seemed to be swelling, the writhing mass of bugs churning angrily, cloak and hat dropped to free itself for movement. Once again, parts of it were falling to the floor and wriggling out, a growing mass of them. The angels began to separate, wings expanding, arms starting to come away from their sides, and Fool could almost see the lines of fire begin to snake from their hands. Things were escalating, tensions mounting, falling apart.

  Fool remembered something Mayall had said, and suddenly he understood. Ask the Delegation, he had said. But why, unless they knew something? Why ask? Because the scribe hadn’t been involved in the things Fool had been investigating; no, the scribe had been carrying out its own investigation, but not of its own accord.

  “You set it to spy on me,” said Fool to Catarinch and Wambwark both. “You didn’t trust the human, you didn’t trust the Bureaucracy or their equivalents in Heaven. I wonder, before you start this fight, have you thought how you’ll explain this to Rhakshasas or Mr. Tap? I assume you did this with their permission?” Of course they hadn’t, the answer was in Catarinch’s sudden deflation, shoulders drawing in, and in Wambwark’s low sound of confusion.

  “You acted without the permission or knowledge of your elders?” asked the angel.

  “I acted as head of Hell’s Delegation in Heaven,” said Catarinch, and even Fool could hear the fear in its voice. It was a little demon out of its depth, overstepping marks it didn’t even know existed, and suddenly realizing it was as vulnerable as any human in Hell had ever been. Nothing and no one was safe, that was the point. For a long, drawn-out stretch of time the room was silent as various courses of action and outcomes were assessed, Fool could feel them unspooling around him, being considered and dismissed. The calculation reached a peak and suddenly the angel smiled and sat.

  “An unwise move, but understandable,” he said, his voice friendly but oddly hard. “Still, it can remain here and go no further. A reasonable explanation can be found, I am sure, once we have these negotiations suitably concluded.”

  “Yes,” said Catarinch, its voice small. The demon sat as well, followed a moment later by Wambwark. Neither spoke as the angel began outlining a series of modifications to the agreements reached so far. Poor demon, thought Fool, you have to accept them or explain where the scribe went, but then you have to tell the Bureaucracy why you didn’t get the concessions or agreements they wanted. You’re fucked.

  Tuning out the discussions now that the tension in the room was dropping, Fool went and stood in his usual place by the window. After a few seconds, Benjamin joined him and the two of them looked silently out at a landscape that was now a rambling village, the houses small and wooden. The Joyful were walking along its streets or standing in front of the houses, some seated on benches in front of the houses. In a small park, more of the Joyful seemed to be playing some kind of game that consisted of forming a huge ring and moving around and around. Behind Fool, Catarinch and Wambwark and the angels argued back and forth about minor boundary infractions in places Fool had never heard of, but Catarinch conceded almost every point after a few listless comments and Wambwark simply growled in a low punctuation.

  There was a black speck in Heaven’s perfect sky.

  The speck grew rapidly as Fool watched, resolving itself into an irregular, shifting mass that approached the building at speed. It flew in over the village, its shadow moving in a long streak over the ground below, although none of the Joyful looked up at it. Fool glanced to his side and saw that Benjamin was looking at the shape, still smiling but with a quizzical look playing across his perfect face. As the shape came closer Fool expected it to become clearer, but it did not; instead, it continued to blur and collapse and re-create itself, one moment a sphere and the next an elongated cloud like the breath of the fires he had investigated in Hell. The only constant was its movement, an inexorable approach.

  Beside Fool, Benjamin breathed out a word that Fool did not catch.

  The shape rea
ched the building and flattened itself against the room’s windows, revealing itself to be not one thing but thousands. A swarm of pitch-black bees.

  The creatures crawled across the panes, blocking the light so that the room became a thing of fractured, brittle shadows. The angels and demons at the table stopped talking and looked at the windows, at the bees.

  “What’s this?” asked Catarinch.

  “A message,” said the senior angel, the one who talked the most.

  “A message? For whom? From whom?”

  “Be quiet, demon,” said Benjamin. The bees were crawling over most of the glass now, blotting out the light and filling the view with a bristling blackness.

  “How can this be a message?” asked Fool.

  “This is sometimes how he talks,” said Benjamin.

  “Who?”

  “Mayall,” said Benjamin, and then the bees spoke, the voice coming from all of them at once, metallic and bitter and loud, and it spoke Fool’s name.

  “Thomas Fool. We have need of you.”

  “Need of me? Where? I don’t understand,” said Fool.

  “Fool is ours,” said Catarinch loudly, to an accompanying rumble from Wambwark. “He is not yours to take whenever you want. He is Hell’s.”

  “Thomas Fool is more important to us than he is to you,” said the bees. “You are but a bad dream, without value. Fool is useful. Fool, you are needed at the Sleepers’ Cave.”

  “I don’t know where that is,” said Fool, ignoring the furious splutterings of Catarinch.

  “We can take you,” said Benjamin. The bees had started to lift away from the windows, letting the light filter back in. For a moment, the room’s walls were covered in heaving shadows, fat bodies and segmented legs cast large across the surfaces, and then the cloud of them was gone.

  “You will not go,” said Catarinch as Fool turned. Wambwark stood, stepped in front of Fool, blocking his passage to the door. Benjamin made to step in front of Fool but Fool stopped him.