The Devil's Evidence

by Simon Kurt Unsworth

  “Enough,” said Benjamin, cutting into Fool’s reverie, and pushed them toward the transport. They climbed into its rear, Benjamin following them, and the four sat silently, Gordie and Summer on the rearmost seat and Benjamin next to Fool facing the other two with their backs to the front cabin. Close to, Benjamin smelled of smoke and blood and clean linen and flowers, and he glowed, the shimmer dancing in the delicate fronts of his feathers and rippling under his skin like lightning in the rain. The transport’s doors closed without anyone touching them and then they were moving.

  The vehicle jolted as it turned around, rolling over the uneven grass before rejoining the road, sending all its passengers besides Benjamin sliding along the seats, Gordie’s and Summer’s shoulders banging together. They gripped hands, as ever, sitting in silence, Summer’s head down and her eyes closed and Gordie looking out of the window. Even now, the man looked fascinated, excited by what he was seeing, what he was taking in and storing.

  Benjamin’s light filled the compartment, dazzling Fool, and after a minute in which he had to keep his eyes squinted to half shut, he said, “Benjamin, could you please dim yourself? I’m sorry if that’s rude, but I can’t see and I suspect that Summer and Gordie can’t either.”

  Benjamin shuffled in his seat, leaning forward, looming into the space, and Fool thought that he was going to attack, felt his hand drop to his gun in defense, but the angel merely folded his wings farther back, the tops of them curving over his head and casting his face into glimmering, deep-set shadow. His glow faded, leaving afterimages in Fool’s vision, the angel’s body becoming a pale shape in the carriage beside him.

  “I apologize, Thomas Fool, Summer, and Gordie, for both my brightness and my shortness these last minutes.”

  “It’s fine,” said Fool. “I know it must have been difficult.”

  “Difficult? These things do not happen in Heaven, and we are, all of us, struggling to understand their meaning. It has unsettled us, which must seem strange to you who live in a place of horror and fear and pain, but this is Heaven and things here are normally good, normally perfect. Watching Israfil be taken was terrible, Thomas Fool, and it made me angry. I am not used to being angry, so please forgive me if I was unpleasant or unkind.”

  “You weren’t,” said Summer.

  “Thank you,” said Benjamin simply.

  “You aren’t used to being angry, but Israfil seemed angry all the time,” said Fool, musing aloud more than anything else.

  “Israfil is from different stock than me,” said Benjamin, and then corrected himself. “She was of an order older than mine, one of the oldest. She was here during the great battle and the time of the original Falling. She was…protective…of what she believed Heaven is. Your coming here, the things we had to see accompanying you, it unsettled her and her old nature began to show.”

  “I’m sorry she’s gone,” said Summer, Fool and Gordie both adding their agreement to the statement.

  “As am I,” said Benjamin. “I know you and she did not agree, Thomas Fool, and that she was a beautiful thing that meant no offense.”

  “Yes,” said Fool, noncommittal, remembering her rage and her fire and the slap she had placed on his cheek and still feeling the burned skin of his wrist. Her ire had made her careless and sloppy. Instead of seeing Heaven as it was, she had seen it through the lens of her own beliefs and experiences, and it had made her miss what was actually there and, ultimately, exposed her to the thing that came out of the darkness and made her unprepared for its attack.

  Was it really the things from outside of everywhere? Had they broken in?

  They rode in silence for a few minutes, the darkness outside splintered only by the starlight and the occasional distant glow of angelic activity, before Benjamin spoke again.

  “We are almost at our destination. It has not been a pleasure watching you work, Thomas Fool, but I wish you all best for what comes next,” the angel said and his voice was low, ended, and final. “I cannot wish you luck as there is no luck in Heaven.”

  “Just like there’s no murder,” said Fool. Benjamin looked at him curiously, peering from under his wings.

  “Yes,” he said finally. “Just like there’s no murder. We have never had need of either.”

  “You still don’t see?” asked Fool.

  “I see the hand of the Great Beast, the Great Enemy,” said Benjamin as the vehicle pulled up and stopped in front of the Anbidstow. “There is no murder, there is simply corruption and sickness that we will root out.”

  “How?”

  “That is not for me to know,” said Benjamin. “Now, we need to go.”

  The four of them left the vehicle and, led by an angel, went inside to where the courts of Heaven waited.

  —

  “What fucking travesty is this?” asked Catarinch.

  The Delegation, without the scribe, was in the room that the previous meetings had taken place in, and the angels of Heaven’s Delegation were standing on the other side of the table from them, simply watching. Mayall was sitting, cross-legged, on the table, bending and tearing at a piece of paper, showing uninterest in what was happening around him. Fool and Summer and Gordie had been led to the room by Benjamin, who now stood in his usual place by the window. When Fool had made to join him, he had been gestured to stand alongside Catarinch and Wambwark on Hell’s side of the table, Gordie and Summer behind him. There were no seats.

  “Travesty?” asked one of the angels, although Fool couldn’t be sure which one.

  “Being removed from our rooms and brought here, given no choice but to come, when no meeting is to take place.”

  “This is a meeting. It is taking place.”

  “It is not on the schedule!”

  “It has been added. There is business to discuss.”

  “Business? More about the boundaries? We’ve settled that. Tomorrow—”

  “Now,” interrupted the angel, “we will discuss the business of Hell’s attacks on Heaven. Now that we come to look, there is the business of hundreds of missing souls, of missing angels of the lower ranks, and of the angel Israfil, taken from her rightful place alongside God and dragged down to Hell.”

  Catarinch didn’t reply. What was left of its throat worked convulsively for a few seconds before words finally emerged from it.

  “We know nothing of this.”

  “Nonetheless, this is the business to discuss.”

  “Hell denies it,” said Catarinch. Wambwark grumbled in support, standing straight and making itself swell slightly. The angels ignored it.

  “Of course it does,” replied the voice. “Hell denies all things.”

  Which isn’t, Fool thought, really true. Hell had little need of denial; rather, it reveled in the truth of its brutalities and grotesqueries, and it enjoyed the hurt and shock and pain it caused, and on the heels of this, Fool thought: Look at me, correcting angels, even if it is only in my mind. Little clever Fool.

  “We demand an apology,” said Catarinch, drawing itself up, finding courage in its indignation. Its rotten flesh dripped, sending oily spatters to the floor around it.

  “No apologies shall be given. We require the return of the angel Israfil, or whatever remains of her. We require the immediate cessation of your incursions into Heaven. We require reparation. Pass this on.”

  “I have no need to pass it on. We do not have the angel Israfil.”

  “Are you sure?” and the voice was colder now, its patience fraying.

  “I would have been told,” said Catarinch, but the demon’s voice gave away its uncertainty.

  “I repeat, are you sure?”

  “Yes! I am Hell’s representative here, and I am senior in this Delegation. You talk of incursions, yet it is Heaven who sends its angels into Hell, who sets fires, and who creeps across the borders. We demand it cease!” Catarinch was shouting now, its voice the shriek of metal grinding against metal, of something rattling and slipping, warping.

  “We demand an apology
,” it said, angrier, puffing up so that its flesh split farther, grease and something that might have been blood spilling from it in fat, poisonous droplets and dripping down its suit, spattering to the floor. Fool saw one of Wambwark’s maggots crawl to a drop of Catarinch on the floor, touch the edge of the liquid, and immediately curl itself into a tiny ball, wringing itself around and around until it stopped. A tiny wisp of smoke rose from it as it crumbled apart.

  “Lower your voice,” said the angel. “You are in no position to demand, demon. Hell has transgressed, and Heaven cannot take this lightly.”

  “We have not!” shrieked Catarinch. “It is Heaven who has transgressed, breaking the border agreements, making unfounded accusations. Hell demands—” and then it stopped.

  For a stretching second, the room was silent and then Catarinch’s head slipped strangely, the neck slithering apart along a neat diagonal line, the rotten skull with its red-glow eyes and teeth and foul breath dropping gracelessly away and tumbling to the floor with a wet thud. Its body held its stance for another moment and then, a puppet with its strings cut, collapsed. Blood sprayed from the exposed stump of its neck, thick and fetid, a single long spurt that trickled away to nothing. The foremost angel of the Delegation withdrew its fire, the thin band of silver flame snapping back into its hand, whiplike, leaving snakes of light branded on Fool’s vision.

  There was a noise from the corridor beyond the room, a rattle and a crash.

  “It is decided,” said a new voice. The angels on the other side of the table were not speaking, simply standing with their mouths open, their eyes rolled back so that they showed as plain white orbs in those perfect faces, and the voice came from their mouths at once, a single voice from every motionless angelic mouth in the room.

  “Hell has sinned,” the voice said. “The time of sadness is upon us. The Estedea are awake. We are coming.”

  Mayall stopped folding the piece of paper. He placed it on the table in front of him and looked up, his face breaking into a wide, toothy smile. He clapped, once, a single sharp note of things beginning, and then rose, stepping off the table. He had formed the paper into the shape of an angel and it stood sentinel in his place looking at Fool, its folded face eerily alive.

  Another crash from the corridor. Fool glanced at the door, back at Mayall. “What’s happening?” he asked.

  “Go and see.”

  Fool hesitated and Mayall nodded, smiling. Fool went to the door and opened it.

  The corridor was empty but all along its length shards of glass lay on the floor, glittering. The pictures of the Estedea were swinging back and forth on their cords, the frames bumping back against the walls and the front of them now empty of glass except for tiny fragments still jammed around the edges of the frames like brilliant, brittle teeth set in old dark gums. Fool stepped into the corridor, hearing the shards crack and snap under his soles. As he neared the first picture, it swung away from the wall and fell back with a loud crack, the picture within the frame now almost entirely filled with the rear of the cowled figure, only slivers of a gray and bucking ocean visible around the edges. A gust of wind, thick with the scent of a cold and salt-heavy sea, blew across his face. The wind came from within the picture itself.

  The figure in the picture backed another step toward the frame and then leaned so that its dark-clad head and shoulders came beyond the edge of the picture. Fool stepped away, retreating toward the room as the shape emerged almost horizontally, robes flapping heavily but not falling from the still-hidden head. There was a low tearing sound as the Estedea’s wings unfolded, pulling out from its back and stretching into the corridor. They were huge and black, the upper edge of them a thick cable of muscle and bone from which hung rippling sails of feather-covered flesh. They opened fully, scraping the far wall, knocking the pictures that hung there and from which figures were also emerging. With a sharp flap, the first figure lifted out of its picture and tilted upright, its long body slipping out of the frame in a wash of cold, briny air to hover in the corridor and then drop to stand in the space’s center.

  A figure was emerging from every picture frame and the corridor was filled with dark shapes.

  They were huge, tall, and thin, their heads bowed and still brushing the ceiling. The one closest to Fool drew its wings back in, folding them around itself where they merged into the long, hooded habit. It seemed to absorb any light that fell on it, as though shadows had been woven together into cloth and the cloth stitched into the angel’s robe. The angel of the Estedea stepped forward, giving space to those that were still arriving behind it, and as it did so it came close to Fool, was standing over him and looking down.

  There was nothing in its cowl, only a patch of darkness that was depthless and lost.

  Fool stopped walking, knees locking, breath freezing into something hard and frigid. He caught a sense of sadness, of regret from the angel, a sense that grew rapidly until he felt like letting it bury him, letting it crush him down to nothing with its weight, prostrating himself before the angel and begging for an end to the sheer misery he felt. It was like nothing he had ever experienced, this sadness. It was a thing of cold unremitting mass that rolled out from the angel and took everything in its grasp.

  The darkness in the cowl roiled, briefly forming empty eye sockets and a mouth of wrinkled lips the color of old sheets that opened in a humorless and flat grin. Fool fell to his knees, letting his chin fall to his chest, holding his hands out to his sides, knowing that the angel was bending in behind him, that its mouth was opening, splitting wider and wider, and he welcomed it, he wanted it, anything to escape this sadness, this feeling that he might explode in shame and regret, might drown in old, trapped miseries. Closer still, and it was ready to feed, to draw everything from him and leave him a husk, and he was ready, he was nothing, he was a speck in the infinite eye of God’s saddest angels, and then something grasped his collar and yanked him away.

  “Not yet, Thomas,” said Mayall, hauling Fool simultaneously back into the room and to his feet. “You may not be one of the saved, may be one of the damned, but you are still our guest of sorts and the Estedea may not have you.”

  The angel in the corridor straightened, shaking itself slightly, and Fool saw the face in the space beneath the hood fade away to darkness again before the head bowed and the cowl hooded the space completely. It crossed its arms over its front, its hands emerging from the ends of its sleeves momentarily. They were as pale as ivory, almost impossibly long and angular, the skin as smooth as river-washed bone and tight to the skeleton beneath. Its fingers flexed, once, the nails at the tips curved arcs that were even whiter than the hands, and then the sleeves came together and the angel was hidden once again, robes seamless as behind it the others lined up in silent ranks.

  “The Estedea,” said Mayall from behind Fool, letting go of his collar. “They have been watching and have decided that the time is now. For the first time since the time of the great Fallings, their judgment is that Heaven is at risk. The saddest angels move once more and Heaven will be protected and Heaven will be avenged.”

  As they watched, the Estedea turned. They didn’t appear to walk or fly but spun and then glided along the corridor, moving away from the room. Their robes flapped around them, slow and elegant and heavy, occasionally parting enough to reveal those long, thin hands or feet that were slim and white and clawed and crowned by smaller wings wrapped around their ankles. None spoke, and they made no other noise.

  The pictures on the walls were simply framed landscapes now, the Estedea fully emerged, just nondescript images of indefinite places. Several of the flames had fallen from the walls and lay broken on the floor, the glass twinkling like distant stars. From others curls of mist fell, warm air and cold twisting around each other like tongues, and from at least one spills of rain sprayed into the corridor. The air had gone cold, smelled of snow and sea and mountain.

  “It begins,” said Mayall quietly.

  At the far end of the corridor the
last of the Estedea filed away, leaving emptiness behind them, and Fool heard the sound of countless wings beating as Heaven and Hell went to war.

  PART THREE

  WAR

  22

  They were prisoners.

  Fool, Summer, and Gordie had been escorted back to Fool’s room after the Estedea left, Mayall at Fool’s shoulder and Benjamin behind with the other two. Wambwark was at the rear, flanked by the angels from the Delegation. Mayall did not dance or jig as they walked, and Benjamin’s face was a set of stone.

  They walked in silence along the corridors of the Anbidstow, their feet crackling the glass that was strewn across the floor, past hundreds of figureless pictures and empty frames. In some, distant seas shifted ceaselessly, and in others fields of corn moved in the wind or snowstorms raged, each one different yet linked by a common thread; in all it was windy, as though the Estedea leaving had dragged the air into chaos, and as they walked the air buffeted out from the pictures and the wind followed them as they went.

  When they reached Fool’s room he and Gordie and Summer were ushered inside. In his absence two more beds had been added and there was little space to move except carefully along the narrow gaps between bed and desk and wall.

  “You will be treated fairly,” said Mayall as the door closed, “until we decide what to do with you.” He grinned as the door shut, lips splitting back from his teeth in a smile that seemed to take up the whole of the lower half of his face, a flash of the old Mayall, that manic light flaring briefly in his eye, and then the door sealed against the jamb and they were alone. Experimentally, Fool tried to open the door but it was locked, the first time it had been since he arrived.

  “This is all wrong,” he said when the sound of their captors had faded to nothing.

  “That we’re prisoners? It’s a war and we’re part of the enemy,” said Gordie. “It makes sense they’d want to know where we are.”