The Devil's Evidence

by Simon Kurt Unsworth

  “Go and tell them, Benjamin. Tell them this is their fault, that their war is based on a lie. Tell them that Heaven is fallible.”

  “Be silent, monkey!” snapped Benjamin, his skin darkening, the feathers around his groin ruffling, his wings opening, starting to move back along the corridor. “You are sinful, Thomas Fool, and Heaven will judge you for your actions today.”

  Fool grinned, mirthless, and gestured for Summer and Gordie to follow him. As the angel reached the end of the corridor and went around the corner, Fool called, “All of the dead can be placed at Heaven’s feet, all of them. You were so concerned by being perfect that you ignored what was happening under your noses. You judge me because that’s still easier than admitting you’ve made a mistake, isn’t it? And you have made a mistake—this wasn’t Hell any more than the fires and deaths in Hell were Heaven’s doing. This is something else, something from outside, and if you can’t see that, won’t at least consider it, then fuck you.

  “Fuck you, Benjamin. Fuck you, and all of Heaven.”

  24

  “Where are we going?” asked Summer.

  “We’re going to the tunnel,” said Gordie. He sounded a little shocked, and had looked at Fool oddly as he climbed over the broken door and then glanced down the corridor to where Benjamin had gone but had said nothing. The old thinking is creeping back in, Fool thought, the thinking from before he died and came back. He’s seeing the risks, seeing the chance of retribution. The tension, it’s slinking back in, and we’re finding our old behaviors, our old cautions. Heaven is becoming like Hell.

  “I know we’re going to the tunnel,” said Summer, also climbing over the broken door, “but where are we going now?”

  She had a point. The three of them had left the room and gone down the corridor, following Benjamin, but the corner led them only to another identical corridor. Branching off from this were more corridors as well as doors to rooms, all locked, and Fool recognized none of them. Or rather, he recognized them all because they were all the same. So they walked, trying to remember the route from the rooms to the meeting rooms, and they made little progress.

  They were walking along another of the Anbidstow’s corridors. It, like the others they had come down, was lined with framed pictures of landscapes, the images moving and empty of figures. Standing in the corridor and looking into the pictures was like looking through the windows of a building out onto a wild landscape of roiling sea and, two or three feet farther on, verdant forests and past that, through another window, sand-whipped deserts. It was dizzying, and Fool wondered what would happen if they were to climb over one of the frames, if they would clamber into one of the pictures and get lost, be forever trapped in the landscapes of the Estedea. He thought maybe they would. Here and there glass lay across the floor in random scatters; in other places it had been swept into neat piles that glittered ferociously as they went past.

  Fool realized he was limping. The new scarring on his stomach refused to give and he was forced to walk, lurching slightly, with his upper body twisted and his gait uneven. Their passage was slow. When Summer tried to help him, he shook her hand off, proud Fool, and carried on unaided.

  “We’re lost,” said Summer after they had passed along another corridor. The Anbidstow was silent and, besides themselves and the images behind the frames, nothing moved.

  “We are,” agreed Gordie.

  “We’re not,” said Fool. “This is Heaven and nothing here is lost, nothing here can be lost, didn’t you know? Heaven is the place of things found that were once lost.”

  “Don’t be sarcastic,” said Summer.

  “I’m not,” Fool said. He was being irritable, he understood, but couldn’t stop himself. After the adrenaline rush of the conflict with Wambwark and the flowering of his anger at Benjamin, now he was on the downward swing. He hurt, he was confused and worried about Marianne in Hell, had little other than the vaguest notions of how to proceed. He limped along, battered, with Gordie and Summer in tow. This war was with the things from outside of everywhere, he was sure of it and had the evidence of the claw and scale. Marianne had found the pincer in Hell and he was also sure they’d match if he could only bring them together and show them as a set. But what did they prove?

  They proved that the same things were attacking Heaven and Hell, that they weren’t attacking each other.

  And how was he going to get the Bureaucracy of Heaven to go to Hell to hear his evidence? Come to that, how was he going to get Hell’s Bureaucracy to listen to the Man tell them about trails and earth churned and tunnels created and filled?

  Fool limped. The hole by his knuckle was still bleeding, the flow a mere trickle now but no scab formed over it. Summer, who had been more severely attacked, had wrapped a clean piece of the blanket around her hand before they left the room, but it was soaked through now and drips fell from her, leaving a trail behind them. At least we can follow it back to where we started, he thought and was then horrified at himself. What have I become, that I can even think that? That I can joke about my friend’s injuries like that?

  They came to another T-junction, the two arms stretching away in bland uniformity. “Which way?” asked Gordie.

  “I don’t know,” Fool replied. There. There, it’s that fucking phrase again, “I don’t know,” the measure of my ignorance.

  “We guess?”

  Fool thought about Hell, about the Evidence and the making of assumptions, about being set, blind and spinning, into an investigation in Heaven that most of the angels refused to even acknowledge the need for, about Catarinch’s head dropping to the floor, about claws slicing through his face, and about being lost, and suddenly he was angry again, livid. “No,” he said. “No, no more guessing. I’m tired of guessing, I’m tired of being two steps behind and a step to the side, I’m tired of being treated like I’m a toy to be set rattling and jigging for their amusement, I’m tired of it all. No more guessing. Now I’m going to ask.”

  “Ask?”

  Fool didn’t speak. Instead, he took the feather from his pocket and looked at it. Which angel was this from? he wondered. Israfil? Benjamin? Or one of the nameless caretakers? How long had he possessed it now? Three days? Four? It was impossible to remember, time in Heaven seemed as elastic and mutable as melting wax. He simply knew it was his, and he knew what he had been told; angels were creatures of truth and their feathers could not lie. It was time, he thought, for some truth.

  “Which way do we go to get out of this building?” he asked aloud, and let the feather fall. It spiraled slowly and calmly to the floor, coming to rest with its spine pointing along the left-hand corridor. He picked it up, holding it out horizontally in front of him, balancing it on his palm, and marveling at its lightness and softness.

  “Which way do we go to get out of this building?” he asked again and moved his hand so that the feather fell. Again, it landed pointing left.

  “We go left,” he said, and started along the corridor. Summer and Gordie followed.

  —

  When they emerged from the Anbidstow, they did so into a large courtyard filled with angels.

  They were in ranks, hundreds and hundreds of them, maybe thousands, standing motionless as the Estedea moved between them. The saddest angels, taller than their compatriots, were easily visible, dark and thin and silent as they drifted down rows and back along columns, occasionally stopping to carry out some hidden task. Fool and Gordie and Summer stayed behind the half-open door for a few minutes, watching, as more angels flew in, landing and being directed by the Estedea to their places, standing neatly with their wings folded and their heads down, posed like the Estedea themselves.

  “What do we do?” asked Summer.

  I will not say “I don’t know” again, thought Fool. I will not. “We walk out like we have every right to be there,” he said, “because we do.”

  “We’re escaped prisoners,” said Gordie softly, as though to remind Fool of the fact.

  “No,” he sai
d. “I am Hell’s Chief Information Officer and I was invited here to solve a series of crimes, and that is what I’m doing.”

  “Are you sure that’ll work?”

  “No,” he answered truthfully, “but we don’t have much choice, do we?” He stepped fully out into the courtyard, feeling the sun warm his skin almost immediately. He tilted his head back to it, letting it wash across his face and closing his eyes, unable to stop himself. How much longer would he be able to feel this? How much longer until he was back in Hell, where the only sun was a flat disk throwing out grimy light and everything stank? Not long, he thought. Wherever this was taking them, Fool had the sense that they were almost there, that the endgame was looming ever larger and closer.

  “We should go,” said Summer, stepping alongside Fool, her voice wary.

  “Yes,” said Fool, opening his eyes. He looked around, saw the fields beyond the far side of the courtyard, and started to walk toward them.

  They kept close to the Anbidstow, knowing it wouldn’t shield them but hoping to conceal themselves in the shade that gathered at the junction of wall and floor, to become simply part of the background. Fool knew that all three of them were doing what he thought of as the Houska Walk, that hunched-over gait that said, Don’t see me, don’t notice me, I’m small, I’m insignificant, I’m nothing you should even see. Gordie had his head down, was staring studiously at his feet, and Summer was looking ahead and walking as though she had seen something in the distance that had absorbed all her attention, eyes forward, not glancing at anything but her destination.

  The Estedea ignored them. One or two of the angels stared at them curiously but did not break rank, good soldiers that they were. “Why are they letting us go?” asked Gordie quietly without looking up.

  “Because they’re preparing for war and we aren’t important,” said Summer, “not in the grand scheme of things.” She spoke almost without moving her lips, her voice as quiet as Gordie’s, her gaze never wavering.

  It made sense, thought Fool, but he didn’t think Summer was right. Something about the whole situation had been bothering him, and as he walked he tried to let it play through in his mind, letting the rhythm of his steps give a structure to his thoughts. Why had no one come while Wambwark was attacking them? They had made enough noise, after all, and surely not every angel was being trained and organized by the Estedea? And after, walking through the Anbidstow, why had they seen no one, heard no one? It was as though things were being left to play out without obstruction, and the Estedea’s studied ignorance of them seemed a part of this, too. But why?

  What had Mayall said? That Fool was a moment of chaos in Heaven’s order, something like that? That Mayall wanted the chaos, or liked it, that he was enjoying it? Was this part of that? Was that it? Was Fool being used as part of some bigger game, to see what he would do and to see where it would take things? Neither helped nor hindered but left, to be observed, to see if what he and Summer and Gordie did was fun? Was interesting? Was useful?

  Yes.

  Yes, it fit. I’m being used again, he thought, thinking of Elderflower and the fires that had burned through the Houska and the smoke that had risen and a shadow that suddenly seemed huge and horned. It’s happening again.

  Were the attacks of the things outside being used as an excuse for the war? But if they were, why let Fool carry on? Because there’re other ways to come to victory, he thought. If I prove that the things outside are responsible, then the war can be against them, and Heaven and Hell can work together, both trying to infiltrate and manipulate and gain a subtler win.

  So why don’t I just stop? Let this play out without our interference? Let them go to war and just stay in our room and be kept prisoners, safe and warm and fed? Surely that’s the best thing?

  No.

  Why?

  No, because of justice. Because of truth. Because of the dead.

  Because of Marianne.

  Yes, because this isn’t our business, this is too big for us to face, let the angels and the demons work it out themselves.

  No.

  Yes.

  They had reached the fields, smooth sweeps of crops ahead of them. Now was the time, if ever. Turn back or go on?

  Turn or go?

  Fool took out the feather again, held it aloft, and said, “Which way?”

  He let go. The feather spun as it dropped, twisting on unseen zephyrs, and came to land on the edge of the field. It was pointing out, into Heaven, and Fool didn’t care whose truth it was, whether the feather was obeying Mayall’s dictates or simply reflecting his own beliefs or being used by some other, greater, power, because it had given him his answer.

  They went on.

  They skirted the first field, walking up one edge and then following the boundary around, moving down the gap between the hedgerow and the planted crops. Fool asked the feather several more times which direction to head in, and each time they followed its lead, moving deeper and deeper into the farmland. They passed one or two smaller groups of the Joyful, one mass of them standing motionless in the center of the crops and another clustered around a small stone farmhouse. This second set, unlike the first, were spinning and dancing slowly, and Fool wondered if they might eventually stop and become like the first; if they would all, in the end, need the attention of the reaping angels, the ones he had seen cut the Joyful loose from the growths the day before, or the day before that, whenever it had been.

  They saw no caretaker angels and nothing moved in the skies above them.

  On the far side of the fields, after walking several miles, the land altered. Here, the earth was planted not with crops but with green, short grass and copses of trees in which wooden benches were standing empty. The gap between crop and hedge widened as the crops fell back and the hedge came to an abrupt end in a neat caesura. Ahead of them was a road, a black metal strip leading to a small town.

  It wasn’t like anything Fool had seen in Heaven before. The buildings were clapboard and old, baked into submission by a sun that suddenly seemed terribly hot. The sidewalks were dusty and what little breeze there was picked up the dust in motes and turned them as though examining them for flaws. Joyful peppered the sidewalk, dressed in old and faded smock shirts and trousers, the women in long dresses. All had their faces raised to the sun and most were tanned a deep brown by its heat, some turning slowly, others still. Wagons were standing motionless in the center of the road or pulled up to the sidewalk in front of the buildings, their canvas rears fluttering slightly in the small breaths of wind. Heavy cords tied the canvases to the wagons’ wooden frames, and the canvases themselves were bleached by the sun and looked dry and brittle. The fronts of the wagons had yokes, but there were no creatures of burden attached to any of them.

  “Do we go through? Or around?” asked Summer.

  “Neither,” said Fool, letting the feather drop again and looking at the direction it pointed them to. “We go away.”

  They walked again, away from the town, and soon the grass had given way, becoming at first scrubland and then shifting into a sandy place of cliffs and rocky earth with little plant growth. The feather led them into an area shadowed by cliffs and huge, tumbled formations of rock and scree before guiding them into a dry gorge that rose in ragged steps to a cliff-top mesa. They reached the top, panting with exertion, and Fool wished they had brought water. His mouth felt hot and cottony, thick with a clinging skin of dust or sand.

  From the top of the cliff they were sent down the sloped far side to a dusty, barren landscape of rocks and stunted bushes. At the point where the slope leveled out, a spring bubbled in the center of a small patch of greenness and all three drank deeply. The water tasted clean and fresh and slicked through the coating in Fool’s mouth, washing it away with each delightful swallow.

  “Were you thinking about water?” asked Summer.

  “I was,” said Gordie, “when we reached the top of the cliff.”

  “Me too,” said Fool.

  “We all
thought about it and it was there,” said Summer. “Is that what happens here?”

  “It might be,” said Fool. The sense of their being allowed to move freely, of being observed for what they might achieve, hit him strongly again, and he wondered if Summer was right, if the water had been provided for them because they’d all thought about it at the same time and strongly enough for Heaven to hear. Was it Mayall? The Malakim? Or some other part of Heaven as yet unmet, watching over them and making sure they reached whatever goal had been set for them in vast plans he would never be a party to? He mouthed a silent thanks, unsure whom he was thanking, and they carried on.

  The path led through the center of the plain, jagging back and forth, moving around large rocky outcrops and between dust-bowl areas thick with red, rough sand. Creatures moved around them, too small to see, indistinct apart from the skitter of their feet and, once, a hiss that might have been a warning.

  “I wonder how far away it is,” said Summer, moving back to the center of the path and looking suspiciously at the knotty plants near the path’s edge that the hiss had come from.

  “We’ll see the chapel,” said Gordie, “and then we’ll know we’re close.”

  “No, things change, don’t they? Heaven changes all the time, we can look out of a window one day and see fields, look out the next and see the sea. The tunnel mouth could be anywhere, couldn’t it?”

  “No,” said Fool, emphatic, “Gordie’s right. Whatever else has changed, it’ll be by the chapel. The tunnel came out there for a reason, because the things from outside wanted the books in the graves. The graveyard’s huge, and hundreds of graves have been opened and robbed; whatever happened there has been happening for a long time. The tunnel and the chapel are linked. When we find the tunnel, we’ll find it by the chapel. Keep looking for the chapel.”