by Liz Williams
“Minimum wage, probably. Hell doesn’t pay very well. Not if you’re a clerk, anyway.”
Zhu Irzh frowned. “Doesn’t Heaven ever send any personnel to the Night Harbor? It’s supposed to be equal, after all. You’d think they’d have a vested interest in guarding the portals to the afterlife.”
“The amount of bureaucracy that Heaven contributes to these things has been waning over the last decade,” Chen said. “Years ago, when I was just starting out as a policeman, you’d come in here and all the staff would be Celestial maidens. Very pleasant, of course. But gradually they all got replaced. It can only have been with Heaven’s agreement.”
“Are they short-staffed up there or something?”
“Who knows?” Chen sighed. “There are certainly more souls in Hell than in Heaven. But these days, that’s not too surprising.”
“Maybe that’s why your goddess isn’t answering your prayers,” Zhu Irzh said. “Perhaps she’s given up and gone on vacation.”
Chen smiled, but it was strained. They were now standing within the Night Harbor itself. Zhu Irzh could smell the ozony odor of the Sea of Night and hear it lapping against the dockside. Ahead, a maze of low stone walls revealed the tall masts of a ship in dock.
“That’s not the Night Boat,” the demon said.
“No, it isn’t.” Chen was staring at it. “I don’t know what it is. I thought there was only one boat that sailed the Sea of Night.”
“Perhaps it’s come in from some other religion’s Hell,” Zhu Irzh said.
“Or someone else’s Heaven,” Chen murmured. Looking at it, the demon was inclined to consider this a more likely possibility. The boat was very pale, a pearly phosphorescence in the dim light of the Night Harbor, illuminated by the smoky lamps that burned along the edges of the port. Its sails were folded, but they, too, were white, draping in spectral folds from the high masts.
“Can you see anyone aboard?” the demon asked.
“No.” Chen paused. “We ought to be concentrating on finding Sardai.”
“Oh, let’s just take a quick look,” Zhu Irzh suggested.
Together, they walked to the side of the dock. Up close, the boat was smaller than it had appeared from a distance: a delicate thing, its sides completely encrusted with ghostly shells, pale whorls and spirals that shimmered in the uncertain light.
“This is beautiful,” Chen said.
“It’s a Celestial craft,” the demon said. He reached out a hand, but did not touch the sides of the boat.
“It certainly looks as though it might be,” Chen said. The demon wrinkled his nose. He could almost smell the offensive peach blossom orchards of Heaven. “But what’s it doing here?” Chen added.
“I have no idea. Celestial vessels very rarely leave the Heavenly seas.”
Chen reached out and brushed a hand along the shell-embossed side of the boat. Immediately, a gossamer web drifted down and enveloped his arm, imprisoning it.
“Damn!” Chen said, staring at his hand in dismay. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
“It was extremely foolish,” the demon said severely. It was nice not to have been the one to fuck up for a change. “What are we going to do now?”
“Wait,” a voice said from behind him. “One moment.”
Zhu Irzh turned and found himself confronting a Celestial maiden. She was exactly like all the other Celestial maidens he had seen: beautiful, of course, with a thick fall of lacquered hair and a white ceremonial dress that seemed to catch the light from the lamps and hold it, so that she glowed a faint gold.
“Madam,” Zhu Irzh said, and bowed. A pity all these girls were as wan and insipid as their home. Perhaps, if Tserai had her way, that might change. The demon belatedly became aware that he was grinning, but instead of stepping back with a squeak of fright, the maiden simply regarded him with a cool, detached interest, as though he was something she had found at the bottom of a pond. She touched the web that imprisoned Chen and it disappeared.
“I’m very sorry,” Chen said. “I meant no harm.”
“I know. You were simply curious. And indeed, no harm has been done. You are Detective Inspector Chen, are you not?”
Chen was staring at her. “Yes. But how did you know?”
“You were the protégé of my mistress, before things changed.”
“Your mistress is Kuan Yin?” Zhu Irzh could see that Chen was rapidly leaping to conclusion after conclusion. “She’s here?”
“Yes. We arrived yesterday, as the Night Harbor reckons these things.”
“Then that must be why I couldn’t contact her,” Chen said. “May I ask why she’s come?”
“I think you should ask her yourself,” the maiden said. “Come with me.”
32
“Where are we going?” Robin asked, shakily. It was hard to walk when your ankles had been shackled and your arms were tied behind your back.
“Be quiet,” the dogman behind her snapped. She felt hot, reeking breath on the back of her neck. From the corner of her eye she saw Mhara, similarly shackled, hobbling along. They had left the fields far behind them and now walked through a wilderness of sharp stones and jagged outcrops. Through gaps in the rock Robin occasionally glimpsed distant lights, and a vast roiling expanse that knowledge and half-memory told her was the Sea of Night. It made her sick to look at it: a horrible thought, to know that her soul had already crossed that sea many times before. She could not imagine sailing upon it. Small wonder that memories of the life-between-lives could not be accessed, otherwise life itself would be a landscape of anticipatory dread. And now Robin herself would suffer from this suffocating fear of death, having seen what awaited her at the other end. Even Hell would be better than that dark ocean. If she even lived … The boundaries had become too blurred; she did not know what that meant anymore.
Then the rocks clustered more densely around them and the glimpses of the Sea of Night vanished, to Robin’s intense relief. She could feel Mhara glancing at her, but she did not want him to meet her eyes and see her fear and dismay, so she stared rigidly at the ground and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. But then a howling filled the air: a deep baying, interspersed with wolf-like cries and high puppy yelps. Around her, Robin saw their captors drop to all fours. The armor and the weapons disappeared. She and Mhara were surrounded by the doglike creatures that Deveth had turned into, their little yellow and amber eyes lit by a wicked intelligence. They bounded forward and turned the corner out of sight.
But one remained, in semi-human form: the pack leader. He prodded Robin between the shoulder blades with a hard hand. “Go on. What are you waiting for?”
Reluctantly, Robin followed the pack. On turning the corner, she saw what lay before them and once more had to be shoved forward. As she had guessed, it was Bad Dog Village.
Rickety roofs showed over a high jumble of palisade. From a watchtower that seemed to have been assembled from roughly cut branches, a lamp burned with a dirty orange light. Architecture was clearly not the dogmen’s strong point. The gates to the palisade were open. Robin could see movement within and hear a snapping, snarling argument.
“Do not worry,” Mhara murmured, as the pack leader was distracted. “You’ve been here before.” But he did not sound convinced by his own reassurances and Robin, looking at the place before them, felt no sense of familiarity, only an overwhelming dismay.
Within the palisade, it was even worse. The village stank of shit and Robin had to be careful where she placed her feet. Real dogs might have gone outside to shit, but these beings seemed to combine the worst of being human with the worst of the canine, too. The dogs herded them through into a compartmentalized stockade and here she and Mhara were separated. Robin clung to him when she realized what was happening, but it was no use. The dogmen dragged them apart and shoved Robin through the door of a small, slatted hovel, with a pit in the floor. She ran to the wall, but could not see where Mhara was being taken. She did, however, see something e
lse: a small, pallid band of ghosts, hastening through Bad Dog Village with their heads bowed, clutching one another’s hands. The dogmen rushed out: one of the ghosts was pulled away from the rest and hauled into the darkness. The others stood, aimlessly lamenting for a while, until reason evidently overcame them and they rushed away. Robin went slowly back into the hovel and sat down on the cleanest patch of straw.
It was impossible to know what the dogmen were planning. Whatever it might be, Robin was sure that she was entirely expendable. The statement made by the pack leader seemed to point to that: So you’re the missing boy. Did that mean that the dogmen were somehow connected to Paugeng? Or were they referring to further back down the chain and Mhara’s absence from Heaven itself? One possibility offered hope, the other, ruin, and Robin had no way of telling which it might be. But judging from the nature of Bad Dog Village, ruin seemed more likely.
Later, Robin woke, with no recollection of having fallen asleep. It was completely dark—she could not even see her hand in front of her face—and very cold, with the iron chill of deep night. Her heart was pounding and she was certain that something had woken her, but there was no sense of anything in the room, no murmur of movement. She said aloud, hoping against hope, “Mhara?” But there was no reply.
Next moment, the door to the hovel burst open, ricocheting back on its hinges, and Robin’s eyes were dazzled in a burst of light. Something hot and large and panting was in the room, filling it. Robin smelled wet hair and meaty breath. She rolled away against the wall, desperately seeking escape, but the light from the wildly swinging lamp was enough to reveal a glimpse of the dogman: in its semi-human form but bare of armor, the grinning mouth gaping wide, the raw pink phallus between its legs erect. There was no doubt in Robin’s mind as to its—his—intentions. She screamed and when the dogman reached down and grasped her hair in his thick padded hand, she twisted round and bit and kicked. She had never fought so hard; revulsion lent her strength. But the dogman gave a cackle of laughter, horribly reminiscent of Deveth, and slammed her against the wall, hands pawing at her breasts, nails tearing her clothes. He jammed the side of a hand against her throat and Robin began to pass out, vision swimming into a sea of light and dark.
Then the dogman was pulled violently away and Robin dropped to the floor. The room was filled with snarling and growling; when she ventured to look up, she saw that the dogman had resumed his doglike form and was rolling over and over with Deveth’s beast incarnation. Her teeth were buried in his throat: thick blood sprayed out across the room. Deveth lunged and tore, the yellow eyes devoid now of anything that might once have been human, and the dogman grew slack. The heavy body slumped to the floor. Deveth stepped delicately back, avoiding pooling blood. The dogman’s phallus stiffened for a moment, then slid back into its sheath. Moments later, the corpse crumbled into a black, earthy substance and was absorbed by the floor.
“Men!” said Deveth, and spat.
Robin started to laugh and could not stop. She clutched at Deveth’s greasy coat and pounded the floor and howled.
“You are hysterical,” Deveth said coldly into her ear.
“Thank you,” Robin gasped, sobering up.
“You are mine to hunt, Robin, mine to torment, mine to do with as I please. I am not subject to the rules of dogtown. The pack leader must understand that, fool that he is.” Deveth was seething with anger. She rose from the floor, shook herself, and surged out, slamming the door behind her with a kick of her hind leg. Robin had never been so glad to be alone. She curled into a ball against the wall, wrapped her arms around her knees and waited grimly for morning.
33
“What do you mean, he’s dead?” Paravang Roche asked the priest-broker, aghast.
“The man was murdered,” the priest-broker said, sourly. “And the Assassins’ Guild is claiming that our contract with them misrepresented the situation and the insurance does not cover it.”
“What ‘misrepresentation’? They knew he was a cop!”
“It appears that the Guild was under the impression that Detective Zhu Irzh was not protected by the full might of the law, being as he is a demon and moreover on assignment from another force with whom the Guild has no contract. However, it turns out that this is not the case and Zhu Irzh is to be regarded as a fully covered member of Singapore Three’s law enforcement. Thus they are asking for a compensation payment for some three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”
“But my insurance with the Senditreya Endo surely guards me against attack, doesn’t it? Can’t I claim under my existing policy?”
“I’m afraid your insurance has lapsed automatically with the revoking of your license. We are obliged under contract to pay and therefore you will have to come up with the money yourself.”
“What! But I can’t work at the moment, in case that fact had escaped your notice!”
“You will just have to manage. Don’t you own property?”
“No, I rent my apartment.” Just as well, Paravang thought in dismay. The prospect of being evicted was all that he needed. Then it struck him that it might very well come to that, too.
“Any relatives, any friends who might be able to help you out?”
“Hardly. I don’t bother with friends much. I’m not married. My father’s been down on his luck—he’s barely got two beans to rub together. I help him out when I can. And my mother’s dead.”
“Dead,” the priest-broker remarked reflectively, and Paravang scowled at him.
“Yes, over ten years ago.”
“Where is she now? Heaven or Hell?”
Paravang scowled at him. “In Hell, if you must know. There were some … family difficulties involving her own parents. I’m sure she did her best, but the bureaucracy apparently decreed that she missed Celestial entry by a whisker.”
“The life-between-lives is often unjust,” the priest-broker said smoothly. “And you are her only son, from the sound of it.”
“Yes, that’s so.”
“A loyal son, no doubt. One who honors his mother at the festivals?”
“Well, naturally.” You had to keep in with the spirits to some extent, and tradition meant a lot to Paravang Roche, and to his father. They had both been generous, over the years.
“A lot of Hell money bought and burned, then? Sent down to the underworld and your mum in a coil of smoke?”
“Yes, I—” Paravang had begun to see where this was going. “You can’t expect me to ask for it back! She’s probably spent it by now anyway.” He had no idea what sort of retail opportunities existed in Hell but, somehow, he felt sure that they were extensive.
“I’m sure your mother loves you still. And I’m sure she’s grateful. Besides, think of it this way—if your mother ended up in Hell as a result of some family embroilment, this is her chance to redeem herself. Get back onto the world’s Wheel in a much more fortunate incarnation when her time in Hell runs out. You’d be doing her a favor, really, asking for the money back.”
“I suppose you might have a point,” Paravang admitted.
“Think about it,” the priest-broker said.
“I will.”
Troubled, Paravang took his leave of the priest-broker and wandered thoughtfully out into the street. He wanted to have as little to do with his shrew of a dead mother as possible, but in truth, it was the only way out. But it was unlikely, knowing his mum, that she’d simply give him the money, not without a very good reason. If she knew the Assassins’ Guild was after him, might kill him—but then she’d have him down in Hell with her, and she’d be knocking on the door every hour of the day and night, demanding this, that and the other. Hell indeed. So telling her the truth was out. That meant a lie big enough for her to return the money he’d burned for her all these years, yet he couldn’t think of anything compelling enough.
But then something happened that made Paravang fleetingly reconsider the essential malice of the universe. He turned the corner and ran into the tail-end of a wedding procession.
Marriage! Of course. His mother, when she was alive, had always been on him to get married, and things hadn’t changed just because she was dead. From the content of her phone conversations, Paravang knew that it was still her dearest wish. The only trouble was that he hated women and saw no reason to seek out their company unless they were the kind whom one paid by the hour, and even then he wondered why folk bothered. He barely knew any, apart from his next-door neighbor … Paravang sank down onto the bench and contemplated the wedding procession as it meandered by. His neighbor might have a tongue like a shrew on speed, but she was constantly bringing him things—extra soup, leftover dumplings, noodles … And now that he thought about it, she seemed to seek his advice rather a lot, too. Paravang had no illusions about his personal charms. As far as he was concerned, he didn’t have any. But the neighbor was a widow, and presumably lonely, and she had presumably also been around the block as far as men were concerned. He balked at actually lying to her, but perhaps if he explained, put the suggestion as a business arrangement and offered her a cut, to be paid once he’d got the Guild off his back and his license renewed … It might even work. Newly inspired, Paravang rose, overtook the wedding procession and headed for home.
34
Once on board, Zhu Irzh took an immediate dislike to the boat. It reeked of Heaven: that sickly peach-blossom odor permeating every crack of its ancient wood. The wood itself was dark and glossy, with a curious sparkle to it as if it contained trapped starlight. Perhaps it did, knowing the ways of the Celestials. The demon ran his hand along a railing and found that it burned his fingers. Hastily, he snatched his hand away.
“So sorry,” the Celestial maiden said, though Zhu Irzh reckoned that she wasn’t actually sorry at all. No doubt she thought it was nothing more than he deserved.
“Perhaps he should have stayed on the dock,” Chen said.
“What, I’m not good enough to be in the presence of a Celestial immortal?” Zhu Irzh asked.