Snake Agent: A Detective Inspector Chen Novel (22 page)

As they drew nearer to the long quay, bypassing the scales that weighed the souls and the great mirror that would tell each one where its future lay, Chen could see the line of souls waiting patiently for the next boat across the Sea of Night. The quay itself was made of human teeth, the last payment made by the abandoned flesh, and it towered high above the transmuting ground of the port. A sharp, rickety tier of bone-steps led upwards. Chen took a deep breath of unnatural air and started climbing. The steps crunched beneath his feet. The badger glided alongside. Curious faces turned to watch their progress, until a swarm of spirits had gathered at the side of the quay. At last Chen stepped onto the quay itself and looked around him. There must have been a hundred spirits gathered there, still wearing the vestiges of their living selves. Most of them, Chen was glad to see, were quite old, a startling tribute to Singapore Three's rather less-than-adequate health-care system, but one or two small spirits flickered around his ankles like dogs and he saw again the girl in the burning wedding dress. Chen shivered, wondering what her story might be. There was also a sullen group of young men; the ritual scars on their forearms fading with the memory of the flesh but still sufficient to identify them as members of Singapore Three's various gangs. Even in death, it seemed, they kept to their tribes. Chen looked around him. There was no sign of the boat that traveled the Sea of Night. The spirits of the elderly people clustered around Chen, bewildered and vague, as if they had not yet realized they were no longer alive. He said, "I'm looking for the boat across the sea. Does anyone know when it leaves?" Wondering, pale eyes widened at the sound of Chen's voice, which seemed to echo out across the darkness beyond. Then the ghost of a middle-aged woman stepped forward; Chen could see the traces of an open wound carved down her smiling face. Her form was still clad in the red robes of a Buddhist nun. Her eyes narrowed as she saw him, with something that might momentarily have been envy.

"You're alive," she said, wonderingly.

"I know," Chen said, feeling guilty. "I'm with the police liaison department. I'm traveling to Hell."

"You're a brave man. Or a reckless one."

"I'm never sure which, myself. Do you know where the boat is?"

"It's on the other side of the dock. These folk are waiting for their final documents to be processed. Do you have proper papers?"

Chen nodded.

"Then come with me."

Chen accompanied her through the crowd. The nun walked slowly, limping. "You'll have to excuse me," she said over her shadowy shoulder. "Still not quite used to being dead yet. You forget, don't you?"

"How did it happen?" Chen asked diffidently. He had never quite ceased to feel that this was a somewhat insensitive question, but the dead seemed to take a grisly enthusiasm in talking about their means of demise.

"Kid in a stolen Daewoo Wanderer. Knocked me off my bike last night," the nun said. "It was very quick. I was a bit cross at first, then I thought, well, there's nothing I can do about it. It's not as if it's the first time, after all."

"We'll all end up here in the end," Chen said.

"We will indeed. Over and over again. . . At least I know where I'm going. Half these poor souls haven't worked out what's happened to them yet, and not all of them are bound for the Celestial Shores. . .or Hell by choice, like yourself." She paused, nodding in the direction of a small, frail figure with its head bowed over its knees. "Like
that
poor soul."

The spirit looked up, and Chen saw with a jolt that it was the ghost of Mrs Tang. She gazed at him dully; there was no spark of recognition in her pale eyes.

"Wait a moment," Chen said. He sat down beside her, with the nun hovering solicitously nearby. As gently as he could, he said, "Mrs Tang? I'm so sorry we couldn't do more to help you. We tried to save you, you know, but I'm afraid there was nothing we could do."

"Oh," Mrs Tang said. A vague comprehension washed over her features. "It's you. And you're still alive. . . You living people all look the same to me, now—isn't that odd? But I do remember. . . yes. You tried to help, you and that tall man with the moustache." Her face twisted. "I was possessed, wasn't I? I don't like to remember."

"It's all right," Chen said hastily. "Don't think about it. It's over."

"It was my husband, of course," Mrs Tang said numbly. "At first I tried to pretend that it was nothing to do with him—Pearl's death, I mean. But I had my suspicions, and at last I decided to do something. I couldn't prove anything, and then I heard of you. So I went to see you. And he found out. He—did something. Called something up, to make me talk."

"Your husband's fallen foul of whoever he was in league with," Chen said. "Don't worry. He's already met his just desserts. But we still don't know who he was working with. Do you have any idea?" At his shoulder, the nun shifted, a little impatiently, but having found Mrs Tang, Chen was reluctant to relinquish his unexpected good luck.

"I don't know much," Mrs Tang said slowly. "I know he had some sort of arrangement with the Ministry of Wealth, but he didn't think they were doing enough for him. So he went to someone else instead."

"Do you know who?"

"Another Ministry, of Hell." The ghost of Mrs Tang shivered. "I don't know which one, exactly—there are lots, aren't there? I think it was one of the ones to do with disease."

"Mrs Tang," Chen said, trying not to look too exultant. "Would you be prepared to testify?"

"Against my husband?" Mrs Tang asked bitterly. "There's nothing I'd like better—he killed me, didn't he? He's the reason I'm sitting in the middle of this—this
nowhere
. But you have to understand, Detective—I know what he can do now. I'm sure he's got contacts in the otherworld—in Hell. I don't even know if they'll let me into Heaven. I've never really been religious, you see; I never used to believe in any of this stuff before I came to Singapore Three and even then I thought it was just superstition."

Chen could believe this, thinking of chic Mrs Tang as she had been in life. Now, stripped of her designer clothes and her status and social position, she was nothing more than just another shade. It had often occurred to Chen how shattering it must be for someone who had devoted their whole life to material possessions to suddenly find themselves in a world where status depended on entirely more intangible matters. He glanced across at the nun, whose feet were planted squarely on the nebulous surface of the quay and who could not have looked so very different from her appearance in life. "And if I end up in Hell and I testify," Mrs Tang went on, "who knows what he might do?" Her hands wrung together in her lap. "I used to think there was nothing worse than death, and now—"

"Listen," Chen said. "Let's be practical. Your documents haven't been processed yet. We don't know where you're heading, and it may very well be that you'll get into Heaven after all. In that case, you'll have automatic immunity—the Celestial Realms look after their own. If you go—elsewhere, there may still be something we can do to protect you."

"Detective?" Mrs Tang said. "What
happens
now? I know what the religious people say, but what really happens when you die? I mean, after this? When will I be reincarnated? And what as?"

Chen sighed. "Mrs Tang, even I can't say for sure, and I've traveled between the worlds several times as a living person. No one is permitted to remember their voyage across the Sea of Night. All souls are sent back—reincarnated—after their time in Heaven or Hell. But we're not granted any real understanding of the mechanics of the process—the gods deem it best that we don't know, or if they tell us, then we forget. I'm sorry I can't be more helpful."

"It's all right," Mrs Tang sighed. Then her head snapped up. "Detective, my daughter! What's become of my daughter?" Her shadowy face twisted. "Pearl died because of what H'suen was doing, I'm sure of it. I think H'suen's new masters wanted a sacrifice. I think she was it."

"Don't worry," Chen said, and this time he was able to mean it. "She wasn't a sacrifice in the way you mean, though I'm afraid it's true enough that your husband killed her. She found out something of what he was doing, you see. But she's safe now. She's in Heaven, she was sent by Kuan Yin herself. I saw her go."

Mrs Tang's face crumpled and she clutched at Chen's hand. Then the distress flowed out of her face, leaving it smooth and pale. "Then I don't care where I go," she said. Chen glanced up. Someone was coming along the wharf, dressed in gray robes. Its face was smooth and inexpressive, with a bland smile, and it carried a bundle of documents. It was one of the wardens responsible for the passage of souls between the worlds: Chen had seen its kind before. As it neared the place where Chen was sitting, it said in a whispering voice, "Lily Tang? Here is your visa." It passed a slip of paper to her and glided on, with a half-curious glance at Chen. Mrs Tang's phantom hands were steady as she opened the slip of paper but one look at her face told Chen the bad news, belaying her earlier defiant words. He put a sympathetic hand on her shoulder and the nun came to sit by her side.

"Don't worry," the nun murmured. "Hell's not as bad as all that, and you may not even be there for very long. Before you know it, you'll be reborn in the world again and you won't remember a thing."

Chen did not think that Mrs Tang looked very convinced. He was about to add his own reassurances, but the smooth, gliding person was coming back.

"Embarkation is about to commence," the being said.

Mrs Tang turned to Chen and grasped his arm. Looking down, he saw that her spectral knuckles were white, but he felt nothing. "Detective? Will you stay by me, on the boat?"

"If I can," Chen said. He rose to follow the official. And after that everything became hazy: a succession of images, the red-lacquered bulk of the boat rocking above an ocean of darkness; his own feet gliding up a gangway and a spectral wind on his face. Later, through the mercifully hazy depths of fear, came the sudden vastness of galaxies, spawned in the hinterlands of the universe and spinning out stars like grain from a millwheel.

And then, much later still, a rasping hand grasped his arm. A voice hissed in his ear, "You do not have correct papers for disembarkation! You must leave now, and take your familiar with you!"

A dim memory of protest, hands tightening, a vertiginous tilt . . .Chen was falling. There was a banner snapping in an eternal wind, towers of iron and bone and pain, and a red and endless sky where no sun shone.

Inari sat bolt upright, shaking. She took a deep breath, inhaling the once familiar scent of Hell: old incense, and hatred, and blood, overlaid with the more fragrant odors of tea and the perfume of the night-lilies, which drifted in from the garden. She had been dreaming a dream in which Dao Yi had snatched her back to the underworld, and was mauling her with putrefying hands . . .It was a moment before she realized that this was memory, not dream; another moment still before the knowledge dawned upon her that it was not this recollection that had awakened her. There was something in the room.

Zhu Irzh
, she thought. Carefully and quietly, she lay back down on the bed. Her hands, resting gently on the covers, flexed their long talons and she could feel the prickle of her incisors as they lengthened. Here in Hell, her own world, she was becoming more demonic by the minute, and she did not like it. She did not want to be this fierce, fearful thing longing for the taste of blood in her mouth, yet repulsed by her own nature and those around her. She wanted to be back on the houseboat, pottering about with the cooking, and the badger weaving in and out between her feet. Sunlight and salt, and fresh clear air
. . .remember who you have become, not who you once were. . .
But now she had to remember both. She could hear footsteps moving stealthily about the room. She turned over, sighing as she did so in the pretence of deep sleep, then rolled silently onto her back once more. There was a heavy rustle of silk as the curtains were pulled aside. Inari stirred, murmured, peered through half-closed eyes.

A little pair of hands protruded through the curtain. They were delicate hands, with long golden talons shaped into fashionable spirals, and even in the darkness Inari's night-eyes could see that the hands were as red as blood. Long fingers rippled and flexed in obscene anticipation and then, as if by magic, a length of black silk was conjured from the depths of a sleeve. The owner of the hands gave a small, breathy gasp, almost a giggle, and reached out with the garrote. Inari struck: rearing up from the bed and lashing out with a taloned hand. Silk curtains tore and something fell wetly to the bed: a long strip of decaying flesh attached to something bony, which sizzled into ash as soon as it touched the covers. Freeing herself from the bedclothes, Inari sprang to the floor. The figure wore an ornate ceremonial robe. Long hair cascaded down its back. Its eyes were huge and dark above the ruin of its jaw, and now Inari could see what it was that she had torn away: a strip of the creature's face and rotting jawbone. The creature's tongue lolled loosely from the back of its throat and it reached up a red hand and stuffed the tongue awkwardly back in. Then it came forwards in a crouching rush. Inari kicked out and hooked a foot behind its bony ankle, bringing it crashing to the floor. It struck out with a flailing arm and she grasped its wrist and twisted. The arm came out of its socket like a ripe plum falling from a tree. Gasping, Inari threw it to one side. She kicked the creature in the ribs and felt something cave rottenly inwards. The creature gave a whistling cry. Its ribcage began to expand outwards, each bone unpeeling itself from the sternum, dangling petals of flesh. The ribs arched back until they reached the floor, where they began to scrabble and thrash like the legs of some monstrous arachnid. Inari fled into the tiny kitchenette and dumped one of the cabinet drawers onto the floor. Seizing a long knife, she ran back into the main room in time to see that the creature had managed to turn itself right way up. It had now divested itself of all spare flesh except the legs, which remained entangled in the robe and trailed across the floor like long and empty bags. As Inari stumbled to a halt, its legs finally fell away, leaving the creature's spine free to arch upwards over its head. Its tongue, attached only by a thin and elastic strip of skin, finally fell off. The foremost ribs, now legs, clicked as the creature ran forwards. A sharp, dark thing like the thorn of a rose protruded from the end of the spine, glistening with venom. Inari dived over the couch just as it lashed forwards. The venomous spine shot through the back of the divan, where it stuck. Scrambling to her feet, Inari struck down with the knife, hacking frantically at bone and sinew until the spine was completely severed. The thing scuttled forwards, only to be knocked flying as the door surged open and Zhu Irzh leaped through, sword in hand.