Snake Agent: A Detective Inspector Chen Novel (27 page)

"Last minute check. Master's orders." That was Tso. Chen took a deep breath of relief.

"I've already fastened up the tailgate; it's too late now."

"But master was insistent!" Tso's voice rose to a mosquito whine, almost as unbearable as the stink of the blood. There was the sound of footsteps, and then the tailgate once more rattled down. Tso's face gazed up at them like a stray moon.

"One. . . two. . . three barrels. . . All seems to be in order. Sorry to trouble you," he said loudly, extending a clawed hand to help Chen down. Chen and the badger clambered as quietly as they could from the back of the dray and Tso slammed the tailgate up and locked it. Chen dodged behind a nearby stack of barrels as the dray rumbled out of the courtyard, the lashing tail of the
ch'i lin
sending a swirl of dust into the evening air.

"Where were you?" Chen hissed.

"I had things to do. I was as quick as I could. Now let's get out of here," Tso said, and set off in his stumbling gait towards a small door in the back wall of the courtyard. Stepping through, Chen found himself in a narrow alleyway, which led out onto one of the main thoroughfares.

"Where's this place you're taking us?" he asked.

"It's in the Pleasure Quarter."

"And you're sure we can't just talk here?"

"No!" Tso said, glancing nervously around him. "My master has set all manner of spies and traps—he's paranoid about employees siphoning off the blood. The place isn't very far, but we'll have to keep to the back streets. Here," Tso added. "Take this." He handed Chen a floppy and ancient hat, heavily stained by some unmentionable substance.

"It's the foreman's," Tso said, by way of explanation. "He left it in the office. It'll hide your face. Pity we can't do anything about your smell."

After a few hours in the dray, Chen felt as though he'd stink of blood for the rest of his life, but Tso evidently thought differently. Chen supposed that it was rather like Europeans, who always seemed to feel that they were perfumed like the very rose but who to his discerning senses often had that odd milky odor. . . He stuffed the foreman's hat unceremoniously upon his head and pulled it down over his face. Tso was already heading down the street, followed closely by the badger-teakettle. Chen followed.

The Pleasure Quarter had changed since Chen's previous visit. He recognized none of the warren of streets through which Tso was hastening, but this did not surprise him. The Pleasure Quarter was defined by its capacity for transformation. Streets altered position overnight, shops disappeared as if swallowed by some vast maw, and brothels rose to take their place. Inari had once told Chen that the Pleasure Quarter was in fact far larger than it appeared: buildings folded back upon themselves and were bigger inside than out. Along with the Imperial Palace itself, the Pleasure Quarter was one of the oldest regions of this part of Hell, as befit the vices which it entertained. Chen supposed that Seneschal Zhu Irzh, as an employee of the city's Vice Division, must be exceedingly familiar with this bit of the city. Tomorrow, depending on what Tso was able to tell them, he would try to contact the demon. It was not reassuring to have as his only allies—unless one counted the badger-teakettle—a disgruntled brother-in-law and a highly unreliable member of Hell's police force, but Chen supposed that without the favor of Kuan Yin he must take friends where he found them. Impeccability was a necessity that he no longer felt able to entertain.

Someone was plucking at his sleeve. Chen turned and saw half a young woman. Her face was plump and pleasantly smiling, her teeth were lacquered red and intricately carved, but she was completely hollow, like a melon rind scooped out from the back. He was uncomfortably reminded of Pearl Tang. She bowed, and Chen could see straight into the meaty hole of her skull.

"Would you like to take tea with me?" she asked prettily, like a wind-up doll. Chen smiled.

"Not just now," he told her. She bowed again, jerkily, and glided away. Tso was waiting impatiently beneath an awning.

"Don't talk to people! Do you want to attract attention?"

"It would create more of a fuss if I ignored them," Chen said mildly. "Are we nearly there?"

"Not far now," Tso muttered. They were standing in a little square: one of the many courtyards of the Pleasure Quarter. From an uninformed perspective, the scene before them could almost be an attractive one: lots of bright colors, smiling faces, ornamental clothes. It wasn't until one looked more closely—very closely in certain cases—that one began to see the decay, the mutilation, the rotten lace and stained velvet. This, Chen supposed, was the problem with Hell: it was all facade, and even that was shoddy. Tso stepped down a side street, lurching to the side as his reversed feet came into contact with one of the many potholes that rendered the sidewalk so unstable. Chen turned to follow, but found himself suddenly in the middle of a crowd of creatures.

They were elemental dancers. He'd seen their kind once before, performing beneath Inari's balcony at the command of her then-fiancé Dao Yi. They were not indigenous to this part of Hell, and he knew that they were very old, perhaps dating to the animistic days before Buddhism. They were animal spirits: Chen recognized a deer, staring up at him with great dark eyes above a mouth filled with most undeerlike fanged teeth. Its spiral horns twisted in mesmerizing rhythms. A clawed hand slipped into his own and held it with casual intimacy, but the green lizard gaze that stared so unblinkingly at him was as cold as river ice. Dark feathers brushed his face; hair as soft and thick as fur slid against his cheek. They were turning him around, murmuring in inhuman voices, and the heavy perfume of the narcotics from a local café was making his head spin, drawing him down, deeper and deeper. . . Something nipped affectionately at his throat and then sharper teeth snapped at his ankle. The intense pain brought him abruptly back to reality. He cried out, whirling in a t'ai ch'i dance of his own that sent the animal spirits flying from him. Laughter echoed and they turned and ran in a pack: tails twirling, graceful hands waving in mocking placation. From an upstairs window, someone echoed the laughter: Chen glanced up to see a woman with her hand to her face, stifling her mirth. A purplish tongue lolled out between her fingers. Chen's ankle felt as though he'd stepped into a napalm bath. He looked down to see the badger staring grimly up at him.

"You should be more careful," the badger said. There was again blood on its long, pale incisors, and it licked them, once, with a relish that Chen found unnerving. He nodded.

"I know. Thank you."

"Follow me," the badger said, and disappeared into the torchlight shadows beyond the little courtyard. Limping, Chen followed, and saw that a metal door was set into the wall. His brother-in-law was waiting behind it.

"Where have you been?" Tso hissed. "I thought I'd lost you."

"I'm sorry. I got distracted."

Tso swore through his teeth and pointed towards a staircase.

"Go up there. It's third on the left. And don't get into any more trouble. I have to pay someone for the room."

Stifled giggles came from somewhere in the depths of the building as Chen ascended the stairs, and he remembered the face with the spilling tongue, gazing down from the balcony. Presumably this was a demon lounge of some kind, but it seemed to be devoid of the usual panoply of prostitutes. A surreptitious glance into one of the rooms off the landing caused Chen to revise this hypothesis: the room was filled with demons, each lying on a narrow pallet. The air was thick with a narcotic haze and the floor was littered with ornate metal syringes: some habits passed between Earth and Hell with alarming ease. Chen found the third door and stepped cautiously over the threshold.

The room was mercifully empty. It contained only a couch and a small iron cabinet with many drawers, set against the wall. The black velvet of the couch was stained and mottled; Chen sat down rather gingerly. He did not know what Tso got up to in here, and he had no intention of asking. A man's private business was no concern of his, and besides, it was almost certainly repulsive. He wondered whether he'd ever get the reek of blood out of his clothes, and his ankle stung painfully. After a few minutes, Tso hastened nervously into the room and shut the door behind him. He carried four sticks of crimson incense, which he lit. The little room was soon filled with an acrid cloud of smoke, which Tso directed with a taloned hand until it wrapped around the walls like a smoke ring, connecting with the spells that guarded the room.

"Sound precautions," Chen said approvingly.

"You can't be too careful. I've already had more than enough trouble over all this. . . No one can hear us now." He collapsed on the couch next to Chen. "So what's been going on?"

As concisely as possible, Chen apprised his brother-in-law of recent events. When he had finished, Tso stared at him in horror.

"My sister? Inari? Back in Hell?" He sounded surprised, but there was something overdone about it, and Chen could not suppress a sudden intuition that this was a fact Tso already knew very well. He'd always been a terrible liar: one of the few characteristics he shared with his sister.

"You don't seem exactly pleased," he said, hoping to draw Tso out.

"Of course I'm not pleased! Don't you know what helping Inari has cost me? My job, my status, my salary, my good relations with my family. . . Not to mention my feet."

"I'm truly sorry," Chen said, and meant it. "But you knew what defying Dao Yi might lead to. And in a way, I saved you a lot of problems by taking Inari away from Hell."

"I know, I know. And you're right. If she'd stayed, who knows what Dao Yi might have done to her? He was furious about the whole scandal—he sued for false engagement, remember? But I thought he was only concerned about the money, and we paid that back with interest once the case had gone through court."

"I think Dao Yi felt that your family had made a fool out of him," Chen said.

"Oh, almost certainly," Tso replied bitterly. "Once she'd gone, I thought all the fuss would die down but Dao Yi never really stopped persecuting us. It's worn mother to a rag. They're like that in Epidemics—vindictive. They've got long memories, like dormant germs. Just when you think you're cured, they reinfect you. And, of course, there's the
wu'ei
."

Even the name made Chen shiver. "Have you seen them?" Chen whispered. "Have they come to you?"

Despite the wall of smoke, Tso glanced anxiously around him before answering. "They came once. They came in the night—I don't remember much. They took my secrets from me—they learned for themselves how I'd helped Inari. They were limited in their powers because we hadn't directly disobeyed the law, we'd only helped another person to do so."

"To travel between the worlds, without license from the Imperial Court?"

"Yes. But what they did was bad enough. They left my father's mind a wreck; he couldn't stand the questioning. As for me, it was the
wu'ei
who reversed my feet, as punishment. O Ji—my boss—suggested it. As a warning. They crippled me, with the promise of more to come. I can do nothing for Inari, Chen. I do not dare. The
wu'ei
will be searching for her now, and if they find her. . ." He stared down at his back-to-front feet and said no more. Chen sighed. He knew his brother-in-law and there was no point in pressing him further. He said, "All right. I understand what you've been through, Tso, and I'm grateful you've given me this much. I won't trouble you further."

"No. That isn't enough. You have to leave Hell. Forget my sister and go back where you came from. If the
wu'ei
find you here, they'll come after me and my family. Inari's made her own bed of nails and she'll have to lie on it."

"She never intended to return to Hell! Someone took her!"

"Who?" Tso asked nervously. Again, Chen got the impression that Tso already knew.

"I don't know. But everything that's been happening seems to lead back to the Ministry of Epidemics. If I'm looking to anyone as a culprit, I'm looking at them."

"Always Dao Yi," said Tso, and spat a fiery spark of contempt. It sizzled as it hit the carpet, leaving a small, smoking hole.

"I'm sorry, Tso, but I won't leave Hell without your sister, even if I have to pay a visit to the Ministry myself. I'll be as discreet as I can."

Tso opened his mouth as if to protest, but then he said, "Very well, then. You must do what you have to do, I suppose. But I cannot help you."

Agreement was the last thing that Chen expected. He glanced at Tso. His brother-in-law's round face was as closed as if a shutter had fallen across it.

"I understand," Chen said quietly. "If you withdraw the wards on this room, I'll be on my way. I won't trouble you again."

"Where will you go?"

"I have—other contacts," Chen said. "I have a place in mind."

Tso nodded. He raised a hand, and the wall of smoke dispersed. Chen crossed to the door, feeling the prick of spells against his skin as he stepped through the dissipating barrier. He left Tso sitting on the couch and, followed by the badger, made his way down the stairs.

As they came out into the courtyard, the badger said, "You cannot trust Master Tso." It spoke abruptly, as though the words had been wrung out of it, and Chen was heartened by this display of reluctant loyalty.

"I know," he said. "That's why we have to get as far away from here as possible. Tso won't waste any time."

"Why did you not lie to him? Tell him that you would leave Hell, forget Inari?"

"Because he'd know it was a lie. Tso understands me well enough. Besides, the more lies I tell, the more trouble I'll have with Kuan Yin later." He sighed. Caught between goddesses and demons. . .what was that Western saying? Something about a rock and a hard place? Or was it a devil and the deep sea? The truth of both statements was brought abruptly home to Chen as he stepped out of the entrance to the courtyard.

The animal spirits had come back. They stood in a patient semicircle. They were quite still and their eyes were bright. At his feet, the badger gave a long, low growl. Chen glanced behind him. There was no obvious way out of the courtyard, unless he bolted into the maze of downstairs rooms. The thought of being trapped in that narcotic maze was not appealing, but going back was better than going forwards. The spirits, moving as one, took a step towards him. Chen slipped his hand into his jacket pocket and found with a sudden sick dismay that his rosary was no longer there. As if sensing his disquiet, the animal spirits surged through the gateway and Chen turned and ran, nearly falling over the badger in his haste. He was heading for the staircase, but as he neared it a door slammed shut and he heard the snap of a bolt. He wondered fleetingly if that might have been Tso's doing, but there was no time for speculation. Accompanied by the badger, Chen fled along the covered verandah towards the far end of the courtyard. A spirit loomed up before him with the faceted eyes and quivering wings of a dragonfly, but its mouth was soft and human and wet. Desperately, Chen shoved it aside: it felt brittle, and yet somehow disconcertingly solid. As it fell, it began to hum. The humming filled the air, and the tendrils of the black vine that covered the verandah started to coil around Chen, caressing his face and entwining painfully in his hair. At the end of the verandah was a small, closed door: if he could only reach it—but a leafy frond of vine reached out and snagged his injured ankle, bringing him down. Chen rolled as he fell, freeing his leg, but even as he began to crawl towards the door more tendrils were creeping about him and their grip was strong. He could feel the long body of the badger beneath him, struggling. Looking frantically over his shoulder, he saw a mosaic of eyes above him: green and golden and meat-red. The badger lashed out with a clawed paw but this time the spirits simply rippled, as though made of water. Still moving as one, still moving with grace, they bent their heads and the tip of a cold spectral tongue flickered over his skin.