The Devil's Detective (27 page)

“Where am I?” Fool tried to ask, but his voice came out as a battered
croak, unrecognizable even to himself. The man put a hand behind Fool's head, ignoring Fool's flinch, and very gently lifted him up. With his other hand he brought a glass of water to Fool's mouth and said, “Sip. Slowly.”

Fool sipped. The water was cold, cutting through dust he didn't know his throat contained. He took another mouthful, washing it around his teeth and feeling its chill bite against the molars on the left side. He probed the area with a tongue and found most of the teeth loose.

“Where am I?” he asked again, pleased to hear that his voice sounded more normal.

“In the Iomante Hospital,” said the man. “I'm Drow.”

“What happened? Why am I here?” said Fool, looking down at himself. He was clean and naked, had bandages wrapped around his chest. Under the sheet that came up the bed to his waist he could feel that his nudity was complete. “Where are my clothes?”

“You were brought here,” said Drow. “Your clothes we burned.”

“But—” began Fool, but Drow interrupted him.

“There's no need to worry, the little man brought another set of clothes for you.”

“Little man?” asked Fool and then realized whom Drow meant. “Elderflower?”

“I don't know. Two demons brought you in, which is usual for this place. I thought you were a little old for a Genevieve, but I've seen older. The little man, Elderflower did you say? Elderflower turned up not long after carrying a pile of clothes for you and a gun. He told me that you're Fool, the Information Man.”

“Yes,” said Fool and then remembered Summer. “Did anyone else come in with me?”

“No.”

It was a vain hope, he had known before asking. Summer had been torn apart, brutalized; there was no way she could have survived. First Gordie and now Summer, taken from him and each other, ripped loose from Hell in moments of fire and blood.
Perhaps they're the luckier ones
, he thought,
because they're out of it and I'm still here.
To Drow, he said, “The Iomante Hospital? What is this place?”

In answer, Drow lowered Fool back to bed, this time propping two
thin pillows behind him so that he remained slightly elevated and could see better. He pulled aside the muslin, hooking it to a rusty curl of metal hammered to the wall. “The Iomante,” he said, sweeping his hand out to take in the room beyond Fool. “We treat Genevieves and Marys.”

It was a long space with a high, vaulted ceiling, the walls light brown wood panels lined with beds. Some had muslin hanging down around them, shielding their occupants, but others were open, and in each that Fool could see was a young man. Some were awake, their eyes open and staring up. Two were sitting up, talking to each other; others were asleep or unconscious or worse, their faces pale in the lamplight. “Demons can be rough with their toys and break them,” said Drow. “They bring them here sometimes, in the hope that we can fix them so that they can play again.”

The man in the bed nearest Fool was swaddled in bandages, bloodied white strips wrapping around his chest and up to his neck. His face was marked with scratches, scabbed and red. Past him, one of the Genevieves was peering at Fool. One of his eyes was bloodshot, entirely red around a pupil that was huge and black, the skin around the eye a rainbow signature of bruises and scrapes. His neck was ringed in more bruises in which Fool could see the marks of thick, clawed fingers. He wanted to speak but didn't, unsure of what to say to the man. Instead, he turned back to Drow.

“They're all men,” he said.

“Boys, really,” said Drow. “All the Genevieves are. Women have separate wards in the Iomante, to stop the arguments.”

“Arguments?”

“The Genevieves and the Marys. They don't get on, fight each other about who the demons prefer. We try to keep them apart, otherwise no one gets any rest.”

Marys
, the female equivalent of Genevieves, and they were all treated here and yet he hadn't realized that the Iomante existed.
How many other things had he missed in his journeys around Hell?
he wondered. How many other brutalities, how many other places like this? How many people had crept under his notice? But then, wasn't that the point of Hell? To avoid the notice of anything, to keep hidden and hope that nothing took
an interest in you? To be nothing, less than nothing, in a place where being something was a dangerous thing? Fool sighed, wincing at the pain it caused in his chest.

“You've got some serious bruising,” said Drow, becoming businesslike. “And probably a fractured rib or two. Your face has extensive superficial damage. What happened?”

“Thomas was attacked,” said Elderflower from the side of the bed, “in the execution of his duties. Hello, Thomas. How are you feeling?”

“I don't know,” said Fool honestly. “I hurt when I move. I hurt about everything.”

“Yes,” said Elderflower. “It was a savage attack.”

“How did I get here? I assume you were responsible?”

“Of course. After your excellent deployment of the troops, the situation in the Houska and the surrounding areas was quickly brought under control. Rhakshasas gave me permission to deploy two of the troops who had completed their allotted task to find you. They followed your trail to the water demons' home and found you.”

“Was it still there?”
It
, the thing he still didn't have a name for, the thing that had killed Summer and the Genevieves and the Aruhlians and, indirectly, Gordie.

“It fled when it heard the troops arriving,” said Elderflower. “It likes the shadows and its privacy. Still, Thomas, there will be other times, I'm sure. You were so close.”

“Yes,” said Fool.
Little close Fool, just not close enough.

Elderflower held something out to Fool. It was a tube, wrapped not in blue or red ribbons but green. “The first Elevation,” he said. “It takes place tomorrow and your presence is required.”

“Yes,” said Fool, taking the tube. The movement of souls, the raising of the lucky few. It meant the delegation was nearly finished, that there were only a few more days of their presence. “Where is Summer?”

“Dead,” said Elderflower. “Ah, but you mean her body? Sent to the Garden, Thomas, along with all the flesh of Hell.”

“No,” said Fool urgently, leaning up, ignoring the pain in his belly and chest and arms and legs and head and heart. “No, I need her sent to Morgan. She needs Questioning. Now.”

“Really? If you insist, Thomas. I shall send one of your troops to the Garden to retrieve her before she goes to the flames. Do you have any other orders?”

“No,” said Fool and then, “Yes. The body in the Houska needs to be questioned as well, and I want Morgan to do both, not Tidyman or Hand.”

“As you wish,” said Elderflower. “I shall see to it. Now I shall leave you to rest. Let me leave you with something to read, though, before I go.” Elderflower took a sheaf of papers from his pocket and passed them to Fool. The top one he had seen before, the leaflet that had been thrown from the roof in the Houska yesterday, and the other papers were of similar size. The second one had another crude picture of him on it, and the phrase
This man kills demons
below it; the next one a different though equally rough picture of him and the phrases
He fights for us
and
Fight with him.
The others were similar, variations on the same theme. Looking at them, reading them, Fool felt a new pain grow in him; or rather, an old pain made large and fresh.

“I don't want this,” he said to Elderflower. “I didn't ask them. I'm not responsible.”

“The Bureaucracy knows,” said Elderflower. “Trust that it knows, Thomas, because you are still alive to protest your innocence. You did Hell a service yesterday evening, but it appears that Hell's human inhabitants are also grateful for it. These have been appearing all over Hell, Thomas. You are becoming noticed not simply by those at the top but by those at the bottom as well. You are in the middle, Thomas, and Hell is pivoting around you. These are fascinating times, are they not?”

“I suppose,” said Fool, still uneasy. He let the papers fall to the floor, trying to show Elderflower his disinterest.

“I should go,” said Elderflower. “Unless there's anything else?”

“Yes,” said Fool after a pause during which he tried to think, to concentrate. “I don't understand.”

“Understand what?”

“Any of it. Nothing's making sense. Like here, this place, the Iomante Hospital. Why?”

“Why what, Thomas?”

“Why is it here? It heals these few Genevieves and Marys but not them all; why not just let them die, replace them from Limbo?”

“Thomas, you've become good at observing these past few days; perhaps you should practice your listening skills as well. Adam has already told you. Hell is not a place of no hope, Thomas, but a place where tiny amounts of hope are allowed to flourish. Most Genevieves live short, brutal lives, even by Hell's standards, get beaten to death or savaged by the passions of their clients, but one or two or ten are brought here and made well. They go back and they tell their friends, if they have any, their fellow Genevieves, about this place, and suddenly there is just the tiniest fragment of hope in a hundred hearts that if they are injured, they might also be saved. This place is the same as the Elevations.

“There is no real charity or goodness, of course. Allowing this place to exist is, for the demonkind, a mere business decision. The Bureaucracy's reason for allowing it to exist, though, is much more complicated. Look at Drow. A good man? Yes. Will he ever be Elevated? No.”

“Why?”

“Think of the answer yourself, Thomas. Think about what you've learned and answer your own question for me.”

“Because,” said Fool after a second's thought, “that would show people that Elevation was something to earn, would give them not just hope but
goals.
The hope of Elevation has to remain something random, impossible to see properly, given not to those who earn it but to those with no discernible right to it. Resentment, fear, loathing, and a tiny, flickering light of hope always just out of reach,
that
is Hell, yes?”

“Of course. The Iomante, the Elevations, those occasional people who seem to achieve some kind of happiness here like your two dead colleagues, these are the things that Hell allows to flourish in tiny, stunted bursts, to make it immeasurably worse for everyone else.”

“Yes,” said Fool. Elderflower had known about Gordie and Summer, despite their creeping and their care. Had he expected otherwise? No. He had hoped it, and at that moment he knew he had hoped to find something similar and he hated Elderflower for exposing that hope to his understanding. He lay back on his bed, looking up at the muslin above him.

“Hell isn't meant to be easy, or nice, Thomas,” said Elderflower, surprisingly gently. “It's Hell, it's meant to be a punishment. We are all of us meant to suffer. We dance to tunes played by those above us, even me, and we hope the dance pleases our masters.”

“Yes,” said Fool again and closed his eyes.

“Tomorrow, Thomas,” said Elderflower, still gentle. “In your uniform. The Elevations begin tomorrow.”

He hadn't intended to, but Fool must have fallen asleep, because he was woken later by the distant sounds of movement. Doors opened and closed, voices called to each other; somewhere, someone shouted loudly. Fool levered himself up onto his elbow, wincing at the darts of pain that traveled across his shoulders and back.

“It's just the new shift,” said one of the Genevieves, seeing him look around. “Don't worry, they'll quiet down soon. Drow and the others go home and some new ones come. They aren't as nice as Drow, and they don't know shit about how to make us better, but they'll help you get to the toilet if you need it and they bring drinks around sometimes. You're him, aren't you? The one who kills demons?”

“Yes,” said Fool, uncomfortably aware of the flyers scattered under his bed and a pressure in his bladder. He sat, very slowly, swinging his legs around and letting them drop over the edge of the bed. He looked down his naked body, seeing the new damage written across his skin. The sickle curves of his hip bones were dark with bruises, and a long graze stretched down his left leg; his right was mottled with scratches and bruised and swollen around the knee. Moving it hurt.

“Swing your legs back and forward,” said the same Genevieve. “You'll be stiff, you need to loosen your muscles.”

“Thank you,” said Fool, doing as he was told. It ached, but moving did loosen the pain's grip. “Have you been here long?”

“A few days. I'm nearly ready to get out and go back,” said the young man. “I'm Parry. You're Fool?”

“I am,” said Fool, and then the screaming started.

At first, Fool thought it was simply another of the Iomante's occupants; there had been screams at irregular intervals during the hours
he had been awake, shouts of pain and fear. This one started low, rose swiftly into a register that sounded as though the screamer's throat were being torn apart from the inside, and then shut off abruptly. There was a crash and more screams, lots at once, layering on each other. A series of crashes echoed, followed by a noise that sounded like ripping fabric and then a wet, thick, pattering sound.

More screams; a sound that might have been a laugh, made by something that hadn't gotten the mouth shape to laugh properly and that had only heard laughter described in words before attempting it, another crash, a shout, and then a voice.

“I smell you, Fool,” it called, the words echoing, climbing through the air to lose themselves among the lanterns and ceiling beams. “I smell you!”

The Genevieves in the room with Fool began to scream, their voices joining the cacophony of crashes and screeches and occasional wet gurgles that came into the room from outside. Fool stood, nakedness forgotten, pain forgotten, bladder forgotten, and limped around the bed. There was a doorless cupboard on its far side and his clothes were folded in it. He crouched, throwing the uniform aside quickly, looking for anything else that might be there. Looking for his gun, hoping that someone had picked it up and brought it to him while he slept.