Shadow Pavilion (19 page)

40

G
o and Jhai stared in silence at the hole in the plexiglass wall. The cell in which Lara had so recently been confined was now empty. Go did not want to look at what lay behind them, at what had once been a man. Go's own voice sounded very loud in the ringing quiet of the room.

“I thought you said this was secure.”

“No one's ever got out of here before. Well, apart from one. Zhu Irzh, in fact. He'd been given a drug, he wasn't himself.”

“So it's not as secure as you thought.” Hard not to sound accusa­tory and Go didn't see why he should be too bothered about Jhai's feelings right now.

“No,” Jhai said shortly. “It isn't.”

“There's no point in getting Chen over here, now.”

“No. There isn't. But he'd better know. We'll need help in tracking her down.” Jhai frowned. “I wonder if she's headed for Hell.”

“She'll have it in for you, now,” Go said, trying to keep too-obvious a satisfaction from his voice. From the look that Jhai shot him, he thought he probably hadn't succeeded.

“Yeah, she will. This won't help family relations, that's for sure. I ought to get in touch with Agni, as well as Chen, tell him what happened.”

Go looked at her curiously. “How easy is that?”

“He's on the phone, Go.”

But before she could contact her cousin, and bring him up-to-date, someone called Jhai herself. It was Chen.

41

S
eijin stepped over the demon's body. Her head had flown across to the other side of the annex, not far from her shattered teacup. The Lord Lady picked up the head and studied it. The huge red eyes were wide with surprise, the small mouth a little “o.”

“Well, well, madam,” Seijin said. “I thought I recognized you.”

Last seen near the forge of
between,
in the company of that disreputable shaman.
Who are you?
Seijin wondered. Some local necromancer, probably, although it was strange to find such a demon outside Hell. Women like this often used their looks to their own advantage, however; this one had no doubt gulled and glamoured some credulous local into taking up company with her. Seijin had probably done the man a favor. Placing the head gently on the floor once more, Seijin sent a tendril of shadow into the main temple and encountered resistance. The wards outside had been hard to avoid, hence the use of the incense stick, evaporation, and reincorporation. In here, the magic of the Celestial Emperor was even stronger; Seijin had to struggle against it.

The main room was empty. Seijin headed further into the temple, sensing a solitary presence in a small room on the far side. No need to disturb this person, Seijin thought. Male self reminded, with a laugh, that the person would be disturbed enough once he woke up and discovered the carnage. A low jest, female self thought, in reproof.

But here was the target, still sleeping. Seijin was now struggling more than male self wanted to admit, the clear magic of the Emperor beginning to tangle up, to snarl the Lord Lady in its infinitely intricate web. Seijin thought of spiders, not a happy metaphor. Not long now. Here was the door—reach out, careful, careful, through the congealing threads of the magical weave, gliding soft as smoke. Open it, step through, still with care, notch the arrow, with the faint and gratifying sense of that spirit bound to the ancient power of the pin, liminal substances all, made by a liminal warrior. Raise the bow, take aim at the sleeping figure, outlined with sky-blue magic, make certain of the aim, and in that final moment of distraction, become aware that someone has stepped up behind with silent rage and plunged a knife in between the seventh and eighth vertebrae of one's spine.

Seijin kept hold of the bow, but the arrow flew wide across the room, burying itself with a shriek in the wall.

“No!” male self cried, sensing the loss of the second pin. Seijin spun around, just in time to see the figure on the bed shimmer and disappear, not real at all, no more than illusion. Turning, the Lord Lady saw the man who had stabbed him, stepping back, humming with a cold and dangerous magic that was entirely human and wholly unfamiliar.

“I believe,” this person said, very quietly, “that you're the one who just killed my wife.”

Seijin tried to draw the scimitar but it would not come free. Numbly, the Lord Lady looked down and saw that the sheath had become entangled in the weave of blue, with a dark, sinuous red running through it, securing the sword.

“I do not make apologies,” Seijin said. “Nor excuses.”

“Just as well.” The Celestial Emperor of Heaven stepped between the human and Seijin, holding the captured pin. “Let's see what happens.” He thrust the pin forward, striking Seijin in the eye. Female self, blinded, screamed in agony and confusion. The Lord Lady, consumed in pain, began involuntarily to disperse and this was what saved Seijin from capture. Diffusing, dispersing into mist and smoke and cloud shadow, seeping everywhere at first, to a shout of “Keep it in one place!”

Too late. For the heat of the braziers, rising, was carrying Seijin's essence upward, into the rafters and through the cracks, out into the skies of the dawning Earth.

Seijin fled through the dim upper air of Earth, barely noticing when the world changed and the Lord Lady was seeping through the clouds of
between
. Was this what people meant when they spoke of coming home, this half-blind flight from power and pain? It had been a long time since Seijin had suffered serious injury, so long, in fact, that it was barely remembered. You can have too much luck, for too long. It makes you weak, this forgetting.

I will take on more pain, Seijin promised. Now, I have to. It was not an easy admission to make and it made female self spit and wail. Too late for her: if the injury could not be healed, she would have to look out upon the world through the eye of male self, if permitted. Seijin recognized, but only distantly, that she might not be.

Back in the Shadow Pavilion, flying past the astounded Gatekeeper, Seijin sat before a cloudy mirror, looking within. The pin had penetrated to the very back of the eye, causing a thin trickle of blood to crawl down Seijin's cheek. It looked like decoration on a mask. The eye itself was filled with a scarlet pool and nothing Seijin could do, no magic that the wounded female self could conjure up, was able to heal it. Perhaps with time? But Seijin knew, deep inside, that this wound was permanent.

The degree of pain was quite remarkable. Learn from this, Seijin instructed the various selves, but male self was no longer listening. He raged, splitting apart from Seijin and leaving the wounded assassin to sit before the mirror like a languishing courtesan, while he stormed up and down the chamber.

“At least the demon is dead!”

“It makes no difference,” Seijin said wearily. “The demon is no compensation, surely you must see that. It was only that she got in the way.”

“Something has been slain!” male self exulted, slamming a spectral fist against the window frame with such force that the window burst open, letting in a cloud-drift of air. And that was the moment when Seijin realized that the plastered-over fractures of the last few decades could no longer be sustained, that the splits between the selves had gone too deep for healing.

42

“
I'm so sorry,” Jhai said, for what must have been the tenth time. Go lingered by her side, staring down at the demon's body. Not a tigress, not this time, yet how he wished it had been. But this demon had been beautiful, too, and Chen's wife. Jhai had insisted on coming over as soon as she got Chen's message, and Go wasn't leaving her side; he felt, however irrationally, that Jhai was still the only one capable of protecting him. Some kind of tiger-to-tiger thing, perhaps.

Chen spoke with a calm that, Go realized, was in itself a response to shock. “Thank you, Jhai.” He'd thanked her the other nine times, too. “What we really need to do now is to work out where Inari is now.”

Jhai took Chen to one side, though Go could still hear her. He stayed where he was, at the side of the “deceased” demon. She had been lain on a table in the middle of the temple, her head placed neatly above the severed neck. From this angle, she looked merely as though she wore a thin red necklace. Her body would undergo no decay or mortification, Chen had explained, still with that unnatural calm. Mhara had enspelled it, and besides, demons' bodies behaved differently when they were killed on another plain. The spell sparkled blue around the demon's corpse: Go took care not to get too close.

He heard Jhai say, “Can't Mhara just restore her?”

“Apparently it doesn't work that way. He's not omnipotent.”

“Honestly, what use
are
these deities?” Jhai sounded as though she were about to sack an incompetent employee. “Emperor of Heaven and can't even restore the spirit of a minor demon.”

“She's not under his jurisdiction,” Chen said. “We'd need the Emperor of Hell for that.”

“Yeah, Chen—the Emperor of Hell, who owes you one. Big-time.”

“That's true, but it takes time for messages to get to Hell's Emperor these days. If Zhu Irzh was here, he could just call his mother and explain, but I'm not sure she'd listen to me.”

“She might listen to me,” Jhai said. “I'm about to be her daughter-­in-law, after all.”

“Then please try,” Chen said. The man sounded exhausted and Go could hardly blame him. “I have tried to put a call through, but I can't reach her.”

“I'll try,” Jhai said. “If you're sure there's nothing Mhara can do. Who did this, anyway?”

“An assassin. Listen, Jhai—” and here Chen drew Jhai away into an annex, leaving Go alone with the demon's corpse. Evidently there was something that Go was not meant to hear. Fair enough.

He tore his gaze away from the body and wandered around the room, looking at the sparse furnishings. A serene place, despite what had so recently happened here. Go had never been a religious man, but something in him responded to this Zen simplicity. As he was standing there, someone came out of a side annex, a young woman. She looked tired, but there was also something else about her, something not quite right—it reminded Go of the spirits his father used to raise, as though the girl was already dead. How odd. Not unattractive, though.

“I'm just waiting for Jhai,” Go explained.

“I know,” the young woman said. “She's still with Chen. My name's Robin; I'm a priestess.” She gave him a rather direct look. “I suppose you know your tiger lady's in the news?”

“Lara?” Go's heart felt as though it had dropped through his ribs and hit the floor.

“Yes. I've just been listening to the radio, trying to take my mind off things. Inari—” she gestured toward the corpse “—was a friend, you know? Still is, wherever she's gone.” She sighed and Go felt a breath of icy air run across his skin. “I caught the news. Lara went through the early morning market like a dose of salts. One man dead, several people injured.”

“This is all my fault,” Go said. Things had gone from bad to worse, and all because he wanted to be a Svengali to the movie actress from Hell.

“Well, yes,” Robin said. She did not sound accusing. “It is. But these things—I've not led a perfect life myself.”

“But you're a nun,” Go said, before he could stop himself.

Robin laughed. “I wouldn't say that, exactly. I need to let Jhai know about Lara as soon as she comes out.”

“Is the news still on?” Go asked. Some stations were devoted to nothing but the news, recycling it endlessly. He might as well hear this for himself, depressing though it might be.

“I think so. Do you want to listen? I can probably find a station.”

“You're being very kind,” Go said.

Robin gave a sad shrug. “All I can do at the moment.”

Go said hesitantly, “Your—deity. Jhai explained a couple of things to me in the car. Is he here?”
Can he help me?
But Go did not want to ask that. Odd: a few months ago, he'd have been entirely happy to make what use he could of the situation. Now, he felt a definite reluctance to ask for such aid; he was beginning to feel that this would have to be worked through, no matter the consequences. And he had an awful feeling he knew what those consequences might be.

But the news surprised him. Lara had indeed been on the rampage through the port market, but there were other sightings filtering through now, along Shaopeng and in Bharulay. Robin frowned as she listened to the reports.

“Lara's moved fast, hasn't she?” Go said in a whisper.

“I don't think these can
all
be Lara,” Robin said. “These places are miles apart and you heard what they just said: these sightings are within the last few minutes.”

“Is she using magic?” Go wondered aloud.

“Or there's more than one tiger,” Robin said.

43

Z
hu Irzh and the badger stared up into the branches of the pillar. A vast column ascended into the cerulean skies, branching out toward its summit, stone changing to tree.

“I didn't even know this existed,” the demon said, awed.

“It sometimes does not,” the god replied. Krishna raised the flute to his lips and played a single, fragile phrase. Behind them, the women of the blue god's court whispered and murmured, and the deer gave a whistling cry. All these sounds floated up into the branches of the tree: glistening ebony black, as if containing captive stars, rustling with huge green leaves like curls of jade. High among these leaves, these sounds crystallized, forming a transparent lotus flower, which changed into a bird and flew down.

“This is your guide,” Krishna said. The badger looked hard at the bird, which remained transparent and expressionless, a thing of light.

“Fair enough,” Zhu Irzh replied. “What do you want us to do? Climb after it? I'm game, but I'm not sure about my friend here.”

“I will manage!” the badger snapped.

“You need climb only a little way,” Krishna told him. “Then, as you will see, things will become quite different.”

The badger's head whipped around. Something on the wind, something rank and distinctly uncelestial.

“Are you all right?” Zhu Irzh asked, but the little deer said, “I can smell it, too.”

“What is it?” Krishna's voice was as soft and musical as ever, but something about it made the badger's hackles start to rise in sympathy.

“It smells like one of Agni's hounds,” the badger growled.

Krishna turned to the demon. “You should start climbing.”

“Hey, I'm all for getting ahead,” Zhu Irzh protested. “But I'm not going to leave you to face that thing; you've been so kind, and—”

“Zhu Irzh.” Still soft, but with force. “Go.”

It had the impact of divine command, a wateriness of the joints with which the badger was entirely unfamiliar. The demon, however, bowed his head in fleeting acquiescence and put a hand on the pillar. His expression changed.

“This is weird!”

As he spoke, a racing, snarling shape burst out of the bushes. Agni's hound indeed: this must be one of the largest dogs, scaled like a dragon, flickers of fire emerging from its nostrils.

“Do the teakettle thing!” the demon commanded, and with great reluctance, the badger did as he was told. Zhu Irzh slung the iron pot over his shoulder and placed a foot on the pillar, the sole flat. From his limited perspective, the badger could see that they were suddenly on a long, snaking road. He looked back, and there was Krishna with the women, each throwing out a long silk scarf. With the final scarf caught in the deer's antlers, they began to spin, faster and faster until there was a whirling coil of color a little way behind.

“Go!” Krishna cried again, and Zhu Irzh started running. The badger heard growls and howls, saw the scarves whirl faster, a dark shape sucked within. Then the landscape changed and he and Zhu Irzh were picked up by the path on which they stood and taken upward.

Then the world was blue, the sky filled with sapphire light, and he walked on indigo earth. Women walked by, chattering and laughing, balancing jars upon their heads, their saris made out of water and crystal and speckled with diamond light. The demon had stopped walking and stared in open admiration.

“This can't be Hell,” he said. And the badger looked up and saw a huge face bending down from the heavens, made out of sky, the dark eyes filled with a vast amusement. The horned moon rested upon his brow; in one hand, he held a trident that was mountain high. He said, in a voice of soft thunder, “You are in the
wrong place.”

“I won't argue with that,” stammered Zhu Irzh. It was one of the few times that the badger had seen him discomposed.

“Then let me send you to the right place,” the vast blue being said. His hand came down. Moments later, they were standing on the palm, fingers rising like blue columns, being raised up through streaming clouds.

“Go,” the blue god said, and gently blew. The realm darkened into stormlight. Zhu Irzh and the badger floated downward, as lightly as leaves, into the humid air of Singapore Three.