Shadow Pavilion (23 page)

50

“
You're
not
coming,” Chen said, for perhaps the eleventh time.

“C'mon. You need me, you know you do. I'm invaluable.”

“It's not that I don't appreciate it. And yes, you are very useful, Zhu Irzh. But this isn't Hell. This is
between.”

“How different can it be?”

“And besides, you've just got back from someone else's limbo.”

“That's not the same. Anyway, so has the badger.”

“It's the badger's job to go with me. If it was just Jhai who needed you here, Zhu Irzh, I'd say—then come with me. But it isn't, it's the police department. Agni's harem is roaming the city—the market manager at the port had to seal off the building earlier and who knows what's happened over the last hour or so. You and Jhai are the closest we've got to experts. And Mr Go, except that he seems to have had an attack of nobility and disappeared.”

Zhu Irzh sighed in frustration. “I suppose you're right. All the same—”

Chen clapped the demon on the shoulder. “I know. I'm not trying to get rid of you—I wish you were coming. But someone has to deal with this in my absence and I'd rather it were you and Ma and Jhai. The badger and I will be fine.”

Husband understood things, the badger thought. During the course of this swiftly conceived plan to go to
between,
Husband had not, at any point, tried to dissuade the badger from accompanying him. Nor had Husband's superior, on learning of what had happened, tried to prevent him from going. The badger, as a magical creature, knew when the flow of events was carrying people along with it; he could feel the snap and sing of it, and there was nothing now to do except to be taken by its wake. Humankind often did not seem to understand these things, however, and it was refreshing to note that Husband had such a good grasp of affairs.

“When do we leave?” badger said now. Husband turned to him.

“As soon as Lao's ready.”

“I'm not sure I'm up to this,” the departmental exorcist said from across the room. Lao was squatting on his heels, meticulously delineating a circle in red powder around him. “This is a bit more than I usually have to cope with. Talking of which, where's your Celestial friend?”

“In Heaven, as far as I know. He's got a lot to sort out. An assassin, for a start.”

Lao grimaced. “If you run into this character—how are you going to handle it?”

“I have no idea.”

“Chen, that's not reassuring.”

“Look, Lao, Seijin is a legend. He—she—is one of the great assassins of all time and, moreover, killed my wife. I don't know what I'll do but whatever it is, it won't be the wrong thing to do.” Chen held up the pin. “Mhara has one of these. I have the other. Mhara has already injured Seijin. The assassin can be killed, I'm sure of it.”

The badger gave a quiet grunt of assent. Husband understood things, for certain.

“When will you be ready?” Chen said now.

“Give me a few minutes.” Lao straightened up, groaning. “I need to make an appointment with an acupuncturist. Back's killing me.” He handed over a small pouch. “I'm using an adapted spell—it's an old one, for traveling between the worlds, and the only reason I'm doing that is because it's one of the few spells that mentions
between.
But you have to remember: it's untested. I don't know of anyone who's used this. This—” he pointed to the circle on the floor “—is the stuff from the pouch. It's your path back here. If you run into trouble, and need to get back, or if—” he amended this hastily at the sight of Chen's expression “—
when
you find Inari, you activate it with your own blood and it'll get you back. I'll need a blood sample now.”

The badger watched as Husband held out his hand and submitted it to Lao's needle. A drop of blood oozed out and dripped to the floor. The red powder hissed, flaring with a light that made the badger turn his head away. Lao had cleared a small gap, through which he invited Chen and the badger to step, so that they were encased within the circle. Then Lao sprinkled more powder into the gap, closing the circle.

“Remember what I said. Your blood.”

“I'll remember,” Chen said. He turned to the badger. “Are you ready?”

“I have always been ready,” the badger replied.

“All right, then,” the exorcist said. “We're good to go?”

A spell scroll fell to his feet as he began the incantation, a quick, sibilant thing that lodged in the badger's skull like a swarm of wasps. The badger reflexively shook his head, but the swarm was growing, shutting out the distant sounds of the city, blurring the sight of the temple beyond the rising red wall of the circle. Then the earth shuddered and shook beneath the badger's paws; he knew enough of earth magic to realize that this was not the world itself that was moving, but Husband and himself, starting to shift as Lao's incantation brought
between
closer and closer yet.

It was not like journeying to Hell, nor did it bear much similarity to the journey down to the Hunting Lodge. In essence, the badger understood, they were not moving: rather,
between
was coming to them, a thin finger of another realm drawn down by Lao's antique magic, gradually enveloping them in a bubble of elsewhere. In the shimmering red air, Husband turned to the badger, who gave a quick bob of the head:
I am all right
. Then they were snatched and away and moving fast, ripping up through all the realms that were: the badger glimpsed the bright shore of Heaven and even thought he saw the towering white cone of the mountain from which he had been born, but perhaps that was wish only and nothing that was real.

Husband said something, or so badger thought, but his words were swallowed by the vast interstellar wind. A thousandfold stars spun by and the badger heard something huge and lost crying out. Then the familiar glitter-black of the Sea of Night fell away below and they were tumbling in a red-tinged mist down a stony hillside.

“Well,” Chen said, a breathless moment later. “We're here.”

An hour or so later, the badger was certain that they were being followed. He said as much.

“You could easily be right,” Chen said, casting an uneasy glance over his shoulder. “We've no idea what lives here, after all. Apart from the ones we're looking for.”

The badger looked back along the stretch of hillside down which they had recently come. The red thread stretched behind them, thin and almost invisible, but if the badger turned his head at a particular angle, he could see it: a shine of magic, binding them to Earth. He would have found that reassuring, if he had been able to place any faith in Lao's spells, especially, since the exorcist himself did not seem confident about this arcane piece of conjuring.

“Where do you think this thing is that's following us?” Chen asked now. “Did you actually see it, or smell it, or
…
?”

The badger gave a frustrated hiss. “I did not. I only sensed it, but I am sure it is there. It keeps moving, in between the rocks, now here, now there.”

“This place must be full of spirits,” Chen murmured. “Let me know if you notice it again. I can't tell what's here, it's as though someone's thrown a blanket over my head.”

“I know the feeling,” the badger said. But he had advantages that Husband did not—and the reverse, no doubt—and the strongest of these was his sense of smell. It had stood him in good stead down in the world of the Hunting Lodge, and he intended it to stand him in good stead now. He kept casting about, searching for any traces of Mistress, confident that he would pick them up no matter how slight they might be. She might be dead, but to the badger, this had become a minor inconvenience.

“Anything?” Chen asked. Husband knew what he was doing and had put up no argument with it, letting the badger get on with his job.

“Not yet,” the badger said, but a minute later, he had the lie to that. It wasn't the scent of Mistress herself, the smell of her skin or hair, but the perfume that she wore: the odor of flowers, frangi­pani and ylang-ylang. The ghost of her scent, just as she herself had become a shade in this gray-mist land. The badger raised his head.

“I have her, Chen.” It was the first time he had called Husband by his proper name; it had seemed disrespectful before now.

“All right,” Chen spoke with a concentrated ferocity that surprised the badger not at all. “Then follow.”

It was good to be focused again, good not to be dithering about. The end was closer in sight now and when he looked back, the red thread seemed to have grown stronger, more secure. This all gave the badger hope and he scurried on, skirting the larger boulders down into a narrow valley.

“It would make a certain amount of sense,” Chen said, “if we'd come in at the same point as Inari, even if it was by different means. We left Earth at the same place, after all.”

The badger thought about this and cautiously agreed, although he knew how unstable these connections could be.

“No footprints,” Chen went on, “but then, one would not invariably expect them. Under the circumstances.” He spoke tightly and the badger did not reply, deeming it unnecessary. Badger scented on, searching for further traces, but the line was narrowing now, as if Mistress had wandered about for a time and then suddenly made up her mind where to go. He headed after it, with Chen close behind. It led between the stones and boulders and then out into a long valley. At the end of it, stood a building.

“She is there.” The badger spoke with absolute conviction.

“That is the Shadow Pavilion,” Chen said. They stood still, staring. To the badger, the Pavilion hummed with spirits, as busy as a hive. He could see their dim forms, wheeling around the tottering summit of the pagoda. They were not like birds, their forms ragged and changing from moment to moment, and occasionally fragments separated and drifted down to the ground like pieces of a torn veil.

Chen was peering at the Pavilion. “There's something around it.”

“Yes,” the badger said, and told him.

“I can't see them very well,” Chen said. “They look like shadows. Perhaps that's how it got its name.”

But the badger disagreed. “No,” he said. “The thing is made of shadows. Can you not see it? To me, it is clear.” To the badger, it looked as though bits and pieces of long-ago structures had been welded together: the ghosts of imperial pagodas, fragments of lost palaces, whispers of ancient fortresses that were now lost beneath the sands of Western China. And Chen said, “Yes. Now you tell me this, I can see it. Seijin has raided the world for the spirits of buildings, ransacked and taken.”

“Perhaps it was not Seijin,” the badger amended. “Sometimes, so I have heard, these things grow.”

Chen smiled. “Like mushrooms.”

“Just so,” the badger agreed, not seeing anything amusing in the remark.

“You still have Inari's scent?”

“I do.” It went in a straight line from where they stood, to the Pavilion itself, as far as the badger could see. He checked back. The red thread was still there, but very faint.

“We need to think about this,” Chen said. He squatted down on his heels and looked toward the pagoda. “We can't just walk up to it. And unless I'm greatly mistaken, it's not long before dark.”

Studying the sky, the badger saw that Chen was right. The light was fading in the smoky heavens and he could smell twilight, an odd, sour odor.

“We'll need to find somewhere safe before then,” Chen went on. “What about that presence you sensed?”

“It's following us,” the badger informed him. “Do you wish to challenge it?” He was hopeful.

“I think,” Chen said, “that perhaps it's time we did.”

51

I
nari crouched in the corner of the room, watching Seijin. Her world had narrowed down to this single focus; at the back of her mind, she understood that this was what it was to be a haunt—to become an obsession. Something within her still cried out for Chen and her home, she knew she had to return to Earth, but revenge had become a greater compulsion now. And both she and Seijin knew it. The assassin, sitting at a small table, turned and looked at her out of that single undamaged eye and Inari grinned back, curling her fingers into claws.

“What are you, that you can haunt me like this?” Seijin whispered, and Inari whispered back,
“I am your madness.”
She uncurled herself from the corner and went to stand by the assassin's shoulder. She was pleased to see that Seijin flinched.

“What?” Inari asked, all mocking. “Afraid of me? Oh, surely that cannot be. You are the great assassin Lord Lady Seijin, are you not? The slayer of gods and men? Killer of little demons who get in your way? Surely I can't be disconcerting you?”

“Be quiet,” Seijin said, but it was a whisper. The empty socket glared, but something moved within it and Inari, baring her teeth, moved closer. There should have been no reflection inside the socket and yet—there it was, a procession of little figures, as if seen in a tiny mirror.

“Why,” Inari murmured. “What can that be?” She had never been so spiteful before, the little voice reminded her, but then again, she'd never before had to live alongside her murderer. “I believe—yes! Aren't those all the people you've killed?” Now that the eye was missing, she realized, Seijin could paradoxically see what previously had been hidden. “If I poked out your other eye, I wonder what you'd see with that? Your own death, maybe? Do you think so?”

“Enough!” Seijin cried, and lashed out. The assassin's arm passed straight through Inari and she laughed. Seijin, muttering wild curses, leaped up and ran from the room. “What's the matter, Lord Lady?” Inari shouted. “Afraid of what you can see, like a child in the dark?” But where the assassin went she, too, was forced to go. She hastened after Seijin, up the stairs, all the way to the topmost chamber. And there, Seijin had paused in the entrance to stand, staring.

Inari peered over the assassin's shoulder. Someone was already in the room. It was a woman, or at least, part of one. Like Inari, she was spectral, wearing robes of immense richness and complexity. But her long skirts seemed sodden, drenched with some dark substance like ink, or perhaps blood. No—Inari looked more closely, it was not blood after all, but certainly something wet. Her face was beautiful, yet it did not look real: she was as white as a doll and her eyes were wells of blackness. Moreover, she was patchy: Inari could see glimpses of the opposite wall through the wet robes.

At first she thought this was another haunt, someone else whom Seijin had slain, come back to exact the penalty, and she felt herself start to smile, but then the woman said, “I am not truly here.”

“Madam,” the assassin said, and Seijin's voice was shaken. “I can tell that.”

“He has imprisoned me.”

“What?” Seijin sounded genuinely surprised. “Where are you now?”

“In a boat. On the Sea of Night. Forever.” The woman's mouth twisted and it was through this gesture, which broke through the mask of her face, that Inari finally recognized her. She had seen this visage before, but then it had been male and belonging to someone else. The woman looked like Mhara, but whereas the new Emperor's face was filled with a genuine tranquility, this woman looked as if she had been feigning it for decades. And it seemed she had.

“You have one last chance,” the woman said. “Without payment, now. He knows.”

At this Seijin laughed, a sound of genuine merriment. “Look around you. This is my kingdom, the only home I have or need, the only one I will ever be permitted. I could have had any fortune I wanted. I'll kill your son whether you can pay me or not.”

Inari heard herself say, “You'll have to reach him first. You haven't done so well up till now, have you?”

The Lord Lady swung around. Inari saw Seijin's mouth work, but the assassin said nothing.

“Who is that?” Mhara's mother said, very sharply.

“A spirit, nothing more.”

“A friend of your son,” Inari said, coming forward. She brushed through Seijin and the assassin felt unpleasantly hot, burning up with furnace fire. Was Seijin ill? Let's hope so. “I was there when your hired help failed, Lady. He killed me instead.”

“I don't know who you are,” the Emperor's mother said, eyeing her askance. “I wished no one else any harm.” But then her gaze narrowed and she said, “You are a demon. I knew he consorted with such. Are you one of his women, then?”

Inari spat and a glowing coal shot out of her mouth and singed the floorboards. “I have a husband. Your son is my friend, nothing more, and you insult both of us.”

“She makes a bold ghost,” the Dowager Empress said, sneering. “Will she be so bold when she is dispersed, or confined?”

“I cannot disperse her,” Seijin said sourly. “I have tried.”

News to Inari, but then the Dowager Empress said, “Then fetch a jar. Bottle her up. I know a spell, if you do not.”

The Lord Lady crossed to a cupboard on the wall and took down a small brass jar. “Let's see,” Seijin said. “I'd welcome some peace.”

Inari expected to feel the stirrings of apprehension, but did not. She waited, quite calmly, as Seijin opened the jar and began an incantation. The words hissed and echoed through the upper chamber, whistling around the eaves like bats, but Inari stayed where she was. It was an old spell, she could tell: recited in the ancient demon-speech before the languages of Hell had changed to mirror the tongues of men, but it had no more effect than a handful of dust.

“And you are supposed to be a magician,” the Dowager Empress said, with scorn.

“Madam, perhaps you should try.” Seijin was still polite, but Inari could hear the thin thread of rebellion beneath the assassin's words: with the Dowager Empress confined, would Seijin still feel the need to carry out what was obviously a contract? Inari thought that Seijin would, as a matter of professional pride.

“I will,” the Dowager Empress said. She, too, began to speak and now Inari felt a pressure growing upon her, as though she was an inflating balloon. But it was nothing more than that and after a moment, it diminished. The Dowager Empress cursed.

“As you said,” Inari remarked, “you're not really here.”

The Dowager Empress' mouth opened and she shrieked, but the scream was only a thin thread of sound. It was a long way to the Sea of Night, Inari thought. The Empress was fading, too, her robes pulling her down into the floor like a drowning woman. Inari watched, impassively. The attempted spell must have exhausted the energies she'd used to project herself here. Seijin's face was unreadable. With a final faint breath, the Dowager Empress cried, “My son is in Heaven now!”

Then she was gone, melting through the floorboards like spilled ink.

“Well,” Seijin said softly. “So back to Heaven we must go.”

For a moment, Inari thought that the assassin was talking to her. Then she saw that one of Seijin's other selves, the male, had drifted out and was circling the Lord Lady, a captured star. Easy to see Seijin's warrior origins in this one: the trailing moustache and pointed helmet adorned with a horsehair tail, the heavily ornamented leather armor. He looked at Inari with congealing hate.

“I must make preparations,” the assassin said. Male self was absorbed back into Seijin's form and the Lord Lady strode from the room, followed by Inari. Seijin summoned the old Gatekeeper with a single clap of the hands; the Gatekeeper studiously did not look at Inari and it occurred to Inari that perhaps the master of Shadow Pavilion had access to his thoughts, that the Gatekeeper did not want to give anything away.

“Prepare for my departure,” Seijin said. Inari watched as the Gatekeeper, moving with the confidence of long practice, cast powder in a circle: a rusty substance, like dried blood. Seijin stepped within. “I will be back soon,” the assassin said, speaking directly to Inari.

“I wish you success,” the Gatekeeper murmured.

“Oh, this time it will be.” Seijin snapped a hand through the air and a sword was whistling down. It touched the edge of the circle and ignited. Seijin's form grew very small, rushing away at unimaginable speed, but Inari was pulled with it, crossing the circle with a blast of heat that made her shout out, feeling as though it had withered her, a leaf in a flame. Bound to Seijin, the assassin had pulled her along. She saw Seijin's figure up ahead, spinning on its own axis: the Lord Lady did not look real, but like a doll dropped down a well. Worlds spun by and they were crossing the Sea of Night, with Heaven's bright shore rising up. Then over the peach blossom lands, the lakes and pools, calm under the Celestial sky that was so light and yet spangled with stars. Inari saw Seijin's figure hurtling toward the spires of the Imperial City and she wanted to cry out, to warn Mhara, but speed tore her voice away.

A blink, and she was somewhere dark and perfumed. She had caught up with Seijin: she could hear the assassin moving about, muttering.

“I am here, Seijin!” she called, and was rewarded with the assassin's curse. Inari felt elated: With her tagging along, warning everyone she saw, how could the Lord Lady ever hope to achieve their objective? But Seijin laughed.

“Who will believe you? The ghost of a demon? The Celestials have jurisdiction here. As soon as they set eyes on you they will snap you into a bottle.”

“Mhara will not,” Inari said. “And how do you know that he hasn't told everyone what has happened?”

Seijin was silent at that, and once again, Inari felt triumphant. Despite the position in which she had been placed, she had—in this limited sphere—more power than when she had been alive. A curious circumstance and one which she intended to make the most of.

The Lord Lady, moving with caution, opened a door and light flooded in. They stepped out into a lavishly decorated room: the lacquered walls hung with pale blue and rose silk, a thick carpet covering the floor, antique furniture dating from one of the more elegant historical periods. Paintings hung in gilt frames, their colors glowing. But somehow, Inari thought, it was all a bit much: too perfect, too refined, the pastel shades reminiscent of a sickly American cartoon. She followed the Lord Lady through several rooms, all decorated in the same style, until they came to a door that hummed and sang with magic. Seijin put out a hand and the wards snapped electric-blue. So someone had decided to seal these overwrought rooms away. An interior decorator? But Inari's sardonic thought was soon superseded by understanding: these must have been the rooms of the Dowager Empress, and now that she had been removed to her exile, Mhara had closed them off. Perhaps, as her hireling Seijin appeared to do, the Dowager Empress might otherwise enjoy special access to the Palace through what had been her own chambers.

Thoughtfully, Seijin walked to the window and looked out. Inari noticed that the assassin's male self seemed to be becoming more apparent: the ghost of a helmet now framed Seijin's features, and the assassin's figure was encased in that tribal armor. Inari wondered if this change could be used in some way: Seijin's power stemmed from the Lord Lady's liminal being, after all, and if that was negated by the increasing absence of the female self
…
It was worth considering, though she did not yet know how it might be taken advantage of.

Seijin was unlucky. The windows were also warded, with the same blue fire. But the assassin did not seem unduly perturbed, and that worried Inari. She tried to move through the wall herself, but an unpleasant shock ran through her incorporeal being, like being snapped by an electric fence. Seijin turned to her with a feral grin.

“See? Heaven's magic doesn't like you, either.”

Inari said nothing. She'd choose her moments of engagement, she thought. She watched as Seijin took out a long cord, of what looked like twisted black horsehair. The assassin murmured a spell, a whispering incantation that fell from Seijin's lips in a thin stream and sank into the cord itself. The cord started to glow and Inari had the uncanny sensation that there was someone else in the room, someone familiar. A moment later she recognized it as the presence of the Dowager Empress: not horsehair at all, but the Empress' own tresses, bound into this talisman. The whispering spell went on and the hair began to change, turning to a silkier texture, a lighter shade of black. Like Mhara's, Inari thought, and understood what Seijin was doing: old magic, transformation through the mother-line, and as such, underpinned by genetic science. She was helpless and could only watch as Seijin took the altered tresses and attached them to the horsehair plume on the warrior's helmet. Then Seijin's eyes closed and the troubled face began to melt away in the pale light of magic streaming down from the coil of hair. Bones shifted, muscles glided into place beneath the changing clothes, and within a few minutes it was not the Lord Lady Seijin who stood in the Dowager Empress' apartments, but Mhara himself.

Seijin turned to Inari and smiled.

“Now, let's test, shall we?” Teeth bared, all arrogance now, which sat oddly on Mhara's serene face; distressing to Inari, like a violation.

“I will speak out,” she warned, and Seijin hissed, “Yes, but who will believe you, little dead demon, when the Celestial Emperor himself gives the lie to your words?”

Inari did not reply, because Seijin would have heard the weakness in it and she did not want to give the assassin the satisfaction. Seijin turned back to the door. The assassin raised a hand and the wards sizzled out into shadow, fading and then gone. Seijin stalked through, with Inari close behind. If Seijin had been hoping that she would be trapped in the chamber, the assassin would be disappointed: resembling Mhara perhaps, but Inari was still tugged along by the magnet.