The Devil's Detective (10 page)

“Perhaps you should enter?” someone asked.

“Perhaps you should,” snapped Fool without looking around. He had never been inside an Orphanage, had no urge to enter one now; the burning child outside the house was bad enough, and whatever was inside would almost certainly be worse.

“No, no, I think that would be your job, Thomas,” said the same person, and this time Fool recognized the voice: Elderflower's.

He had approached silently, was standing behind the three of them and smiling. It was impossible to tell whether his smile was one of
amusement, irritation, or boredom; it was an expression as distant as the clouds above them, and as hard to read. Fool nodded, hoping to look contrite, but Elderflower waved the nod away and said, “I come with two messages, Thomas, important enough to be brought in person rather than wait for you to pick them up via the tubes.

“The first is that Rhakshasas is pleased to be able to grant your request, Thomas.”

“What request?”

“Your weapon, Thomas, your weapon. All your weapons, in fact. Their ammunition will form far more quickly once spent. You are the only people in Hell to be allowed the use of weaponry, Thomas, besides that which occurs naturally or that which can be converted from other purposes.”

Naturally?
thought Fool, and then realized:
The teeth and claws and rocks and poisonous fangs. Natural.

“It is felt that,” continued Elderflower, “given the current circumstances, you should be allowed more efficient guns. The Bureaucracy has agreed that their Information Men require equipment that supports them in their roles as protectors and investigators. The archdeacons pass on their regards and hope that this pleases you.”

“They do? They have?” said Fool, confused. They protected people? Investigated? Well, in theory, yes, but in practice? No. Only now they were, he realized, in some small and ill-formed way, searching for some kind of truth about dead humans, and the origins and plans of the Man. “Thank you. Or them.”

“Indeed,” replied Elderflower. He waited, looking at Fool, his gaze intense. Under his scrutiny, Fool felt again that Elderflower was something he did not understand, was impossible to read. Human or demon, his place in Hell was unclear to Fool. At times he portrayed himself as little more than a glorified clerk, and yet at others he spoke as though he had some minor level of power and influence within the Bureaucracy. He ran the Information Offices, or at least was the link between it and the Bureaucracy, and all his and Gordie's and Summer's reports and findings went to him, and all their tubes were delivered by him or by the administrators who worked for him. Fool thought again of
the thing in the Assemblies House retrieving papers from Adam, its clawed hands scrunching the unwanted sheets up, and wondered what else those hands might do if Elderflower ordered it.

“Really, Thomas, you disappoint me,” said Elderflower eventually, still smiling. “You have had such an interesting day, have proved yourself so unexpectedly dogged in your pursuit of the truth, and yet you do not ask the most obvious question.”

Fool's head felt thick, muzzy. If there were questions, they weren't obvious to him; there was simply the knowledge of a blue ribbon, of a murder committed in the house behind him, a house that even now shrieked in something that might be pain or might be horror or might be fury or might be all three. What did Elderflower want?

“Why has the request been granted? Why now, and not before?” asked Summer, rescuing Fool. She had, Fool saw, removed her own gun from its holster and was staring at it, as though looking for changes to its metal solidity to indicate its new functioning.

“Precisely!” said Elderflower, clapping his tiny hands together. They were perfect, Fool noticed, the fingers delicate and the nails that topped them smoothly arched and clean. The sound of his clapping was loud, cutting through the wails from the house and through Fool's muzziness.

“And the answer is?”

“You have been
noticed
, Thomas. Two demons dead in such a short space of time! No human has done that for a long time, and certainly not with such determination. The little one means nothing, but the one in the bar, it has a parentage in Hell's hierarchies, and siblings who even now are wondering who Thomas Fool is, and why the humans are talking about him in tones of awe and respect. Oh, don't look so worried, any of you,” Elderflower said, looking at their faces.
Frightened Fool
, thought Fool,
silly, idiotic Fool.
Noticed
Fool. How could I have been so stupid as to think that I might have gotten away with it? Walked away from Rhakshasas and the others without a mark, gotten away scot-free?

“You have done nothing wrong, Thomas. Quite the opposite; whether you know it or not, you acted within the rules, and besides, you are interesting, have amused those who judge these things. The archdeacons find you interesting, Thomas. You are a bright spark in the boredom of Hell's
days, and their eyes are upon you. There are many eyes upon you, not just those of the archdeacons of Hell.

“Besides,” Elderflower said, “they need you equipped for the mission they have given you.”

Fool said nothing, thinking that being
interesting
might be even more terrifying than being merely
noticed
, and feeling an odd, dangerous anger sweep over him. He was interesting because he had done what? Killed demons? Things, human and inhuman, died every day in Hell, every hour, and nothing seemed interested in them or what had killed them. Elderflower talked about obedience, but what choice did he have, really? They were here because blue ribbon tubes were compulsory to investigate, and if he or Gordie or Summer did not? How
interesting
would they be then? And who made the decision about whether a death warranted a blue ribbon? He did not know.

“What's the second thing?” he asked.

“Good, Thomas, that's better. Your presence is required tomorrow.”

“My presence? At an Elevations meeting?”

“No, earlier. The delegation wishes to see the Flame Garden and then the wall and what lies beyond, and Balthazar has requested that you be their guide. They are our guests so Rhakshasas has, of course, willingly agreed.”

For a moment, Fool was speechless. The words were there, in his mouth, on the tip of his tongue and the front edges of his teeth, and his lips twitched to let them out but he would not. A tour guide? A fucking
tour guide
? For Balthazar and Adam and the scribe and archive, Heaven's beauteous inhabitants, come down but not Fallen, not them, come instead to decide and Elevate and now wanting to sightsee? A reward, perhaps, for their hard work? “No, I can't,” he said finally. “I have jobs to do, things to find out.”

“Fool,” said Elderflower, the smile weeping from his face. “Their wishes were clear. They have specifically asked for you, and we will comply because we are all servants of those who sit above us. Your colleagues can keep your investigation's fires burning as you carry out these other duties. You may not like them, but be aware: you
will
carry them out to the best of your ability, you will be courteous and answer the delegation's
questions as best you can, and you will take them anywhere they wish to go and show them whatever they wish to see. Is that clear?”

“Yes,” said Fool, not trusting himself to say anything else.

“Good. Now, there is a body awaiting your attentions, I believe.” Elderflower turned and began to walk away, his feet making delicate taps on the surface of the roadway. Where he was going, Fool wasn't sure; the Orphanage was in the hinterland between the area most of the humans lived in and the farmlands beyond, and they had traveled here on the train and by walking the last mile. Somehow, he couldn't imagine Elderflower on a train, even one that would be, out here at least, nearly empty. He grew angrier as he watched the small figure move away; he moved like a man with no cares, almost bouncing as he walked, a man who has done his job and can leave safe in the knowledge that what happens next is for someone else to deal with.

“Elderflower,” Fool called, knowing he shouldn't speak but letting the burn inside him power the words. “You send us the tube, and it tells us that there's a body here, that there's been another blue flash. Were there witnesses?”

Elderflower turned but didn't come back toward them. “No,” he said, another unquantifiable look on his face.

“Then how did you know? About the murder, and the flash?”

“Because this is Hell, Thomas. This is Hell, and this is a place where things are known without understanding the knowing.”

“Then you know who did this, what we'll find inside?”

“No, but Hell itself knows, Thomas.”

“Then why should we investigate? If Hell already knows?”

“Because this is Hell, Thomas—have you understood nothing? We all do what it requires of us, no matter how pointless or trivial those things appear to be. We are, all of us, at the whim of forces and desires and urgencies far greater, far wider, than we can ever hope to recognize or understand. Hell knows what you will find in there, but it will not pass on that knowledge, because you need to find it for yourselves. That, too, is important, although I cannot tell why because I am told as little as you. I simply know that it is important, critical, that it be found. Rhakshasas and the other archdeacons instruct me, and I instruct you. Does that answer your questions? I can see by your face that it does not.
Then let me try again, Thomas, and I will keep it simple to aid in your understanding.

“This is Hell, and there is only the illusion of choice here. If you are told to go, then you go and you hope that you arrive at your destination without injury. You are valued, Thomas, important in your own way, although it may not feel that way to you; you have a destiny, Thomas, as we all do. We are placed in positions designated us by architects that we may never know, in structures we only see the barest fragments of. These are the mechanics of Hell, Thomas. Be happy with this and do your job.”

“Yes,” said Fool, thinking,
No.
He turned his back on Elderflower and in the shrieks echoing out of the Orphanage he heard the savage reflections of his own anger and impotence.

“No,” said Summer.

“It's an order, Summer. Both of you, stay here. I don't know what's inside, and neither do you. There's no point in risking us all.”

“No,” said Summer again.

“Besides, we do,” said Gordie. “They are only children.”

“There are no children in Hell,” said Fool, “and you shouldn't believe the rumors that there are. The things in there aren't children, they're the young of the succubae and the incubi.” That wasn't quite true, he knew. There were three or four of these Orphanages scattered across Hell, places where human women came to give birth after being impregnated by incubi. The incubi took the sperm gathered from men by succubae and used it to make the women pregnant, and the resultant children were part demon and part human, and wholly monstrous. The human part of them, Elderflower had once told Fool, weakened them and made them unable to control the burning inside that came from their demonic parentage, and their flesh warped and burned almost from the moment they were born. Most died in the Orphanages; those who lived long enough to emerge tended to become predators out by the wall, where the light was lowest and the living most brutal. In Hell's past, they might have been given jobs as torturers or harriers, those things that stalked around the lakes of fire or that operated the vast, black wheels of torture; now they became part of the fabric of Hell's nightmares.

“We're coming,” said Summer. “This is for all of us to do. We're all Information Men.”

“We know what's in there,” said Gordie again. “You know I do, better than you probably.”

Summer's tone was firm, Gordie's merely conversational, and Fool didn't argue. Whatever protection he may have offered them once was gone now, he suddenly understood, shredded by the interest being shown in him. They were his colleagues, the closest things to friends he had in Hell except, perhaps, he realized with a sad little jolt, Elderflower or the Man, things he wasn't even sure were human.

They came to the doorway and the shrieks and cries were almost unbearable, not just loud but agonized and piercing. Fool, who had heard screams of most timbres during his years in Hell, had heard nothing like them before; the Orphanages were not a place he had ever had call to visit previously. The cries were continuous, tremulous, and they tugged at him even as they made his flesh crawl. Gordie felt it as well, it was obvious; he was frowning, his forehead low above his eyes, as though he were in pain, but it was Summer whom Fool was most worried about. She was already sweating, and the look on her face was as alien as anything Fool had seen on Elderflower's features. There was longing there, as though she were attracted to this tumultuous noise, wanting to open her arms to it, as well as a determination not to let it catch her.
It has barbs, this sound
, Fool thought,
ones that are already sinking deep into Summer.

The house, or something in it, shrieked again and Summer moaned slightly, closing her eyes. Gordie put a hand on her shoulder but she shook it off sharply. As though Gordie's tiny gesture of sympathy had galvanized her, she opened her eyes and said, “Are we going?”

As they walked swiftly to the door Gordie said, “I've thought of something else, about the Man. Something I heard once.”

“Later,” said Fool. The Man was a problem for later, and whatever Gordie had remembered could wait.

“It's a strange thing, about how he grows. About what he eats,” said Gordie.

“Tell me after we've done this,” said Fool. They were at the doorway now, surrounded by wafts of heat and the smell of burning hair. The
three stopped, and then, looking at each other briefly, they all stepped forward.