DAC 3 Precious Dragon (16 page)

Chen proffered the bottle of wine. Zhu Irzh's mother looked at it as though he were trying to poison her.

"He's a human."

"Yes, Earth people generally are."

"And you brought him to my party?"

"If it's inconvenient, madam, I'll leave," Chen said. This appeared to go some distance toward mollifying Mrs Zhu.

"You might as well stay, now you're here," she said.

"Mother," Zhu Irzh's voice came from inside the parlor, into which he had stepped. "Where is Dad?"

"He's not here."

The demon reappeared. "What, he's not at your party?"

"Certainly not. I threw him out of the house six months ago."

"You did what? Why? Where is he now?"

"I don't know where he is! At his whore's, probably. I don't want to talk about him, Irzh. I've moved on." She gave an expression remarkably, and repellently, close to a simper. "I've met someone new."

"Are you getting divorced, or what?"

"It's in process. Naturally, there are financial issues to work out. I said, I don't want to talk about it. There's someone I want you to meet. He's not here yet; he's coming for dinner." She swept through into the parlor, leaving a stupefied Zhu Irzh in her wake.

"Oh dear," Chen said.

"I can't believe I wasn't told. Even with this family."

"I'm sorry, Zhu Irzh."

"I don't suppose it'll make any great difference in the long run. Except to my inheritance, but I wasn't counting much on that anyway, the way Mother fritters her way through money. Although there's the question of the house . . ." Zhu Irzh appeared momentarily lost in thought.

"Your mother said something about dinner."

"Yes, it's a birthday tradition with her. She throws a big dinner party and then we all have a celebration after that." As he spoke, the reverberations of a gong sounded through the house. "And that will be dinner," the demon said.

Chen and Zhu Irzh traipsed through into an enormous dining room, dim-lit sconces along the wall. The room was opulently decorated with tapestries, but as Chen drew closer he saw that they had started to fray and molder, and the room itself smelled strongly of damp. It had an air of neglect and, beneath that, something much worse.

"Something happened in here," Chen murmured to Zhu Irzh, his psychic senses twitching.

"My grandfather was murdered in here by my uncle. Dispatched to the lower levels and confined there. We don't talk about it much. A nasty business."

"Quite." Chen paused and looked around, at a table groaning beneath the weight of silverware and gleaming glass goblets. "I wasn't expecting a banquet. To be honest, Zhu Irzh, I'm not sure how much of it I'll be able to eat. As a human, I mean. I don't mean the quality of the food."

"Mother has always run a very—traditional—household," the demon said, apologetically. "And her idea of a nice dinner is usually blood soup followed by a series of main courses. Boiled trotters and that sort of thing."

"Please don't worry on my account," Chen said. "I'm only mentioning it in case you think I'm being rude—I can eat when we get back to the hotel."

"I might join you," Zhu Irzh said. "I'm not fond of home cooking. At least, not at this home."

He motioned Chen to a seat near the head of the table. There did not seem to be any names attached to the place, so Chen sat where he was told and reasoned that Zhu Irzh could have it out with his mother if the need arose. Other people were filing in now. To Chen's dismay, the sullen, angular Daisy sat immediately opposite him and was joined by a squat escort, who favored Chen and Zhu Irzh with an oily smile.

"So pleased to meet you," this person said, unctuously.

"This is my brother-in-law, Sip Lu." Zhu Irzh tended introductions.

"And what do you do?" Chen asked.

"He works for one of the Ministries," Daisy said. She leaned aggressively over the table. "Lust, you know. He's very successful."

Chen could not imagine sharing a bedroom with anyone as needlelike as Daisy, let alone an actual bed. Perhaps Sip Lu gave at the office.

"What's your actual role at the Ministry?" Chen asked, more from a slightly desperate desire to make conversation than from any real wish to know.

"I am Thirteenth Under-Clerk to Lesser Lord Twelve. We issue licenses to demon lounges, collect fees, that sort of thing."

"Interesting," Chen said, feeling feeble.

"And yourself?"

"Lu, you know perfectly well what he does," Daisy hissed. "He's a policeman. On Earth. He works with my brother."

"Ah! Are you in vice?"

Suppressing the impulse to answer Frequently, Chen explained that the role of the police in Singapore Three was somewhat different to that which they played in Hell. Sip Lu nodded politely, but Chen was left with the feeling that he might not have made himself fully understood. There was something oddly stunted about Sip Lu, as though he could be drugged. He smiled and beamed, seemingly without reason. Perhaps Daisy kept him under some form of control. Looking at Daisy's long, twitching fingers, scratching nervously at the tabletop, Chen thought she was the kind of woman who would take whatever steps were necessary in order to establish her own agenda, and from the wary way that Zhu Irzh was staring at his sister, the demon thought so, too. Then Zhu Irzh glanced up and Chen saw his face freeze.

The demon's mother had entered the room, swathed in her preposterous furs, on the arm of a demon so large that he had to bend slightly to avoid brushing his crest against the ceiling. A lizardlike person, with enormously bulky limbs, a long, sinuous tail, a scaled rust-colored face with curving tusks. He, too, was wearing armor and carried with him a strong scent of gunpowder. When he turned, Chen could see that the insignia on his shoulder was that of the Ministry of War. Unsurprising.

"What the—? That's Erdzhe Shen," Zhu Irzh whispered.

"Who?" Chen had never managed to fix in his mind the various principal personages of Hell, largely because there was so much backstabbing and so many palace revolutions that personnel turnover was exceptionally high. But Zhu Irzh had spoken as if Chen should know, which suggested that this Erdzhe Shen was a major player.

"He's only the Minister of War," Zhu Irzh said. Chen glanced across at Sip Lu and saw that the Lust demon's face had grown watchful, overriding the expression of greasy vacancy. Zhu Irzh spoke urgently to Daisy.

"Did you know about this? Mum's new boyfriend?"

"Of course I did," Daisy hissed. "Why do you think she threw Dad out? She's been putting up with his girlfriends for years, but she didn't care—she had her own life, and you know as well as I do that they didn't share a room for years. It wasn't until Erdzhe came along that she decided to make the break. Erdzhe is more powerful than Dad ever dreamed of being." Erdzhe. Daisy spoke the name with a kind of complacency, a smug twitch of the lip, clearly pleased that despite her own ministerial connections, she was permitted to use the name of the Minister of War. But since her mother was now nearing the head of the table, with her vast escort in tow, Daisy fell silent. The couple took their places—Zhu Irzh's mother with a glance like a simpering skull, and everyone rose.

"A toast to the birthday girl!" the Minister of War boomed, in a voice that set glassware rattling. "To my beloved!" From the look that he bestowed upon her, it might even be true, thought Chen. How odd, though Zhu Irzh had proved susceptible to love in the past so perhaps it was a family weakness. But allegiances in Hell were notoriously unstable. Perhaps the real wonder was that Zhu Irzh's parents' marriage had apparently survived for so long.

"I don't think I can handle this," Zhu Irzh muttered.

"I don't think you've got much choice," Chen whispered back. The first course was already arriving; it was, as predicted, blood broth. He pretended to take a sip when everyone else did, but beneath the table he inscribed a careful sigil on the underside of the polished wood, holding his breath as he did so. His own magic, being goddess-given, was erratic here in Hell. After a moment, however, he saw the blood broth evaporate. It would be embarrassing if noticed, but hopefully everyone else was concentrating too much on their own dinners.

The Minister of War was attacking his food with gusto; there was certainly nothing wrong with his appetite. He finished two bowls of soup and then went on to the main course, slabs of something greenly meaty in black bean sauce, fried locusts, adders' tongues, and a number of dishes that Chen was unable to identify.

"It's deer," Zhu Irzh said in an undertone. Thus encouraged, Chen took a careful mouthful and found that the meat was revolting.

"Sorry, Zhu Irzh. Can't eat it." At least it had the benefit of killing what little appetite he still possessed. He prepared himself for executing another spell when Zhu Irzh said, "I'll have yours, then. It's not as bad as usual, actually."

Chen transferred it swiftly onto the demon's plate. Glancing back, he saw that the Minister of War's gaze, as green and reptilian as a lizard's, was fixed upon him. Chen gave a blandly polite smile and, after a moment, the Minister looked away. Chen did not know what to make of this. The Minister's gaze had been impossible to interpret: not rage, even at finding a human (and the one-time servant of a goddess, something which was surely visible to the Minister) seated at his girlfriend's dining table, nor disquiet. There had been something remote and alien and calculating about the Minister's expression and it concerned Chen.

It wasn't until halfway through the main courses that the disruption happened. Chen became aware of sounds in the hallway, distant scuffling and muffled shouts.

"Zhu Irzh? What's happening?"

"I don't know." The demon frowned, just as the door burst open and two maidservants rushed in bearing an enormous cake. It was heavily iced in red and black, appearing almost lacquered. A small figure at its summit represented, perhaps, Mrs Zhu.

"Oh god," Zhu Irzh said under his breath. "Just what we need. A birthday surprise."

Chen gritted his teeth. He hated this kind of thing, ever since being obliged to attend other children's birthday parties. He put the polite smile back in place and kept it there. The women carried the cake ceremoniously to the head of the table and placed it on a hastily cleared space. It seemed an odd time to do this; shouldn't they wait until the dessert course, or after the meal? But perhaps things were done differently here; it was Hell, after all.

There was an expectant pause. Zhu Irzh's mother leaned forward with the rapacious look of a gannet. The Minister radiated smugness. The cake burst open in an explosion of black and red icing, which spattered those guests nearest the head of the table, and a demon leaped forth. Looking back, Chen did not know quite what he had been expecting: not a naked girl, given the nature of the gathering, but certainly not a heavily armed and armored being who uttered a roar and hurled himself through the air in the direction of Zhu Irzh's mother, a glittering sword in his hand.

Zhu Irzh was on his feet in a flurry of black silk. Daisy screamed like a whistling kettle and kept on screaming. The Minister gave a bellow that temporarily deafened Chen. Zhu Irzh's mother was scuttling backward with the speed of a spider. Chen, acting before he really had a chance to think, snatched the table knife from the side of his plate and cut a bloody rune into the palm of his hand. Then, with no time to worry about whether it would work, he threw it in the direction of the sword-bearing demon, who had by this time landed squarely on the floor in front of Zhu Irzh's mother.

The rune blazed through the air in an arc of fire and struck the demon in the midriff. A ragged, smoking hole appeared in his armor and the demon looked down in fleeting dismay, before exploding in a manner similar to that of the cake, only messier.

"Well," Zhu Irzh said, picking strips of charred flesh out of his hair. "That was novel."

Zhu Irzh's mother slapped Daisy across the face. "Be quiet!" Daisy's screams subsided to a whimper, but Chen caught sight of something in her face, a swift and secret expression that, again, he could not interpret. He filed it away for later consideration.

The Minister of War turned to him. "A good shot and a quick spell! Especially from a human."

"To be honest," Chen said, "I didn't know if it would work down here."

"But so it did, and if it had not, my beloved would have been sent to the lower levels, there to eke out an existence among the creeping things."

"No change there, then," Chen thought he heard Zhu Irzh say.

"Well, I'm just glad I was here to help," Chen said, feeling like someone in a television cop drama.

"He should be rewarded," Zhu Irzh's mother remarked. Her expression was beady.

"There's really no need for that," Chen said quickly.

Zhu Irzh nudged him. "No, go for it."

"I should like Zhu Irzh to have my reward instead," Chen explained. As he spoke, he saw a flicker of light in the air, moving between himself and Zhu Irzh: the mark of a destiny spell being cast. Chen himself had done nothing, it must be some function of the proffered reward itself. Oh dear.

"In that case, I accept," Zhu Irzh said before his mother could react. "I should like Grandfather's heart."

"What!" That was the demon's mother.

"What?" That was Chen.

"You heard me, Mother." The spell sparkled around him as he spoke.

"Zhu Irzh? What are you doing?" Chen hissed.

"You recall I told you he was murdered here? He's been nudging me. I can feel it."

Chen expected Mrs Zhu to refuse indignantly, but he could feel the spell still working: a cool, powerful tugging at his magical senses. This was something old and strong. Zhu Irzh's mother rose as if under compulsion, and began to totter out of the room, as jerkily as a puppet. Chen expected the Minister of War to intervene, at least to make some kind of protest, but he did not. Instead, he watched, with that same remote gaze with which he had favored Chen.

"Come with me," Zhu Irzh said to Chen. Everyone else at the table appeared turned to stone. Chen, his skin prickling, followed the demon out the door.