Snake Agent: A Detective Inspector Chen Novel (32 page)

Inari and Fan had now been traveling for almost three hours, and Inari was hopelessly disoriented. She had tried to keep track of the labyrinth of passageways, but the twists and turns were too intricate to keep in mind: it was as though they were moving through a vast honeycomb of bone. Indeed, Inari thought, the walls of the passages more closely resembled bone than stone. They were pale as ivory, smooth and cool. She remembered what Fan had said:
you'll be safe here, beneath the old devil's skull
. Yet whenever she tried to ask the scarred woman what she had meant, Inari's throat constricted and her mouth grew dry as dust so that the words would not come. Fan turned. Her face was luminous in the darkness, as though she shone with her own light. She murmured, "Inari? It won't be long now before we reach the transition point. We need to prepare ourselves."

"Transition point? What's that?" Inari asked.

"Where the worlds cross."

Inari blinked. "I thought we were still in Hell. Do you mean we're going to be on Earth?"

Fan shook her head. "No. Inari, this is a route through the levels of Hell. The geography of Hell is complex, and even I don't understand it fully—it travels back upon itself, like intricately folded cloth. We're going to go a stage further down; perhaps even deeper than that."

"Do we have to?" Inari, used as she was to Hell itself, had never visited the lower levels; indeed, her family had always considered it a rather disreputable thing to do, grubbing about beneath the layers of the world like worms. Fan gave a faint smile, as if she knew what was going through Inari's mind.

"I'm afraid we have no choice. We've attracted the attention of the
wu'ei
, remember? They'll be looking for you, and there are few better ways of covering your tracks than by traveling in the worlds beneath." She turned and began walking swiftly along the narrow, sloping path.

"Don't they have jurisdiction in the lower levels?" Inari asked, following. She heard Fan's soft laugh.

"They have some. They'd like to think they have a great deal, but the truth is, Inari, only the Imperial Emperor himself has any sway over what happens in the lower reaches. The denizens of those parts go their own way; they are perverse, inconsequential, intransigent. Elemental forms, very old, and slow to change. You'll see."

Inari opened her mouth to ask another question, but they had reached a slender split in the rock, as perfect and regular as the curve of a crescent moon.

"There," Fan said with evident satisfaction. "Here is where we make the transition." She glanced round. "When we pass through, you may notice a change in me. And in yourself. As in all movement, something is lost and something gained. . . Take my hand." She reached behind her, and after a moment's hesitation Inari gripped her rough fingers. Fan stepped forwards, drawing Inari with her, and now Inari could see that the arch in the rock was nothing more than an illusion: a crack in the dark air itself. Inari's fingers curled more tightly around Fan's, and they stepped through. But even though she had moved, Inari could not repress the sudden sensation that she had remained still, that the world itself had shifted around her, as though she were the hub of an immense wheel. Inari's vision dimmed and swayed; she staggered, and Fan's iron hand pulled her upright.

"Do you see?"

Inari blinked. For a brief, disorienting moment, it seemed that she gazed out across a vast expanse: a great plain of crimson rock, above which hung three ashen moons as fragile and wan as soap bubbles. Two immense cities jostled out across the plain, composed of spires of red rock that reached up into the heavens; she could see the smoky fires burning in the streets, and hear voices on the wind. It looked like a scene from one of those science-fiction movies that Chen was so inexplicably fond of watching; it looked nothing like the worlds she knew. As she tried to make sense of it, however, it disintegrated, and there was nothing more than a cool, gray twilight.

"The cities of the plain," Fan said into her ear. "Very old—so old that some philosophers say that the world is gradually configuring itself to meet their image, and what we see is nothing more than a glimpse of the far future. But others say that this is not so, and there are no triple moons, no plain; only a writhing chaos onto which we project our own images." Her hand tightened around Inari's as she shrugged. "But it doesn't make a great deal of difference in the end, if you ask me. It still has to be dealt with."

"We're going across?" Inari faltered. The glimpse she had seen was somehow terrifying, something that not even a demon should be permitted to see.

"No," Fan murmured. "We're going
in
."

Above Chen's head rose the enormous iron spire of the Ministry of War: a spike some nine thousand feet high that reared towards the heavens from a tripod base, as though some mad giant had been let loose on the Eiffel Tower and told to make a few improvements. Around the foot of the Ministry extended an obsidian wall surmounted with writhing live razor wire that thrashed and squirmed in perpetual blind motion, seeking prey. From the base of the wall ran a long flight of shallow steps, leading down to the main administrative square, and a pair of gigantic metal lion-dogs on plinths. Chen, Zhu Irzh, and the badger-teakettle were crouching at the base of one of these plinths, contemplating the ziggurat bulk of the Ministry of Epidemics across the square.

"How are we going to get in?" the demon enquired rhetorically. They were at the time of day which, in Hell, passed as dawn. A chilly, gray light suffused the buildings of the administrative district, and the wind had changed direction, though Chen noted that his shadow still streamed out behind him any which way, as if incapable of making up its mind where to fall. He had long since given up trying to work out where the light was coming from, but the inconstancy of his shadow continued to set him on edge. He stared across to the Ministry of Epidemics. Shadows seemed to wreathe it like a miasma of plague. In its distant upper stories, lights were burning red. The great iron doors that led onto the main square were firmly closed.

"You say it has no back entrances?" Chen murmured.

"None whatsoever. I checked. The drainage system is also apparently complicated, since the city officials clearly don't want the Ministry infecting the rest of the population via that particular route—believe it or not, sanitary controls here are quite strict." Zhu Irzh caught sight of Chen's skeptical look, and protested further. "They really are! So we can't get in via the sewers. On that previous occasion, as I told you, I simply strolled through the doors with the rest of the patients, and strolled right out again with Leilei." His face took on a momentarily pensive cast. "But that was before the Ministry started dispatching assassins after me. I've no doubt that my person carries some telltale sign that will set alarms clanging all over the place if I so much as set foot in the forecourt. And Imperial Majesty only knows how they'd react to
you."

"No, obviously we can't go in via orthodox means: that's out of the question. Do you know of any means of disguise? Could we pass ourselves off as sick?"

Zhu Irzh looked at him dubiously.

"You're obviously human, that's the problem. And don't take this the wrong way, Detective, but you smell like one, too. All that fresh blood and meat and bone—" He broke off hastily at the look in Chen's eye. "They'd sniff you out, is what I'm saying."

"What about magic?"

"All government departments tend to have detectors for magical disguises, that's the trouble. There's too much internecine warfare between agencies; everyone's paranoid."

"Could we get in through one of the upper-level windows?" Chen mused, instantly discarding his own suggestion. "No, I don't suppose we could."

"Not a chance," the demon agreed flatly. He stared across to the sheer, gleaming side of the Ministry ziggurat. "Fifty feet of wall before you get anywhere near a window. I doubt if even a glue-footed gecko could make its way up that on a hot day."

"And no chance of you getting in anywhere?" Chen asked the badger, frivolously. The badger raised a clawed hind foot and scratched its ear with vigor, not deigning to reply. Beside them, Zhu Irzh became suddenly tense. His fingers reached for Chen's arm, drew him abruptly back into the shadows below the plinth.

"What?"

"Look," the demon hissed.

"I don't see anything."

"There—crossing the far edge of the square," Zhu Irzh whispered urgently into his ear. Chen peered obediently in the direction indicated, but his weaker human eyes could still see nothing. Then a beam of Hell-light fell through the breaking clouds. Chen could not refrain from a gasp of astonishment. The thing that was now crossing the square was more than familiar. Recently, he had spent several hours cooped up in the back of it, and even as he watched, the pungent odor of blood seemed to drift across the square. It was the delivery dray of Tso's Blood Emporium, drawn by the sinuous, lumbering
ch'i lin
. It trundled across the flagstones and turned the corner so that it was lost to sight around the back of the Ministry.

"Quick," the demon snapped. "Follow me."

Before Chen could stop him, Zhu Irzh was running across the square. Cursing, Chen followed, the badger at his heels. The iron spire of the Ministry of War seemed to swing around, aimed directly at his retreating back. From the corner of his eye, he glimpsed the ornate and roseate portals of the Ministry of Lust, with red pagoda towers carved in a sequence of disconcertingly genital images. Anyone who happened to glance from any one of those towers, from Lust, Epidemics or War, could hardly fail to notice the three fleeing figures: the square was immense, and exposed.

Chen desperately thrust all thoughts of their vulnerability to the innermost pit of his mind. Ahead, he saw that Zhu Irzh, with youth, longer legs, and a demon's speed, had already reached the far side of the square and was sprinting around the side of the Ministry. His chest heaving, Chen followed, and shivered as he passed within the purview of the Ministry. It was almost as though the building itself were conscious: a vast, malign bulk that could at any moment turn and crush him. Zhu Irzh was standing with his back flat against the wall of the steps that led up to the Ministry; as Chen panted to a halt, he reached out a warning hand and drew Chen to his side.

"See what they're doing?" he whispered. Cautiously, Chen peered past the demon. The dray had been parked at an angle to the flank of the building, so that they were temporarily, and mercifully, concealed from view. The
ch'i lin
stood blinkered in its shafts, impatiently clawing at the ground. Behind the dray, Chen could see two pairs of feet: one inverted, and one not. The non-inverted feet wore a stylish pair of curled slippers: not quite Tso's style, Chen thought, but it was hard to tell. The thunderous noise of barrels being unloaded from the dray ricocheted across the early-morning silence of the square.

"What are they doing?" Zhu Irzh asked, in an undertone.

"At a guess, unloading the morning's consignment of blood," Chen murmured.

"That's what the dray's carrying, is it? How do you know?"

"Because the company that the dray comes from used to belong to my brother-in-law," Chen told him. The demon's elegant eyebrows rose.

"Tso's? Yes, I remember you telling me. But Tso's blood isn't cheap—as far as I know, the Ministry tends to use low-grade blood for experimentation." He paused. "Perhaps they're having a party."

"That I doubt. However, they almost certainly
will
be having a party if we don't get in there and stop them from creating their cursed plague."

The demon gave him an uneasy glance. "So what do you suggest?"

Chen nodded towards the dray. "Hiding in one of the barrels."

"You're joking." Zhu Irzh peered anxiously into Chen's face, and discerned truth. "Oh," he murmured. "You're not."

"I'm afraid it may require the ultimate sacrifice of yet more of your garments," Chen added. "But it is for a good cause."

"I suppose so," Zhu Irzh muttered, and gave an involuntary shiver.

"I thought demons liked blood?" Chen said.

"It's the same kind of thing as humans liking chocolate. Most do, but some don't and anyway, too much of it makes you sick. It doesn't agree with me. It gives me migraines."

"Keep your mouth closed then," Chen instructed unsympathetically, and headed stealthily in the direction of the dray.

As they had stood and watched, the morning light had crept further along the square. Glancing over his shoulder, Chen could see the metal spire of the Ministry of War catching the light, and sending fragmented refractions from the
ch'i
mirrors placed along its upper struts into the turbulent skies of Hell. The Ministry of Epidemics, however, stood in a black block of shadow, and Chen could no longer see the pinnacle of the ziggurat, which was wreathed in cloud. Followed closely by Zhu Irzh, and with the badger prowling at his heels, he sidled around the wall and waited. The two pairs of feet were, in their respective fashions, facing the back of the dray. The front stood unguarded, except for the restless presence of the
ch'i lin
. Chen heard a grunt of effort; the tailgate of the dray rattled as yet another barrel was unloaded, and the feet shuffled towards a gaping dark space in the ground. Clearly, this was some kind of cellar, into which the barrels were being unloaded.

Something plucked at Chen's ankle. He looked down to meet the lambent gaze of the badger.

"This is something I can do," the badger murmured, so low that the words were almost lost in the rumbling of the barrels. "I will distract them. You go. There." Its narrow head swung in the direction of the hole in the ground.

Into Chen's ear, Zhu Irzh murmured, "It's better than a barrel. Believe me."

Chen was inclined to agree, and in any case, there was little time for debate.

"All right," he said, and gave the badger's sleek side a nudge with his foot. "You go."

With Chen and the demon behind, the badger slunk around the side of the dray. Chen peered through a slit, and saw one short, squat demon and one tall, thin one. The latter's carefully coiffed hair was dangling about his face, which was an unbecoming shade of puce. He was saying bitterly, "—miserable little bastard's probably sleeping off a hangover somewhere. Disappeared, indeed! I don't believe a word of it." With an evident effort, he slung the barrel into the hole with the aid of his companion, and wiped a sticky brow.