Snake Agent: A Detective Inspector Chen Novel (35 page)

The worst thing about the lower levels was not the thin, high voice that sang incessantly through the streets like the whine of a vast mosquito, nor the jets of acrid flame that shot at random from between the stones, but the dust-laden wind which blew in from the distant barrens. Dust stained Inari's skin and seeped beneath her clothes, matting her hair and blocking her nose. She couldn't stop sneezing: it was worse than the hay fever to which she'd been prone on Earth. Neither the wind nor the dust seemed to greatly affect Fan, whose red and gray robes appeared as fresh as though she'd recently retrieved them from the laundry. She cast Inari an occasional sympathetic glance, but when Inari begged to sit down for a moment and wipe the dust from her eyes, Fan said no.

"We have to keep moving. For all we know, the
wu'ei
might be close behind."

"I thought you said their power was limited in the lower levels?" Inari protested, and Fan gave a small, grim smile.

"If you are
wu'ei
, even limited power is enough. We can't take the risk," she said over her shoulder, and hastened on. Inari glanced at her, curiously. Throughout this whole strange affair, Fan had given no real hint as to why she was helping Inari, even though the very mention of the
wu'ei
was usually sufficient to send the denizens of Hell scuttling for cover. She wound her robe more tightly around her face, and hurried on.

Just as the cities of Hell mirrored the world above, so did the lower levels reflect Hell itself. Yet the reflection was an imperfect one: sketchy and crude, and uncaringly unfinished. The buildings, made of a coarse red or black stone, were crumbling and often unroofed. Streets ended in nothing but a barren wasteland, sometimes with only half a house trailing away into loose stone and dusty earth, where nothing grew. Here there were none of the dark flowers of the uppermost level, nor the shady, insect-haunted trees, only stone and a thick lichen that grew like a scab over exposed surfaces. The inhabitants of the ramshackle houses were small and squat, with squashed faces; their eyes were like filmy coals, and they had long, sharp teeth. They wore rags and tatters; Inari saw an infant with an unnaturally old gaze sitting in the dust, half-covered in a rat-skin cloak. It leered at her as she passed, and smacked its lips. The traces of Inari's human blood seemed to flinch in her veins.

"I do not like these people," she said with a shudder, as they turned the corner and came out into a decaying square surrounded by metal poles, on which chunks of flesh were drying in the raw wind.

"Don't you?" Fan said, with seeming amusement. She nodded towards a metal shield hanging on a nearby wall. "Take a look, as we go by."

Inari did so, and gasped as she caught the distorted reflection of her own face. It was longer and narrower: more like the muzzle of an animal, with a low forehead and thrust-out jaw lined with pointed teeth. Inari flicked an experimental tongue across her own incisors, and sure enough, they were longer, and her tongue seemed to have grown, thickly filling her mouth.

"I told you," Fan said softly. "This place may change you."

Inari turned a panicky glance towards her guide.

"But you're no different," she said.

Fan smiled. "I change very little," she said. "Wherever I am."

"Why not?" Inari asked, but the scarred woman only turned and began walking swiftly through the maze of alleyways. Inari glanced down at her own hands and saw that they, too, had altered: the fingers were almost twice as long as before, and even as she stared, aghast, her talons began to grow into gnarled shapes, so that the remaining polish cracked and split. Fan was staring at her with a trace of impatience.

"Inari, come
on. . .
"

Inari swallowed her fear and hurried after the scarred woman. They made their way over piles of broken brick, through ruined courtyards where eyes like glitters of broken glass gazed from the shadows. The high, eerie keening seemed to swirl in eddies of air, becoming amplified by the hollow homes. Fan glided beneath gutters pouring rivulets of dust, and skirted exposed cellars filled with the ghosts of bones. The dust filled Inari's eyes once more and she stopped to wipe them: when she could see again, Fan had gone.

"Fan?" Inari called. There was no reply. She hastened around the corner, but the street ahead was quite empty. "Fan?" she cried again, but nothing answered, only the unceasing wailing voice and the echoes on the wind. Inari stood and listened, feeling cold fear run clammily down her twisting spine, and now the wailing voice seemed louder. She could detect words within it: it spoke in Gweilin.

"Save. . . save. . ."

She could not tell whether it was male or female, or even whether it was the same voice she had been hearing since they entered the lower levels. And if it was Fan. . . Inari glanced around, trying to decide where the voice was coming from. She followed it down the street, and she could smell something now, something thick and rank.

The building at the end of the street was a collapsed palace: its facade crumbled until none of the once-ornate carvings remained. A balcony extended down one half of the property, then broke abruptly away. The voice drifted through the ruined stones:
Save. . . save. . .
Tentatively, Inari stepped through into the hallway, but there was nothing there, only a few dusty tapestries. She made her way out into a courtyard, but it was utterly dead. Even the air was heavy and still.

"Fan?" Inari whispered.
Save. . . save. . .
It was coming from somewhere just beyond the courtyard. Pushing aside a dry mass of something that at first Inari took to be creeper, but which on closer inspection seemed more akin to hair, she found herself in what had once been a formal garden. Yet nothing was growing here, only clumps of the thick, yellow lichen, and petrified clusters that might once have been shrubbery. A decaying bridge crossed a dark pond, and it was from here that the voice was emanating.

With trepidation, Inari went over to the bridge and looked down. The pond was filled with dark, clotting blood, and she could see something moving in the liquid shadows. A mouth like a bag broke the surface and spoke. "
Save me. . ."

It was not Fan. It was undoubtedly something dangerous and unpleasant, but just then it sank deeper into the blood and its last plea was nothing more than a string of thick bubbles. Without stopping to think, overtaken by pity, Inari knelt by the side of the pond and plunged her misshapen hand in. It was immediately gripped so tightly that she was almost pulled in. The reek of the pond filled the air, choking her lungs. Inari hauled and tugged and pulled, and slowly, by degrees, something began to come up out of the pond.

Its hair was matted with blood. Its face was indiscernible beneath the fluid, and it was weighed down by its heavy robes. It took a long, rasping breath and spat redly over the cracked paving stones. Then it raised itself up on its hands and stared at her with cold crimson eyes.

"Who are you?" Inari asked.

The dripping figure replied, with as much dignity as it could muster, "I am the First Lord of Banking."

Inari gaped at him. "But you're—you're the head of the Ministry of Wealth. What are you doing here?"

"It is a long and sorry tale," the First Lord of Banking said bitterly, spitting gobbets of blood. "I have been sorely wronged, by one of my so-called governmental colleagues, no less—by the Minister of Epidemics. He took my house, he wrapped it up—"

"He
wrapped
it?"

"—flinging me from my own balcony into my own pond as he did so. Then everything went dark, and I found myself here. In
that
." He pointed a trembling forefinger at the pond. "Menstrual blood. Cast over generations by adulteresses and abortionists. And I could not get out."

"Then how is it that I was able to help you?" Inari asked, puzzled, and a calm voice said from over her shoulder, "Because you felt pity, and not for yourself. A rare thing, in any level of Hell, and therefore powerful."

Inari turned. Fan was standing behind her, scarred hands folded neatly into the sleeves of her robe. "I am sorry, Inari. I was moving too quickly. I lost sight of you."

"I
know
you," the First Lord of Banking said to Inari, wiping blood from his eyes. He then squinted at the scarred woman and frowned. "Who are you?"

"I am Fan."

"The name means nothing."

"No matter. I think you should come with us, but not in your present condition." She bowed in the direction of the First Lord of Banking, and immediately the blood drained out of his robes and hair, trickling swiftly towards the pond, where it was immediately reabsorbed. The First Lord of Banking stared wide-eyed. "How did you do that?"

"Come," said Fan. "We are losing time."

Inari saw that she was right. Already it was growing darker. Thunderclouds clapped and snarled overhead, and a thick substance began to fall. At first, for a bewildered moment, Inari thought it was real rain, but then she realized the truth: the clouds were raining a bloody dust, which left smears and stains on her skin and clothes. The First Lord of Banking gave a sigh of utmost irritation. With wonder, Inari saw that Fan remained untouched, but the scarred woman was staring up into the broiling skies.

"Inari," she whispered.

Inari looked up and saw with a bolt of horror that the skies were splitting. An immense crack was opening between the clouds: for a moment, she glimpsed what might have been stars and a rainy moon, but then it was gone, obscured by the vast presence of what was coming through.

It might have been a demon. It might have been a dragon with a human face and a great crimson eye, but it was simply too large to see properly. It was covered in dark scales that were themselves the size of clouds. It was one of the
wu'ei.

"Imperial Majesty!" the First Lord of Banking breathed.

"Inari!" Fan shouted. "Run!"

But Inari could not move. The
wu'ei
filled the skies, gliding overhead, and far, far in the distance of the heavens she saw it turn and look back. Iron fingers clasped her arm as Fan caught hold of her. The woman's mismatched eyes were huge and black, yet somehow she did not look afraid.

"Come, Inari," she said, and her voice rumbled around the echoing ruins like the thunder itself. The power of her voice unlocked Inari's frozen joints and she ran, gripping Fan's hand tightly in her own. The First Lord of Banking was close behind, holding the skirts of his robe up from his flying feet. They bolted through the dying streets, which even now were crumbling around them. A block of masonry fell from a roof, smashing into fragments a few feet from Inari's head. Splinters of wood struck her flesh as a doorframe exploded silently into nothingness, but her skin had become horny and hard, and she barely noticed. Above, the dragon-form of the
wu'ei
coiled and its hot breath overtook the wind, scorching the dust. Fan dodged through a courtyard, dived around a crater in the road, and leaped over the splintered edge of a verandah. They came out into an immense square: clearly the correlate of the administrative centre of Hell-above. Ahead, Inari could see the iron ziggurat of the Ministry of Epidemics, but here in this lower level the metal was rusted away to reveal the building's huge skeleton, and the upper stories were twisted into a fractured mass of girders. On the other side of the square, the Ministry of Lust was no more than a rotting mass of flesh.

"Run!" commanded Fan. "And don't look back!"

Still clutching Inari's hand, she sprinted across the square. Stumbling and staggering as her toenails grew and curled, Inari tried to keep her gaze fixed on the ruin of the Ministry ahead, but she could not help glancing up. The
wu'ei
was disappearing into the heavens, and for an elated moment Inari thought that it was going away, but then she realized that it was coiling upwards to strike. Her legs seemed to be growing shorter, the knees cracking as they bent awkwardly backwards. She caught her foot on an uprooted paving stone and fell flat, but Fan and the First Lord of Banking dragged her up.

"We're nearly there . . ."

A great shadow fell across the square as the
wu'ei
dived. A blast of heat preceded it, as though someone had opened the door of a vast furnace. As it struck, Inari, the First Lord of Banking and Fan sprang up the uneven steps of the Ministry and through the wreckage of the iron doors. Inari collapsed, her distorted chest heaving, on the threshold of the Ministry of Epidemics, and over the sill she saw the
wu'ei
dive headfirst into the ground. Flagstones hurtled through the air, striking the Ministry with a sound like a hundred beaten gongs, and a wall of red dust billowed through the desolate vaults of the hallway. The gleaming mass of coils thundered down through the air, and Inari saw the end of a barbed tail, the length of an express train, flick behind them. Then the
wu'ei
was gone, leaving a tornado of dust in its wake and a gaping crater where the square had been. Fan gave a chilly smile.

"Where did it go?" Inari gasped. Her tongue lolled out between her lips as she spoke; it was suddenly difficult to keep it inside her mouth. She caught a glimpse of herself in the dusty surface of a once-bright wall panel and saw something squat and monstrous. Fan said, "It's plunging down through the levels. It could not stop itself in time."

"When—" Inari had to gesture; it was too hard to talk. "—when—up?"

"Not for a while," Fan said. "And now we have to find your husband"—but that suggestion really made Inari panic.

"Not—" she pointed a claw at her own mutated face "—not—this."

"Don't worry," Fan said, still smiling. "People change back once they ascend the levels. Usually. Come on. We have to find a way up."

When Chen began to come round, it seemed that the world was spinning about him. Things also appeared to be upside down, a fact that Chen initially attributed to being half-throttled and banged on the head, but which he swiftly realized to be no more than empirical fact. It was not the room that was revolving—slowly, like a spider in the breeze—but himself, and since he was also suspended by the heels, this accounted for the otherwise baffling inversion. The unlovely figure of his brother-in-law was dangling several feet away, and Chen could see that Tso's ankles were securely bound by a chain attached to a hook in the ceiling. Flasks, alembics, and other chemical apparatus lined the walls and the acrid smell of ammonia filled the air, making Chen's eyes sting and water. Chen permitted himself the luxury of a pang of
Schadenfreude
on behalf of his brother-in-law who was, despite his treachery and deceit, now no better off than himself. Then he devoted all his energies to working out a way to get down.