Snake Agent: A Detective Inspector Chen Novel (36 page)

Twisting and spinning, he managed to get a look at a nearby table, where scalpels and other instruments lay temptingly displayed. Among them, Chen saw with a leap of the heart, was his lost rosary. Tso must have picked his pockets at some point—probably when they were getting into the dray—and stolen his main means of defense. Its beads were stony cold, seemingly dead, but if he could just reach it. . . Tso was hanging nearer to the table.

"Tso!" he hissed. "Wake up." Tso mumbled something unintelligible. "What? Come on, Tso. Wake
up
."

The demon's bloodshot eyes snapped open, caught sight of Chen's furious face, and abruptly closed again. Tso emitted a thin whistle of distress. As he twisted on his chain, Chen could see a long, angry welt through the thinning hair of the demon's scalp. He could also hear someone moving around outside, muttering to themselves. Something about the crazed eagerness of the tone of voice suggested that the alchemist was outside the door. As Chen listened, footsteps retreated down the passage and Chen breathed a momentary sigh of relief.

"Tso, I know you've probably had a bang on the head, but I'm quite well aware you're still conscious. We have to find a way of getting down."

"No use," the demon whined. "There's no way out of here."

"Nonsense," Chen said briskly.

By dint of much cajoling and pleading, he finally induced Tso to make a grab for the rosary. Tso did so, catching the string of beads on the end of his long, barbed tongue and flicking it towards its owner, but though Chen lunged for it, he missed. The rosary wound itself tightly around the ornamental carved pineapple adorning a nearby desk and hung there, just out of reach. The footsteps were coming back. Frantically, Chen began to swing on the end of the chain: faster and faster, like an immense pendulum. His erratic path knocked his shoulder against a precarious rack of alembics: some of these fell, sending glass and an acidic fluid spilling across the floor. From a cracked flask there was the sudden, cough-medicine odor of ether and this gave Chen an idea. Swinging against the desk, Chen opened his mouth and caught the rosary between his teeth. As soon as the beads registered the presence of their owner, they began to burn and glow. Chen could feel the heat radiating out from them; he was careful not to let them touch his tongue. The door was opening. Grimacing wildly, Chen swung backwards and forwards, flicking the rosary out towards the cracked flask. The alchemist stepped through the door, clasping his ceremonial machete. Seeing Chen, his terrible smile widened. Light glinted from the rippling surface of the machete. Chen, swinging, let the rosary go. It wrapped itself around the cracked flask. Chen swung back, muttering warding spells for all he was worth.

As soon as the red-hot beads touched the flask of ether a great flower of fire ignited, running along the shelf and blossoming up towards the doorway. The blast brought down half the ceiling, Chen and Tso with it. Fire licked Chen's hair and the hem of the alchemist's robes and the alchemist went up like a torch: the chemicals which stained his robes burning now ultramarine, now amber. The alchemist fell against the door with a wordless cry, beating at his blazing robes. Half-blinded by heat and flame, muffling his scorched head with his sleeve, Chen saw that the brittle shells which guarded the mandarin talons of the alchemist's left hand had also caught fire, and were burning like so many incandescent candles. The last glimpse Chen had was of the blazing alchemist staggering out into the hallway and falling to the floor in a welter of flames.

Inside the laboratory, a tongue of flame licked one of the alembics that stood on the opposite shelf. It exploded like fireworks, sending sparks showering into the room.

"Bloody marvelous!" Tso cried. "You've doomed us both!"

Chen had to admit that his brother-in-law had a point. After all, he could die here and probably end up in exactly the same place—an interesting metaphysical question—whereas Tso would be consigned to one of the lower levels. However, to someone as concerned with status as Tso, this was probably worse than death. The fire on the floor, caught in the backlash of the warding spell, guttered and died.

And then a long, black coat, greatly the worse for wear, swirled through the drifting smoke and Chen saw Zhu Irzh's intrigued face peering down at him. Struggling to rise, he found to his shame that his legs were shaking. The demon hauled him upright. Zhu Irzh's eyes were wide.

"I don't know, Detective Inspector. I leave you alone for no more than an hour and you manage to get captured, torch a laboratory and dispatch an Imperial alchemist with a blast of flame. What did you have in mind for an encore?"

Chen tried to speak, but the acrid fumes had rendered his voice no more than a hoarse whisper. He gestured towards Tso, still entangled in the chains. Tso's anguished, angry eyes were watering profusely from the effects of the fumes.

"Who's that?" Zhu Irzh asked sharply. "Your brother-in-law, at a guess."

"That's right," Chen croaked.

"What do you want to do with him?"

Chen considered this. There was a strong case to be made for leaving Tso exactly where he was: firmly secured and out of mischief. There was also an argument for dispatching him to one of the lower levels, but Chen did not feel that he could cope with even the limited death of a demon on his already weighted list of sins. It took no more than a moment to make his decision.

"Leave him where he is," he said hoarsely.

"No!" Tso protested. "You can't leave me! Get me out of here!"

Zhu Irzh grinned. "No chance," he said.

"Chen Wei! As the brother of your wife, I appeal to you! I—"

"Sorry," Chen said. "As far as I'm concerned, any obligation I had to you vanished when you sold me out to the Ministry."

"I had no choice! My status—my feet, I—"

Zhu Irzh snorted. "Come on, Chen. Let's leave him to it."

"Wait a moment," Chen said. He snatched up a skein of cloth from a nearby shelf and, ignoring Tso's cries, gagged him with it. Zhu Irzh, who was already halfway through the door, nodded in approval. Followed by Tso's muffled shrieks, they picked their way through the ashes into the corridor. To Chen's mingled alarm and relief, there was no longer any sign of the alchemist: only a black, greasy stain along the walls and floor.

"Where do you think he's gone?" he asked uneasily.

Zhu Irzh shrugged. "The lower levels, probably. Don't worry about him. He's out of the picture."

Chen wasn't so sure. He lingered for a moment, sifting through the ashes while the demon waited impatiently by his side, and found what he was looking for. His rosary was, encouragingly, untouched by the blaze: the beads bright and untarnished. Hoping that it was a sign that his luck was turning, Chen wound it around his wrist and followed the demon down the corridor.

"What happened to you?" he asked, as they hastened on. Zhu Irzh actually seemed to have some idea as to where he was going, which was more than Chen did.

"I fled," the demon said, somewhat embarrassed. "I hid in a closet in that first lab. I heard them leaving, and when I thought the coast was clear I followed them—the Minister, the alchemist and the guards. They had you all trussed up. That sour-faced prick Dao Yi was all for putting an end to you there and then but the Minister insisted that you be kept alive, and the alchemist agreed. The Minister said you'd have information, suggested they torture it out of you when you came round, but the alchemist overruled him—said he had something else in mind, something more important than information. The Minister obviously didn't like it, but he didn't put up much of an argument—which in itself is weird. People of that sort of status usually don't take no for an answer."

"I think the alchemist's running this particular show," Chen said.

Zhu Irzh glanced back without breaking his stride, and nodded. "I agree. And that means the Imperial Court."

The thought of a direct confrontation with the Emperor of Hell was enough to send icy rivers of apprehension down Chen's already bruised spine, but there was little he could do about it now. He'd been implicated from the moment Mrs Tang put the sad photo of her dead child on his desk, perhaps before. There was nothing to be gained by regrets.

They came out into the junction of two hallways and Zhu Irzh paused in indecision.

"Where are we going, by the way?" Chen asked.

"I'm looking for the Records Office. We've seen the labs, we know what the Ministry's up to, but we need proof to take to the Ministry of War."

"Why War?" Chen asked, but he thought he already knew.

The demon said, "The Imperial Court rules us all. You know that, and there's not a great deal anyone can do about it. If they're implicated in this plan, then they've come down on the side of the Ministry of Epidemics, and there's unlikely to be any form of direct redress. However, the Imperial Court isn't united."

"That's an understatement," Chen said, thinking of the numerous antipathetic factions that racked the Imperial Court with intrigue.

"Maybe. But the most powerful Ministry in Hell is War, and if they suspect that Epidemics is trying to steal a march on them, they've got enough influence with their own factions at Court to seriously embarrass the Ministry. Maybe even stop them. That's what I'm counting on, but I need proof."

"Do you have any idea where that proof might be found?" Chen asked. The demon seemed very sure of where he was heading, and not for the first time, Chen felt a flicker of unease. The events of the previous few days had lulled him into a relationship with Zhu Irzh that, if not precisely trusting, was not so far removed from it, and this was a luxury that had to stop. It was certainly well within the bounds of possibility that Zhu Irzh was luring him into a trap; after all, he only had the demon's word for the attempted assassination-by-saucepan, and Hell was noted for the cruelty and ingeniousness of its games. Even if Zhu Irzh was not in league with the Ministry itself, he was nonetheless a citizen of Hell; a subject of the Imperial Court and it was improbable in the extreme that he would seriously balk at any scheme designed to discomfort mankind.

Unaware of Chen's misgivings, the demon was saying, "Because when I overheard the alchemist and the Minister talking, the Minister mentioned schematics. The alchemist asked where they were, and the Minister told him that the relevant data was in the Hall of Records. There was a floor plan in the entrance hall to the labs, I took note of it."

"So you know where we're going?"

"More or less. I think so, anyway."

"And have you devoted any thought as to how we're going to get out of here?"

"No," Zhu Irzh remarked with sublime insouciance. "I thought we'd cross that bridge when we came to it."

Sergeant Ma first began to notice the changes when they swung back up through the Ghenreng tunnel and onto the coast road. The narrow strip of lights that normally illuminated the tunnel was dead, plunging the highway into shadows. With a hiss of irritation, No Ro Shi switched the headlights on. Glancing up, Ma saw that the fans of the air-conditioning units that dotted the ceiling of the tunnel at regular intervals were no longer turning, and indeed, the air that was being funneled inside the car was heavy with fumes. As they came to the end of the tunnel, they hit a traffic jam.

"Get on the radio," No Ro Shi ordered. "See how bad the holdup is—I'm not sitting here for the rest of the afternoon."

Ma did so, and found that the usual channel was nothing more than a hiss of static.

"It's not working," he said.

The demon-hunter glared at him. "Why not?"

"I don't know."

"Well, then, find out! Try some of the other frequencies."

At last, Ma managed to contact the precinct and speak to the operator, but her voice was wavering and distorted, audible only at brief intervals. She seemed to be trying to explain something, but it was impossible to tell what she was talking about and after five minutes or so, Ma gave up.

"Well?" No Ro Shi said.

"It's no use. I can't hear a thing."

No Ro Shi muttered something that Ma didn't catch, then added, "At this rate, we'll be back at the precinct round about November. I'm not putting up with this." He slammed his hand down on the horn so hard that the mechanism jammed, producing a single unwavering howl. No Ro Shi gave a wolfish grin.

"Know what they call that in Beijing, Sergeant? Sixth gear." He snapped into reverse, backing up so fast that the driver of the car behind hammered his own horn, then did a brutally swift U-turn. Moments later they were speeding back through the tunnel, on the wrong side of the road.

"Where are we going?" wailed Ma. No Ro Shi, swerving to avoid a speeding truck, did not reply. Hurtling out of the tunnel, he dodged back onto the right side of the road and speeded towards the Lao Shih turnoff. They passed a Merc on its side in the ditch, and further on a truck upside down on the hard shoulder; its cargo of watermelons lying split and squashed all over the road. No Ro Shi's foot came down hard on the accelerator and they shot through a junction. Ma squeezed his eyes tightly shut, but was unable to avoid hearing the sudden squeal of tires.

"No lights, that's the problem," the demon-hunter barked in his ear. "Traffic signals aren't working."

"Why not?" Ma asked, baffled. No Ro Shi grimaced.

"Because the bioweb's finally crashed once and for all, that's why."

Ma thought back to the rows of sad, waterlogged figures in the
gherao
dormitory and was silent. No Ro Shi took the car onto the upper coast road: a narrow, winding one-lane track that the new highway had replaced. The road dipped and bent, revealing alarmingly sudden vistas of sea, and Ma gripped the sides of his seat until his knuckles hurt. They swerved down through the northern suburbs and came out onto the upper reaches of Shaopeng Street. None of the lights were working. At the Hsi junction, two trams had collided and derailed; they lay on their sides in the road, surrounded by crackling, jumping electric cables. Beneath the mass of twisted metal, Ma glimpsed a hand: outstretched as if in supplication.