Iron Khan Read online

  PRAISE FOR THE WRITING OF LIZ WILLIAMS

  “Williams has an astonishing ability to create strange worlds and complex characters with only a few words. She finds new tangents with standard myths … and uses non-Western concepts … to great effect.” —Publishers Weekly

  Snake Agent

  “This exotic amalgam of police procedural, SF, comic fantasy, and horror is a delight from start to finish.” —Locus

  “Williams joins A. A. Attanasio and China Miéville as one of the best contemporary practitioners of a kind of imaginative literature that fuses the intellect of SF with the heart of fantasy.” —SciFi.com

  “Williams’s language is lyrical and elegant… . The dialogue has a patina of Britishness about it that adds to the feeling of other that permeates the book. The first in a series, Snake Agent set the pace for what will no doubt be an exciting and worthwhile series. I am looking forward to the next … Inspector Chen novel.” —Bookslut

  The Demon and the City

  “Like all of Williams’s work, this is a smooth, sharp read. She turns the conventions of good and evil on their ear and gives them a good sharp boot in the rear.” —Jay Lake, author of Mainspring

  The Iron Khan

  A Detective Inspector Chen Novel

  Liz Williams

  Contents

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  About the Author

  1

  The ghost horde swept out of the east, moving fast across the black sands. Standing on the rise, legs braced and bow drawn, Omi could see a train in the distance, racing over the desert toward Urumchi. The horde was moving faster than that, quite silent, though in life, Omi reflected, the hooves would have sounded like thunder on the stones. They were heading straight for him. His fingers tightened on the bow and he spoke, also silently, to the Buddha, thinking of those images which still swam out of the shadows of the caves so many miles to the east. The memory gave him courage.

  The horde was close enough now for him to see their faces. Not at all Chinese, though he knew that some with local blood had ridden under the Khan. Flat-faced men, black eyes below their topknots, which streamed like horse-tails from the back of their helmets. In the front of the horde rode the Khan, in armor the color of night: a man with a thin face, a narrow beard, all angles. He was riding hard up the slope and Omi drew back the arrow, thinking: Not yet, not yet—now! He fired. The arrow sang through the air but the Khan was coming, expressionless, as though he could not see the archer, but Omi knew he had come for this and he leaped forward, springing down the stones of the slope as the arrow sang on. At the last moment the Khan’s pony swerved. The arrow sailed by, nicking the Khan’s face. A single drop of dark blood flew out and Omi had the cup ready: he caught it. It sizzled into the metal cup and Omi snapped shut the lid. But the Khan had turned in the saddle with a bow of his own and as Omi met his blank night eyes the Khan, in turn, loosed an arrow.

  “Now!” Omi cried. “Make it now!”—and the desert was ripped away from under his boots into the shadows of a cave and a pair of huge, calm eyes, looking down at him.

  2

  “Missing?” Chen said, into the phone. Behind him, Miss Qi sat with neatly crossed legs, exuding a delicate perfume of cherry blossom. She sat up a little straighter at the tone of Chen’s voice. “When did you last see it?”

  On the other end of the receiver, a very long way away, Mhara the Emperor of Heaven answered, “A week ago. We had its annual honoring ceremony to celebrate the time of its writing, if one can say that. The Book wasn’t so much written, as wrote itself.”

  “You’ll have to forgive me,” Chen said. “I don’t know anything about all this.”

  “It’s kept as secret as possible,” Mhara explained. “Not even all the denizens of Heaven know that it’s a real text. You’ll meet people who think it’s no more than a creation myth.”

  Chen caught Miss Qi’s glance and, ever tactful, the Celestial warrior rose and glided from the room, closing the door behind her. “From what you’ve told me,” Chen said, “This isn’t so much a creation myth as a creation manual.”

  “Exactly. The words it contains are the blueprint for Heaven. If they’re tampered with—deconstructed—then Heaven itself could begin to unravel. Of course,” Mhara added thoughtfully, “there are those who might say that this is no bad thing.”

  After the loss of both of Mhara’s parents—an Emperor gone mad and an Empress turned wicked—Chen couldn’t blame him for those sentiments. “Things are stable now,” he reassured Mhara, “now that you’ve been crowned.”

  “Ruling has become somewhat more achievable than it initially appeared,” the current Emperor agreed. “At least, so I thought until yesterday. Then the curator appeared in a flat panic and told me that the Book was gone.”

  “And it’s definitely been stolen? Could it have—I don’t know—taken itself off? Does it have a will of its own?”

  There was a short pause on the other end of the line. “I don’t really know,” Mhara said slowly. “I’ve never heard anyone mention it. But often these magical artifacts have some degree of consciousness. What a depressing thought, that things might have become so lousy in its own creation that it’s removed itself.”

  “Is there any way we can find out?” Chen asked.

  Mhara sighed. “That’s why I called you. Sorry, Chen. I know you’ve got a lot on your plate at the moment …”

  Chen smiled. This was characteristic of Mhara: to be concerned, but also omniscient. In this instance, however, the Emperor of Heaven was simply being courteous. “I have got a lot to do. But it’s all good stuff, as well you know.”

  He could almost feel the Emperor’s smile. “Robin has spoken to Inari, I know. She told her that things are going well with the pregnancy.”

  “Yes, it’s been four months now,” Chen mused. He still couldn’t quite believe it. He’d always wanted a child, of course, but never thought it would actually happen. Humans and demons could breed, but it wasn’t always an easy process. And this child … well, they were all special, weren’t they? But it seemed that this child might be more special than most. Not a comfortable thought.

  “Inari has hopes,” he confided, “that this might bring herself and her family back together. Children often do reconcile warring relations.”

  “And what do you think?” Mhara was being very patient with him, as usual. A theft that could threaten the very foundations of the Celestial Realm and here was Chen waffling on about his family.

  “To be honest, I doubt it. I’ve seen rather too much of Hell’s attitude toward family life.”

  “How is Zhu Irzh?”

  “Actually, he’s fine as far as I know. Jhai had business in the Far West, so she’s out there now. Zhu Irzh chose to cash in some vacation ti
me and go with her. Spoke to him last night. Says there are some nice restaurants. But you didn’t call me to talk about all this, Mhara.”

  The Emperor of Heaven sighed. “I wish I had. Everyday life is so relaxing. It would be nice to have more of it.”

  “About this book,” Chen said. “I’ll do my best, you know that. I’ve got a fairly light caseload at the moment. For a change.”

  “In that case,” Mhara said, “could you come to Heaven for a day or so? To look at the scene of the crime?”

  “I’ll be glad to,” Chen said.

  *

  Later, the trip arranged, he walked with Miss Qi alongside the harbor wall. Out in the bay, the boats bobbed beyond the barriers of the typhoon shelter; it was autumn now, the air mercifully cooler after the summer’s steaming heat, with a salt breeze stirring up from the ocean. In a week or so, Chen knew, that breeze would grow stronger, heralding the storms that lashed at the south China coast. His son or daughter would be a winter child: it was not, Chen considered, all that surprising.

  “Jhai didn’t ask you to go west with her?” he asked Miss Qi now.

  “I’m on standby,” the Celestial warrior said. “I know I was hired as her bodyguard, but she said she just wanted to get away from it all for a bit.”

  Trust Jhai to think that the Gobi Desert was the ideal place to “get away from it.” But she was probably right.

  “Well, Inari appreciates you being around,” Chen said. His wife had suggested they ask Miss Qi to dinner that night and Chen had agreed. Their social circle had expanded since the worlds began opening up: a handful of years ago, Chen wouldn’t have been able to mention his otherworldly pursuits without people coughing nervously and heading in the opposite direction. Or phoning a psychiatrist. Just look at Sergeant Ma, whose view of the supernatural had started out as raw fear and now was close to resembling a healthy interest, or an unhealthy one, depending on how you looked at it. These days, they often entertained all manner of people and Chen had to admit that his wife had blossomed because of it, unless that was simply a product of the pregnancy. He hated to think how lonely she must have been in the earlier days of their marriage: separated from her admittedly vile relatives, torn from the only home she’d ever known, and living incognito in a city in which half the inhabitants couldn’t see her and the other half were likely to summon an exorcist as soon as she came into view. Sure, Inari had the badger to look after her, but the badger had his limits.

  But things were changing, as the presence of the quiet, pale warrior by Chen’s side attested to. Miss Qi looked up at the rose and turquoise of the evening sky and smiled.

  “It’s quite lovely sometimes, this human realm,” she said.

  Chen returned the smile. “It’s not as beautiful as Heaven, I’m afraid.”

  “Heaven can get a bit … cloying,” Miss Qi said, frowning as though she’d said something disloyal. “I never thought so until I lived here, and then I started looking at Heaven with a different eye. I suppose that’s what travel does.”

  “There’s a Western saying I heard in a movie once,” Chen told her. “‘You can’t go home again.’”

  “Well, you can go home,” Miss Qi said, “it just won’t be the same.”

  Perhaps she was right, Chen thought as they crossed the makeshift bridge of other people’s sampans to one of the little rowing boats that was used whenever the houseboat was moored further out in the harbor. Miss Qi took one oar, Chen the other, and they rowed the short distance to the houseboat. But it was certainly good to be coming home this evening, seeing the old-fashioned lamp that swung from the prow of the houseboat and the lights in the kitchen. A familiar striped shape was waiting at the top of the rope ladder.

  “Hello, badger,” Chen said. The badger grunted, bowing his head to Miss Qi. She’d learned not to try to pat him. Badger had been uncharacteristically patient.

  “Good evening, spirit of earth,” Miss Qi said. Badger preferred formality.

  “Good evening, warrior of Heaven. Mistress will be pleased that you’ve come.” The badger trundled inside.

  “You must be one of the only people I’ve ever met who has a badger for a butler,” Miss Qi remarked.

  Chen laughed. “He’s a little more than that.” They followed the earth spirit inside, to where Inari was bending over a steamer on the stove. Looking at her, one would never have known she was pregnant. Chen had not known what to expect of a demon gestation, and Inari had not reassured him by saying vaguely that it took all manner of forms. Much more helpful had been the explanation given by the midwife. They’d been very lucky in finding Mrs Wo: demon health professionals weren’t common in Singapore Three, even under the new and more relaxed immigration policies. Half of Heaven seemed to have decamped to the city after Mhara had insisted that his personnel take a greater role in human affairs, and all of them seemed to want to be healers. Well and good, thought Chen, but they’d all balked at treating a demon, even one who was a personal friend of the Emperor himself. It wasn’t a political issue, they’d taken pains to explain: it was simply that they lacked the relevant obstetrical knowledge.

  Then, one evening, he’d come out of the police station to find a hunched figure sitting on a bench in the shadows, veiled by an enormous hat. Chen had thought there was something odd about her at the time, and moments later, when he felt a tug on his sleeve and looked down into little green eyes, like chips of jade, set in a coal-black face, he realized that beneath the hat was a demon.

  “Sorry to trouble you,” the demon had said, gripping the handle of her capacious handbag, “but this might be of interest.”

  She proffered a large, ornate business card, on which the words Mrs Wo, Midwife were written in gold.

  “I have references,” Mrs Wo said. “I know you’ll be wary of trusting a demon. But you’ll need someone, at least, when the time comes.”

  Inari, when asked, had requested a meeting and she had, rather unexpectedly, taken a liking to Mrs Wo. Chen checked out the references with all the capability of a police department that deals extensively with Hell, and they were excellent. So Mrs Wo had been hired as a midwife to the Chen’s forthcoming child and, thus far, had proved invaluable.

  Now, Inari straightened up from the stove and smiled at Chen and Miss Qi.

  “It’s good to see you,” she said to the Celestial warrior.

  “Thank you,” Miss Qi said, gravely, and Chen watched with a quiet satisfaction as his wife served tea to their friend.

  3

  Urumchi was not an unpleasant city, Zhu Irzh thought as he stood on the hotel balcony. There was a park, situated on a greenly wooded hill, with a pagoda rising from it. Streams of morning traffic wound around the base of the hotel, some twenty floors below: the sound of distant horns floated up through the hazy air as impatient drivers utilized what Zhu Irzh had heard referred to as the “sixth gear.” Beyond the road, a jumble of restaurants and shops led to a bridge, and beyond all that, lay the endless dusty expanse of the steppes, and Central Asia.

  Zhu Irzh had never been so far west before, and somehow he’d expected it to be much more primitive than this thriving metropolis. But this part of the country had proved interesting. They had already been to an official dinner at a restaurant in the mountains, which rose up at the back of Urumchi in a massive, white-capped wall.

  And Hell was a little different here, too. He could feel it. It had appeared to him in dreams—a liminal space, the gap between the Chinese and the Islamic Hells, and the hint of something much older yet. These were not Han lands: the people here were Uighur, Turkish, as well as Chinese. They looked different. Their food was different. And their beliefs were different. It made Zhu Irzh feel slightly disoriented, as though the ground was literally changing beneath his feet. He’d not had cause yet to discuss this with Jhai, but he planned to. In the meantime, she was busy, here to discuss the construction of a new chemical plant out on the barren steppe. She was in a business meeting right now, leaving Zhu Irzh to en
joy the hotel. With that in mind, the demon realized it was now eleven o’clock, almost time for the bar to open. He slipped on a pair of sunglasses, to hide his eyes, and wandered downstairs. They’d know he wasn’t local, but hopefully they wouldn’t realize quite how local he wasn’t.

  The main lobby was occupied by a wedding. The bride, in full Western bridal gear that made her look like a gigantic cake, was nearly six feet tall. Behind her veil, the eyes that glided incuriously over Zhu Irzh were a bright green. Not at all Chinese, Zhu Irzh felt, with a pleasant frisson of being abroad. He headed into the plush red velvet opulence of the bar and ordered a local beer.

  Not bad. Looking at the range of wines featured above the bar made the demon feel provincial: he hadn’t realized quite how many vintages the Gobi and its environs produced. There had always been attempts throughout China’s long history, to encourage settlement out here. But no one wanted to leave the comforts of the east for this difficult and still dangerous land, a place where sandstorms scoured the desert and the land stretched red and black for miles. Not unlike Hell, really, but without the crowds. Reflecting on similarities, Zhu Irzh sipped his beer and watched the wedding party proceed into the dining area. Oh god. That was another thing to think about—his own wedding. Jhai had set the date for the following summer. It was to be a big affair, befitting the marriage of the stepson of the Emperor of Hell (China) and a scion of the royal family of Hell (India), not to mention Jhai’s role as a leading industrialist.

  Their mothers had been in close correspondence. That in itself was enough to strike fear into a demon’s heart. Mind you, Zhu Irzh thought, at the rate at which they had both been casting out family members, give it another few months and there wouldn’t be anyone left to invite.