Snake Agent Page 15

  After a moment, which seemed eternally long to Chen, the goddess inclined her head. “What is to be done?”

  “Pearl has information. She overheard a conversation at the very moment of her death, between her father and an unknown person, and I believe she still remembers it, even though she doesn’t think she does. It is something that I believe to be of immense value to Hell—something that they have already gone to great lengths to retrieve. But I don’t know how to reach it.”

  “Very well,” said Kuan Yin, after a pause. “Then let us see what may be found.”

  Around them the temple began to melt and fade. Chen saw Lao’s startled face mouthing mute words before snuffing out like a blown candle. Chen was standing in someone’s bedroom.

  “Where am I?” Chen asked, and then he knew. He had been here before. This was Pearl Tang’s bedroom, in the now-vanished­ house. Behind and around him, Kuan Yin’s voice said, “You are within what remains of Pearl’s personality. When she sets foot upon the Celestial Shores, all this will be gone, but for now, all that is left of her consciousness is here. Search for what you need, but be swift. Dawn is coming, and I must send Pearl on her way.”

  It felt like being a burglar in someone else’s head. It felt like a violation, and Chen hated himself as he hastily rummaged through drawers and ransacked closets. He did not even know what he was looking for, only that it was not there. He turned books from their shelves, glancing quickly at unrevealing titles: most were of the teenage romance variety, and betrayed nothing. He looked under the bed: nothing. The coffee he had so recently ingested was making him twitchy and uncoordinated, and some part of his mind reflected that this was strange, since he wasn’t even in a real place at all. As he clambered to his feet, he heard the goddess say, “These are the last minutes, Chen. The sun is rising.” Chen opened his mouth to protest but as he did so he saw a strand of light reflected from something in the far corner of the room. It was a pearl: round and glowing, set upon a crimson cushion. Lunging forward, Chen snatched it up as the bedroom in turn faded away, sucked into the opening fabric of the universe. Chen had a glimpse of a place that made him cry out: a golden sky above glittering, diamond-blossomed trees, and the fragment of shadow that was Pearl Tang running among them until it was lost in the light. He opened his eyes. He was kneeling, breathing hard, on the cold stone floor of the temple of Kuan Yin, whose statue stood mute and remote above him. His hand was empty, but the knowledge represented by the pearl struck home with sledgehammer force. He knew, now, what it was that Hell had gone to such great lengths to conceal and seek out. And he knew, too, how vital it was that he should find not only Inari, but also Zhu Irzh.

  27

  The trouble with hell, Zhu Irzh reflected bitterly, was not so much the palpable miasma of evil (with which he was, after all, ingrained) but the bureaucracy. This was now the fifth hour he had spent at the Ministry of Epidemics, in the crowded queue for the Second Level Third Administrative Assistant’s Appointment Maker. At least after the third hour he’d managed to procure a seat, but the room was packed to bursting point and smelt of sickness and sweat. If he’d known that this was the best Dr So could do in the matter of contacts, he wouldn’t have bothered, though he had to admit that the doctor had at least provided him with the necessary documentation to get through the Ministry’s impressive iron portals.

  “Stop doing that!” the woman sitting beside him snapped. “It’s getting on my nerves!”

  Zhu Irzh gazed blankly at her. He hadn’t been aware of doing anything at all.

  “That.”

  Her small, pursed mouth opened and a tongue flicked contemptuously in the direction of his tail, which was tapping impatiently against the iron surface of the floor.

  “Sorry,” said Zhu Irzh as insincerely as he could manage. With studied insolence, he curled his tail around his knees and glanced at the clock. It was getting late, and he’d promised to take one of his girlfriends to the opera. It had to be the razor-tongued Ren Ji, he thought with a sigh; it couldn’t have been one of the others, the ones less likely to complain … The door of the appointment-maker’s office opened and a frail figure shuffled forth. After a fifteen-minute wait, the lamp above the door glowed briefly, and the next in line went through. Zhu Irzh realized he was tapping his tail again. This was absurd. Time to take matters into his own hands, he thought.

  “Excuse me,” he said to the woman sitting beside him. “But do you happen to know where the lavatories might be?”

  “Down the hall, on the left,” the woman said ungraciously.

  “Thanks. Would you mind keeping my place for me? I’ll only be a moment.”

  “Certainly not. You’ll have to join the back of the queue if you leave.”

  Grumbling convincingly, Zhu Irzh rose to his feet and pushed his way through the crowds to the door. Outside, he discovered that the queue extended down the hall, and was obliged to shove his way past a throng of muttering demonkind. This particular department of the Ministry was devoted to Hell’s own citizens, not to the souls of those humans who had died from disease, and the queue represented just about every affliction that the Ministry was wont to test-drive on the locals. Zhu Irzh saw the ravages of tsetse fever; bone rot; open-lung, and the disgruntlement of people who could not rely on the mercies of death to relieve them from their suffering. Silently, he gave thanks to his Imperial Majesty that his own family position protected him from this kind of thing, not to mention the health insurance that consumed a large portion of his monthly salary, but you never knew when misfortune might strike. Suddenly aware of the tenuousness of his position, Zhu Irzh slipped through the door of the lavatories.

  Inside, there were the usual stinking holes, and the floor was awash. Hissing with disapproval, Zhu Irzh twitched the hem of his coat out of reach and looked around him. One of the cubicles was occupied; he could hear the sound of prolonged retching. Another moment in here, Zhu Irzh decided, and he’d be coming down with one of those diseases so amply represented in the hallway. He stepped swiftly into a cubicle and closed the door behind him, then looked up.

  Set into the low ceiling was, as he had anticipated, a ventilation grill. It was unlikely to serve much of a purpose insofar as actual ventilation was concerned, since it was clogged with dust and grease, but Zhu Irzh was not worried about that. It was narrow, but he thought he could probably get through it; it wasn’t as though he was fat, after all. Reaching up, he hooked his talons in the wire of the grill and gave a sharp tug. Gripping the sides of the opening to the ventilation shaft, Zhu Irzh hoisted himself lithely upwards and pulled the grill shut behind him.

  Inside, the shaft was wider than he had expected, and extended in both directions. Unfortunately, Zhu Irzh had very little idea of the layout of the Ministry, but he did know that, like all Hell’s institutions, the highest levels were the most important. He therefore must find somewhere that led up. The shaft was too low for him to stand upright, but he could move faster in a crouch than on his hands and knees, and he was able to make reasonably rapid progress. He had been scuttling along for perhaps some fifteen minutes when he came upon yet another grill, set into the ceiling of the shaft. Not without difficulty, Zhu Irzh dismantled it, thereby dislodging a large rat that bolted into the shadows, its scaly body scraping against the metal floor. It left a faint trail of phosphorescence in its wake, and this proved helpful. Looking up, Zhu Irzh could see the tracks it had made in the upwards shaft, and although he was considerably larger than the rat, it was evident that there were rudimentary handholds in the walls of the shaft, provided by the grills which themselves led into other passages. Gritting his teeth, Zhu Irzh began to climb.

  It was not easy going, and Zhu Irzh was relieved when the upwards shaft finally came to an end. Clinging to the sides of the shaft, he hooked the nearest grill with his tail and pulled, then levered himself into the passage. By now, dust had made its way down inside his collar and between the scales on his back, making his spine itch uncontrollably. T
here was a rip in the skirts of his coat, and his hair was full of cobwebs. Closing his eyes, Zhu Irzh directed a careful, precise, and hopefully untraceable curse in the direction of the First Lord of Banking. Then he froze. He could hear voices.

  Very slowly, and as quietly as he could, Zhu Irzh inched forwards. The voices were muffled, but he could tell that one of them was female, and hissing in anger. Zhu Irzh hunched forwards until he was immediately above the source of the voices; here, too, a ventilation grill was set into the floor. Zhu Irzh peered through. He could not see the woman. He was looking down onto the top of a demon’s head, and he could see that its owner’s hair was combed carefully in long, black strands across a series of bald patches. The scalp revealed beneath was scabrous and flaking. Zhu Irzh once again thanked the fate that had seen him born into a family of scions of the Ministry of Vice. Plenty of interesting opportunities, and no hideously disfiguring diseases … He was unable to see the demon’s face which, he reflected with a grin, was probably just as well. He squirmed round, trying to get a glimpse of the woman.

  “You ought to be grateful,” the demon was saying with some hauteur. “After all, have I not been magnanimous enough to forgive you, bring you back to the bosom of your home and family, protect you from the justifiable wrath of the wu’ei, who would otherwise cast you down into the Lower Realms for your disgraceful conduct. Well, haven’t I?”

  An inaudible murmur: possibly assent, possibly not.

  “Come here,” the demon commanded. “And stop muttering.”

  There was a shuffling sound as the woman made her way forwards, which was, Zhu Irzh realized, a result of the fact that her ankles were shackled. Her head was bowed: he could see the top of her glossy dark hair (no bald patches there, Zhu Irzh noted with approval). He could even smell her perfume: something subtle and spiced, a breath of sweetness in the rank air of the Ministry, and he inhaled it with gratitude. Then she looked up at the demon, and though her face was twisted with contempt, Zhu Irzh saw that she was beautiful. Pale soft skin, cheekbones like razorblades, eyes like wells of blood. She was wearing an extra­ordinary garment, which looked as though it had once been a dressing gown but which was now in tatters, revealing the curves of her body. The demon reached out a mottled hand and drew it along the underside of her breast, pinching the nipple with sudden force. Zhu Irzh, ambushed fleetingly by sexual fantasy, swallowed, and shifted position slightly against the floor of the shaft. He felt uncomfortably like a voyeur. Not that there was anything wrong with that, he reminded himself. The woman spat out a single glowing spark and the demon jerked his hand backwards. The tang of singed flesh rose upwards and Zhu Irzh’s elegant eyebrows rose. She must be very angry indeed to do that, but given the circumstances, he couldn’t blame her. He wondered who she might be: she was clearly someone of breeding, which made the references to the Lower Realms somewhat puzzling. What could she have done to merit such punishment, and such forgiveness? His voice furred with rage, the demon beneath said, “I don’t have to tell you that you’ll regret that.”

  “I don’t care!”

  Zhu Irzh winced. So beautiful, so brave, and so reckless … He entertained an idle fantasy of sliding down through the grill, knocking the girl’s persecutor unconscious, and saving her from her own vile fate. In the fantasy, she fell to her knees in gratitude; winding her arms around his waist, her soft breasts pressing against his thighs, her mouth—Zhu Irzh blinked. This would not do. Whatever was happening in the room below, fascinating though it might be, was none of his business. Zhu Irzh tried to push the ever-present specter of sexual desire to the back of his mind and watched as the demon strode from the room, nursing his injured hand and leaving the woman to sink back onto the couch, her face defeated and weary. Surely, Zhu Irzh thought, all this could have nothing whatsoever to do with the matter on which he had come to the Ministry. Getting embroiled with this situation would cause nothing but woe, however beautiful the woman might be, however desirable … If he had any sense, he would move swiftly and quietly onwards. With that sensible thought well out of the way, Zhu Irzh pulled aside the grill and dropped into the room.

  28

  Lao stared at Chen in amazement. “Are you sure?” he said for the fourth time. Chen did not bother to speak; he merely nodded, wearily. “Well, that’s bloody ambitious, I must say. Even for Hell. I told you letting that demonic vice cop hang around was bad news.”

  “I don’t think it has anything to do with Zhu Irzh,” Chen said, propelled reluctantly to the demon’s defense. “He was as much in the dark as we were, remember, unless he’s a spectacularly good liar.” Somehow, recalling Zhu Irzh’s limpid golden eyes, Chen did not think that this was the case. “It’s the Ministry of Epidemics.”

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  “I’m not sure what I can do. I could alert Heaven, via that one.” Chen gestured towards the motionless figure of Kuan Yin. “In fact, I think I already have.” He dimly remembered Kuan Yin’s presence hovering at his shoulder in Pearl’s spectral bedroom. “But Heaven plays by its own rules.”

  “A sort of Prime Directive,” Lao mused. Catching Chen’s puzzled glance, he said, “American television show. Science fiction. Oh, never mind.”

  “Heaven likes humans to do its dirty work for it, quite frankly. Anyway, as you are aware, I am not exactly in Kuan Yin’s good books at the moment and I don’t want to push my luck. Besides which, I think there’s a good chance she actually knows about all this already. As I just said, Heaven plays by its own rules. I’ll have to tell the medical services here, but there’s always the problem of being believed. People never want to see what’s under their noses, especially where Hell’s concerned.”

  “The Minister of Health’s an atheist,” Lao remarked. Chen snorted.

  “The Minister of Health’s in pathological denial. We’ll do what we can at this end.”

  “How do you start working on an antidote for a disease that doesn’t even exist yet?” Lao remarked.

  “It’ll exist soon enough,” Chen replied grimly. He recalled the pearl: that gem of information snatched from the mind of a girl already dead, remembered the shock as he grasped its meaning. It came back to him now, that fragment of conversation between Pearl’s father and the demon who had come to watch her die, echoing in Pearl’s own whispering voice:

  Your sacrifice won’t be in vain. The Ministry of Epidemics is making a plague: one that will kill millions. They need blood. They need blood, and the souls of the innocent. Human blood and innocent souls, to make a drug that takes demons into Heaven.

  And there the fragment of memory had ended. Chen stood up, feeling light headed with too little sleep and the shock of revelation.

  “What now?” Lao asked.

  “I’m going to call the precinct, tell Captain Sung what I think is going on. I’m also going to e-mail Zhu Irzh, if the bioweb’s working.” He took out his phone and began tapping characters onto the screen.

  “The demon? That’s a bit of a risk, isn’t it? What if he’s involved?”

  “He’s not working for the Ministry, I’m sure of that. Pearl seemed convinced that the Ministry of Epidemics is working independently from the rest of Hell—that’s why they wanted this kept so quiet. And Zhu Irzh could be a useful contact, especially if we give him information.” He watched, holding his breath, as the connection was finally sustained and the e-mail vanished into the ether between the worlds. “As far as Singapore Three is concerned, apart from yourself, there’s one person here who can be trusted to notify the relevant authorities and get the city on full alert. And that’s No Ro Shi.”

  “The demon-hunter? Actually, that’s brilliant. He’s well connected, highly motivated, and he doesn’t give a shit about what anyone thinks of him.”

  “No Ro Shi can handle things much better than I can,” Chen said, picking up his jacket. “And since I won’t be here, he’s the ideal replacement.”

  “Since you won’t be here? Where are you going?”
Lao asked, and then realization dawned. His face grew even longer with dismay. “Oh.”

  “Well,” Chen said. “Where do you think?”

  29

  Inari watched hopelessly as Dao Yi strode angrily from the room, clutching his wounded hand. She could still taste the sparks of rage and fear between her teeth, but this time she swallowed them. She had done a stupid thing, hurting Dao Yi like that. She remembered his face, mottled and dappled with sores and flushed with fury, and winced. But if he hadn’t touched her like that … she remembered Chen’s gentle, considerate hands and the anger came flooding back. If it was a question between being Dao Yi’s low­liest wife and getting summarily dispatched to the Lower Realms, the latter option seemed almost enticing. Perhaps she should take her chances with the wu’ei after all, now that the worst had happened and the Ministry had kidnapped her back to Hell … At this thought, there was a rattle from the direction of the ceiling and a shower of dust and grime. Inari jumped, as though the very idea had summoned up the wu’ei, but it was a demon like herself who dropped into the room.

  Inari’s first thought was to wonder why the demon was covered in filth. She had rarely seen anyone dirtier, and his coat was torn. Beneath the dust, however, his face was carved into elegant planes and his eyes were as golden as fire. He said, “Madam? It’s plain that you’re not where you wish to be.”

  “Too right,” Inari quavered, not yet daring to hope.

  “In that case,” the demon said, “there is a way out, but I warn you, it isn’t altogether pleasant.”

  “I can see that,” Inari remarked, eyeing the demon’s disheveled form. He glanced down in evident embarrassment.

  “We’ll need to free you from those shackles,” he said. “What’s your name, by the way?”

  Inari thought quickly. She didn’t want to reveal her true identity, in case this character remembered the old scandal and decided to use her as a pawn in further blackmail. She said hastily, “My name’s Leilei.”