Precious Dragon Read online

  “And we might have gone with it,” Mrs Pa said, shivering at the recollection. “Inari, I was so stupid. I panicked.”

  “Oh, Mrs Pa,” Inari said, visibly shocked. “Don’t blame yourself. You were confronting a demon that was trying to kill you. You didn’t see me on the houseboat. I’m a demon myself and I very nearly ran and hid under the bed. If it hadn’t been for Precious Dragon, I would have done. I’m no warrior.”

  “I nearly got Precious Dragon hurt,” Mrs Pa said. Even the most supernatural of children might injure themselves falling out of a tree. But her grandson shook his head.

  “I was perfectly safe, grandmother. I was more worried about you.”

  “If we all look after each other,” Inari said firmly, “Then we will be all right.”

  “It’s nearly light,” Mrs Pa said. “How long was I unconscious?”

  “Only a few minutes,” Inari said. “It was nearly dawn when the demon came.”

  Across the glade, the badger turned. “And twilight when they came the last time.”

  Inari frowned. “The bleed-times between day and night. They seem to appear then.”

  “And they may come again at noon,” the badger said, “Or midnight. The high and the balance points of the day.”

  “We should try to get to the temple before noon, then,” Inari said. “Just in case.”

  She made Mrs Pa rest for a few minutes until they were sure that she was well enough to move. Then they set off along the woods of the shore, with the badger scouting ahead and Inari bringing up the rear.

  “I am so sorry,” Mrs Pa said over her shoulder. “If it wasn’t for Precious Dragon and myself and our problems, you’d be waking up on your own boat and thinking about nothing worse than breakfast.”

  Inari laughed. “Mrs Pa, given where I come from, and given my husband’s job, there’s always something. If it wasn’t you and Precious Dragon then believe me, it would be something else. And to be honest, although we’re in danger and I don’t like that, helping other people makes me feel useful.”

  “You are helping us,” Mrs Pa said. She reached out and squeezed Inari’s hand. Inari took her arm and supported her. It was now quite light, with the rim of the sun just starting to come over the tops of the skyscrapers across the harbour. As they left the trees and set foot on the shore road, Mrs Pa looked back at the houseboat. It rocked gently in the middle of the harbour, with nothing out of the ordinary about it. But the sight of this peaceful scene made Mrs Pa shudder all the same and she was glad when they reached the end of the harbour road and made their way into the maze of alleys that was the southern end of Ghenret.

  “Do we have to walk all the way?” Mrs Pa asked. “Couldn’t we catch a tram?”

  Inari sighed. “You can, but I can’t. After the problems last year, the city’s governors put a block on public transport—if I set foot on it, I’ll set off an alarm. Then I’d be arrested and the police department would find out my connection with Chen. But Mrs Pa, if you want to, you go on ahead without the badger and myself. I don’t want to make you walk all that way.”

  “I’d rather we stuck together,” Mrs Pa said. “I’d feel safer. Anyway, I don’t know where this temple is. Is it difficult to find?”

  “It’s not very easy, I’m afraid. I suppose we could put you in a taxi.”

  “I don’t have enough money for a taxi all the way across town. It’s miles and miles. Do you have any?”

  “No,” Inari said, frustrated. “I left the boat in such a rush, I didn’t pick up my bag.”

  “Then we’ll keep together. I don’t mind walking.”

  Inari pointed upwards, to a block that towered over the shanties and roofs. A red bird blazed across it and some of the scaffolding was still up.

  “Paugeng,” Inari said. “My husband’s police partner is going out with Jhai Tserai.”

  “He must be a very brave young man,” Mrs Pa mused. “Although I suppose he is a demon.”

  “He’s either brave or foolish,” Inari said. “But one might say the same about Jhai. I wish I felt able to trust her. But I just can’t. This might sound strange, coming from me, but she’s had too many dealings with Hell.” She lowered her voice when she spoke about Jhai, Mrs Pa noticed, and understood why. The companies had ears everywhere.

  “I heard so many rumours, when there was all that trouble with the feng shui place,” Mrs Pa said. “But this city is full of rumours and it’s hard to know what to believe sometimes. Wasn’t Jhai supposed to have been behind that goddess who went mad?”

  “It was a bit more complicated than that,” Inari said. “But she did kidnap the Celestial Emperor’s son and do experiments on him.”

  “But that’s terrible! And she got away with it?”

  Inari grimaced. “I think they struck a deal. That’s the trouble. Sometimes Heaven can be as cold as Hell. It’s all a question of diplomatic negotiation.”

  “And this poor experiment is the person—the being—whom we are going to see?”

  “That’s right. Maybe he’ll tell you about it himself.”

  “I should have thought,” said Mrs Pa, “That it was something he’d be keen to forget.”

  They were trying to keep out of sight as much as possible, walking as quickly as they could beneath the shadows of shop awnings and away from the main streets. Most of the folk whom they passed paid no attention to Mrs Pa: just a little old lady out for a walk with her grandson. But sometimes Mrs Pa saw a head go up and the person would stare sharply at Inari, then down at the shambling black shape of the badger. Once, the badger hissed, displaying sharp yellowing teeth, and the man who had come too close backed hastily away.

  “We’re too visible,” Inari murmured. “If anyone asks, they’ll know that we passed this way. But there’s no other way to get to the temple.”

  “At least it’s morning,” Mrs Pa said. “If this was night time we’d be in even more danger and not just from demons.”

  Inari nodded. “People think that where I come from is Hellish. But this city, sometimes, seems far worse to me. Demons don’t have much choice to be as they are but even then some of us prefer to do the right thing and not the wrong. But humans all have a choice, and so many of them choose wrongness.”

  “It’s just the way it is,” Mrs Pa said. “All you can do is go your own way and not worry about other people.”

  But that, she thought, was easy for her to say: Inari had fewer options.

  By late morning, they had left the reconstructed Paugeng building far behind. The dome of the Opera House rose now above the tiles. Inari stared at it uneasily. They were entering the Pellucid Island district, one of the more bohemian quarters of the city and a place where Mrs Pa only ever went to undertake cleaning work.

  “My husband was attacked near here the other night,” Inari said. “You hear stories about the Opera House, too. I’ll be glad when we’re on the other side of the city.”

  Mrs Pa agreed. She bought three boxes of noodles from a street-side café, no more than a cluster of children around an iron wok, and consulted Inari about the badger’s requirements. She did not want it to feel left out, but she need not have worried. The badger ran off behind the café, returned with a squealing rat, which it devoured headfirst.

  “He prefers meat,” Inari explained.

  “I like insects,” the badger said, through a mouthful of rat.

  “At least he can fend for himself,” Mrs Pa said.

  By mid afternoon they were more than two thirds of their way across the city, through Pellucid Island and Shaopeng, skirting Barulay and Peng Ti.

  “Are you all right, Mrs Pa?” Inari said. “You can still take the tram if you want.”

  But it was Precious Dragon who answered. “We are safer together,” the little boy said. “Even if you are not a warrior, Inari, we are still safer.”

  “I don’t quite see how,” Inari said. “I’m getting a little worried. It’s not all that long until twilight and you’ve got blisters,
Mrs Pa.”

  “Nothing happened at noon,” Mrs Pa said hopefully.

  “No. But maybe badger is wrong. Maybe it’s not the high points of the day, but only the in-between times that we need to watch out.” She pointed to the sun, now sinking down between the distant tower blocks of Ghenret. “Another hour and a half, and it’ll be gone.”

  “Let’s keep going,” Mrs Pa said. “As quickly as we can.”

  But whatever Precious Dragon might really be, he was still in the form of a small boy and small boys cannot walk for miles across the hard streets of a city, not without a break. So Inari, belying her fragile appearance, had been carrying him for the last hour or so. And Mrs Pa, as Inari had correctly observed, did indeed have blisters. Her feet burned with every step; even in the comfortable old slippers that she used for cleaning, she was not used to walking so far. Nearly there, she told herself, as though she was the small child and not Precious Dragon. Nearly there.

  And it was true. As the sun sank further, with every hurting step, they were drawing closer to the temple and Mrs Pa kept herself going by imagining what it would be like. Inari had told her that it had been ruined but was in the process of being restored, and she envisaged it as being a little like the temple in which she had first learned about Mai’s marriage. Big statues of the gods, fierce with their swords, a stone floor, a courtyard beneath a curling tiled roof. A large, once-splendid place. It must be, if it was dedicated to the son of the Celestial Emperor. There was a temple to the Celestial Emperor himself, after all, and that was enormous. She had been there only once for its inauguration, many years ago now, and she had only been permitted to enter the outer precincts, along with all the other ordinary people, as the elite of the city filed through in their magnificent robes into the inner courts. This place must be very similar.

  So when they came up onto the crest of a hill, to see the downtown area stretching behind them to the harbours, and the hillside suburbs before, Mrs Pa was surprised to hear Inari say “There it is,” and point to a ramshackle little building on a slight rise some distance away. The building was covered in vines, glowing golden in the sunset, and even from this distance it looked as though part of the roof had fallen in.

  “Is that really it?” Mrs Pa asked, disappointed, and Inari said, “Why, yes. The most powerful places are not always the largest.”

  “Is that so?” Mrs Pa said. The idea had not really occurred to her before and she was not sure that she agreed. She looked back. Paugeng’s red bird floated above the other towers of the downtown area, highest of the high. She knew that this was power. It did not seem equivalent to the tumbledown place before them.

  “We need to hurry,” Inari remarked, with an anxious look back at the sun. Its lower rim was touching the sea now, casting a gilded path across the waves that seemed to flow right across the city and catch the little temple.

  “I’m going as fast as I can,” Mrs Pa said. The blisters had burst now, and she could feel the wetness in her shoes. Every step was like walking on needles. Inari’s free hand was grasping Mrs Pa’s arm, but the other was holding onto Precious Dragon. A normal boy would have been asleep by now, head lolling on the grown-up’s shoulder, but Precious Dragon was staring out across the city with narrowed eyes. Beyond the temple, beyond the point where the built-over foothills started to rise and climb, the light was already dying over the mountains and they were purple and darkness.

  Nearly there, nearly there. They were hastening now down a narrow street where the stalls mainly sold cooking wares: pots and woks and steamers. Mrs Pa looked at the things hanging up on hooks, the burnished kitchenware, to try to take her mind off her feet. Now that they had come down from the rise, the temple was only just visible on its slight hill, the shattered vine-covered roof a glimpse through the awnings and tiles. Nearly there—but then Inari cried out and the badger growled and Mrs Pa turned to see the thing coming fast over the rooftops, leaping across the tiles like a great black ape, its curling mouth set in a red needle grin and its eyes two glittering black lenses. Twilight was falling and the demons had found them.

  29

  Blinded by unexpected radiance, Chen stood blinking in the vast hall of the Ministry of Lust like a foolish owl. Zhu Irzh grabbed him by the arm and dragged him behind a nearby column. As his vision cleared, Chen saw that it was a twirling pink spiral of meat, pulsing in the same unwholesome rhythm as the tunnel through which they had just come. That was when he realised what he had hitherto been only dimly unconscious of: the Ministry was alive.

  “This row of columns leads to this passage, see?” Underling No was explaining. Chen peered over her shoulder at the map and saw that the huge circular space in which they now stood was clearly depicted.

  “Where are we?” he asked.

  “This is the main Ministerial chamber of Lust,” Zhu Irzh said. “They’re on recess now, lucky for us.”

  “I don’t see any seats,” Chen said.

  Underling No shot him a curious glance, which Chen thought he could interpret as embarrassment. “It’s not that sort of Ministerial chamber.”

  Any explanations that might have been forthcoming were abruptly cut off by the sound of footsteps. Chen and his companions kept very still. Peering cautiously around the side of the pillar, Chen saw that two female guards were walking past: both tall, willowy demons clad in the minimum of clothing and carrying spears. One of them stared suspiciously at the pillar from emerald compound eyes, but neither of them stopped.

  “I think we need to get out of this chamber,” Zhu Irzh murmured.

  “Does the Ministry itself know we’re here?”

  “Actually, I doubt it, although it probably knows that we’re walking about on it. I don’t think it can tell who we are, though, or that we don’t belong to it.”

  “Is it sentient?”

  “Not really, as far as I understand it from Daisy. It’s apparently highly sensual, but not capable of much actual thought. I mean, if you think about the function of the Ministry, and the bits to which it corresponds—”

  “Are you telling me that we’re standing in some kind of semi-aware testicle?”

  “Basically, yes, in a manner of speaking. Or a kind of womb.”

  “I don’t know why,” said Chen, “But I don’t find that nearly as repulsive.”

  Zhu Irzh shrugged. “You can see the Ministry personnel as being sperm or eggs, or both.”

  “I hesitate to ask,” Chen said, “But where do we go now?”

  “Upstairs. From this map, and from what Daisy’s let slip, the upper storeys of the Ministry are where the cells are. It’s sort of spongy upstairs, like a hive.”

  “Where does the Minister actually have his office?”

  “Ah,” Zhu Irzh said. “Here, I see we have a misunderstanding. The Minister of Lust is a woman.”

  “It hasn’t always been the case,” Underling No said earnestly, suddenly regaining her equal opportunities hat. “The previous Minister of War was female, one of our greatest warriors. And the Minister of Lust was a man.”

  “It tends to go in opposites,” Zhu Irzh said. “Traditionally, they’re said to complement one another. Doesn’t really bear thinking about.”

  He began to walk along the rows of columns, which grew closer together and more intertwined as they went on, until Chen had to duck beneath sticky pink tendrils. Eventually the web became too close and cloying and they were forced to step out into the main hall again, first checking to see that no one was in sight. Chen felt very small and vulnerable in the enormous cavity of the central hall, and he hastened after Zhu Irzh and Underling No with all possible speed until they reached the point indicated on the map and could dive into another narrow passage. Here, there were more of the mauve fungi, but the Ministry at this point appeared blighted and rotten, for the fungi were covered with weeping yellow sores.

  “Lust and Epidemics had a disagreement some years ago,” Underling No whispered. “Epidemics released a sexually transmitted disease o
n the Ministry of Lust. Hundreds of people are still in the lower levels, it was a terrible thing. The Ministry itself almost collapsed but they found a cure.”

  “A not entirely successful one, though,” Zhu Irzh added. He nodded towards the blighted fungi. “That’s the result.”

  “I’ve always wondered whether my mother was one of those affected,” Underling No said. Her face grew fierce. “If I can find her—”

  “We’ll help as much as we can,” Chen said firmly. “But we need to find Qi first.”

  They made their way past the livid fungi and towards the end of the passage. The map was correct. A flight of what passed for stairs led upwards: short, yielding steps formed from a kind of membrane, lit by the same phosphorescent light that Chen had seen in the first tunnel. They climbed, feet sinking into the membrane. It felt very unstable, as though at any moment the stairs might give way and precipitate them downwards. Chen saw Zhu Irzh disappear through an opening in the ceiling above, and moments later, he was able to follow.

  Here, the passages through the Ministry of Lust were extremely narrow, obliging even Chen to bend his head. The Ministry was also hot and now sweat was streaming down Chen’s neck and causing his shirt to cling clammily to his spine. Zhu Irzh remained as cool as ever and it was hard to tell whether Underling No’s thick crimson skin was overheating or not. Chen kept glancing back, expecting to see one of the insect-eyed women close behind, but the passage remained mercifully empty.

  “We’re not far from the cells, according to the map,” Zhu Irzh said over his shoulder. “Should be there in a minute.”

  “We’ll need to watch out for guards, in that case,” Chen reminded him.

  But when they came to the cell area, they found that it was not as they had thought. As Chen and Zhu Irzh peered around a gristly outcrop, they saw that the first cells—small cavities in the wall of the Ministry—were decaying. The flesh of which they were formed had turned to a greyish green and there was a strong smell of rotting fish. Zhu Irzh wrinkled his elegant nose and Chen clapped a handkerchief to his mouth to prevent himself from retching. There was no one in sight.