Two Hundred and Twenty-One Baker Streets (22 page)

At first I thought my experiment was a failure. Although the Sherlock had shown a sharp and enquiring mind, as might be expected from a demon of its nature, it was unable to account for the thefts. Its failure frustrated it, and at last it confronted me, insisting that there must be some information hidden from it. “I cannot see any possible means by which this act has been accomplished,” it told me agitatedly, and I felt bitterly disappointed that I had nothing to show my master.

But then the demon went on, “Of course there must be some connection to the tin-trader who visited this place some months before, as every one of the victims confirms having dealt with her, and as the miniature animals that they purchased have been stolen along with their things of value. And yet the trader is long-departed, and unless there were some way for her geegaws to have come to life and accomplished the thefts themselves, I cannot see how her involvement is relevant. It is true that there are small marks and scratches on the shelves and altars where the valuables were on display, as of diminutive animal tracks. But all this is plainly impossible, so I discount it.”

I tried to explain to the Sherlock that these things were not impossible at all, and it eyed me sternly.

“Well then,
hypothetically
, that would be your solution,” it stated, “but they are impossible and so it cannot be.”

But it was. Even though it strained the credulity of a demon, it was.

T
HIS TIME
,
WHEN
the Sherlock manifested, matters were different. Each time before, the creature had appeared before me gripped by the fevers of the coca leaf, solving my puzzles detachedly, as an academic exercise. Now, when I called, the Sherlock almost fell at my feet. It is not uncommon for demons to fight each other in their own worlds, but I had not expected it of this cerebral monster. However, its garments were torn and it was bruised and sodden. For a moment I thought it would be no use to me, and despaired of ever finding another demon of its capabilities. However, it lifted its head and fixed me with its crystal gaze.

“So,” it said, looking on me and my surroundings. “One last time I am amongst the illusory Chinamen. But I have taken nothing, and this is no phantasy of my idling mind. Is this some relapse in mylast moments, to spare me from the pain?”

“O demon, but this is reality, such as it is,” I told it politely.

It looked at me with a wintry smile. “Why, if I believed that, I would be mad indeed. I remember my previous visions well, and there was nothing in them but nonsense: a fantastical reimagining of my real cases transfigured under the influence of the cocaine I used to fend off the tedium of inaction.” And I saw the smile freeze and fade. “And yet here I am.”

It swayed suddenly, and I thought that it would fall. “Have you been making war upon other demons?” I asked it solicitously.

“You could say that,” it murmured, closing its steely eyes for a moment. It seemed only a shadow of the haughty creature I had previously conjured and made use of.

T
HE ADVENTURE OF
the stolen heirlooms was too minor a matter to reach the ears of the Green Wizard, of course, but I next had cause to conjure the Sherlock when one of my master’s own servants met a suspicious demise. The deceased woman was a steward of one of Ang Tze’s retreats, a place where he often spent less guarded hours, and there was a concern her killer had gained secrets from her. As a junior magician in his service, I was tasked to find the truth. After bumbling about the retreat, questioning the other servants and getting nowhere, I despaired of solving the mystery on my own.

When the demon came, it was relaxed, with a sharp humour. It dismissed almost everything I told it, and informed me frankly that many things self-evident to me were impossible, up to and including my summoning of itself. Working with it was a belittling experience, but at the same time the eccentric keenness of its wits was unparalleled.

“If there was such a thing as this magic you describe, then simply discover the truth with a spell,” it suggested derisively. I was forced to explain that, of all magic’s many capabilities, the art is lamentably poor at uncovering mundane truth. Magic is a force drawn from the imagination. A man who scries for his future, or the deeds of his paramour, is more likely to see a scene drawn from his own suspicions than any objective reality.

The Sherlock found this deeply amusing, and remarked, “Yes, that is exactly as I would imagine the failings of sorcery to be, which only reinforces my certainty that all of this is a mere delusion. However, it is a delusion that offers me a conundrum and it so happens that my real existence is painfully devoid of any such at present, so let us solve this imaginary murder of yours.”

None of the other servants had seen anything, and the enchantments that kept the retreat spotless had removed any telltale clues, much to the Sherlock’s derision. The demon did raise an eyebrow when I explained that we could also interrogate the victim herself. I dutifully raised her ghost once more so that the Sherlock could hear her testimony: the story of a shadowy figure coalescing in the room with her, the icy fingers about her temples, the sense that understanding was being drawn from her. All these facts had filled me with a dread that I would have to report to the Green Wizard both that his secrets had been stolen, and that the culprits were unknown.

The Sherlock was undismayed, however. After questioning the ghost carefully, it informed me briskly that, whilst it had no wish to gain any understanding of witchcraft, it was clear on one thing: the account we had just heard was not that of the victim, but of the murderer itself! I was taken aback, but its logic was unassailable. The perspective of the ghost’s account had included various details the victim could not have observed.

Unmasked, the possessing demon within the corpse attacked us, but my defensive magics mastered it and I was able to deliver it to my master for deconstruction. Once again the assistance of the Sherlock had proved invaluable.

I
N THE MATTER
of the Blue Wizard, I was hard-pressed to focus the demon on the matter in hand. The idea that its surroundings might be as real—more real—than those it had hailed from became more and more oppressive to it. “This world of yours is madness,” it remarked, as I flew it to the ruin of Men Shen’s demesne in a chariot of bones. “How can anything be solved by deductive reasoning, in a world where every possibility is impossible?” Only reminders of its past successes would mollify it for a time, until a blackness of soul would arise in it again.

Still, the scene of devastation seemed to give it a fresh lease of enthusiasm, and I shadowed the demon about the great heap of broken stones, and stood before the petrified Blue Wizard, cringing from the expression that was Men Shen’s last legacy to the world.

The Sherlock quizzed me of what he called ‘suspects’ then, and so I explained to him that the statue had been one of the seven great wizard lords who ruled the known world. I set out the natures and characters of those who might have done the deed: Red, Ochre, White, Black and Golden. “One of these must have acted to destroy the Blue Wizard.”

“Unless it was your master.” The demon wagged a finger at me. “I do not know your insane and unreasonable magic, but from your description, not one of your great conjurors was a friend to this man. Your Green Wizard may just as easily be the perpetrator of this crime. Until eliminated by some logic of motive or opportunity, he remains a suspect. I would say
means
, also, but it is clear, by the madness of this place, that such means are commonplace. Is it really the case that your rulers sought to create stability by each of them possessing the power to annihilate the others, in the hope that mutual fear would keep them all in line? I cannot see such a system succeeding. Far better to disarm all, than go on building greater guns.” And, in response to my assertion that the system had served us well for millennia, it only pointed out, “Until now.”

And then it insisted that it would have to meet with my master.

M
Y RISE IN
the hierarchy of my master’s household is not entirely uncoupled from my use of the Sherlock at times of need. It is common for a magician of my stature to come to rely on certain demons whose strengths and capabilities are known, but my relationship with the Sherlock has always been unusual. I have found it hard to remember, when it has been conjured into the world, which of us is master, and which servant. No other demon has dismissed our true world as nothing but a trick of its own mind.

By the fourth summoning it had experienced enough of my world and my ways to gain confidence in its methods despite its disdain for magic. “Your sorcery may be absurd,” it would tell me airily, “yet there is an internal logic to the madness, just as one often finds with even the most demented lunatics of the asylum. They are adrift from the world, and yet within their heads there is a consistency of delusion which renders them predictable. So it is with your magic and, given that it is the creation of the underused portions of my brain, I would expect no less.”

And then it would turn to the matter in hand —in that case, I was tracking a monstrous demon hound which some renegade had unleashed in my master’s demesne, and which seemed to give the Sherlock even more cause to believe that all he saw had its origin within his own drug-twisted memories. And of course he examined the spoor, questioned the witnesses, enumerated the suspects, and without any grasp of the principles of magic, he read the true conjuror of the demon hound as clearly as if the villain had signed his name in bold characters on the creature’s forehead.

I
N BRINGING THE
Sherlock before Ang Tze I was dreadfully afraid that I had overstepped my place. It was not for a mere demon, after all, to question one of the great mage-lords, and I anticipated the Sherlock’s condescending manner would see both it and myself banished to some dungeon plane for a thousand years. The Green Wizard is wise, however, and the Sherlock demonstrated a deftness that, whilst it fell short of proper deference, at least demonstrated that the creature was used to standing before the demon lords of its own world without disgracing itself.

The Sherlock asked many questions about Men Shen, about the relations between the magi, and then about each of the ‘suspects,’ as he referred to my master’s peers. He had Ang Tze conjure up images of each: likenesses tainted, of course, by the Green Wizard’s personal feelings, so that each was decidedly less flattering than the original might have preferred.

“Well?” my master enquired politely of the demon. “My servant Wu Tsan speaks highly of your abilities, demon. Can it be that this... mere talk has enabled you to uncover which of my fellows murdered Men Shen?”

“Not as yet,” the Sherlock confessed. “This mere talk is doubtless a curious way to proceed, for one who has the power to remake the world in his image, but in this I have the advantage. I have never sought to remake the world in my image, but rather to understand others through the way they remake the world—albeit in a less literal manner than you might.”

The Green Wizard hunched forwards. “And what now, demon?” he asked.

“Now? Now I must speak to each one of your fellow lords,” the Sherlock told him, “and I judge your land similar enough to mine that this will not happen without your recommendation.”

The Green Wizard laughed as I have not seen him do for many moons. “Yes indeed,” he confirmed, “I shall send Wu Tsan to each of them, with you in his retinue, and I shall watch through his eyes as you strut before them, demon. I wish to see how they will react to this impertinence. Perhaps the one that destroys you shall be the murderer.”

The Sherlock only smiled thinly.

W
E SURVIVED THE
other interviews. I had not thought we would. Between the general animosity that exists between the great lords of the world—made worse by the fate of Men Shen—and the known arrogance of the Sherlock, I thought my fate surely sealed. My master would express his displeasure if I were slain, but he would not commence hostilities over one such as me.

And yet I lived, and I realised, as I watched the Sherlock perform before each of those terrible and powerful lords, that it had a hidden art for speaking plainly to the mighty. What the powers of its own world might have been, I cannot say, but I saw that the Sherlock had an art for manipulating and managing audiences with the great. As it spoke, its words were in turns provocation, suggestion, insinuation, redirection, so that each of the magi believed full well that they were masters of what was said and done, and yet I could see the Sherlock drawing from them the truths it sought, as if peering into their minds. They were all of them strongly warded against any magic that might seek to trawl their thoughts, but the Sherlock had none, and instead used their own natures against them, making them its accomplices in prying out what it wanted to know.

And at the end, after it had thoroughly interrogated Sun Gong the White—who could have annihilated us both just by opening his/her eyes—we returned to the demesne of my master and it informed me, “Now I am in a position to reveal to you who the villain is.”

My joy must have appeared on my face, but the Sherlock lifted a thin finger sternly and said, “but I will not, unless you provide a service for me. I am loath to concede even the veneer of reality to anything that I have seen of your world here, but if there is a chance that any of this exists outside of my own racing mind, then I have something I must ask.”

One does not perform services
for
demons; that is not what they are for. I could have used my powers and compelled the creature to speak. Perhaps I should have. I had an admiration for the Sherlock, though, grown from the many knots that it had elegantly unravelled for me in the past. “If it is in my power,” I told it, “then yes.”

S
OON AFTER
,
WE
were back in the shattered demesne of the Blue Wizard: the Sherlock and I, and also my master and his peers, the remaining mage lords standing mistrustfully together in one place. Soo Mi burned and Lu the Black glowered. Amyat Pre’s thick fingers turned over her many ornaments. The argent embers of Sun Gong’s eyes glimmered through her/his smoked glasses. The nameless Ochre Wizard stood still and lean, hands pressed together and eyes narrowed. And my master, of course, watched them all.