Shadow Pavilion (10 page)

23

H
e had fought dogs before, on the streets of Hell, and he knew that location was everything. Rather than fight these hounds on the palace steps, badger turned and bolted, heading for the cover of the bushes. As he wheeled around, he saw the palace for the first time in its entirety: a sprawling crimson building, lacquer gleaming like blood, the white marble pillars standing out like stripped bone.

There was a stand of hibiscus at the far end of the grass. The badger made for it, as fast as his short legs would carry him. He felt a hot breath on his hind paws, just as he reached the shelter of the bushes. These plants had spines. Badger was used to that, but he did not think the dogs were. A wailing yell from behind him confirmed this opinion. Badger pushed through the undergrowth, which became increasingly dense, snuffling and snorting, sounding out the ground beneath. Somewhere, there was a hollow­ness, and this could only be a good thing. But the hounds were not far away; he could hear them whining, running parallel to his own course, presumably on the far side of the bushes. Soon, there would be a place at which they would break through.

And sure enough, it came, just as the badger stumbled out into a small clearing. There was a hole!—badger's spirit soared, but it also meant that the ground was uneven, the hibiscus less dense, and a black scaled head was even now bursting through the scarlet blossoms. It was too close; badger could not risk a leap for the hole and so he turned, growling.

The dog snapped, a teasing play.

“There are four of us, little demon. And only one of you. So we will take it in turns, before we rip you apart.”

“I have something to tell you,” badger replied. The dog put its great head on one side, the clever, fierce eyes glittering.

“And what might that be?”

“This,” the badger said, and sprang. His jaws closed around the dog's nose, biting through the thin scales and rewarded with a scalding spray of blood. The dog screamed. Badger curled up, bringing heavy hind paws under the dog's chin, and tore out its throat. The dog crashed to the ground, just as the others charged through the bushes. Teeth grazed the badger's shoulder, he spun around, snapped, missed, snapped again, and locked molars onto an ear. The dog jerked, frantically.

“Stay
still,
stupid bitch!” a canine voice instructed. Again, the badger felt the graze of teeth and used the momentum of the dog's own movements to whip to and fro. Up and over, landing on the dog's back and biting through her spine. A dreadful howling filled the clearing, and badger, finally, was in reach of the hole. He jumped, turned, and backed down it, hoping with some desperation that it was deep enough. His last view before the spice of unfamiliar earth swallowed him was of two snarling heads, with the whining ghosts of the slain hounds close behind. But they were too big to fit down the hole. Badger slithered further, wriggling and scraping, turned a bend, and they were out of sight.

Earth. It was not the soil in which he had been born. That had been black and crumbling, a nourishing loam which had brought badger forth, forming him out of its own substance, reaching deep within itself to draw up metals, forging him in the furnace roar, only dim now but still a tumult of light and fire in memory, making him dual-aspected, teakettle and badger. Earth had told him secrets of itself: where it was hollow, where dense, the long, slow stories of stone, the hard, bright tales of metal. Badger, having learned, had then been ejected: spat out onto an immense slope of hillside. Looking up, he had seen the volcanic cone rising behind him: a mountain, a deity, its world-filling presence still recognizing the small spirit of a badger demon, reaching out and down while badger cowered against the ground, wishing earth would swallow him and take him back. The presence, Fujiyama, sweeping over and out and gone and leaving the cone—far larger than its counterpart in the human realm—shining snow-pale against a rosy sky.

He had wandered after that, exploring this new world of over-ground, encountering others,
kappa
and
miko,
things that tried to bind him and things that tried to kill him, to dispatch him to the lower levels of this particular Hell. And finally, one had succeeded: badger swept up in a net, a shout of triumph, a sorcerer with bones rattling from his hat who cut badger down and shackled his feet, then took him Elsewhere, fleeing between the worlds to a mansion in China-Below. Several spells later, there was badger: indentured to an august family. He minded, at first, but there was a baby to protect and badger discovered that he did, after all, have a sense of purpose and duty, if not much of a heart.

Mistress
. Unprotected, somewhere far away. This would not do. Resolute, badger scrambled around into the narrowing passage. But he could sense that the tunnel went on. Badger started digging.

Distance was easy, time was not. He had traveled some way: a few hundred yards before the tunnel opened out again. There was even a crack of daylight in the ground above, a slot widening into over-ground. Badger was very cautious. These gardens had been made, it was not wild ground, and that meant there was an even greater chance of them being fully known and mapped. He did not want to burst back into the above to find the dogs waiting. He proceeded with great care, smelling, listening, waiting. But he could not scent the dogs and he knew them by now: a rank, musky odor like a long-buried bone, and it occurred to him that this was what they were: summoned up, flesh magicked onto old ivory.

Over-ground was a surprise, when he eventually poked his nose into it. The gardens were gone, or seemed to have done. This was forest: wild, a high canopy filled with chattering, sharp-toothed creatures and flashing birds.

Interesting, thought badger. In his own Hell, distance did not mean very much: it was fluid, mutable, unlike the fixed spans of the human realm. You could turn a corner and find that you had come five hundred miles. From badger's admittedly limited experience, most Hells seemed to be similar. So perhaps he had already come a great distance from the gardens of the tigresses' palace. And perhaps not. Better be careful.

Badger listened, but the only sounds around him were those of this unnatural realm. It was hard to know what to do, other than to begin walking and hope that there would be a portal to somewhere else. All worlds were linked, but only at certain points unless one was particularly gifted in traveling between them: the gods, for instance, were better at this than most people, but one would expect that. Badger, not even a small god, had no such talents. He snorted, and trundled on.

24

I
nari sat bolt upright. Beside her, Chen lay in peaceful slumber: a tidy sleeper, his hands rested together on a gently rising chest. Clearly, he had made no sudden movement that might have startled her into wakefulness. Yet she was awake, with no idea as to what time it might be, nerves jangling, her head filled with a black pressing presence.

What is the matter with me?
Inari thought. A glance at the clock revealed that it was close to midnight. She lay back, but calmness would not come and sleep was out of the question. She reviewed the events of the previous day—the same day? The last few hours blurred and merged in her mind, running like water. They had eventually left the police station—Inari had managed to sleep in a chair in a side office, but Chen had been working throughout—and come home to no badger, no demon, and a subdued supper. Chen had also been compelled to explain to his captain that he'd illegally married a demon from Hell.

“He took it very well, considering. Said that since my second-in-command was demonic and we'd managed to save the city a couple of times, the climate had changed somewhat. Besides, he
sent
me to Hell a few months ago on that ridiculous equal ops thing, so he didn't have much ground for complaint. Suggested we go to dinner with him and Mrs Sung. When things calm down a bit.”

So that secret, which they had guarded so long and with such care, had fizzled out on revelation like a damp firecracker. Just as well. Inari had had enough drama.

Things might have gone relatively well at the precinct, but there was the whole shameful issue of the shaman to consider. No Ro Shi had really been very nice to her, but she didn't deserve it. What a stupid thing to have done—well, allowed to happen. She should have known better. Hadn't she grown up in Hell, surrounded by magic? Hadn't she traveled through the lower levels, visited Heaven? She was a woman of the worlds now, no longer the fragile young girl whom Chen had been obliged to rescue—and yet some
…
magician …
had snapped his fingers and off she'd trotted, like an obedient ghost.

Weakness. Her mother would have blamed that human blood, that taint, but Inari thought of the humans she knew, who had fought dark magic so bravely, and she could not fall back on prejudice. She would not make excuses for herself. She would not sleep, either. Quietly, so as not to disturb the slumbering Chen, Inari got out of bed and padded into the main cabin to make tea.

It was very quiet. Outside, a gentle tide slapped against the sides of the houseboat, making it rock. Inari took a cup down from its secure place behind the little rail and set it on its stand on the table, before putting the kettle on. That reminded her of badger and she clenched her fists against the tabletop: demons find it hard to cry. Badger had been by her side all her life, the family familiar; she was not even sure where he had come from. Her mother had been vague on the subject. He was not a Chinese demon, but a spirit from across the water, and once, on coming to Earth, Inari had offered to set him free from bondage.

Demons find it hard to smile, too. Badger had refused.
I could break this spell at my own choosing, Mistress. It is duty that keeps me by your side.
She understood what he meant by that and she had been more grateful than she could say.

She looked at the teakettle; a small antique one that had belonged to Chen's late mother. It was boiling now, steam whistling through its spout, and she reached out to turn off the burner. As her finger flicked the switch, the kettle subsided, but steam continued to pour out of its spout, billowing out around Inari as though she had stepped into a cloud, its soft heat filming her skin beneath her silk night-robe. Inari stood very still, her hand still reaching toward the stove. A world was coming toward her and she did not want to disturb it. Somewhere far within, a despairing voice cried:
weakness
—but it was swallowed in the drifts of mist, as the shadow-world came closer yet, and gently drew her in.

She could see again; the mists were lifting, surging up into the heights of the rocks. Inari stood in a monochrome landscape: sharp black rocks, white sand, gray shadows. A bleak place, not without its own stark beauty. Ahead, at the end of this enclosed valley, the gap in the rocks opened up like a missing tooth, revealing a distant pass. Just before that, she saw a pagoda, an elegant structure, somehow difficult to see. It was easier to glimpse it out of the corner of one's eye, coming into sharper focus then, its curls and angles decorated with the crescent moon.

Wind lifted white sand and sent it skittering across the valley floor. Inari knew that this was not Hell, but if not there, then where? It certainly wasn't anywhere on Earth—the pagoda was proof of that—but it was too austere for Heaven, unless it was some kind of Zen minimalist version.

Not far away, something rattled.

Inari whipped round. Her whole body felt as though it had been struck with a hammer. For a moment, the world, too, rang: the blank sky above her spun, the dust whisked up. Then all was once more calm. The rattle came again.

“Who's there?” Inari demanded and her voice sounded very shrill in this silent land. And besides, she thought she already knew.

He stepped out from behind the rocks and Inari, filled with horror, knew that she had last seen him in Men Ling Street, a dark shape amongst the garbage cans.

“It's you,” she whispered. “They said you were a shaman.”

The shaman grinned. Not a big demon, but hunched and shuffling, wrapped in a motley arrangement of skins and tattered scraps of fur, some still with flesh attached. His face was blue, although it was difficult to tell how much of this was the original skin tone and how much might be tattooed: spirals and dots of blue extended beyond one makeshift sleeve to creep along the hand that clutched a rattle, from which hung many small bones. His eyes were like black seeds. Small tusks protruded from the sides of his mouth.

“And so I am. You can call me Bonerattle. I will call you Humanwife.”

“I am not human,” Inari said, a fluttering attempt at defiance that made the tusked mouth grin wider. “I am a demon.”

“Oh, so!” the shaman said, mocking. “And yet you are the wife of a man, Humanwife.” He frowned. “It used to be more common.”

“My husband will find me,” Inari said. “He is a hunter of demons.”

“Is that so? I thought he was a worker with demons. Yourself, the striped beast, the tall one. I've been watching you.”

“Why am I here? Where are we?”

“This is
between,”
Bonerattle said. “One of the rift-valleys, the cracks in what people so stupidly consider to be real.”

“I see,” Inari said slowly. “I thought
between
was a myth.”

This appeared to delight the shaman. He swung the rattle and the bones clattered and hissed. “If even demons think this is not real—consider the power of it! One can do anything.” He gestured, making the rattle shake further. “Over there, is Shadow Pavilion, home of one who plans a great wrong.”

“A great wrong?” Inari asked. “Who lives there, then?”

“That is the home of Lord Lady Seijin, one of the greatest assassins who has ever lived. One who plots to slay the Emperor of Heaven?”

“Mhara?” Inari said, blankly. “But—he's a god.”

“Don't say his name! And you know that gods can die.”

“Yes, but—why are you telling me this?”

“Why,” the shaman said patiently, “so that you can prevent it.”

“But you're a demon,” Inari said.

“A technicality. I am of demon blood, true. But I am not from Hell. I am one of the guards of
between,
and if the Lord Lady succeeds, then all will be lost. Heaven will crack asunder, Hell's gates will open forth, and
between
will fall through and be lost.”

“So that is what you care about?” Inari asked. “This place?”

“There you have it. We keep ourselves to ourselves here. There are rare things that cannot enter Heaven and yet are too pure for Hell. Things that humans have driven out. You may see this place as a kind of conservation effort. I am charged with their preservation, it is my duty, in expiation of an ancient wrong which is really too dull to go into at the moment. Usually, the actions of Hell and Heaven do not concern us. Let them get on with it, we say. But the Lord Lady has taken hold of this final ambition and does not realize the consequences.”

“Couldn't you speak to this assassin and explain things? After all, if they live here
…
”

“If Seijin succeeds, then it will not matter to the Lord Lady whether
between
disappears. Seijin will be able to live anywhere.”

“But why come to me?” Inari asked.

The shaman's beady eyes dimmed. “You were the only one who listened.”

“No Ro Shi—the one who vanquished you—seemed to think you were a wicked thing,” Inari said.

“There are those who would say the same of you.”

She was unable to answer that, recognizing its truth.

“I walk in the bone worlds,” Bonerattle said. “Among blood and whispers. Humans don't tend to like that.”

“All right,” Inari said. “I know Mh—” A finger like a tendon was placed swiftly across her mouth.

“Don't say the name,” the shaman said. He nodded toward Shadow Pavilion. “Names carry on the wind.”

“I know the person concerned. I'll talk to him if I can.”
He might even listen,
Inari thought, and realized,
Why, I might be able to help, after all. If any of this is true.

Bonerattle's tusked head jerked up and Inari turned to see what he was looking at. Mist was boiling down the mountainside, licking out like smoke and touching the sides of Shadow Pavilion. A moment later, the pagoda was enveloped in cloud, shot with stormlight. The air was filled with the metal of oncoming rain and a distant crack and flash came from beyond the pass.

“The Lord Lady is coming home,” Bonerattle said. “We need to get you back.” He raised the rattle and shook it like thunder. Inari blinked, suddenly doused in a chilly wetness. Then she was standing in her own kitchen, with her mother-in-law's kettle clutched firmly in her hand and the lights of the boats rocking in the harbor beyond.