The Devil's Detective (36 page)

Fool paced. When he reached one end of the carriage he turned and went back, along and along, and at each end faces peered through the quartered glass in the doors at him. At first he thought they were people who wanted to come in but then realized that they were simply watching him. He wanted to tell them to stop, to scream at them to stop staring at him, but he didn't.
Little noticed Fool
, he thought,
everyone's watching you now.
The train rattled and jolted, making its slow way onward.

The square in front of Assemblies House was quiet. Fool walked to its center, wanting to be away from the alleys and shadowed doorways that lined it. If attack came, he wanted some notice and a chance to escape or defend himself. He drew his gun, felt strange carrying it out like that, and put it away again. The windows around him were dark; this was a district used mainly in the daylight business of Hell. The ground was stained with blood dried to the color of old mud and burned patches, and there were still torn and trampled banners lying around. Shredded and mulched paper had been trodden into the dirt, stained red and black and brown. Fool pulled himself straight, standing as tall as he could, and went to the gates. They were unlocked and he went through, going to the main doors and knocking.

“What?” said a voice from inside.

“I need to see the angels,” he replied.

“Shit to that,” said the voice. “Who do you think you are?”

“I am Thomas Fool,” said Fool. “I'm an Information Man of Hell and I have the right to enter and speak to anyone or any fucking thing I want. Let me in.”

“Shit to that,” said the voice again. Fool dropped his hand to his gun, starting to flick off the straps, when there was a dull thud from beyond the door. Someone, possibly the owner of the voice, said “Sir” weakly, and then there was the sound of locks slipping and opening.

“Hello, Thomas,” said Elderflower once the door was open. “I wondered when you might arrive.”

“You knew I was coming?”

“Of course. Rhakshasas informed me by tube of your imminent arrival a few moments ago.”

Fool stepped into the hallway of Assemblies House, stepping over the prostrate figure of a man. He was shuddering, his arms tucked under his body and his hands cupping a face that was pointed to the floor. He was sobbing. Fool looked down at him and said, “What happened?”

“I merely showed him the folly of standing in the way of an Information Man doing his duty. You are Hell's man, Fool, and none should obstruct you in your path.”

“I need to see Balthazar.”

“Yes,” said Elderflower. “You think he has something to do with all this?”

“Does he?”

“How would I know?”

“You know things about Hell,” said Fool, halfway between a question and a statement.

“Do I? No, I think not, not I. And remember, Thomas, the angels aren't of Hell. They are from above and beyond and without. Shall we go?”

The corridors of Assemblies House were long and low once they were out of what Fool thought of as the “public” area. In his time in Hell, and always with Elderflower, Fool had been in several of the smaller meeting rooms and offices and the large ballroom but never behind them, into the Bureaucracy's area. The ceilings were lower, causing Fool to duck his head slightly, although Elderflower was fine. The light was dank and guttering, inefficient gas lamps burning yellow and orange in brackets on the walls. The air was claustrophobic with the smell of flame and gas and things dead and dying.

“These are their rooms,” said Elderflower as they came to a set of arched double doors. Symbols were carved in the lintel above the door and in the frames down the side of the doors. They seemed to move in the shifting shadows and light, writing and rewriting themselves.

“A word, Thomas,” said Elderflower. “Beyond the doors is not, strictly, Hell but is an offshoot of Heaven, a little bubble of perfection in our sordid world. Whatever you plan to do, you have no jurisdiction or power beyond this threshold. Your gun will not work, and I cannot help or protect you. Bring the angels out and they leave Heaven and enter Hell again, and your power is restored. Do you understand?”

“No,” said Fool truthfully. How could rooms in Hell belong to Heaven? He supposed it didn't matter, not really. What mattered was all the dead flesh staring at him from inside his head, Summer dangling between two columns and Gordie lost under a burning, spastic mass of figures that were neither wholly demon nor wholly human, the Man slumping forward with holes torn in his back. What mattered were the dead.

Fool took a deep breath, drew his gun, and, using its butt, hammered on the doors. After a moment, they swung open. A wash of clean, blue light fell out from between them, framing the small figure of the scribe. Or maybe it was the archive, Fool wasn't sure.

“I need to speak to Balthazar,” Fool said.

“It is customary to say ‘please,' ” said a voice behind the smaller angel. Balthazar stepped into the light, the shimmer of it across his flawless skin almost too beautiful to look at. “What do you want, Information Man? Come to give me instructions again?”

“Yes,” said Fool and made a conscious effort to lower his gun. “We need to discuss one last piece of business. I need you to come to the ballroom.” Was this the way to do it? Fool didn't know, had never had to do anything like this before. Was there a right way? A wrong? The trail had led him this far, but now that he was at its end, or near its end maybe, he had even less of an idea than normal how to act.

“What business?”

“Hell's business,” said Elderflower, stepping forward.

“It is not on our schedule,” said Adam, also stepping into the light. It was getting crowded in the doorway, thought Fool; the scribe or archive, maybe thinking the same, slipped back between Adam and Balthazar and out of sight.

“No,” said Elderflower, “but it is important nonetheless. I must insist, Adam, that this be dealt with before you leave tomorrow.”

“Very well,” said Adam. “Balthazar, bring the others. We have business.”

“What's this about, Elderflower?” asked Adam.

They were in the ballroom, Adam and Elderflower seated in the usual places, Fool and Balthazar standing behind them rather than over by the windows. The room was cold and dark, the only light the few lamps that Elderflower had ordered lit. If Elderflower's servants were in the corners of the room, they were hidden by shadows.

“Something has come to light,” said Elderflower.

“And it will still be unclear and untrue,” said Balthazar, “as is everything in this place.”

“You still don't understand, do you, even after your time here?” said Fool, trying to keep his tone conversational. “Everything in Hell is true, even the lies, because they are believed. People see it all around them, see unjust, merciless punishment, and know that it is just because what they cannot remember, what they do not have, is the knowledge of their sins. The place is a curse made solid, a place where the truth is just as harsh and bitter as the lies are, and you should not underestimate the power of that.”

“The business,” said Adam, steepling his hands and leaning back, crossing his legs.

“Thomas?” said Elderflower. Fool tried to speak, found his throat had dried from speaking, swallowed a breath that was like sand, and tried again.

“Balthazar, why did you kill them?”

The angel did not reply, simply stared at Fool for a second, and then the sound of his laughter filled the ballroom, a dry rattle clattering up against the ceiling and swooping around the molded cornices.

“It's funny?” asked Fool, not raising his voice, feeling the anger build inside him and letting it. “The deaths, the murders, they're funny?”

Balthazar's laughter trailed away. “You're serious?” he asked. “You think I committed these murders that you've been investigating? Fool, I'm an angel.”

“Yes,” said Fool, thinking of the demons by the lake falling into pieces and the chalkis dropping from the sky in smoking segments, “you are, and all the way along you have destroyed my evidence and killed my witnesses. You destroyed the bodies of the Aruhlians in case they talked and—”

“I destroyed them to give them dignity,” Balthazar interrupted.

“You killed the demon at the lake before it could describe you to me, you killed the Man of Plants and Flowers so that you could use him to send me off in the wrong directions. So, I ask again. Why?”

“Fool, I did not kill them,” said Balthazar, formal now, making a statement. “My weapon has been used only in the tasks of protecting you. Why in the name of God would you think that I killed those poor souls?”

It was the question Fool had been avoiding in his head, the
why
of it all. Why would Balthazar kill the Genevieves, the Aruhlians, all the others? They disgusted him, yes, weak as they were, failing sinners that they were, but surely that wasn't enough? Was it? Yes.

No. No, because suddenly it was there, clear and shimmering in his head and in the air in front of him and he opened his mouth so that his tongue could chase it.

“Because of the souls,” said Fool, speaking without pause, allowing the words to lead the thoughts. “Because what you did freed their souls and punished them at the same time. They weren't sent back outside the wall when you killed them; they were
released.
That's why the murders were so violent: they had to be to ensure that the dead weren't simply sent back to Limbo, the violence absolving the dead of their sins and freeing them. The blue flashes—they were souls escaping from Hell and rising up, gaining entry to Heaven.”

“Very good, Thomas,” said Elderflower, and then Balthazar's flame was dripping from his hand and beginning to rise.

“I did not kill them,” he said again, and his wings were unfurling, curling out from his back in black arcs, smaller shadows around his feet
opening, his arms coming up in front of the larger wings, his body taking on the color of flame and ash.

“I have a witness,” said Fool.
Had a witness
, he thought, remembering the demon's head collapsing to the mulchy ground, killed by the angel he would have pointed his accusation at. He drew his gun, trained it on Balthazar, watching the whip of flame curling down from the angel's hands, growing longer and thicker, curling and flickering like a reptile's tongue. The light was draining from the room, the shadows at its corners thickening as Balthazar pulled the illumination in, became the burning center of the room.

“A witness,” said the angel, “who saw what?”

“A bright man,” said Fool, hearing as he said it how thin it sounded.

“Do I look bright?” asked Balthazar, who was churning with a dull, fiery redness now, convection patterns of heat boiling away from his skin and filling the air around him with mazy shades. “Do I, little Information Man, little Fool? Do I look bright?”

The flame curled up, dancing around Fool, encircling his wrist but not tightening. He felt its heat, saw the hairs across the back of his hand begin to shrivel and char and tried to stay still; one twitch and he had no doubt his hand and the gun it held would fall.

“I say again, I did not kill them,” said Balthazar.

“No?”

“I'm not lying, Fool. I can't lie. Don't
you
understand? I'm an angel, Fool, one of God's holy things, and the truth is woven through me as surely as blood is woven through humans and evil through demons. You have my feather, a part of me. Haven't you noticed that people tell the truth when they hold it? That you tell yourself the truth when you have it near you, when you carry it or hold it?”

“Tell myself the truth?” asked Fool, but suddenly understood. All Hell's fog had burned away from him not because of anything he had done or anything inside him but because he had had the feather, had been carrying something beautiful and pure and clear. He had seen the trail, understood the marks on the path, the clues, because, once gifted, the feather had sharpened his vision. All the time it had been with him, it had been drawing him taut, sharpening him, bringing him into focus, bringing him
here
, and he felt betrayed and hollow. Sick.

“The feather only made you a better version of what was already there,” said Balthazar, with something like tenderness in his voice. The curl of flame widened, tip lashing slowly, and then fell away from Fool's outstretched hand. He flexed it carefully, feeling the tightness of the skin where he had been scorched.

“I am capable of killing,” said Balthazar, “but I did not kill anyone or anything in Hell that did not deserve it, Fool. My work here is to service the delegation and nothing more.”

“So if it wasn't you, and it wasn't a man or demon, then who killed them?” Fool asked, speaking out loud because his mouth was still running ahead of the rest of him. He needed answers, something concrete to grip and understand. If it wasn't Balthazar—and it wasn't, couldn't be, because the angel was right, he wasn't bright but was a rippling, fleshy gleam that seemed to sweat shadows into the air around him—if it wasn't him, then who? “Who was it?” Fool asked again. “Who killed them? Who killed all those people?”

“I did,” said Adam and then the room was full of the brightest light Fool had ever seen.

It was beyond light, somehow, had weight and mass and volume, pushed Fool backward and sent him stumbling. Somewhere, lost in it, he heard Balthazar shout and then the angel's red glow was extinguished by the glare. Fool squeezed his eyes shut and tried to swing his gun around to where he thought Adam was, but the weight pressing against him made it feel like he was moving through mud or heavy, oily water, clinging and pushing against him. Oddly, it wasn't painful; the opposite, if anything, and he felt the skin on his wrist soften and calm, the aches to his face and body flare briefly and then begin to fade. It was healing him, and even through his closed eyelids, the light was inexorable and he had to turn away from it.
The white man
, he thought.
White, and bright.