The Devil's Evidence (17 page)

“Marianne, are you still there?”

“Yes?”

“Can you do me a favor?”

“I'll try,” she said. “What do you want?”

“Can you go out into the courtyard? Without being seen?”

“I can try. Why?”

“Because,” said Fool, remembering a promise made to a thing of fern and leaf, “I need to talk to the Man of Plants and Flowers.”

How long had it been since Fool was in the courtyard? He used to come here regularly, enjoying its peace and relative calm, but recently he'd not been able to get out of his rooms as much. There was always some administrative function that needed addressing within the Information Office, some crime to investigate, some internal grievance to rule upon. As Marianne and he went into the courtyard he felt an unexpected thing—a swell of emotion that it took a moment to recognize as pleasure. He genuinely liked it out here, and was glad to be back.

Only, he wasn't there, not really; rather, he was lying on his bed in Heaven, eyes closed, as Marianne carried the piece of paper with the sketch of his face on it, and only through those open and pencil-sketched eyes could he see a slightly distorted view of the place he used to know well.

It was like looking at the world through a lens of glass that had fogged at the edges and warped, and which made things off-kilter, uneven and distant. It was also a view out of his control, moving when he did not want it to, focusing on things he wasn't interested in, and gliding over those things he wanted to spend time looking at, a view dictated by whatever the paper was facing.

The statues around the courtyard's edges were the same, Fool thought, when he managed to catch sight of them. A little more weatherworn, maybe, their coats of moss and lichens a little thicker, but they were standing in the same places, old friends waiting to welcome him. The flagged floor was covered in a shroud of old leaves that Fool heard crackle under Marianne's feet, and the sky above them was filled with stars that were cold and remote. He heard Marianne's teeth chatter, felt the chatter in the movement of the tattoo, realized it must be cold but did not feel the chill. In Heaven, Fool was warm.

“What do we do now?” asked Marianne, having seated herself on one of the stone benches that lined the courtyard. She had placed his paper faceup on her knee and his view was suddenly of the underside of her chin, upside down, and the skies above her.

“Hold me out,” he said.

“What? Oh, yes, I'm sorry,” she said, fumbling the paper upright and holding it out so that Fool could see the area in front of him. “I didn't mean to put you like that, I wasn't thinking. I'm not used to speaking to someone like this.”

“It's okay,” said Fool, smiling and grimacing at the way it stretched his healing cheek. “I don't mind seeing you upside down. The bottom of your chin is very pleasant.”

She spun the paper toward her, a wary expression of amused surprise on her face. Was she blushing? he wondered. There was a faint tinge to her cheeks, difficult to make out but definitely there.

“I'd thank you, but you're only paper,” Marianne said finally. “I don't suppose the opinion of a paper person matters.”

“I don't suppose it does,” he agreed, and the two of them started laughing at the absurdity of it all, Fool wincing as he did so.

“Well, this is very cozy,” said a sibilant voice, and Marianne jerked back, snapping the paper around so hard that she folded it, and for a moment Fool had a view of the world that was bent, doubling back in on itself so that he could see his own penciled chin and had to open his eyes in Heaven to block the view of Hell. It was dizzying, this jumping between places, between views. He swallowed, aching, and then closed his eyes again.

He was looking at an empty courtyard. The shrubs in the borders around the courtyard twisted, tangling around each other, and then the Man was there in front of him. More of the plants were pulled into the mass being created by the continual twisting of the stems and branches so that it formed a growing bulk with a vaguely human shape. At its top, a knot of thorns and flower heads had clustered together to form a full head, the first time the Man had done so in front of Fool.

“Hello,” said Fool, talking through the picture.

“Hello, Fool,” said the Man. “You look different.”

Talking to the Man was easier than talking to Marianne. With his real eyes closed and his paper eyes open, he could see relatively clearly the moving plants that the Man had created himself from, despite the vision having a slightly blurred, sepia hue, and hear him through the sketch Fool's ears; only when the real Marianne spoke did the tattoo Marianne split his skin, and for most of his conversation with a thing made of growth and leaf she stayed quiet. She was, he thought, wary; it was a sensible approach to the Man.

“How's Heaven?” asked the Man.

“Cleaner than Hell,” said Fool, truthfully. He still wasn't sure how much, or what, he was going to tell the Man. He didn't trust him, was cautious of him in the way that he had learned to be cautious of distant demons, where safety was only temporary and delicate because they could come closer at any time and he was unsure of what would attract them, start them moving in his direction.

“Oh, Fool, you have to tell me more than that!” said the Man, his eagerness showing in the way his fronds twisted and curled around each other, the urgent edge his voice had taken on.

“I have another feather,” said Fool, still avoiding.

“Fool, really? Is it as beautiful as the one you had before?” asked the Man, and Fool could practically hear the wanting in his voice. “Will you be bringing it back with you?”

“If I can.” What to tell?

“And what of the angel it came from?”

“I don't know,” said Fool. “It was given to me to replace the one I lost. They said it was in thanks for my services to them. To the angels, I mean.”

“Fool, you mean to say you're well known in both Heaven and Hell? You may be the first human ever who's managed that trick. Think about it, we all know of the Devil himself, black and afire in Crow Heights, and we know of God creating the Heavens and the rest of existence, but tell me, do you think the Hosts of Heaven cared about the names of the demons in Hell, or of the people in Hell? Except as part of the trading missions?”

“No.”

“So there's the Devil himself, the summoner of fires and terrors, the thing of flies and sin, and there's God, the nameless goodness above, that all of us know.”

“Yes.”

“And now there's you, and you are
known,
Fool, part of an elite triumvirate known in both worlds. Thomas Fool, equal of God and the Great Enemy! It's too rich, Fool, too interesting for words! Now, what else have you got for me?”

I'm a little paper Fool, talking to the Man of Plants and Flowers,
thought Fool as he started.
I'm in Heaven and in Hell, and in pain and the equal of God and the Devil, and I'm nothing, all at the same time. No wonder I'm confused, little damaged, helpless Fool that I am.

So Fool talked. He told the Man about the places outside of everywhere and the creatures they contained, those multi-limbed things that cleaved to each other with such accuracy, about the way angels ate happiness like demons ate fear, about the changing landscapes that all still existed, about the Joyful standing and swaying and spinning. He did not mention Mayall or dead people or tunnels, and the Man did not ask about his slashed face.
My paper mask is protecting me,
he realized,
showing the Man a flat and unmarked version of me. I'm a lie.
In Heaven, eyes still closed, he raised a hand to his cheek to feel the crusted lines of damage, and then dropped it again.

At the end of the conversation, the Man said, “And you, Fool? Are you enjoying your time in God's realm? Are you making friends, brokering deals?”

“No.”

“Why not, Fool, why not? There are riches to be had there in among the carousels and in the seas you tell me about, grand secrets hidden in the school buildings and the caves, Fool, and if you reach out and take them, you could be the most powerful man in Heaven or Hell.”

“I don't want to be,” said Fool and realized, as he said it, that it was the truth. “I want to do my job, that's all.”

“Really?” The Man sounded disappointed in Fool, and Fool felt, for the shortest moment, oddly ashamed before remembering that the Man wasn't his friend, was only friends with the Man himself. “Then go, Fool, solve your crime and talk to me again.”

“Yes.”

“And Information Man Marianne?”

“Yes,” she said, and Fool heard her voice simultaneously in his ears in Hell and through the tearing and ripping of his arm as the tattoo moved.

“I thank you for your assistance in this matter. If you ever need help, simply come out here and ask for me. After all, Fool isn't likely to be here forever. None of us are, are we? His star is clearly in the ascendant, and if he leaves us all behind you may find you need a friend in the future.”

“Thank you, but I have faith in Commander Fool,” said Marianne.

“Faith? Faith, in Hell?” asked the Man, and started laughing and did not stop until the cluster of plants in front of Fool had collapsed down and was lying still on the damp earth.

They came for him in the morning. Fool didn't remember falling asleep, didn't remember saying good-bye to Marianne, just knew that suddenly it was light in his room and that someone was knocking on the door. It wasn't a demon's knock, it was too polite, so he hadn't missed the start of a Delegation meeting, which meant it had to be the angels. Dressing in his stained and torn uniform, every part of him groaning with aches and discomforts, he made sure the feather was still in his pocket. He hadn't written his report last night, he realized; he'd have to do it tonight. If he was right, there would be more to add anyway.

He was right.

The building was long and low, its ceiling glass reflecting the sun in painful darts.

“Why are we here?” asked Fool, suspecting he knew before the angels answered and confirmed his suspicion.

“We are told here is something you should see,” said Benjamin.

“ ‘Something'?”

“Yes,” replied the angel.

“Fine,” he said, “let's go then.” Fool walked to the building, passing through a gate set in a fence of metal posts and crossing a grassy field whose surface was marked with regular white lines. Crowds of the Joyful were standing on the field, spinning or still, heads back or down, arms outstretched or down at their sides. Fool ignored them. The building's door was open and Fool stopped, taking out his weapon, looking into the space ahead of him. The interior had marbled floors and tiled walls, the light from the glass ceilings coating the surfaces in buttery yellow smears and filling the air with dust motes that swirled gently. There was even a desk on the far side of what he assumed was a foyer, paneled in dark wood, gleaming with a patina of age and use, although no one was near it now. It reminded Fool of the Questioning House.

As Fool stepped through the doorway, Summer and Gordie appeared at his side and started walking with him.

Summer and Gordie.

For a second time in as many days his vision doubled on itself, looped around, and for the briefest moment Fool was watching Summer and Gordie walk alongside him down the Houska when they were alive, the streets filled with demons and the stench of blood all around them and they were here next to him in Heaven with angels behind them and the smell of cleanness and freshness against their skin. The two images overlapped and he could see both Heaven and Hell behind them, gaudy brothels and the crowds of the Joyful crashing in a dizzying wash of color and emotion and odor. He tried to speak, only to have his voice crack, the words lost in a popping blister of sound, and then the image of Hell collapsed and he was back, back in Heaven, and Summer and Gordie were here alongside him, walking at his pace.

Summer and Gordie were at his side—his friends, his colleagues, back to where they belonged, back where he remembered them being.

Fool looked behind them; they cast shadows, the same length and thickness and shade of darkness as his own. He could hear their feet, hear the impact of them against the smooth floor, hear the gentle swish of their clothes, hear their breathing. He reached out, went to touch Gordie, but pulled back at the last minute. He was used to their ghosts appearing in the corner of his room, had persuaded himself that the apparitions were either not real or only-just-real, but the figures beside him now were different, looked here and solid and
actual
. He stopped walking, felt faint, and leaned against the sun-warmed desk, steadying himself. Its solidity was reassuring, an anchor in a world that seemed to be constantly pitching and yawing around him.

“Summer? Gordie?”

“Bal Koth sends her regards,” said Benjamin from the doorway. “These are those who follow, returned to you.”

“They followed me?”

“They are tied to you, or at least were. Bal Koth has split those ties and brought them in from the darkness.”

“Are they real?” Gordie was looking at Fool, smiling and nodding. Summer was in Gordie's shadow, her face showing more concern. That was how it had always been, Gordie approaching things with the freedom of innocence, Summer with a cynical caution.

“Everything in Heaven is real,” said Benjamin. “Everything here exists.”

“But are they people? Or ghosts?”

“Is there a difference?” asked Benjamin. “They are there. Were they your friends? They were tied to you with strong links, perhaps forged because of their deaths alongside you, deaths caused by the Fallen. They care about you, and you about them.”

“They were colleagues, yes. And friends. They were together.”

“When they died? Bal Koth imagined so. They're linked to each other as well as to you, and they're returned now. Enjoy them.”

“They weren't together at their deaths, they were together in their lives. You make them sound as though I own them,” said Fool, looking again at his dead friends. “Are they alive?”

“You own them as much as they own you,” said Benjamin, holding one elegant hand out toward a set of double doors on the far side of the room. “Now, the thing Mayall wishes you to see is that way. He says he will see you afterward, all three of you. I assume he'll find you when he wants the meeting to take place. To your task, Thomas Fool.”

“Are you coming?”

“No. You have your own companions now. Israfil and I will wait for you here.” And then the angel was gone and the doorway was empty and the sun was falling in through the space and dancing across Summer and Gordie, and Fool was left trying to work out what the fuck was going on.

This time, he managed to touch Gordie's arm. It was solid, the material of the plain suit he wore coarse but well made, the flesh underneath firm. The skin of his face was smooth and unmarked, no trace of his death written on that pink surface. His hair was long, longer than it had been when he had been alive in Hell, and fell in waves around his face. His eyes were blue, brilliant blue, and they crinkled in greeting, the man's smile growing, if anything, even wider.

Fool reached past him and placed a hand on Summer's shoulder. She was dressed in clothes made of the same material as Gordie's and her body was solid under them, and he marveled at the feeling of her
thereness
in his hand. He found it impossible to remove his touch from her, just holding her and looking at her, until she reached up and placed one hand over his, curling her fingers around his and finally smiling at him. Her touch was warm, the fingers soft. His eyes dropped unconsciously to her belly, looking past the clothes and skin to the guts within her that he had last seen stretched out and pinned to columns in a warehouse, and then back to her face. She shook her head, other arm moving protectively to cover her stomach, but didn't stop smiling.

“Are you real?” he asked. “Are you really here?”

Neither replied.

“What are you?” he tried again, but again both stayed silent. Gordie shook his head, raising a hand and covering his mouth.

“You can't speak?” Nods.

“Ever?” Shakes, a shrug. They might be able to? They weren't sure? Fool looked up, looked through the glass ceiling at Heaven's perfect sky with its acreage of deep blue, the distant marks of flying angels written across it, and let his breath out. One more question, then.

“Do you still have to stay with me?” Shakes, then nods. Still no sense. He let out a long breath, feeling tears prickle at the back of his eyes. “
Will
you stay with me?”

Nods; emphatic and clear.

“Good. Good,” Fool said, and then added more quietly, “I've missed you.” Then, gathering himself, he nodded in the direction Benjamin had pointed.

“Shall we go?”

Fool led Gordie and Summer to the doors in the far wall that Benjamin had gestured toward. They were wooden, old like the wood of the counter, and their handles were mounted against brass scratch plates that had been rubbed to a rich golden luster by however many hands had pushed against them in the past. When Fool touched them, they were warm.

Pushing open the doors, Fool felt a soft wall of air fall out, drifting over the three of them, humid and thick. It carried on its breath gently lifting wreaths of thin mist that curled around them like the tongues of some ghostly creature that wanted to taste their skin. The mist smelled slightly sharp, as though it was laced with some extra ingredient, not just water and air but water and air and something else, some seasoning that made it tang in Fool's nose. It was cloying, coated his face and left silver trails across his jacket.

Beyond the doors was a pool that filled almost the entirety of the room that contained it. The room itself was huge, the ceiling vaulted above them and the floors that ran to its edges laid with flags that were rough-surfaced yet carefully fitted so that they formed an intricate lattice. The walls around them were clad in veined marble tiles that sweated in the heat, water forming a skin over them and then collapsing into trickles that ran swiftly down and puddled in the narrow channels between the floor tiles. The floor was at an angle, Fool saw, a very slight decline so that the water on the walls and floor ran back into the pool.

The pool itself was filled with the Joyful. Some were standing, others moving slowly about, eyes closed, arms carving out slow arcs ahead of them as though using the water to pull themselves forward. Still others were floating on their backs, robes drifting about them, hair untethered and loose and creating halo patterns around their heads. The light played across the water, breaking and reforming as the surface moved, reflections from it shifting in constant movement across the rest of the room. Across the ceiling, shadow Joyful moved in slow, steady patterns.

A breeze hit Fool, colder, and he looked up over the water and its inhabitants to the far wall. Here the steam that rose did so in fast loops, curling around clear tongues of colder air coming in from a broken window. A motionless Joyful was slumped below the window, its face a mask of drying blood, its eyes open.

Here it was, then. The thing they had come to see.

Fool walked around the pool to the body, seeing as he came closer to it that it was a man, his skin a dark coffee brown. He was lying against the wall, half propped up against the tiles, arm loose at his sides, and his palms turned up so that he appeared to be asking a silent question. There was a piece of glass, presumably from the broken pane, sticking up from behind the man's collarbone, angled so that it had pushed into the meat at the base of his neck. The robe around it was soaked with blood and there were a series of smaller scratches across his face and scalp. His right ear, on the left as Fool looked at him, had been neatly half severed from the top and was flapping down like a bitter tongue to reveal a wet, red hole in the side of the man's head.

Fool crouched in front of the body, hand automatically reaching for the feather in his pocket. It had been a habit, since lost and now found again, to hold the piece of an angel's wing while he looked at the dead, studied the places they had been strewn, using it to shore himself against the horrors he was forced to see. It was cool against his fingers, the light of it a faint glow within his pocket.

So, what was he looking at?

The man was wet, not just with blood but with water, his robes soaked. The water that spilled out from them and was slowly trickling back toward the pool was tinged pink near his upper body but clear lower down, meaning what?

“He was dragged from the water and over to the window, which is where his injuries occurred,” Fool said aloud, wishing he had Marianne here, anyone to provide another pair of eyes.
But I do,
he remembered,
the ghosts that may be real, those who follow.

“Can you see anything?” he asked, turning to Summer and Gordie. The two were standing several feet away, holding hands. Gordie looked at Fool, the expression on his face one of incomprehension, but Summer was staring at the body, eyes darting up and down. Finally, she raised a hand to the window and made a gesture that Fool didn't understand. She made it again, pointing at the window, the floor, the pool, and then the man. He looked back around, staring again at the scene before him. The glass from the window lay across the floor, some of it small and jagged, other pieces larger, wicked curves glinting. The dead man was sitting on one of the larger pieces, its sickle edge protruding from under his thigh. Had it cut him? No. So?

The glass was on the floor when the man was dragged here, meaning it was broken from the outside in. Something came in through the window, dragged the man from the pool, and slaughtered him.

No, no, that wasn't right. There was a single thick streak of blood seeping down from the window to the man, starting by the bottom frame and angling toward the man's injured shoulder. Smaller streaks ran alongside it. He looked again at the wound in the man's shoulder and the smaller ones across his head, leaned in close to see the smooth, even edges of the slice to the man's ear, and then leaned back on his haunches.

“If they were going to kill him, why not simply kill him in the pool, or just pull him onto the side and attack him there?” he said, looking again at Summer, only to find that her expression had softened again, was similar to Gordie's. Whatever clarity she'd had, it was, for the moment, gone.

So they didn't simply attack him,
he thought.
But what did happen? They took him from the water and dragged him to the window but he got, what, caught on the glass? Impaled on it as they tried to push him through?
Fool stood, reaching onto tiptoe and looking through the window, careful to avoid the glass teeth that still grew from the frame's wooden jawbone. Outside, down the wall, another long, thick spray of blood was visible. Below it were prints, the earth churned and muddied.

He turned back, facing into the room. A pool full of the Joyful, the spacing of them appearing random but, he knew, having an order that he simply couldn't see or recognize.

Only that wasn't true, not now. The longer he spent in Heaven, the more he saw the massed Joyful, the easier the patterns grew to spot. Even in the pool, there were areas for the floaters, areas for the standing, areas for the moving. It was easier to see where the man had been from the space he had left, and the closer he looked the more gaps Fool saw. The Joyful, even the floating ones, tended to stay away from each other and move in regular patterns, and now that he was looking for them he could see the holes in this delicately choreographed movement. How many holes? It was difficult to tell, but certainly six or seven, perhaps as many as ten. When he inspected more closely, he discovered more puddles of water on the side of the pool, trails leading from them to the window. By one puddle were a few strands of long blond hair, still attached to a scrap of skin, sticking to the edge of a tile. He lifted the skin by the hairs, pulling it free to reveal a moist, dark surface underneath. It was, he guessed, a piece of someone's scalp.

One or more people or things came in, dragged some of the Joyful from the pool, knocking one of the poor bastard's heads on the side as they did so. They took him to the window and thrust him through, dropping him to the outside, until this one messed things up. He got stuck, injured, started to bleed out in front of them. Did he make a noise? Were they worried they'd attract attention? Or maybe he was simply the last one anyway and his being injured was an inconvenience, so they left him to die. I'm sure there weren't any taken after this one. There are no tracks in the blood, only in the water. Nothing walked over him or around him, no one moved him or saw him until I got here. He was the last one.

What next? Fool crouched again, stroking the feather and looking at the body, hoping for its clarity, but nothing came. Someone, he had forgotten who, had told him that the feathers made him think more clearly because they were a part of a thing that was entirely truthful, that holding it made the truth seem simpler and easier to see and speak.