The Devil's Evidence (27 page)

Fool picked up the nearest book. It was old, ancient, the pages slipping from the binding and scattering down over him like some patchwork sheet drawn up to keep his legs warm. On the worn leather cover of the book, embossed in gold, were the words
Lebor Gabála Érenn
. He put the book down, picked up another, and found this to be in a similar state. Its pages fell out to join the others and its cover was peeling, mock leather flapping back from old and damp cardboard. Printed on this were the words, barely readable,
Book of Common Worship
. When he opened the book farther, more pages drifted loose, leaving only a few leaves attached to the inner spine.

Using the wall, Fool pushed himself upright, still holding the book. His head and shoulders emerged and he found himself looking out across the space behind the chapel at almost ground level. From this angle, he could see evidence of more holes, disturbed ridges of earth, piles of soil and torn grass, and when he pulled himself free and stood up, stretching to his full height, he saw that the ground was extensively dotted with holes, was sick with them.

“Fool? Are you okay?” Gordie, coming around the chapel, Summer with him.

“I'm fine,” said Fool, brushing the dirt from his arms and legs. “I fell, but it's okay.”

“Fell where?” asked Gordie, coming closer.

“Into a grave for books,” Fool replied and, seeing the confusion flit across both of his companions' faces, gestured at the hole beside him.

Gordie knelt on the edge of the hole and looked into its depths. “So many books,” he breathed, seeing what the grave contained.

“But why bury books?” asked Fool.

“Can we get some light?” asked Summer, who had walked past the two men and started looking into the farther holes. “I can't see where I'm walking.”

Fool raised his feather as high as he could and followed Summer, the feather's eldritch light allowing them to pick a delicate path between the open graves.

Gordie came with him, pointing to a grave whose inner walls had started to grow a cover of thin, scratchy grass. It was a deeper grave and its far wall had collapsed and the earth had covered the few books that remained in its depths. Here and there, a page or cover stuck up out of the dirt, but there were not many.

“It's empty,” said Summer. “The one you fell in was still partly full, but not this one.”

“Yes,” said Fool, moving to the next one. This one, too, was empty. Fragments of torn pages blew across the ground, sometimes zephyring around their feet, sometimes colliding and dancing together before separating again.

“What fresh misery is this?” came a voice from behind them as the light picked up, fully illuminating what Fool had now come to realize was a graveyard. Turning, he watched as Benjamin came toward them walking under a phalanx of caretaker angels, a living set of lights casting their glow down on the churned earth.

“What's happened here, Thomas Fool?” asked Benjamin.

“I'm not sure, because I don't understand what this place was to begin with.”

“It is where we send religious texts to their rest,” said Benjamin. “When they are old, when they can no longer serve the worshipers because their spines are cracked and their insides are falling loose, they are discarded above and come to us through the Garden of Earth and Air. We bury them with the respect due those that have provided long and faithful service to God.”

“In graves?”

“This whole place is one huge grave, Thomas Fool. The chapel is built on foundations of buried texts from all the branches of the tree of faith.”

“Would they ever be dug up? To move them somewhere else, or to make room for new burials?”

“No, except to carry out new interments. We gather them in the chapel, and when Mayall commands, we come and pay our respects and we bury them with the ceremony they deserve.”

“Look around.”

Benjamin walked under the hovering ceiling of the other angels, going silent among the graves, head bowed. His wings were folded back against him but occasionally they twitched and then stilled, as though the angel was controlling some great anger or shock.

“They are gone,” Benjamin said after a few long minutes.

“Yes,” said Fool. Now he could see clearly, he walked deep into the graveyard, finding more and more holes as he went. “And not recently. These holes are old, they collapsed, plants are growing in the collapsed sections.”

“My God,” said Benjamin, and Fool wasn't sure if it was an imprecation or a plea.

Fool went back to the grave he had fallen into and looked around it. The trail he had originally followed around the chapel led to it, and in its trodden face he found one or two of the blue flowers, crushed and dead. Had he done that in the darkness without realizing? Turning and crouching, he followed the trail with his eyes, watching as it split and split again, older parts of it leading back to the rear of the fields and the graves there.

“Holy books,” he said to himself, “and the Joyful. They're being taken.”

“Taken where?” asked Gordie, coming and crouching next to Fool.

“I'll bet we'll find this track leads from the graves to the tunnel opening,” replied Fool. “Or it would if a thousand damned angels hadn't stepped on all of the ground around it.”

“We are not the damned,” said Benjamin from just behind the two men, his voice cold. “You are, Thomas Fool. You should never forget that.”

“How could I?” asked Fool. “Israfil and you remind me of it often enough. I'm a monkey, a damned monkey. Wasn't that what she said?”

“And I have to wonder, was she right after all?” said Benjamin. “All this started when you and your demon brethren arrived.”

“No, it started before that,” said Fool. “That's why I'm here.”

“We have only your word for that.”

“Go and speak to the Malakim, or to Mayall, or believe what you will,” said Fool, feeling the repetition in his mouth. “I don't really care. Now, if you'll please leave us alone, we have work to do.”

Fool stood, Gordie doing the same, but Benjamin did not move. Instead, he placed one hand on Fool's shoulder and the other on Gordie's, the grip on Fool unyielding. Behind the angel Fool saw one of the caretakers drop out of the blanket of moving light and land behind Summer, who was watching them closely. Gordie opened his mouth, but Fool sent him a warning glance and the man closed it again without speaking.

“Benjamin, what are you doing? We need to investigate. I've been
asked
to investigate.”

“There will be no more of this farce. Matters progress without you now, as they should have all along. Thomas Fool, you and your companions' presence is required.”

“Where?”

“Where decisions are made, in the court of Heaven.”

Fool was marched back around the chapel, Benjamin's grip firm on his shoulder but not painful. Summer and Gordie were allowed to walk ahead of the other angel.
If we ran now,
Fool thought,
would that fire leap from them and split us into pieces?

Yes. Yes, I think they'd kill us.

Fool had assumed that they would find a transport in front of the chapel, waiting to take them back to the building in which the Delegation was housed, and was oddly cheered to find he was correct. The small black vehicle was idling beyond the wall on a road that had not been there when they emerged from the Sleepers' Cave, however long ago that had been. Its doors were open and it was empty. Behind it, the night was being gently split by the light of more caretaker angels, these hovering over the exit from the Sleepers' Cave. As they stopped to watch, shapes, dark and swift, were entering and leaving the cave in quick succession, moving around each other in a complicated, elegant aerial ballet. There was an urgency to their movement that Fool had not seen in Heaven before, a purpose in their arcs and dips that he could grasp even if he could not read its intent.

From the center of the cave's mouth a slower, heavier shape emerged and started into the sky. It was like a distant storm cloud, black and shifting as it rose, its edges sharp and then blurring and then making themselves again, and Fool realized it was the small, kindest angels carrying one of the dead onward. The tiny angels were clustered around the body, lifting it, moving around it. As it climbed into the sky another of them flew ponderously from the cave and started its slow journey upward. If he could have given that flesh to Morgan, or even to Tidyman or Hand, what would they find it saying? What horrors would it tell them about its last moments? Or would it lie mute on the table, its story done and told?

Where were they going? He supposed it didn't help to speculate, not now anyway.

“They're beautiful,” said Summer, watching with Fool. “What are they?”

“They're the kindest angels,” said Fool. “That's what I was told, anyway.”

“They're the Sundô,” said Gordie.

“Pardon?”

“Sundô,” repeated Gordie. “The angels that carry the dead on, help them complete their journeys. Even Heaven has the dead, after all, and they need as much help as anyone else.”

“ ‘Sundô,' ” said Fool. The word rolled around his mouth like oiled silk, soft and rich and gentle.

“How do you know these things?” asked Summer. “I mean, I can understand you knowing things about Hell, we lived there, but about Heaven?”

“There are Sundô in Hell,” said Gordie, “haven't you see them? And you know how I know this stuff; I read books.” Even in the darkness Fool could tell Gordie was smiling, and could tell that the smile was a sad one. He knew these things because of the life he'd lived before he died, before he and Summer both died.

“Are you sure?” asked Summer, her own voice balanced between disbelief and query.

“Of course,” said Gordie. “Sundô: angels that move the dead on, the kindliest ones, the kindest ones. Always small and always black and always mute. Sundô.”

Summer paused, still watching the retreating shape of another that had drifted out from the cave and was floating up, following its companions. “I'm glad they're not alone. At the end, I mean,” she said eventually. “And we have them in Hell?”

“Yes.”

“How? How are they in Hell, if they're angels?”

“Because all demons are angels that fell, or the descendants of angels that fell,” said Fool.

“I'd like to see them,” said Summer.

“I'll show you,” said Gordie, and Fool knew the two were looking at each other, and he wondered, if they ever got back to Hell, how long those looks would be allowed to continue before the Bureaucracy took notice and moved against them.

“Enough,” said Benjamin, cutting into Fool's reverie, and pushed them toward the transport. They climbed into its rear, Benjamin following them, and the four sat silently, Gordie and Summer on the rearmost seat and Benjamin next to Fool facing the other two with their backs to the front cabin. Close to, Benjamin smelled of smoke and blood and clean linen and flowers, and he glowed, the shimmer dancing in the delicate fronts of his feathers and rippling under his skin like lightning in the rain. The transport's doors closed without anyone touching them and then they were moving.

The vehicle jolted as it turned around, rolling over the uneven grass before rejoining the road, sending all its passengers besides Benjamin sliding along the seats, Gordie's and Summer's shoulders banging together. They gripped hands, as ever, sitting in silence, Summer's head down and her eyes closed and Gordie looking out of the window. Even now, the man looked fascinated, excited by what he was seeing, what he was taking in and storing.

Benjamin's light filled the compartment, dazzling Fool, and after a minute in which he had to keep his eyes squinted to half shut, he said, “Benjamin, could you please dim yourself? I'm sorry if that's rude, but I can't see and I suspect that Summer and Gordie can't either.”

Benjamin shuffled in his seat, leaning forward, looming into the space, and Fool thought that he was going to attack, felt his hand drop to his gun in defense, but the angel merely folded his wings farther back, the tops of them curving over his head and casting his face into glimmering, deep-set shadow. His glow faded, leaving afterimages in Fool's vision, the angel's body becoming a pale shape in the carriage beside him.

“I apologize, Thomas Fool, Summer, and Gordie, for both my brightness and my shortness these last minutes.”

“It's fine,” said Fool. “I know it must have been difficult.”

“Difficult? These things do not happen in Heaven, and we are, all of us, struggling to understand their meaning. It has unsettled us, which must seem strange to you who live in a place of horror and fear and pain, but this is Heaven and things here are normally good, normally perfect. Watching Israfil be taken was terrible, Thomas Fool, and it made me angry. I am not used to being angry, so please forgive me if I was unpleasant or unkind.”

“You weren't,” said Summer.

“Thank you,” said Benjamin simply.

“You aren't used to being angry, but Israfil seemed angry all the time,” said Fool, musing aloud more than anything else.

“Israfil is from different stock than me,” said Benjamin, and then corrected himself. “She
was
of an order older than mine, one of the oldest. She was here during the great battle and the time of the original Falling. She was…protective…of what she believed Heaven is. Your coming here, the things we had to see accompanying you, it unsettled her and her old nature began to show.”

“I'm sorry she's gone,” said Summer, Fool and Gordie both adding their agreement to the statement.

“As am I,” said Benjamin. “I know you and she did not agree, Thomas Fool, and that she was a beautiful thing that meant no offense.”

“Yes,” said Fool, noncommittal, remembering her rage and her fire and the slap she had placed on his cheek and still feeling the burned skin of his wrist. Her ire had made her careless and sloppy. Instead of seeing Heaven as it was, she had seen it through the lens of her own beliefs and experiences, and it had made her miss what was actually there and, ultimately, exposed her to the thing that came out of the darkness and made her unprepared for its attack.

Was it really the things from outside of everywhere? Had they broken in?

They rode in silence for a few minutes, the darkness outside splintered only by the starlight and the occasional distant glow of angelic activity, before Benjamin spoke again.

“We are almost at our destination. It has not been a pleasure watching you work, Thomas Fool, but I wish you all best for what comes next,” the angel said and his voice was low, ended, and final. “I cannot wish you luck as there is no luck in Heaven.”

“Just like there's no murder,” said Fool. Benjamin looked at him curiously, peering from under his wings.

“Yes,” he said finally. “Just like there's no murder. We have never had need of either.”

“You still don't see?” asked Fool.

“I see the hand of the Great Beast, the Great Enemy,” said Benjamin as the vehicle pulled up and stopped in front of the Anbidstow. “There is no murder, there is simply corruption and sickness that we will root out.”

“How?”

“That is not for me to know,” said Benjamin. “Now, we need to go.”

The four of them left the vehicle and, led by an angel, went inside to where the courts of Heaven waited.

“What fucking travesty is this?” asked Catarinch.

The Delegation, without the scribe, was in the room that the previous meetings had taken place in, and the angels of Heaven's Delegation were standing on the other side of the table from them, simply watching. Mayall was sitting, cross-legged, on the table, bending and tearing at a piece of paper, showing uninterest in what was happening around him. Fool and Summer and Gordie had been led to the room by Benjamin, who now stood in his usual place by the window. When Fool had made to join him, he had been gestured to stand alongside Catarinch and Wambwark on Hell's side of the table, Gordie and Summer behind him. There were no seats.

“Travesty?” asked one of the angels, although Fool couldn't be sure which one.

“Being removed from our rooms and brought here, given no choice but to come, when no meeting is to take place.”

“This is a meeting. It is taking place.”

“It is not on the schedule!”

“It has been added. There is business to discuss.”

“Business? More about the boundaries? We've settled that. Tomorrow—”

“Now,” interrupted the angel, “we will discuss the business of Hell's attacks on Heaven. Now that we come to look, there is the business of hundreds of missing souls, of missing angels of the lower ranks, and of the angel Israfil, taken from her rightful place alongside God and dragged down to Hell.”

Catarinch didn't reply. What was left of its throat worked convulsively for a few seconds before words finally emerged from it.

“We know nothing of this.”

“Nonetheless, this is the business to discuss.”

“Hell denies it,” said Catarinch. Wambwark grumbled in support, standing straight and making itself swell slightly. The angels ignored it.

“Of course it does,” replied the voice. “Hell denies all things.”

Which isn't,
Fool thought,
really true
. Hell had little need of denial; rather, it reveled in the truth of its brutalities and grotesqueries, and it enjoyed the hurt and shock and pain it caused, and on the heels of this, Fool thought:
Look at me, correcting angels, even if it is only in my mind. Little clever Fool.

“We demand an apology,” said Catarinch, drawing itself up, finding courage in its indignation. Its rotten flesh dripped, sending oily spatters to the floor around it.

“No apologies shall be given. We require the return of the angel Israfil, or whatever remains of her. We require the immediate cessation of your incursions into Heaven. We require reparation. Pass this on.”

“I have no need to pass it on. We do not have the angel Israfil.”

“Are you sure?” and the voice was colder now, its patience fraying.

“I would have been told,” said Catarinch, but the demon's voice gave away its uncertainty.

“I repeat, are you sure?”

“Yes! I am Hell's representative here, and I am senior in this Delegation. You talk of incursions, yet it is Heaven who sends its angels into Hell, who sets fires, and who creeps across the borders. We demand it cease!” Catarinch was shouting now, its voice the shriek of metal grinding against metal, of something rattling and slipping, warping.

“We demand an apology,” it said, angrier, puffing up so that its flesh split farther, grease and something that might have been blood spilling from it in fat, poisonous droplets and dripping down its suit, spattering to the floor. Fool saw one of Wambwark's maggots crawl to a drop of Catarinch on the floor, touch the edge of the liquid, and immediately curl itself into a tiny ball, wringing itself around and around until it stopped. A tiny wisp of smoke rose from it as it crumbled apart.

“Lower your voice,” said the angel. “You are in no position to demand, demon. Hell has transgressed, and Heaven cannot take this lightly.”

“We have not!” shrieked Catarinch. “It is Heaven who has transgressed, breaking the border agreements, making unfounded accusations. Hell demands—” and then it stopped.

For a stretching second, the room was silent and then Catarinch's head slipped strangely, the neck slithering apart along a neat diagonal line, the rotten skull with its red-glow eyes and teeth and foul breath dropping gracelessly away and tumbling to the floor with a wet thud. Its body held its stance for another moment and then, a puppet with its strings cut, collapsed. Blood sprayed from the exposed stump of its neck, thick and fetid, a single long spurt that trickled away to nothing. The foremost angel of the Delegation withdrew its fire, the thin band of silver flame snapping back into its hand, whiplike, leaving snakes of light branded on Fool's vision.

There was a noise from the corridor beyond the room, a rattle and a crash.

“It is decided,” said a new voice. The angels on the other side of the table were not speaking, simply standing with their mouths open, their eyes rolled back so that they showed as plain white orbs in those perfect faces, and the voice came from their mouths at once, a single voice from every motionless angelic mouth in the room.

“Hell has sinned,” the voice said. “The time of sadness is upon us. The Estedea are awake. We are coming.”

Mayall stopped folding the piece of paper. He placed it on the table in front of him and looked up, his face breaking into a wide, toothy smile. He clapped, once, a single sharp note of things beginning, and then rose, stepping off the table. He had formed the paper into the shape of an angel and it stood sentinel in his place looking at Fool, its folded face eerily alive.