The Devil's Evidence (34 page)

“You'd burn, little girl,” she said. “Even like this, my skin is hotter than you can stand. Thomas Fool, the monkey from Hell, are you still here?”

“Of course,” he said, stepping into her view. She smiled at him, lips splitting back from teeth that were as white as the snow in Heaven had been. Her tongue traced the line of them, emerging from her mouth, a dark pink worm that slipped delicately out to play along her upper lip, tasting her own blood.

“Little monkey,” said Israfil, sounding almost fond of him. “You found me when no one else has managed it. Do something for me?”

“I can't get you free,” he said, wanting to hold this beaten thing in his arms but not daring to. “We haven't a blade to cut and the knots are too tight for us to loosen. We could find a rock and try to rub them apart.”

“No,” she said, “I don't want you to. I'm tired and I hurt and I'm nearly done. My soul will return to God when I die. I have faith in that. No, the thing I want you to do is simple.”

“Anything.”

“Avenge me. I'm an angel of war, Fool, an angel of fire and sword and vengeance. Be my fire. Be my sword. Be my vengeance.”

“Yes,” he said simply, and knew that he would be, or would die trying. That she had treated him so badly didn't matter, he would still do it because that was right, that was justice. He would be the vengeance of Heaven for damaging something so perfect, so wonderfully, terribly beautiful. “I give you my word.”

“A monkey's word,” she said. “I suppose, at this point, it's the best I can get. I'm grateful. It's fair. Go, Fool. I have no advice to give you but to be yourself. You've done better than I ever believed you could, and you're still free, unlike me. Go. Be my revenge.”

He didn't answer, instead holding his gun up and pointing it at her, muzzle inches from her forehead. She smiled.

“No,” said Summer. “You can't.”

“Better this than leaving her to be fed upon any more.”

“I don't mean that, I mean you can't because they'll know if you do, the things will know you've been here. They'll know we're trying to stop them. It's too dangerous. Israfil, I'm sorry, truly, but he can't.”

“She's right, Fool,” said Israfil. “Just go. My soul is free once this body dies, and I've enjoyed my life and will enjoy it more yet. Go.”

“We need to go,” said Gordie from behind Fool. Fool nodded and backed away. As he lost sight of the angel in the plants, the last thing he saw her do was nod once at him, still smiling, and then her head rested down again and she reminded him of the things that were sometimes strung up in Hell's fields to scare the smaller flying demonkind away from the crops.

Still walking backward, still looking at the angel even though he couldn't see her, Fool led them back to the clearing in silence. Once there, he set off swiftly around its edge, around the massed and waiting Joyful, almost running, body complaining at every step, and he ignored it because that was just pain, just feelings, and he had to drive on through them because this was almost too big to hold now; this was growing and escalating almost out of his grasp.
Keep hold, little reaching Fool,
he thought, and then they came to the first of the paths leading from the clearing. Continuing around, he found two more, each well used, each heading in a different direction.

“Which one?” asked Fool, handing over to Gordie. He had always had a better grasp of Hell's geography than Fool, and he didn't disappoint now.

“This one,” said Gordie, picking a path that sloped down from the clearing. “I've got a theory. I may not be right, but I think perhaps I am.”

“A theory?”

“A theory. I'm right or I'm wrong, this is as good a one as any at this point.”

Fool couldn't argue, didn't have the strength, and they set off. The path was narrow but passable and they moved quickly, Fool leading and Summer at the rear, Gordie in the middle carrying the bag of torn books and the demon and the scale.

“Where are we going?” asked Fool, each word escaping on a pant.

“I think we're heading to water,” said Gordie. He sounded, if anything, more tired than Fool did.

“Why water?”

“Because I think we're on one of the islands in the middle of Solomon Water,” said Gordie. “I think we're out behind the banks of mist that sit in its middle. I said—didn't I?—that I'd seen them on the map, that'd I'd been hearing rumors for a while about them.”

“There are always rumors,” said Fool.

“But these were consistent,” said Gordie. “They said the same things. Or at least, they were before I…you know.”

“Before you died,” said Summer. “Before you died, Gordie. You have to say it. You have to be clear about your past, about the part you know about, at least. It's the only thing we have that's ours.”

“Yes,” said Gordie. “Before I died. The map confirmed it, and I think that's where we are.”

“Why?”

“I don't know. It's just a feeling.”

The bushes at the side of the path were crowding in now, track narrowing, the leaves brushing against them, snagging at Fool's jacket and trousers. He pushed the branches ahead of him aside, stopping them from swinging back until Gordie and Summer were past them, crouching because the ceiling of wet leaves and interlocking branches was lowering, separating them from the sky, and then something at their side groaned.

Gordie stepped in front of Summer, trying to protect her from whatever attack was coming, but she wouldn't let him, pushing him so that they stood alongside each other, waiting.

Nothing happened and then the groan came again, long and loose and hoarse.

“What now,” said Summer, her own voice low. Fool went toward the groan, gun held out, motioning behind him at Gordie and Summer to stay still. Another groan and the bushes were thicker yet, straining against him so that he had to use his weight to push through, and then they were apart and he was at the next stop of this mystery, looking at demons bound in boxes.

It was another clearing that opened ahead of Fool to reveal a muddy, shingled shoreline, a long and thin space that stretched out before him, and it was full of crates. They were made of branches lashed together with more of the vines; looking up, Fool saw that the trees that lined the clearing were riddled with the clinging growths. Here and there, vines hung down, their ends showing the signs of rough cutting and slashing.

Each crate contained a demon.

The demons were, if anything, in a worse state than Israfil was, each battered and torn and savaged. The nearest to Fool was a skinless thing from Solomon Water, and its flesh was covered in gashes and what looked like burns, a cluster of weeping holes dotted up high on its back. Its ankles and wrists had been tied together so that it was forced to lie on its front trussed up like a parcel, and in the dim light Fool saw that its claws had been torn away, the tips of its fingers bloody stumps that still dripped. The crate it had been forced into was too small, and the wooden bars, chopped branches, were pressing against it, leaving it no space to shuffle or move. Its breathing was shallow and uneven.

The crate beyond it was larger, the demon it contained a fat globule of muscle and skin covered in eyes that peered at Fool myopically, blinking. Past that were more crates, of different sizes, and all around them, on the ground, were the trimmings of the branches that had been used to make them, leaves and smaller twigs. Here and there, they had been swept into piles, and Fool was reminded of the glass in the corridors of the Anbidstow, patiently awaiting disposal.

“What are they?” said Summer from behind Fool, and he knew she was talking not about the demons, but about the things that had put the demons there.

“They're from outside,” he said. “I told you. They're not us and they're not angels and they're not demons. They're…other.”

“Can we go?” asked Gordie. “I hear something.”

So did Fool, the crackle and crack of something approaching. Glancing over, he saw that the bushes and trees at the clearing's upper edge were moving, trembling in a rhythm that wasn't caused by the wind. “Let's go,” he said.

“If they're on an island, they must use boats to get into Hell,” said Summer. “We need to find them.”

“Quickly,” said Gordie. Something had started to gather in the shadows of the trees, the darkness moving, coagulating, and pushing forward. Shadows had started out into the clearing, thin tendrils of blackness that writhed across the ground toward the crates. “Quickly, before they see us.”

They went as fast as they could to the water's edge and started along it, their feet splashing in the mud and water. Behind them one of the demons screamed, and then another and then another, until it was impossible to make out individual voices in the cacophony, the sound of it rising into the trees, raw and battered and hopeless. As the coast curved around, Fool glanced over his shoulder, running now, and caught a glimpse of the black tendrils slithering over the edge of the crates, forcing their way between the bars, and knew that the things from the places outside had come to feed.

They ran, the three of them, keeping the water on their left and the land on their right, moving so that they were abreast and could see each other. Fool was flagging now, various parts of his body going into stitch and cramp, and he stumbled, only just avoiding falling. Summer hooked an arm under his and held him up as they came around a small headland and found, at last, a collection of moored boats.

They were small, little bigger than coracles, each dragged up onto the shingle and into the cover of the trees. Around them, in the mud, were the tracks Fool had started to become familiar with, the footsteps and striations and undulating waves that spoke of the things' presence.

Gordie took one of the boat's keels and began to drag it toward the water, the noise of the hull grating across the pebbles terribly loudly, terribly
noticeably
in the quiet. Fool slumped, sitting at the top of the beach with his back against a tree trunk, gasping, trying not to retch. His skin throbbed and itched where his tattoos split and moved, his belly hurt where the new scars were being pulled, his face ached where the slashes were still healing, his legs hurt from the running, his heart hurt from the fear, and his soul hurt from the pain and misery.

“Where are we going to go?” asked Gordie, getting the boat to the water but not pushing it fully in.

“The Information Office,” said Fool, catching his breath, biting down on the pain. “We need to get Marianne and the pincer. Then to Assemblies House to try to get Rhakshasas to listen to us.”

“Okay,” said Gordie and began to cry. His shoulders began to rack as great sobs were torn from him, moaning low and long, raising his hands to his face and covering eyes that were already leaking tears.

“Gordie,” said Summer and went to him, taking him in her arms.

“I'm sorry,” he said, “I'm sorry but it's too much, I can't take it. All the pain, the horrors, I'd forgotten. Those poor people, those poor
demons,
all of them used that way, for food. And we were dead and then in Heaven and it was like we had a chance but then we're here again, we're back and I'm scared. All of it, it's so awful.”

Awful,
thought Fool as Summer stroked Gordie's head, soothing him,
that's not even close. Maybe there aren't even words for what this is, for an angel staked in a field and its fresh pain and horror eaten, for those snatched away from their most joyous places and brought here. Maybe the words will never exist for it.

“It's okay,” said Summer even though it wasn't, it wasn't even close to okay. “You can cope. We can all cope. We've been through worse, we've seen worse. We've
died,
Gordie, died and come back, and we aren't different, we're us, we're the same, they haven't managed to change us. They can't do anything to us that hasn't already been done.”

“Can't they?” asked Gordie, and Fool thought of the Joyful, tied to their stakes and being fed upon, and thought that maybe Gordie was right not to be sure.

“No,” said Summer firmly. “Now we have to go. We have a war to stop.”

“You make it sound so simple,” said Gordie, sniffing back snot and tears. “Like we'll stroll in and just say, ‘Hey, stop it!,' and they'll agree.”

“Maybe they will,” said Summer, finally letting go of Gordie and pulling the boat fully into the water. “Maybe they will.”

They climbed into the boat. It was cramped, not meant for three, and rode low in the water, but none of them cared or suggested taking two. It was important for them to be together, Fool understood. It was important for them to be with their friends.

There was a set of small oars in the boat's belly, and Gordie took them and started to row, pulling them out into the lake. There was a bank of mist ahead of them, and as they entered it, Fool let his head drop back, let his body relax, and he drifted into something almost like sleep while he put the pieces together.

“The things are other, they're outside,” he said aloud, eyes still closed, “and what do they want? They want what Heaven and Hell have. They're always trying to find a way in but they never manage it, and Heaven and Hell get lazy, get complacent, and when the things finally find a way in they don't notice.

“So they're in, but they can't launch an all-out attack straightaway.”

“Why?” Summer, always the more direct of the two, closer to the point.

“Maybe they're unsure of what they're facing, maybe they're too weak, maybe they can only get a few things in at a time, so they start somewhere small. Not Heaven, their corruption would be impossible to ignore for too long, so they come and hide in Hell and they start taking demons.

“Does that sound right?

“Yes,” he said, answering his own question before Summer or Gordie could, “because this wasn't recently, this was months ago, back when Hell was all chaos and uncertainty, and who's going to notice a few missing demons when everything's changing all the time? They set up on the island because nothing's here and they feed and they get strong and then they're ready for the next stage; they start traveling over the water and lighting fires and carrying out slaughters. The fires aren't about the damage so much as the fear they cause, not in the general populace, because we're frightened most of the time anyway, but in the Bureaucracy, who can't work out what's happening, they're a distraction. At the same time, they have the strength to force their way into Heaven, they tunnel up through the space between the worlds and they follow the same pattern there, starting small, taking the books at first to light the fires, bringing them to corruption, a blasphemy written in flame and paper, and then they take one or two Joyful, and then more and more.”

“Why the Joyful?” Gordie this time, the collector of the arcane, Gordie with his brain that could hold so much, taken from so many places.

Fool thought for a minute. “Because they feed off the strongest emotions, and those poor bastards have known perfection, have known exultation and the most perfect joy, and then suddenly they're in a place of such pain and such terror and good fuck how sweet must their fear and disgust and confusion taste, so much stronger than that of the demons in Hell, who are used to this kind of misery. How much stronger it must make them!

“So they get confident, they've done these things and nothing and no one had linked it to them, they take more and more, raid the pool and the beach and finally the caves where they have the greatest chance of all, to take an angel, not just a caretaker but a fucking
angel,
and now it doesn't matter that they've been discovered because they're strong and they're confident. They want the war to go ahead. They leave a dead demon to set Heaven against Hell, and then they sit back and wait.

“They wait for war.”

“Because they're the unknown in the fire,” said Summer, “the unexpected in the chaos.”

“Yes. And in the middle of the war, or maybe at the end, they'll rise up, pour through the gaps and tunnels they've made, flood off the island, and whoever's won, they'll be weak, not able to fight back against a second, surprise war.

“The things outside of everywhere will be
inside,
and they'll have a chance to win, to be in control. No more Heaven, no more Hell, just two vast feeding pens, demons and angels and Joyful and Sorrowful all staked out and being fed upon. And when they're empty, done? Simple: they take more from Limbo, from the oceans of the damned, and from whatever Heaven's equivalent is, and they never stop, just feeding and being inside and being the victors.”

Fool stopped. Neither Gordie nor Summer spoke.
Is that how it is, how it's going to be?
he thought.

Yes.

No.

No.

No.

Fool opened his eyes, sat up, struggled to focus, but the last image, of Heaven and Hell being reduced to little more than cattle pens in which nothing moved except the feeders, in which everything was staked and battened upon and lost, lodged in his head, the horror of it unshakable. “Where are we?” he asked.

“Near the shore,” said Gordie. “I think we're somewhere on the edge of the farmlands from what I can see. Once we land we should be able to reach the Information Office fairly easily.”

“We have to work fast,” said Fool. “Things are reaching their climax. If it starts, we may be too late.”

“Maybe we should let it,” said Summer quietly. “Maybe Benjamin was right. Maybe we should just let them fight it out between them. Heaven might win.”

“And it might lose,” said Fool. “I'd like to think they'd win but there's no guarantee, especially with the things from outside joining in. We can't risk it. We're the only chance, the only chance to save Heaven and Hell.”

“You want to save Hell?” asked Summer.

“Yes,” said Fool and was surprised to find he meant it. “It's my job. It's our job. What else is there to do?”

“Do you really think we can?”

“Yes,” said Fool, and then his arm screamed at him.

The pain was intense, a sudden white-heat burst from under his sleeve that made his arm clench. Fool started in shock and the movement caused the boat to tilt violently. Water splashed over its side and threatened to swamp it, the tiny craft beginning to wallow. Summer cried out and started to bail with her hands as Gordie pulled the bag up around his shoulders and then joined her, the two of them scooping frantically. Fool curled around himself, arm tucked against his belly as it screamed again, and this time he heard a word in the cry, a single clear utterance in the center of the pain.

He heard his own name.

“Fool,” the voice cried again, and this time he recognized it: Marianne. He sat again, the boat rocking, and tried to pull his sleeve back. It had gotten wet and was sticking to his skin, refusing to move, so he tore it along the inner seam, splitting the material apart in a flurry of thread and ripping. He tugged, lengthening the tear, to reveal Marianne's tattoo face.

“Fool,” she cried again, “please help. Where are you?”

“Marianne, what's wrong?”

“They're coming,” she said, voice still wavering, loud and fearful. “They're here. They're inside!”

“What are?”

“The dancers,” she said, “the dancers are here.”

“Where's ‘here,' Marianne? Where are you?”

“The office,” she said and then screamed again.

He closed his eyes. Immediately, his vision was filled with the flat gray view looking out through the picture and his ears were filled with the familiar noise, as though he was hearing everything from a long way back and the space between was filled with wind. Behind the wind he heard a crash, other screams, the sound of windows breaking.

Where was he? The paper him? The sketch? He was tilted, the angle of his vision disconcertingly uneven, and he had to open his eyes briefly to try to adjust. Gordie and Summer were bailing, looking at him. He closed his eyes again, ready for the off-kilter perspective this time, coping with it slightly better.

He was on the floor, he thought, dropped and knocked there in the confusion. He could see what he thought was a chair or table leg, blocking part of his view, and beyond it a door. Was that his office?

No, the door was too large. It was the mess hall, he thought, the main door of the mess hall. It had a makeshift barricade across it, a broom slipped through the two handles to hold them together.

“Can you get out?” he asked Marianne, trying to remember if the mess had windows. “Where are they?”

As if in answer, the doors shook.

“Are you alone? Have you got your weapon?”

The doors shook again, harder.

“Marianne,” he snapped, “pay attention. Focus on me. Are you armed?”

“Yes,” she finally replied. “It's here.” A hand appeared at the top of his view and picked him up, lifting him and turning him so that he could see her. She looked exhausted, her eyes fearful, ever moving, ever watchful. Her other hand, holding her gun, appeared briefly, wiped at her forehead, and then was gone. Everything shook; Marianne, trembling as she held him.

“Put me down, you need both hands free,” he said, and she did, placing him higher
On a table? In one of the food alcoves?
and facing the door again.

It shook fiercely and something on the far side of it howled. He remembered; the mess had no windows and only one door. If Marianne was to escape, it had to be past whatever was on the other side of that fragile wooden barrier.

“What's happening?”

“Sir, it's got so much worse,” she replied. “The Evidence aren't even hiding that they're taking people now, and Mr. Tap's been gathering demons in the streets. The Evidence have been trying to train the demons to use weapons, but they can't communicate and more often than not they end up fighting the demons they're supposed to be training. Humans have been pulled away from their jobs and—”

The door rattled again, this time hard enough to send the broom handle rattling back several inches.

“Tell me,” said Fool. “Quickly, Marianne, it may be important.”

“We, the last of the Information Men, were told that we would be heading up troops of humans because we had experience.”

“Experience in what?”

“They didn't say. Following orders, or giving orders, I suppose. They told us to stay here until orders arrived.”

“How many of you are there?”

“Not many.”

“Are you all in the mess?”

“I'm alone. I don't know where the others are.” Marianne started to breathe hard, ragged gasping hitching her up and down.

“Calm down,” Fool said. “Calm down now, or you'll die. You have a chance, but not if you panic.”

The door banged in its frame. The broom splintered but did not break, bending and cracking. Fragments of wood flew from it as the door opened part of the way and then slammed shut again, only to reopen at speed. Marianne's gun appeared in Fool's view, pointing at the door, shaking violently but aiming nonetheless. Her breathing was under control at least.