The Iron Khan (5 page)

That didn’t surprise Inari. Miss Qi had not been on Earth for very long, and Inari understood from her heavenly friend that Mhara’s delegation to the human world was forbidden from interfering with the weather. Out along the horizon, a mass of cloud was gathering, inky and shot with bronze where the sun made its last feeble attempts to push through.

“Everyone was startled at the weather-working ban,” Miss Qi said, echoing Inari’s own thoughts. “No one could understand it. Hurricanes and earthquakes and typhoons — why would anyone want to put up with that?”

“Don’t you have any weather in Heaven?” Inari said, rather timidly. She did not want her friend to think that she was criticizing her, or cause her to lose face.

“Sometimes there are breezes. And the occasional shower of rain in the spring, just for contrast. But it’s extremely gentle.” Miss Qi gave a very human shiver.

“I’m afraid you’re not likely to find this weather ‘extremely gentle,’ ” Inari said grimly. The ominous bank of clouds reminded her of Hell. “If Wei Chen were here, I’d — ” but her thought was cut off by a high-pitched wail from the shore.

Miss Qi jumped and her hand flew to the hilt of her sword. “What is that?”

It sounded like a cat being tortured, but Inari had heard the noise before. “It’s the typhoon warning siren! We need to move the boat.”

Miss Qi gaped at her. “Can this boat be moved?” Of course, Inari reflected, Miss Qi had only ever seen the houseboat in its current position and, like a lot of people, must have assumed it to be stationary.

“Yes. This has happened twice before, but Wei Chen was here each time. We’ll have to do it ourselves.” She found that her hand had crept to her stomach, unconsciously protecting the growing child. She did not relish the prospect of steering the boat all the way around the point to the typhoon shelter, but it would have to be done: the harbor was too exposed and all around them people were scrambling with mooring ropes and starting their engines.

“We’ll have to bring the anchor up,” Inari said.

“I’ll have to bring it up,” Miss Qi retorted. “You’re pregnant.”

“Demons are more robust than humans,” Inari said.

“But it’s half a human baby!” Miss Qi said over her shoulder, running along the deck to where the anchor rope strained over the side. Inari cast an anxious look toward the horizon, where the cloud was beginning to boil. As she did so, a mammoth crack of thunder rolled across the sea, followed by a bolt of lightning as bright and sharp as a razor. Inari frowned. That wasn’t the right way round… The wind was starting to rise, too, stirring her hair and the hem of her skirt with a salty, electric breath. She looked back along the deck. It seemed that Heaven’s warriors were more robust than humans as well, for the seemingly delicate Miss Qi had already got the anchor up to the railing and was heaving it over the side. As quickly as she could, Inari ran up the stairs to the little wheel-house. This was an old-fashioned boat, which Chen had modernized over the years so that the controls were relatively slick. Inari knew how to steer, but the sea was growing increasingly choppy; and besides, there were all the other boats around her, some of them quite a lot longer, all making for the typhoon shelter. Well, she had no choice.

“Ready?” she shouted down to Miss Qi.

“Nearly!” Miss Qi replied. “Get going!” Inari started the engine and after a few sputters, the old houseboat roared into life.

“Mistress!” Inari looked down to see the badger. “I can offer little assistance,” the badger said, reluctantly.

“Perhaps you could help Miss Qi with the mooring ropes,” Inari said, forbearing to add, “And please don’t fall in.”

By now, the sea was churning inward, driven before the oncoming storm. Inari looked out the window of the wheel-house and her courage almost failed her. The clouds were coming at a tremendous pace, whipped on by a dimly glimpsed, whirling mass at their heart: the typhoon itself. A sudden gust threw rain across the window of the wheel-house; Inari felt as though the storm had spat at her. This didn’t feel like a normal storm: the way the clouds moved, the way the wind was rising. Inari swallowed panic as Miss Qi called up, “We’re no longer moored!”

Inari spun the wheel, checking the position of the boats on either side of her, a commercial barge and a much smaller sampan crewed by an elderly couple. There was little time for maritime etiquette: the barge waved her on and Inari took the houseboat out into what was becoming a shipping channel. The boat wallowed in the swell, lurching from side to side. Miss Qi leaped nimbly up the stairs and into the wheel-house, her pale hair starred with rain.

“It’s cold,” she said.

“Miss Qi, I don’t think this is the usual type of typhoon. I don’t know what it is, but it’s not like the typhoons we’ve had before.” She steadied the wheel. “And we had so little warning. Normally, they know days before if the weather’s starting to change — they want everyone in the shelters well before it hits.”

There was, she thought, little chance of that now. The houseboat was rounding the point now — she could see the ridge of pine trees at the far end of the spit — and the typhoon shelter was visible as a series of barriers bobbing in the water of the next harbor. But they were at the tail end of the queue, and given the number of boats trying to get into the bottleneck of the shelter, Inari thought they were unlikely to make it.

She wouldn’t abandon ship. But she might not have any choice. A series of possibilities, none of them pleasant, flashed through her mind: drowning, in which case she’d return to Hell. Swimming to shore, but losing the houseboat, the only true home she’d ever known. And what would she say to Wei Chen on his return from Heaven? Sorry, dear, home sank. She had to make it to the shelter, but the houseboat, chugging along, could not be made to go any faster. It was already at its limit and the storm was lashing the coast now, blurring the lights of the city through the rain-speckled glass, and causing the boat to heave in the water. Good thing demons were not easily afflicted with seasickness, but she was not certain that the same could be said for poor Miss Qi, who was now so pale that her skin had a faint gleam of green.

“Sit down!” Inari commanded the Celestial.

“I’ve never thrown up in my life,” Miss Qi protested. “I don’t know how!”

“I think you’ll find it comes quite naturally,” Inari said, with sympathy. The badger had wedged himself into a corner of the wheel-house like a cork in a bottle and showed no signs of budging. Then a blast of wind struck the houseboat broadside and caused it to lurch. The wheel was ripped out of Inari’s hands and freely spun. She grabbed it, losing skin, and managed to regain control of the craft, but only for a moment. They were yards from the entrance to the typhoon shelter — she saw the sampan glide safely through — when the storm struck full on.

The wheel was once again torn out of Inari’s hands. The houseboat spun violently into a right-angled turn, throwing Inari and Miss Qi into a heap on the deck. The wind hit them with a sound like an express train. Inari had a sudden, confused glance of the barriers of the typhoon shelter far below them, as they were carried up on a wall of water that should have deposited them in the middle of the sheltering boats. Instead, the wave dropped, letting the boat fall and fall and fall, until Inari could see not sea, but stars.

“If you want to go,” Jhai said, not yet impatient but verging on it, “then we’ll go. The surveyors are getting on with what they have to do. You’ve still got leave. And I could use a proper break.”

“It might not be much of a vacation,” Zhu Irzh said, thinking of that sinister villa. “And it’s not like me to be influenced by dreams.”

Jhai shot him a curious glance. “No, it isn’t, is it? This must have been some dream.”

“Something’s seeking me out,” Zhu Irzh said. “I’m not used to that.” It was true. Usually, he was peripheral to events, along for the ride. He might have been involved in some of the major upheavals of the last few years, but only as a participant, not as someone whom others tried to rope in. Yet there had been something about Nicholas’ dark gaze that Zhu Irzh felt oddly reluctant to ignore.

“This man who came to you,” Jhai said, as if she had read his thoughts. Zhu Irzh blinked. For a moment, it was almost as though Nicholas was standing in the room. “What exactly did he say to you?”

“He mentioned someone called the Iron Khan,” the demon reported. “I don’t know who or what he meant by that — I’ve never heard of such a person. But that’s not so surprising. Out here, the Hells are so close that they overlap with one another: he might be a figure from the Islamic version. I’ve never been there, don’t know much about it. Nicholas said that the Khan is like a jiang shi, a vampire.”

“Have you met many jiang shis?”

“No, never. I’ve met a couple of zombies, but they weren’t life-force leeches. There aren’t any in Hell, for obvious reasons — they come about because the soul fails to leave a human body properly, and Hell is, by definition, a place of souls.”

“I’ve heard theories that they don’t really exist,” Jhai said. “That they’re demonized forms of the Manchu — that’s why they all wear those Qing Dynasty clothes. There’s another belief that they were invented by smugglers, who dressed up to scare off locals from investigating their activities.”

“That may be so,” Zhu Irzh said, “but I wouldn’t rule them out, all the same. Especially not after what happened at that wedding downstairs.”

Jhai laughed. “If I see any furry people with long black fingernails hopping about, I’ll let you know. Better go around holding your breath. Or we could get some sticky rice from room service. That’s a sure-fire cure for jiang shis.”

“I think you’ve been watching too many movies,” Zhu Irzh said.

But all the same, next morning, Jhai booked flights for Kashgar.

•

“Have you heard anything more from Turgun?” Jhai asked as they waited in line at the airport. It would, doubtless, have been easier to commission Paugeng’s own jet, but the runway at Kashgar was apparently not up to the task. So here they were, standing in line with grandmothers and small children and dogs and crates of chickens, in Urumchi’s new and surprisingly glossy airport terminal.

“I called him while you were packing,” Zhu Irzh said. “He’s heard nothing more about the female mummy. He said that the male’s been returned to the museum and has shown no further signs of life. Turgun’s got armed guards on duty, but there’s a limit to how long he’ll be able to keep them there — the authorities have been asking awkward questions, apparently.”

“Can’t blame them,” Jhai said. “When is this line going to start moving? Ah. Here we go.”

They shuffled through the security channels, which were tightly controlled: Turgun had not been joking about the government’s concerns regarding terrorism. Soldiers armed with machine guns swarmed around the little terminal and even Jhai’s baggage was searched, which she bore without comment. Zhu Irzh himself, resplendent in a pair of designer sunglasses to hide non-human eyes, attracted no comment.

“Good thing we’re not going out of the country,” Jhai said in an undertone. “If they’d needed to see your passport, you’d have to take those off.”

Zhu Irzh could not help wondering about Mhara’s Long March, whether the Celestials who had come down to Earth would really be able to have that much of an effect on human problems, on terrorism, on war. With the Ministries of Hell still doing their best to carry out their remits, Mhara’s people would have their work cut out.

Together, he and Jhai made their way out onto the tarmac. At noon, the airport was baking in the heat, a desert in itself, and behind them the terminal shimmered in the haze until rendered almost spectral. The plane itself was a small, squat vehicle, bearing an Air China logo. Jhai and Zhu Irzh took their seats and awaited take-off.

You certainly got a sense of China’s size, flying over it like this. The demon squinted out of the little window while Jhai concentrated on her laptop. They’d opted for first class, so the facilities were somewhat better, but not by much. Zhu Irzh watched as the landscape scrolled beneath: wave upon wave of high, bleached hill interspersed with dark stripes and red washes, the stark colors of the deep Taklamakan. No trees, nothing that was green. Occasionally, there was the glitter of salt in the harsh sunlight. Given recent events, the demon would not have been surprised to see a woman on a blue crane flying alongside the plane, but none appeared. Was she now in some Hell of her own, he wondered, flying between the worlds? The woman intrigued him, as did the entire situation. The Tokarian, the shaman. She had not looked like a jiang shi, stiff and hopping. She’d looked alive.

Movement at the front of the cabin attracted his attention and Zhu Irzh looked up from the window. The pilot, smart in his official uniform, had come out of the cockpit, accompanied by his co-pilot. Both were beaming.

“Who’s flying the plane?” Zhu Irzh asked uneasily. He was aware that technology was not his strong point. Magic was much simpler, somehow. Jhai glanced up.

“What? Oh, it must be on autopilot. Perfectly safe.” She returned to her spreadsheet. The demon watched with interest as two bureaucratic men at the front of the plane were greeted fulsomely by the aircrew, while a smiling stewardess looked on. Local government officials, probably. Both the men wore designer suits and were clearly of some importance.