The Demon and the City - By Liz Williams Page 0,63

more likely possibility. The boat was very pale, a pearly phosphorescence in the dim light of the Night Harbor, illuminated by the smoky lamps that burned along the edges of the port. Its sails were folded, but they, too, were white, draping in spectral folds from the high masts.

"Can you see anyone aboard?" the demon asked.

"No." Chen paused. "We ought to be concentrating on finding Sardai."

"Oh, let's just take a quick look," Zhu Irzh suggested.

Together, they walked to the side of the dock. Up close, the boat was smaller than it had appeared from a distance: a delicate thing, its sides completely encrusted with ghostly shells, pale whorls and spirals that shimmered in the uncertain light.

"This is beautiful," Chen said.

"It's a Celestial craft," the demon said. He reached out a hand, but did not touch the sides of the boat.

"It certainly looks as though it might be," Chen said. The demon wrinkled his nose. He could almost smell the offensive peach blossom orchards of Heaven. "But what's it doing here?" Chen added.

"I have no idea. Celestial vessels very rarely leave the Heavenly seas."

Chen reached out and brushed a hand along the shell-embossed side of the boat. Immediately, a gossamer web drifted down and enveloped his arm, imprisoning it.

"Damn!" Chen said, staring at his hand in dismay. "I shouldn't have done that."

"It was extremely foolish," the demon said severely. It was nice not to have been the one to fuck up for a change. "What are we going to do now?"

"Wait," a voice said from behind him. "One moment."

Zhu Irzh turned and found himself confronting a Celestial maiden. She was exactly like all the other Celestial maidens he had seen: beautiful, of course, with a thick fall of lacquered hair and a white ceremonial dress that seemed to catch the light from the lamps and hold it, so that she glowed a faint gold.

"Madam," Zhu Irzh said, and bowed. A pity all these girls were as wan and insipid as their home. Perhaps, if Tserai had her way, that might change. The demon belatedly became aware that he was grinning, but instead of stepping back with a squeak of fright, the maiden simply regarded him with a cool, detached interest, as though he was something she had found at the bottom of a pond. She touched the web that imprisoned Chen and it disappeared.

"I'm very sorry," Chen said. "I meant no harm."

"I know. You were simply curious. And indeed, no harm has been done. You are Detective Inspector Chen, are you not?"

Chen was staring at her. "Yes. But how did you know?"

"You were the prot茅g茅 of my mistress, before things changed."

"Your mistress is Kuan Yin?" Zhu Irzh could see that Chen was rapidly leaping to conclusion after conclusion. "She's here?"

"Yes. We arrived yesterday, as the Night Harbor reckons these things."

"Then that must be why I couldn't contact her," Chen said. "May I ask why she's come?"

"I think you should ask her yourself," the maiden said. "Come with me."

Thirty-Two

"Where are we going?" Robin asked, shakily. It was hard to walk when your ankles had been shackled and your arms were tied behind your back.

"Be quiet," the dogman behind her snapped. She felt hot, reeking breath on the back of her neck. From the corner of her eye she saw Mhara, similarly shackled, hobbling along. They had left the fields far behind them and now walked through a wilderness of sharp stones and jagged outcrops. Through gaps in the rock Robin occasionally glimpsed distant lights, and a vast roiling expanse that knowledge and half-memory told her was the Sea of Night. It made her sick to look at it: a horrible thought, to know that her soul had already crossed that sea many times before. She could not imagine sailing upon it. Small wonder that memories of the life-between-lives could not be accessed, otherwise life itself would be a landscape of anticipatory dread. And now Robin herself would suffer from this suffocating fear of death, having seen what awaited her at the other end. Even Hell would be better than that dark ocean. If she even lived . . . The boundaries had become too blurred; she did not know what that meant anymore.

Then the rocks clustered more densely around them and the glimpses of the Sea of Night vanished, to Robin's intense relief. She could feel Mhara glancing at her, but she did not want him to meet her eyes and see her fear and dismay, so she stared rigidly at the