It was close to nine o'clock when Chen wearily stepped onto the deck of the houseboat—a sultry evening, with an oily, yeasty smell drifting off the waters of the harbor. Inari came to meet him, ducking under the lintel of the kitchen door with a pan in her hand.
"Darling! You're home!" Some women would have made remarks about the time, questioned him as to where he'd been and what he'd been doing, but Inari was never like this. She always seemed delighted that he'd come back at all. "How was work?"
"Boring," Chen said, "and then exciting." The one breach of official protocol that he ever entertained was to talk to Inari about work. In a sense, she was part of it: Hellkind, after all, even though her heart had never belonged to Hell, or to the vast, scheming clan which had sought to marry her off to a scion of the Ministry of Epidemics. Inari was a good person; death—had she been a mortal—would surely have qualified her for entrance into Heaven.
So now Chen told her about Miss Qi, and her unexpected talent for violence. Inari's crimson eyes widened as he spoke and her small face grew even paler.
"She sounds—remarkable. But you know, there are warriors among the Heavenly Host and even Hell fears them, and the great swords that they carry. Heaven has its armies, just as Hell does."
"That's true," Chen said. He sat down on the bench that stood just outside the kitchen and accepted a bowl of green tea. Inari sat beside him, hands folded in her lap. The image of demure womanhood, and yet he knew that Inari had on occasion been obliged to fight for her life, and done so fiercely. "I suppose it's just that I haven't come across them all that much." Did he detect a slight note of resentment in his own voice? The feeling that he'd been forced to battle on, more or less alone, doing the Goddess Kuan Yin's work in the world while the warriors of Heaven sat on their Celestial backsides—
"Darling, is everything all right?" Inari was gazing at him with some concern. "There's soup if you haven't eaten," she added.
Chen reached out and squeezed her hand. "I'm fine. Just distracted." A life dedicated to Heaven's behalf and yet the most support he'd had was from two of demonkind. He sighed. "I've got to go to Hell tomorrow evening. Zhu Irzh and Miss Qi and I have been put on this equal ops visit."
"Oh. All right," Inari said. She looked momentarily downcast. "How long will you be gone?"
"A few days. Not longer, I fervently hope, and if we can cut it short, we will. None of us want to be there, not even Zhu Irzh. Will you manage all right?" Inari could and did go out to the market on her own without being recognized as a demon, but Chen couldn't help worrying about her.
"I'll be fine," Inari said. As she spoke, something low and dark trundled out from beneath the bench and snapped at a moth. "I'll have badger, after all."
"I shall look after her," said her household's ancient familiar, through a mouthful of moth. Chen rather wished that he could take the badger with him; the creature was a denizen of Hell, after all, and had proved useful in the past. But it was more important for it to look after Inari.
"Will Zhu Irzh be taking Jhai?" Inari asked. They'd spent an evening at Paugeng, at a small private reception of Jhai's. The industrialist had been charming, complimenting Inari on an admittedly beautiful dress and spending some time in conversation with her. Tserai herself had looked rather fine, dressed in a purple and silver sari with her huge eyes outlined in kohl and the faint tiger stripes of her own demonic origins just visible on her darkly golden skin. Chen could certainly see the attraction, but he would as soon have gone to bed with the original tiger. When they had emerged into the cool night air, the only thing Inari had said was, "Be careful. I don't trust her."
"I've no intention of trusting her," Chen had replied.
Now, he said, "No, Tserai's not coming with us. I'd be surprised if she ventured into Hell, quite frankly. She has—business associates there who won't be too happy with her after the debacle a few months ago. She failed to give them Heaven, effectively."
"Do you think they'll come after her?" Inari said.
"I'm counting on it. But it won't be just yet. Hell takes a long time to revenge itself sometimes. As you know. Anyway, Zhu Irzh didn't seem all that keen on having her with him. I think he feels a cooling-off period might not be a bad idea. Says she's started to take too much for granted."
Inari grimaced. "That one will always take too much for granted. She thinks she can buy people."
"The trouble is," Chen said, "she's very often right."
He dreamed that he had already entered Hell. Zhu Irzh and Miss Qi were nowhere to be seen and neither was anyone else, but somehow, this did not seem to matter. He was walking along a promontory of scarlet rock, the cliffs tumbling down to a crashing, iron-colored sea. On the horizon, the storm clouds were gathering and he could see the flash of the spears and eyes of the kuei, the Storm Lords whose arbitrary, capricious law is said to govern the affairs of Hell. But this did not matter either and Chen strolled on, admiring the view. But suddenly, a figure was standing in his path with a hand upraised: a figure that changed as he looked at it—first a small boy, then an old man, and then something that was not human at all. It opened its mouth and gave a ringing cry. Chen covered his ears, but the cry went on and on, echoing from the scarlet cliffs until the world itself began to shatter and fall apart.
Chen's eyes snapped open. The sound was still going on, although now it was the telephone. When he groped for it, dropped it, and finally answered, with the dream still so fresh around him that he could smell saltwater, Zhu Irzh's voice said, "Chen! We've got a problem."