The Demon and the City

by a bony arm, but Senditreya flicked her contemptuously away as though Robin were nothing more than a bothersome insect. Robin flew into a snowbank and did not rise again. With a sinking dismay, Zhu Irzh noted that her head lay at an odd angle. There was no sign of Jhai. Chen was again standing, beginning to chant a spell, but his voice was in rags; he had been winded by the fall. The goddess lashed down with the whip once more.
    Zhu Irzh knew that he had little chance against a vengeful deity, and when it came to it, whose side was he on, anyway? But then again, Senditreya presumably wasn't very popular with Hell right now, and perhaps some capital could be gained if he were the one to bring her down—but as he was debating the rights and wrongs of the issue, there was a howl of pure fury from behind.
    "You fucking cow!" Paravang Roche ran over the snowbank with remarkable speed and launched himself at his goddess. She was too startled to react as he hit her. The dowser's momentum carried them both into the crack, which closed behind them with a reverberating shockwave. Zhu Irzh blinked. Senditreya was gone. The chariot still stood, with two mild-eyed white cattle in its traces. Above them, reached the high vault of Shai. As Zhu Irzh watched, it began to collapse.
     
    Shai seemed to have retreated, and it was so cold, as cold as the void between the stars. It struck through to the demon's bones and beyond, freezing blood and sinew, welding his tongue to the roof of his mouth, his eyes transfixed, the damp warm air in his lungs turned to ice. Then he felt a single note, very sweet and clear, ring through the whole world. Ice that he was, it seemed to shatter him, break him soundlessly apart so that he spun into pieces, fragments of muscle and glassy bone flying in all directions, followed by an unwinding spool of blood. From a distant place, he watched his blood unravel, a dull silver thread bursting into droplets, and he followed it, all the way across the world, higher and higher and then falling like rain. As each drop fell, it impacted on the iron ground and it was as though all the weight of the world descended. Then he was through, seeping beneath the surface of the earth, the presence of pain, dispersal and then the familiar stretched, dreadful sense of the world itself, spinning ponderously on its axis, one face toward the hearth of the sun, the other touched by the dark and the cold, and the city on the edge of the world just coming into day. Instinctively, he gathered his fragmented senses and pulled toward the bright line of the sun, to where the Great Meridian ran in a fluttering path of fire beneath the city, and his tigress was waiting.
     

Fifty-Nine
    Jhai finally managed to get a hold of herself as the ceiling fell in. She had blurred, uncertain memories of a snowy plain, other people, a mad goddess, but none of it was clear. There was the taste of blood in her mouth and her spine ached at the base. Coughing, she dodged falling masonry, struggling to find the demon and get clear. There was a searing crunch from the doorway as the lintel began to give way. The front of Shai was subsiding, sinking slowly and gracefully in upon itself. She still had no idea how she had come to be here in the first place. Then the floor heaved and Jhai was knocked to her hands and knees. The lintel cracked with a shotgun report, bringing a shower of dust and plaster down upon her head. Jhai could not see; the chalky dust saturated her nose and throat. She coughed and gagged, knowing that she ought to get up and run. She could feel her devic nature surging back in defense. It occurred to her to wonder where she would end up when she died. She thought she knew.
    As the doorframe fell inward, however, she felt herself seized, wrenched free and thrust out onto the steps. Frantically, she rolled clear. Behind her, the front of Shai fell in. Jhai lay on the shaking steps, gasping in long breaths of the dust-smothered air. Then, as swiftly as it had come, the tremor stopped. She remained there for a minute and then, retching, got to her feet and rubbed the dust from her eyes.
    The morning sun was a pale coin above Wuan Chih, rising up through the mist, and somewhere a bird was singing, a nightingale in the uprooted trees along Shaopeng. Jhai took a step toward the ruin. All four walls of Shai had come down, along with the dome. The ground still shuddered with the aftershock. Detective Inspector Chen was standing by her side,