The Demon and the City

she continued to swim, coming out with a snort and a gasp into the reeking water of the side channel.
    When she came to the round outlet that led into the main Jhenrai, it was not so bad. The canals were supposed to be flushed every few days by opening the big sluices that led off from Ghenret. She could taste a cleaner undertone of salt through the acids and detergent, and the water seemed to be flowing fairly quickly. It was dark at the bottom of the canal; Embar Dea, afraid, had no wish to be seen making her journey. Boats tethered at the surface swung and knocked in the flow, the black bulks of their hulls rose above her in the darkness. Someone threw something over the side, an unpleasant mixture of solids and acid which drifted down through the tainted water and which Embar Dea swerved to avoid. She was following the salt, coming up toward Ghenret. Her instructors had told her when the sluice was to be opened, and she would have to pass through or be penned in the muck for another three days. Thus Embar Dea hurried, an elderly water dragon, traveling quickly and unseen through the silted canal to the harbor.
     

FOUR
    It was evening when the visitors came for Pin H'siao. The performance had just ended, and Pin was in the process of folding up his costume when he turned to find Miss Jhin standing nervously behind him.
    "Pin," she said, encouragingly. "There are some people here to see you." In a lowered voice she added, "I think they want to make a, um, a booking." Miss Jhin, delicate soul that she was, preferred to turn a blind eye to the more sordid activities of her chorus; he could see the distaste in her eyes.
    "All right," he told her, wearily. "I'll sort it out."
    "Thank you, Pin," Miss Jhin said, her face betraying gratitude. Pin tidied himself up and followed her out of the dressing room. Two people were waiting in the hallway. One was a woman in early middle age, with the trademark blackened teeth and lacquered hairdo of a professional madam. The girl who stood by her side had a pretty, empty face, reminding Pin uneasily of the lost Maiden Ming, whom he had not seen since the night of the Paugeng party. That had been two days ago now, and he had heard nothing from the policeman or the demon. And Ming had not returned. Guiltily, he could not bring himself to feel too sorry about that.
    "How may I help you?" he asked.
    The Madam gave a slight bow.
    "We are interested in your company this evening, at a small soirée in Shaopeng. Not very far, and possibly for no more than an hour or so."
    "I see." Well, that didn't sound too bad, Pin thought. But he'd been wrong before, Gods knew. "All right. Would you like me to accompany you now?"
    "That would be most acceptable. We will, of course, want to come to some sort of arrangement: I have a list of the rates from your charming chorus director." Holding out the list, she indicated the higher end of the fee scale.
    "Most acceptable," Pin said, echoing the Madam. If he could get more bookings like this, he thought, he might be able to start saving to get out of here. This decision had come to him on the morning after the party at Paugeng, which he had spent in a daze thinking about the demon. He needed a goal, he had decided. He followed the Madam and her assistant out into the balmy evening air of Shaopeng.
    They took a circuitous route, bypassing the downtown station and heading down a maze of back alleyways to a long, low building with a red lacquered roof. A neon sign hung outside the door, and as soon as he set eyes on it, Pin stopped dead.
    "You didn't tell me that this was— that sort of place," he protested, trying not to sound too accusing.
    "Please don't worry," the Madam replied, rather sharply. "This is not the usual kind of service."
    Pin stared unhappily at the sign, which bore, in bright pulsing letters, the word for Hell. He had only ever been in a demon lounge once before, but his visit had passed in a haze of narcola and panoline. The lounges catered to the more exotic end of the market; the services in which a wide range of drugs played a major role. It was said, beneath people's breath, that the inhabitants of the lounges were no narcotic-induced hallucination, but were real: minor denizens of Hell, conjured up on a short-term lease to service the clients of the lounge. It was not, by anyone's definition, safe sex.
    Pin's memories of that event, which he did not care to examine too closely, were a blur of images: elegantly contorted limbs,