The Demon and the City

organization decided to get the drop on their neighbors by manipulating the energies that lay beneath the city and altering the surrounding feng shui . The neighbor was quite right. Throughout Kuen, Rama and Wuan Chih, a ch'i war had snaked across the city. The whole thing had started in Shaopeng, where the Eregeng Trade House had erected its monstrous new headquarters: capped by a devilish pagoda roof flaring out in all directions, but directed principally at the northeast. Everyone directly beneath its baleful influence had called in the builders—at night, so as not to lose business—and had their premises tweaked and tucked to accommodate the energy flow of beneficent ch'i and malignant sha . The battle lines had shot from Shaopeng and radiated east, all the way to Paravang's neighbor's kitchen ten miles distant.
    In the days—so sadly recent—when he had still possessed a dowsing license, Paravang would simply have recommended some lesser practitioner. Fixing his neighbor's feng shui would not have been worth his while, but now, he was forced to take what little he could get. He accepted the meager dollars that the neighbor shoved grudgingly into his hand, and, grinding his teeth, fixed her culinary trauma with a set of judiciously positioned bagua mirrors to halt and deflect the unlucky energy.
    Now, he stood in his little kitchen, angling more octagonal mirrors to deflect the malevolent sha lines that were still running off from the Eregeng Trade House. He had hung red tassels around the windows and over the door and the entrance to the disposal chute, and set up a complex array of bagua mirrors. Gradually the sense of oppression had begun to lift, but he could still feel it, hanging heavy and ominous, like a storm cloud just beyond the horizon.
    Eventually the mirrors were arranged to his satisfaction, and Paravang turned his attention to his dinner. He shredded ginger and spring onion, pounded it with the garlic that he grew in pots on the windowsill, and chopped Chinese leaf, bean sprouts and shrimps. He doused the mixture in soy, rice vinegar and sesame oil and set to making neat little packages with the won ton wrappers made by his neighbor. Arranging the won ton in the bottom of the steamer, he put the water on to boil. The lights were beginning to come on across the district, and Paravang's neighbors were starting to straggle home. Paravang looked out the window, filled with sudden doubt. Seedy though it undoubtedly was, he liked living here. In the evening he could go down to the small, dark bar at the end of the street, the one that always had washing hanging outside, and sit with his cronies. They were not practitioners. Feng shui men tended to keep aloof from one another, fearing rivalry. These were local businesspeople who respected him. Once a week he took the tram out to Bharulay to see his elderly father, and they went for long, silent walks along the canal. His mother, the shrill, quarrelsome Mrs Roche, had long since passed into one of the more pleasant neighborhoods of Hell, if that wasn't a contradiction in terms. She sometimes telephoned, a tinny, distant voice in her son's ear, demanding to know why he was still unwed. Since he was now fifty, he thought that she'd have given up hope long before now, but not so. She had always been a most determined woman. Apart from this maternal irritant, his life had been good enough until the arrival of the demonic intruder and the revoking of his license. But now . . . had he really done the right thing in hiring an—an exorcist? He thought of the demon's blank, menacing visage, and the terrible ripping claws. What if the exorcist—Paravang shied away from the term "assassin"—messed things up? What if Zhu Irzh came after him again? He needed a fallback plan, Paravang decided, staring sightlessly out over the lights of the city. He needed serious help.

Eighteen
    The world had become a dream to Robin, a circus of wonders, and nothing could touch her. She had followed the beast along the turning alleys of Shaopeng and Ghenret until they had come out into a place that she recognized. They stood in a wide square, but the towering compartments made it seem as though Robin and the animal stood at the bottom of a well. At one side an oblong of night sky was visible, above the much lower roof of the Battery Road teahouse, and Robin had gasped. She had never seen such stars, such brightness. They fell in a great burning coil over the teahouse roof