The Demon and the City

until we reach—that is, until we find a place where I can return to where I belong."
    Robin gritted her teeth. She was determined not to ask him to stay. She remained, nursing her knee, as he vanished. He was gone a long time. Robin was hot and every time she moved a burning ache ran along her shin. The stuffed sacking was making her nose run and her eyes itch. She had never known such a week for being ill. The beasts stamped in their stalls. Mhara was coming back, she thought with an uplift of hope, but they refused to settle down and he did not come into view. One of the cows kicked out, and the sound echoed around the stalls like a hammer blow.
    "Robin? Where are you?" a soft, familiar voice said. Robin kept still. She could see it flickering against the wall of the shed, like a shadow, no shape or form, just movement. Then it collapsed back into its normal being, the powerful hindquarters swaying against the sacks. Wise, orange eyes looked at her.
    "There you are."
    "Go away," Robin cried.
    "Oh no," the beast said.
    Do not look at it, she thought, it is not real, it is not there, a spirit, but she felt her head, suddenly bursting with pressure, turned around to meet its gaze.
    "Well," Mhara said softly from the door, "whatever are you?"
    The animal looked up at him and whined. It gave a little purring laugh.
    "So you're the one," it said. "Have you told her yet? What you are, and what they made you?"
    Mhara crouched down on his heels and regarded the beast with some interest. He was smiling his vague smile but Robin saw his fists clench slowly. His spine was taut.
    "Not yet, no."
    The animal laughed again, and scratched one ear with its heavy, hind foot.
    "Better do so then," it said. Mhara growled. His thin, amiable mouth drew back from the long, sharp incisors and narrowed the blue eyes to a slit. The cows, fretful, shuffled in their stalls. The animal bounded forward and Mhara rose and stepped swiftly from its path. It bounded through the door and was gone. He looked after it.
    "Found a boat," was all that he said.
    He helped Robin through the door and down a small set of steps, strewn with dried grass, onto the street. They were, she saw now, outside a long range of warehouses. From here, the go-downs looked like separate buildings, when in fact they were a single long barn. The derelict lot to the side of the sheds was blowing with grass, a pale golden haze in the darkness, and the night air was filled with pollen and dust. This, presumably, was where the beasts were kept in their city pasture, contravening the zoning regulations.
    Holding onto Mhara, Robin hopped the remaining few yards to the bank of the canal. This was not the main Shaopeng canal itself, but a narrow tributary. The boat was roped roughly to a post. It was a small, nondescript craft, barely big enough for two people, a flat raft rising slightly to a squared prow and half-covered by a semicircle of canvas. It was the boat of a poor person. Robin's liberated social conscience protested.
    "We can't take this . This must be all someone's got."
    "It's all right," Mhara soothed. His eyes were shadows under the single wharf light. "I paid for it. Fifteen hundred dollars in gold."
    "How much? Wherever did you get all that?"
    "I don't think we should stand here, Robin. We should go."
    Robin acquiesced as he jumped from the wharf and turned to lift her down. When he had untied the boat and had started its small inadequate engine, she said, "Who did you take the money from?"
    Mhara squinted narrowly ahead. "I did not take it from anyone. I just happened to have it."
    "What, you just 'happened to have' fifteen hundred bucks in gold?"
    "Yes. When I found the boat, it was roped to another one, and I thought perhaps I shouldn't just take it, so I left the money in exchange. That's what you do, isn't it, with money? I don't understand it very well."
    "Yes," Robin said, staring at him. "Basically, that's what you do." She was beginning to wonder whether she had done the right thing, going quietly along with him, her victim, whether she should not try to escape and raise the alarm, perhaps try and get her job back. But then Deveth was there, dead in the corporate morgue. Then she looked at him, the peaceful, oval face, the veiled eyes, a braid of hair tapping between his shoulder blades, and demon or no demon, job or no job, she knew she could do no such thing.
    "You should sleep, Robin," Mhara said. "I will drive the boat." So she lay uncomfortably down