The Demon and the City

burst of laughter. Robin and Mhara stopped. A woman was coming toward them. She had a dancing walk and her pale hair streamed down her back. As she walked, her hair was full of fire, flames trailing behind her, and her long and slanted eyes were empty except for its light. She held out her hand when she saw them and spoke, and the liquid syllables rushed away like water. Mhara's grip of Robin's hand tightened.
    "Where are we now?" Robin asked, confused, and the woman smiled, fierce and gleaming.
    "You are in the antechamber of Hell," she said mockingly. Turning to Mhara, she made a sign with her hand and then she was gone, taken by the gunpowder air. Mhara took Robin's hands in his.
    "Robin, before we go any further, you have to know something."
    —and suddenly Robin was walking down Mherei Street, and the night was quiet. Ahead, someone paused, uncertainly, and Robin paced toward her, faster and faster, running now and the smell of fear hot in her throat. The woman turned and her mouth opened wide, Deveth's dark face frozen on the surface of memory, and Robin reached a clawed hand up and tore open her throat. She caught the body as it toppled and dragged Deveth swiftly back, the blood very warm and heavy against her fingers and, curious, she reached down and ripped. The flesh came off in one piece, and even in the warm evening air, it steamed. She sat with the woman's startled head in her lap, absorbed in her prize, and then there was a sharp hiss of air and the dart brought her down, falling over the ruined body, the blood wet in her dark, unbraided hair, warm against her cheek.
    Robin looked at Mhara, dazed.
    "You gave me the drug," Mhara whispered, "just before you went home, the largest dose yet, and when you'd gone and I was under the long dream, Jhai Tserai took me out into the city. I don't know what I did. I don't remember what happened, only the fragments that you just saw. I escaped from them, the meridians drew me, I don't know what else I might have done, who else's life I might have taken. When I woke I was in the cot, in Paugeng, and it was morning and you were bending over me, so unhappy. Jhai used me, Robin. She used me to kill Deveth. But mine was the hand that did the killing. I am a Celestial being, Robin. Do you know what that means? I deserve to be in Hell. I cannot enter Heaven now, except by stealth. But it's to Heaven that I have to go, to tell them what is happening."
    Robin turned and went to stand at the edge of the wharf. Beneath her, the water ran quickly, a haze of darkness dappled with the fireworks' light. She could see nothing beyond.
    "We killed Deveth, then, Mhara. You and I and Jhai."
    He came to stand next to her on the dock. He had wrapped his arms about himself and she saw that he was shivering, even though the air was warm. Robin said, as if to herself, "You see, there are so many causes . . . If I had not been so scared of losing my job that I gave up my principles for it, and so scared of losing my lover that I failed to challenge her, and that fear coming from being a child in a poor family and not knowing when or if we'd eat again—I have to set a point somewhere and say, this is where I could have acted, and did not. I can't just look at all the causes and say 'this is where it began.' All stories begin in the middle. But I don't think I've been making the right choices for a very long time."
    They looked out over the black, swift current separating worlds.
    "Maybe it wasn't my fault that Deveth died, and not yours, either. But that's the result and that's what you have to live with. If I hadn't been too afraid not to run the experiment on you, you wouldn't have killed her and I'd still be back at Paugeng, and so would you."
    Mhara sighed and looked up at the gunpowder stars. The flowerburst was reflected in his eyes, and he was no longer shivering. From somewhere, she could smell the scent of thousand-flower, faint and sweet.
    "I'll come with you," Robin said. "Wherever you go, in Hell or out of it."
    Mhara said, "Come, then." He grasped her arm and drew her with him into the tangle of warehouses. He moved quickly through the narrow streets and although Robin could hear voices all around, in sudden snatches of conversation and laughter from the mild air, no one was visible.
    "Where is everyone?" she said, as if to herself. Mhara's long-nailed hand was warm and real in her own, but around them there was unseen life in the windows of the houses: a child crying