The Demon and the City

murdered your girlfriend, Deveth Sardai, and that she in turn was not exactly innocent of such machinations herself. You're going to tell me what you know."
    And Robin Yuan, pale-faced and twisting her hands in her lap, did so.
    "And I haven't told anyone this, either," she concluded, "but Mhara made a prophecy. He saw the end of the city."
    "Wow," the demon said, wide-eyed. "Jhai thinks big, doesn't she?"
    "And do you know who Tserai's contacts in Hell might be?" Chen said to Robin.
    "I have no idea," Robin admitted, clearly frightened.
    "And your Mhara. Who is he?"
    "I don't know. He's a Celestial being, but I don't know which one. I think he must be a minor scion of some Heavenly house."
    "But he is not," a voice said from the doorway. Kuan Yin was standing in the opening, light streaming around her. Everyone stood up. "He is the son of the Jade Emperor of Heaven, and one day he will be one of the most powerful beings in all the worlds that are."
     

Forty-One
    Jhai was pacing up and down, a tiger caged.
    "Are you sure?"
    "They are even now on their way to the Celestial Shores," the dogwoman said. She was in her purely canine form; as Jhai turned, the dogwoman raised a hind foot and scratched an ear. "I spoke to the girl, your servant."
    "She's not my—well, never mind. What did she say?"
    "She did not know who your escaped captive is. I am certain of that." The dogwoman snapped at a passing bee zooming in over the hibiscus on Jhai's balcony. "Then we had news that the goddess had left the port, in the company of a human and a demon."
    "Yeah. Wonder who they could have been."
    "The males took the two captives up to a cave, a secure place, and your transformed one went to attack the goddess. But they overcame it and we were deceived: the goddess' party came to the village, and questioned us. Then, we do not know how, they found their way to the cave and released the boy and your servant. All are now aboard the boat and heading across the Sea of Night."
    "All right," Jhai said. "Then that's it. Might as well say that the game is up."
    "You made me a promise," the dogwoman said.
    Jhai nodded. A fleeting moment of spite suggested she should not honor it, but that wasn't the way it worked and besides, she might have use for this creature another day. You just never knew. She went to the desk and, from a drawer, took out a small bag. "Here," she said to the dogwoman. She hung the bag around the thick ruff. "These are the bones of the first founder of your village."
    "You have given me my rule," the dogwoman said softly. "I won't forget."
    "You did your best."
    "I wish you luck," the dogwoman said.
    Jhai gave a short, sour laugh. "I'll need it."
    From a second bag, she cast a circle of black glittering powder around the dogwoman, who squeezed her eyes tightly closed. A muttered incantation activated the powder, which went up in a blinding flash. When Jhai opened her eyes once more, the dogwoman was gone and the bone bag with her, dispatched back to the Night Harbor and control of Bad Dog Village.
    Jhai went out onto the wide balcony and rested her hands on the rail. She could see almost the whole southern half of the city from here: the sparkling line of sea, the islands . . . It would be hard to give this up, harder still to break it to Opal that they were going to have to bail out. An unhappy conjunction had occurred, like ill stars: Zhu Irzh, Robin, Mhara, Kuan Yin. The worst possible combination, Jhai thought. Heaven would know of her plans: the demon could not withstand the goddess, and besides, Robin had probably decided to do something stupid and pointless, like atoning for her sins. Even if both of them had kept their silence, there was, of course, Mhara himself.
    Goddess, thought Jhai, and it was the image of great Kali who rose in her mind, and Durga the tiger-rider. How was I to know who he was? When Mhara had first been brought to her circle, summoned by Deveth, Jhai had assumed that he was a minor Celestial being, a runaway youth, rebellious, who wanted to experience the sins of Earth before settling down into an exemplary life in the Celestial plane. But no. It had been the dogs who had told her, though they would not tell her how they knew. The son of the Jade Emperor Himself, the heir to Heaven, who, like Buddha, apparently felt it necessary to experience Earth's pain and suffering at first hand so that he might better assuage it when his father passed on the ruling to him.
    And this had been the