The Demon and the City

rise that morning: party or no party, the chickens had to be fed. Everyone slept in one room, and she cringed as she came out into the living area. It was awash with cracker crumbs ground into their one good carpet, paper streamers, something that looked like foam, and a stack of miniature bottles stuffed down the side of the chair, presumably by Auntie Pei who seemed to think that her sake habit went unnoticed. Mrs Soi was thirty-three, but on mornings like this she felt every day of sixty.
    She had to wrench the back door open and stepped out, blinking, into the chilly darkness before the dawn. Icicles, sharp as teeth, hung from the overflowed gutter and the hens were bundles of feathers, puffed up against the cold. Those that were still alive, anyway. With mounting dismay Mrs Soi counted the skinny bodies that littered the yard, five as far as she could tell. Dogs? she thought, but they had heard nothing last night and she was awake for most of the time. She'd checked on the hens around midnight, and they had been all right. Then she raised her head and saw the cause. It was sitting underneath the japonica tree, the one good thing about this house, which they had hung with rags and paper twists to keep the spirits away. Mrs Soi noted this rather grimly, for beneath the japonica tree sat a young person with a dark golden face, smiling a pointed and beatific grin.
    "You killed my hens," Mrs Soi said, strangely devoid of shock. The young person jumped down and spread out his long taloned hands.
    "So sorry." He took a fluttering step across the yard; ochre robes swirled about his ankles and she saw that he had a tiger's eyes, the color of the sun. He smiled charmingly. "And now, you."
    Yin Deng Soi had left her husband snoring in the communal bed. She opened her mouth to cry for help, and then her husband's face rose up before her memory: his mouth open, the smell of old beer, one hand groping for her just as she was falling asleep, the constant demands for food, drink, sex, everything that was wearing her out before she even turned forty. She looked into the demon's golden glowing eyes and closed her own.
    "Go on, then," she muttered, and she felt him pick her up and soar high above the Bharulay slums, her slippered feet catching for a moment in the branches of the japonica tree, and when she at last dared open her tired eyes, she saw the rim of the sun, yellow as an eye, engulf the horizon's edge.
     

Fifty-Four
    The spell was not, according to Chen, a complicated one. He arranged everyone in a four-quarter pattern: Zhu Irzh in the south, Robin in the west, Mhara in the east and himself in the north.
    "A bit Western, isn't it?" the demon remarked disparagingly.
    "So? Who says we can't take the occasional idea from other cultures? As long as the underlying magical structure remains intact. Besides, think of it as a disguise. We're less likely to get noticed this way. Anyone watching will think we're just a bunch of students or something."
    Zhu Irzh thought that this confidence might be somewhat misplaced, but he went along with it anyway. He watched as Chen once more scored a bloody line across his palm, scattering a few red drops to the four quarters. The blood flared up as it touched the floor, as though Chen's veins were filled with hot coals. Then Chen began to chant, long strings of syllables that were vaguely familiar to the demon as a spell. Chen did not, Zhu Irzh noticed, use his rosary: presumably Chen had had enough of gods, for the moment. And who could blame him? He could feel the tension in the room ratcheting up through the soles of his feet and tingling up his spine.
    On the wooden boards of the floor, a pattern began to form, congealing out of blood and air. There was a familiarity about it and, after a moment's puzzlement, Zhu Irzh realized what it was: a map of the city. The meridians glowed beneath it, blood red, and Zhu Irzh found himself wincing as he understood for the first time what a battering the city had taken. There seemed to be focal points, nexi of light, and the demon began to work them out: the foremost of them was the abandoned temple of Shai. Chen's strained voice continued to chant and as Zhu Irzh watched, a face began to manifest above the little configuration of lights. It was not human, and no longer divine. It was the horned head of a great cow, but instead of the flat teeth of cattle its long jaw was full of needles and its eyes were black as the Sea of Night. It snapped at