Inari woke early at the temple. They had stayed the night, for it had been late when their final conversation had wound to a close. It was still dark outside, with that heavy pre-dawn expectancy, and rather than wake Chen, she wrapped herself in a borrowed robe and went into the little kitchen of the temple to make tea.
The simple act of placing the kettle on the stove reminded her painfully of badger. They had rarely been separated, and perhaps never for so long. Although the badger had traveled through Hell and back, possessing a solid, silent reliability, Inari still worried about him: she knew he would have come back if he could, and that he had not done so hinted at dire possibilities. She had not thought, either, that she would have come to worry so much about Zhu Irzh. When she and the demon had first met, his intentions had clearly tended toward the amorous. Inari sighed at the memory, an old exasperation coming to the fore. It would be so much easier to be plain. But she had inherited all the beauty of that long-ago courtesan grandmother, a human snatched down to Hell. Inari knew she resembled this woman, with a demon glamour besides, and look at all the trouble it had led to. But if it had not been for her appearance, perhaps Chen Wei might not have rescued her. Then again, had it not been for her looks, he would not have had to . . .
Since those early days, and the arrival of Jhai, Zhu Irzh had treated Inari like a little sister—affection, respect, combined with some teasing—and she was surprised, now, to discover how much this meant to her. Her own brothers had thought of her as no more than a tool to be used where it would benefit the family most, even if this had meant marrying Inari off to a scion of the Ministry of Epidemics.
And Jhai—who had never shown any jealousy of Inari, who had always treated her with courtesy—must be worried sick.
The kettle was boiling. Inari took it from the stove and made a pot of tea, which could be reheated if anyone else woke up and wanted some. The sky was lightening a little, but it was still night, and Inari took her tea into the main hall of the temple, sitting on a small bench to drink it. She took one of the limited selection of sacred texts ("People generally don't bother with those," Robin had remarked. "I certainly don't.") from the wall cabinet and read it, or tried to. Such flowery fulsomeness! Praise to the late Emperor cascaded from the page, in a prose so extreme it formed an almost tangible perfume. No wonder Robin didn't bother with this kind of thing. It made a marked contrast to the simple approach taken by Mhara, to the calm serenity of the temple's interior. Looking around, Inari saw that although the big bowl on the altar was filled with prayer slips that people had left, there were no icons, no gilded statues. The braziers glowed, embers only, and there was not even a lighted candle.
So if there was no candle, where was that smoke coming from?
Inari, frowning, went to investigate, still clutching her cup of tea. The thin thread of smoke was twisting its way through the room. It appeared to be coming from the annex, which led, in turn, into the little courtyard that stood just beyond the annex door. Within the courtyard, on a plinth, set a large bowl of sand. And in front of the plinth was a box containing the thick crimson sticks of incense, of varying sizes and prices, that Robin kept topped up for the faithful to light, that their prayers may be carried up to Heaven with the smoke. In fact, this was not strictly necessary, since Mhara heard most things anyway, but it gave people hope and empowerment, Robin had explained, and it was a tradition with which folk connected.
Inari's frown lifted: how stupid of her! Of course, someone must have lit an incense stick, either late last night, or on their way to work this morning. But the smoke was trickling beneath the door—shouldn't it just dissipate outside, to be borne away on the early morning wind?
Inari felt the need to check. Cautiously, she opened the door to the courtyard—and relaxed. There, indeed, was the stick of incense, smoldering in the bowl of sand, its tip still glowing orange against the shadowed wall.
But surely there was too much smoke, from a single incense stick, and it was pooling about the base of the plinth like seafoam—then Inari knew where she had previously felt this chill across her skin, where the terror that now gripped her had last been experienced.
The assassin Seijin, the Lord Lady of Shadow Pavilion, stepped forth from the cloud, congealing and condensing, smiling gently all the while, and before Inari could turn and run, Seijin drew the scimitar in one sweeping, cloud-dispelling curve and struck off her head.