Inari put a faltering hand to her head. Still there, and that was strange enough in itself: she remembered the shock of the assassin's sword as it struck her, remembered her body, fountaining blood, toppling sideways like a felled tree. There had been no pain, and surprisingly little sensation. The memory that was most clear was, curiously, a moment of anxiety over the broken cup of tea, flying through the air and shattering as it hit the floor. Her eyes had watched, for a few seconds, the streams of tea and blood, mingling like little rivers on the stone floor. Then everything had gone dark, in more traditional fashion, and now she was here, lying facedown on ashy earth with the cloudy hillside rising above her.
Inari's initial sensation, once shock and dismay had made their presence felt, was one of relief. She did not know where she was, but she suspected that she was back in between, where at least she had a kind of ally. Bonerattle might help her, or he might not, now that she was of no further use to him, but even a doubtful ally was better than an uncaring family. She was not home in Hell and that was a great blessing, even under the circumstances. And, she could be assured that Chen would do everything in his power to get her back, reanimate her, and Inari had great faith in her husband's abilities. Chen, a modest man, never claimed to be a particularly inspired thinker, but he was persistent, calm, and above all, constant. She could trust him, and so she would.
Also, being decapitated was oddly liberating. Inari had never been slain before, although she knew plenty of people to whom it had happened, and who better than a denizen of Hell to know that this was no kind of end at all, just an interruption in the continuity of being. Seijin, that smiling serenity of a killer, had done his or her utmost, and this was the result.
Could be worse, Inari thought. Could be a lot worse. Aloud, she said, "Is that the best you can do, O assassin?" And laughed, because it made her feel better.
But that was all very well and good. She couldn't just lie here, eating ash. The presence of the light, fluffy grayness that covered the ground made her wonder if she was near the place where the forge had been: Had it really disappeared for good, or did it move from place to place? While Chen was working out how to rescue her, Inari knew she must take steps to rescue herself. With this in mind, she clambered to her feet—she might be a spirit now, but she had a very real sore throat, all the same—and started walking, hampered by her long skirts. When she had died, she had been wearing a bed-robe and a nightdress; somehow, these had metamorphosed into a full set of funeral robes, the red of a dying sun, embroidered with black. Long sleeves trailed down past her wrists, and her midriff was supported by a stiff, folded sash. She had the feeling that, if she'd had a mirror in which to look, she would find that her face was fully painted: she put a tentative finger to her lips and rubbed. The fingertip came away reddened, so yes, this was indeed the case, and her hair had also been piled up and pinned. She must look like a geisha doll. Was this what she now looked like on Earth? Had her funeral already taken place? No use wondering about that.
After some time, the landscape had changed very little, although it was true that Inari was making slow progress. The rocks that protruded through the ashy surface were sharp, and she did not want to slow herself down any further by injuring a foot or an ankle. There was no sign of the forge, or of Bonerattle—although when she reached a patch of more open ground, where the mist was less oppressive, she risked calling out. She did not use his name, hoping that he might recognize her voice. But nothing emerged from the cloud and so Inari walked on, reminding herself that she had been in worse places than this: the lower levels of Hell, for example, in which one's very form might change, become more bestial. She did not seem to be changing now. And there was no sign of the brooding pagoda that Bonerattle had called the Shadow Pavilion. Inari was just thinking that, if forced to enter this strange limbo, she had at least ended up in a relatively innocuous bit of it, when she stepped around a rock and before her rose the pagoda.
It seemed even larger than she had remembered from that last turbulent visit, towering on its rock, so high that it almost appeared to lean out across the valley. At least she knew where to avoid . . . And then found she could not.
The Shadow Pavilion was like a magnet. Inari's suddenly faltering footsteps dragged her down the valley: she tried to resist, to pull away, but was unable to do so. The Pavilion had her now and it wasn't just the tug it exerted on her feet, but a compulsion that made her incapable of looking anywhere else. Inari, a sudden puppet, was dragged toward the pagoda.
The compulsion lasted until she had climbed the steps. She stood looking up at the ancient wooden doors, carved with symbols so old that they had long since lost any meaning, at least any that was known to Inari. Now that she had reached the pagoda, the protective calm that had enfolded her on the slopes had dissipated as completely as mist; she was afraid, of Seijin, of further vengeance. Sometimes even a spirit could be killed—such a fate had befallen Mhara's own father, the late and corrupt Celestial Emperor. The assassin struck her as someone who would not flinch at full measures.
Then someone said, "Ah. You must be the person we are expecting."
Inari stumbled against the doorframe. The person who had addressed her was slight and ghostly, the same gray as the wood of the doors.
"I am the Gatekeeper. I'm afraid we weren't given your name . . . ?"
Inari had no intention of telling him this, for names had power and she did not know what authority the laws of between might give him over her. But then the words were dragged out of her mouth as efficiently as she herself had been hauled to the doors of the pagoda. The Gatekeeper fished in a sleeve and consulted a list.
"Ah, yes. I see I was correct. And you came here on your own two feet? Impressive."
"I didn't have much choice!"
The Gatekeeper said, "Usually, Seijin brings them here in a bag."
"I think I am too small a fry for the assassin," Inari said.
"How charmingly modest. And yet, the Lord Lady slew you. That is a very great honor, normally reserved for elite warriors."
"I suppose I should be grateful," Inari said, not without sarcasm.
"Well," the Gatekeeper remarked, unhappily, "you are still dead. Let me open the doors for you, so that you may see your new home."
"New home?"
"Why yes," the Gatekeeper explained. "Once you are here, you won't be leaving us again."
But Inari, as she stepped through the old wooden doorway into the Shadow Pavilion, thought, We'll see about that.
As she wandered through the Pavilion's labyrinth of chambers, Inari unaccountably felt her spirits rise. Seijin was not here, and who, in truth, might say whether the Lord Lady would even return at all? The assassin had gone after Mhara once before, and been defeated. Inari hoped against hope that the Celestial Emperor would once more be successful. Perhaps Seijin would even be slain!
And end up back here again, two raging ghosts, confined in this echoing prison.
The more she saw of the Pavilion, the greater her awareness of other presences grew. She could not see these beings directly, but if she stood in the corner of a room, or by a windowsill, and glanced out of the corners of her eyes, figures appeared: a woman with streaming hair, ringing her hands in the stiff folds of her old-fashioned robes. A tall, armored man, snarling in fury, clasping a shattered sword. A child, weeping, but when it turned, Inari saw that it had gaping holes where its eyes had once been, and a mouth full of teeth like pins.
None of them tried to speak to her and she wondered whether she seemed the same to them, a half-glimpsed ghost lost in her own pain.
But I don't feel dead, particularly. And whereas the other spirits mourned or raged, Inari planned to push her own woes aside, and find out more.
This was not a simple matter. When she tried to count the number of stories possessed by the Pavilion, running lightly up and down the many stairs and taking note of landings, Inari found that she could not get a grip on it. At first she counted four, and then nine, and then only three. At each ascent and descent, the Pavilion looked the same: the musty, paneled walls; the moth-eaten hangings, decked with spiders' webs; the thick, hand-stitched carpets. A luxurious place, once, a palace. Had the Pavilion ever been somewhere real, the home of some Chinese emperor, the summerhouse of a spoiled princess? Inari had known of buildings being stolen before, and the Shadow Pavilion held resonances. At some time, someone had been happy here; she could feel it, a summer current running through the dust. But those sensations were very faint, long overlain by rage and pain.
Inari had no way of knowing when she had arrived, and she began to lose track of time. She did not think that between followed the same time zone as Singapore Three; there was no reason to expect it to do so. But when she next looked through a window, out across the long lands, she saw that the light was fading and a blue twilight was falling. Shapes moved with purpose through the dusk and Inari, however foolishly, felt glad that she was inside.
She turned to find the Gatekeeper standing at her elbow.
"I thought you would want to know," the old spirit said. "The Lord Lady is coming home."