Inside the shrubbery, it was quiet, but the eerie scarlet-and-white light still played all around Go and the deva, emanating from the myriad blossoms. There was a pungent smell, close to narcotic, and for a moment the panicking Go entertained the possibility of just giving into it, lying down and going to sleep. At least you wouldn't see the jaws closing down. But a heavy body was crashing through the undergrowth behind them and the deva seemed to have forgotten about her injury, or perhaps she was swift to heal. She was sprinting ahead, dodging around the arches of the ornamental plants with a speed presumably born of a life in the forest. Go dropped the chain, which was becoming unfeasibly weighty, swore, gathered it up again before the deva yanked him off his feet, and followed her.
He hoped she knew where she was going—her velocity suggested that she did—but then the deva took a wrong turn. They sped out into a long avenue of rhododendron, densely planted, the glossy, illuminated leaves forming a screen in front of a thickly twisting maze of branches. At both ends rose a high wall of shrubbery, quite impenetrable. The deva and Go looked frantically from right to left, mirroring one another's movements. Behind them, Go once more heard the sound of Agni's guests, cheering, and a very familiar roar. In desperation, they ran up the avenue toward the wall and flung themselves against it. The rhododendrons did not give way. Go beat at them with the chain, whipping it against the branches, but to no avail. The deva cried out. Go turned. A tigress had come out of the gap in the hedge, lazily switching her tail from side to side. She looked pointedly in the wrong direction, as if in mockery, and then saw them. She began to lope rapidly up the avenue.
"Get behind me," Go urged, though he knew he was only delaying the deva's own bloody reckoning.
"No," the deva quavered. She took hold of the other end of the chain and with one accord, they began to swing it. There might be a chance—but the tigress was running now, a streak of black and gold, leaving fire smoldering in her wake. As she leaped, Go and the deva swung the chain, but the tigress saw it and swerved. She snatched at the chain with a massive paw and it caught in the razor claws, dragging Go and the deva off their feet. They hit the short grass like bowling pins, tangled up in the chain and ripe for the catching. The tigress swatted Go with her paw, a cat's playful pounce. The blow hit him in the ribs and it felt as though something snapped. The tigress then lifted him off the ground, hauling the entangled deva with him. Go had once heard that being attacked by a wild animal produced a euphoric sensation of calm, that Zen moment before a bloody, rending death. There was no such sensation here. Go's body let go: he tried to piss himself, but it was as though his system had shut down. He hit the rhododendron hedge full on and slid back to the floor. The tigress was pacing, a gleam of interest in her yellow eyes. Go wondered, frantically, where the others were and then he realized: they hadn't bothered. It wouldn't take more than a minute to finish either himself or the deva off. Agni's harem had sent a single cat, for the fun of the chase and the death for the prince's guests. The tigress leaped. Go threw an arm in front of his face: he didn't want to see what was coming.
Then the tigress disappeared.
"Got her?" Zhu Irzh panted, from the other side of the rhododendron hedge.
"I think so." No Ro Shi was frowning. A short distance away, the tiger revolved, snarling soundlessly, in midair. No Ro Shi's outflung hand betrayed the passage of a recent spell. The demon watched with interest.
"How long do you think you'll be able to hold her?"
"I don't intend to hold her for long." No Ro Shi's voice demonstrated effort. He drew his hand back, bringing the captured tiger with it, and snapped his fingers shut. The tigress dropped to the ground and bounded up with a roar.
No Ro Shi spoke quick cold words. He flung out a spell that brushed Zhu Irzh's face as it passed and left a film of ice across the demon's skin. Zhu Irzh was too intrigued to protest. He watched as a swift ripple of magic passed over the tiger's leaping form. A moment later, all the black and gold was gone and in their place was the statue of a springing tiger. It looked to Zhu Irzh as though it had been there for years; encrusted with lichen and moss, the stone eroded by rain.
"Artistic," he commented. No Ro Shi appeared pleased.
"This realm would seem to be particularly amenable to statue magic."
"Makes sense," Zhu Irzh agreed, thinking of what had befallen the deva. "Let's see how much more trouble we can cause."
"Help!"
"That's Go," the demon said. He took out a section of shrubbery with a sweep of his sword. No Ro Shi hacked through as well and a few minutes later, Go and the deva were stumbling through the gap.
"Hang on," Zhu Irzh told them, and brought the sword down onto the chain that connected them. The deva looked as though she was about to burst into tears and threw herself into Zhu Irzh's arms.
Go, very pale, said, "I thought we'd had it."
"Get moving," No Ro Shi told him, and they ran for the forest, Zhu Irzh disentangling himself from the deva en route.
"Where's Jhai?" he hissed at Go. "Still on the terrace?"
Go looked nonplussed. "I don't know. I haven't seen her. I've only just—well, arrived here, you might say."
"And will soon be leaving," the demon-hunter told him.
"Hell, suits me. She's coming too."
Zhu Irzh caught No Ro Shi's sleeve. "Get them back home. I'm going after Jhai."
No Ro Shi looked positively disappointed at being denied a further chance to slay things, or enspell them. "Are you sure? Won't you need back-up?"
"Believe me," Zhu Irzh said. "Jhai is back-up, all on her own."
Back at the edge of the lawns, the Hunting Lodge was in an uproar. Zhu Irzh crept rapidly back the way he had come, sneaking along the rhododendron hedge until he came to the place where the statue had been created. Then he ducked down behind the undergrowth.
Agni's guests, and the rest of the tiger clan, had streamed down from the terraces and made their way along the lawn to where the new statue stood. Zhu Irzh recognized quite a few faces from his last visit, but was not inclined to stroll forth and be sociable. He could not see Jhai anywhere and this gave him a moment of hope: if they'd left her up on the terrace . . . Zhu Irzh began to sidle along the hedge, away from the crowd. Agni was there, yes, in his fire-colored clothes. Zhu Irzh caught a glimpse of the tiger prince's eyes and wished he hadn't: Agni's gaze was a feral gold shot with red, like blood over the sun, both angry and mad. Well, Zhu Irzh thought to himself, if I have to take you on, I'll do it. I just hope I don't have to. It wasn't that he was a coward, just—careful.
But if Jhai was not there, then neither was Lara, and that made Zhu Irzh's skin prickle. He tried to do a rapid inventory of exactly who had come down to see the statue, but it was impossible: there were just too many people milling about. He crept along the hedge until he thought he was reasonably clear, then sprinted up a second long avenue of azalea toward the Hunting Lodge.
There was no sign of Jhai on the terrace, which Zhu Irzh skirted with a great deal of caution. He was beginning to think he'd imagined her, yet he knew she had to be here. Then something caught his eye: a long red and gold thread, snagged on a rough piece of masonry. Zhu Irzh was pleased; it seemed this detective business had something to it after all. He left the thread where it lay and moved along the terrace, keeping to the shadows. Occasionally, he checked the lawn. They were still down there; he could hear the growls of the tiger girls and Agni's voice, raised to a pitch that Zhu Irzh had not previously encountered in the prince, but which betokened an incipient psychotic meltdown. He thought that Agni was probably in the process of discovering that No Ro Shi's spell was irreversible: the demon-hunter tended, necessarily, to be very thorough about these matters.
At the end of the terrace, one of the French doors that lay along the ground floor of the palace was open. Zhu Irzh, with a final glance at the congregation down on the lawns, slipped through. Inside, he found himself in a dining hall. Silver glittered in candlelight, though the candles burned with a steady red flame that was somehow cold to look at. An array of plates and cutlery suggested that whatever meal that was about to be served was not going to take the form of a light snack. Silver platters rested along the table at intervals, their domes rising from spiky flower arrangements like some miniature city. Checking that he was unobserved, Zhu Irzh lifted one of the platters and stared down at a human head. It was white, and male. Its blue boiled eyes bugged out, lending it an expression of puff-cheeked outrage. Half a mango had been stuffed into its mouth. As Zhu Irzh stared, intrigued, the eyes rolled up to meet his own.
"Mgmph!" the head said.
"Sorry," Zhu Irzh told him. "Can't help you right now, old chap. Maybe later." Hastily, he replaced the cover. He didn't want to be grassed up by someone's entrée, but it was too late now, assuming that the head had Agni's best interests at heart, which Zhu Irzh doubted. Cursing under his breath, he left the magnificent banquet table behind and ran through the columns that separated the dining room from a hallway.
Something glinted in the shadows. Zhu Irzh stooped and picked it up: Jhai was unraveling. The thread led him along the hallway and up a flight of stairs. Halfway up, Zhu Irzh heard footsteps coming down and dived behind a tapestry. He peered out, once the footsteps had passed, to see a turbaned servant disappearing down the staircase, carrying a tea service on a tray. Zhu Irzh followed the thread further and found that it ran under a door. He took a chance, and knocked.
"Yeah?"
Jhai, found!
"Agni, you twat, is that you?" Jhai's voice dripped contempt.
"No," Zhu Irzh hissed, "it's me."
"Zhu Irzh!" At least she sounded pleased to see him. "Get me the fuck out of here. Agni's warded the door."
"All right, stand back. I'll see what I can do."
He'd used opening spells before, in a variety of circumstances, but there was still the issue of how magic worked in this realm. The demon agreed with No Ro Shi: sometimes you just have to take a chance. Zhu Irzh was reluctant to use blood magic—too close to the sorceries of fire, in Agni's lands—so he deployed an incantation instead, one that had been devised for blasting through rock. Not subtle, but he had to work quickly.
The spell worked quite well. Three minutes later, Zhu Irzh was sitting in the middle of the shattered dining table, picking plaster out of his hair. Jhai lay spread-eagled across a dining chair, swearing. The severed heads, freed of their imprisoning platters and domes, bounded around the room like pinballs. Above, a gaping hole in the ceiling gave testimony to the success of Zhu Irzh's conjuration.
"Bloody hell," Jhai said. "Agni won't be pleased."
"I think we'd better go," Zhu Irzh told her, clambering to his feet and brushing forks from his coat. The fallen candles had set fire to the white linen tablecloth and it blazed up in a sudden sheet of flame. Jhai took the demon's hand and they ran out of the French doors. As they did so, the long lace curtains that concealed the diners from view also caught fire, billowing out behind them. As they came out onto the terrace, a shout went up.
"There!"
The assembled crowd was running back up the lawn toward the Hunting Lodge, Agni at their head. Beside the demon, Jhai picked up the trailing skirts of her wedding dress and sprinted for the forest. Zhu Irzh caught a glimpse of Agni's raised hand and then a fireball shot across the lawn and sizzled into the mango trees.
"Shit!" Jhai reeled back against the demon.
"Just run. He's not trying to hit you."
Unfortunately, it seemed that Agni was. The next fireball knocked Zhu Irzh off his feet and sent him sprawling into a flower bed. He glanced toward the forest, saw that they were not going to make it, looked back at the Hunting Lodge and also saw—with some satisfaction—that it was well and truly on fire. Then Jhai cried out. Things were swarming out of the trees, blackened shapes that looked as though they had already been consumed in the flames, their eyes as bright as red-hot coals. Some were small, but most of them were the size of a man. They had long, delicate hands and sharp, black teeth. Two of them had seized Jhai by the arms and lifted her off her feet; Jhai was not a heavy girl, but she still had a demon's strength, as Zhu Irzh knew, and these creatures lifted her easily and held her despite her struggles.
"You," said Agni, strolling up behind in dangerous silence, "have set my house on fire."
"An accident." It was ironic, the demon reflected bitterly, that the occasions when he actually spoke the literal truth were those in which he was the least likely to be believed.
"How does a life in the fire sound to you?" Agni still spoke mildly, but only a few minutes ago Zhu Irzh had heard him shrieking down on the lawn.
"A bit Catholic, actually."
Agni smiled. "A lot of them come here. We have a Goanese population on Earth, after all."
"Agni, listen." That was Jhai, speaking quickly. "If you keep me here, this won't be an end to it. You think I'll just knuckle under? Yes, you can control my cousins. They've never known anything else, apart from Lara, and look what a mess she's made of her independence. But I've never known anything but. That's why you went after me, isn't it? But can you handle it?"
Zhu Irzh looked from Jhai to Agni, both in their red and gold. Agni's clothes were as impeccable as ever, but Jhai's glossy hair-do had come undone and streamed across her shoulders. The magnificent gown was torn at the hem, fraying into ruffles. She had lost her shoes, or kicked them off, and now stood barefoot on the scorched grass. Her face was flecked with soot.
"Well? Better decide if I'm worth the trouble, cousin."
Zhu Irzh hoped Agni wasn't too far gone to be reasoned with. The prince hadn't even bothered to put out the blaze, but just as this occurred to Zhu Irzh, the tiger prince flicked a finger and the fire went out. There was surprisingly little damage left in its wake, only a little smoke stain on the columns. But then, it was Agni's own element. Would Agni see reason, or would pride hammer him down? Then Agni said, "You've certainly caused a remarkable degree of chaos in the space of your visit. Maybe you're right. I'm not sure I could put up with a lifetime of it." He turned to Zhu Irzh. "As for you, perhaps eternity in a blazing dungeon wouldn't prove as great a punishment as marriage to Jhai."
The demon considered a number of humorous remarks, and wisely kept silent.
"But my guests have come here tonight to expect entertainment," the prince went on. "I can't deny them that. We've already lost one set of quarry. And you're not the only one I'm displeased with, Jhai. I'm not all that delighted with little Lara, either."
"Very well," Jhai said, warily. She could see what was coming, Zhu Irzh thought, and so could he. "What do you suggest?"
"I think a cat fight's in order," the prince said.