Magistrates of Hell

order, and Nishiharu fired the flame-thrower.

‘Fascinating,’ murmured Chiang. ‘In the Spring and Autumn Period, Sun Tzu wrote of such devices—’

Asher shoved him without ceremony toward the darkness: ‘Run!’

They ran. The flame-thrower sputtered out, and Nishiharu slithered from its straps as he ran, then swung around to fire his rifle into the loping shadows of the yao-kuei. Asher smelled above their stink the distant reek of chlorine, growing stronger as it flowed into the mine. As he had observed on the shores of the Peking Sea, the yao-kuei moved with the swift precision of a school of fish, dispersing themselves across the gallery. Some scrambled up on the rotting scaffolding, moved along it with terrifying agility, spreading out to keep from being shot into in a mob. To aim, the fugitives would have to stop, and to stop was to die.

‘This way!’ Chiang waved his staff encouragingly. The gallery ended in a steep tunnel, its walls marked with enormous, fresh chalk Xs – obviously Chiang’s way of keeping from getting lost. Two yao- kuei dropped from the scaffolding in front of the entry to the tunnel, bared their outsize teeth. Asher didn’t see how, but like an eye-blink, Ysidro was behind the creatures in the tunnel mouth: thin and rather tattered, skeletal in the lantern-light. He caught one of the yao-kuei with both hands around its head and twisted its neck. Asher heard the bones snap, but when Ysidro kicked the thing aside it got up again, staggered blindly, arms thrashing, still looking for prey. The second yao-kuei fell upon Ysidro, mouth stretched to bite, and Mizukami took off both its hands with one stroke of his sword, and then, as Ysidro dodged nimbly away, its head with the next stroke.

More of the creatures dropped from the scaffold, the main group – twenty at least – closing in from the gallery floor. Karlebach fired into the group as they approached, and a yao-kuei grabbed him from behind. Its claws tore through his thick coat, and it seized him by his white hair. The next second the thing was knocked sprawling by the tallest of the yao-kuei – blood clotting from the gaping entry-wound Asher’s pistol had left in its skull – who flung the smaller creature aside, caught up the rifle Seki had dropped during the fray, and waded into the advancing others, swinging the weapon like a club.

The other yao-kuei fell back before it. It turned, for one second, and looked back at Asher, at Karlebach, at the small group huddled in the tunnel mouth in the lamplight.

Karlebach whispered: ‘Matthias—’

It opened its fanged mouth like an ape and screeched at them. Then turned, and strode toward the others, holding them at bay.

‘Go,’ said Asher. ‘Run!’ He caught Karlebach by the arm, forced him along in the wake of Chiang’s lantern, stumbling on the uneven floor. Another white X glimmered at the bottom of a shaft.

‘Up,’ urged Chiang. ‘Hasten—’ For indeed, the smell of chlorine was growing stronger in the shaft, and Asher began to cough, lungs burning, ribs stabbing him, tears flooding his eyes.

‘Go.’ He slipped his satchel from his shoulder, with the last two bars of gelignite. ‘I’ll be up—’

‘You’re a fool,’ said Ysidro’s voice in his ear as the others disappeared up the ladder.

Asher was coughing so hard he couldn’t respond. The pain in his side made him dizzy.

‘How do you set these?’

‘Detonator – in the middle—’

Cold hands pulled the wires from his fingers. All very well for you to talk. You don’t need to breathe . . .

‘Get up the ladder.’

‘Lydia,’ gasped Asher. ‘Tso house— Said they have her—’

Ysidro swore hair-raisingly in Spanish. ‘Go. And cover me from that lunatic Jew before you touch off the explosion.’

Head swimming, Asher dragged himself up the rungs, endless in the dark. Overhead, the lantern-light was a dim spot. It was like trying to swim up out of a lightless well.

Hands grabbed his arms, pulled him up. He saw Mizukami kneeling over the detonator box, gasped, ‘Wait—’ and staggered, flung out his arm as if to catch his balance, and fell, knocking lantern and detonator spinning away into the blackness.

The darkness was like being struck blind. Voices cried out, scrabbled in the lightless abyss, and Asher lay on the stone floor gasping. Aware that Ysidro had heard their voices in the mine and come out from behind his protective silver bars and followed them, once the Others were fully occupied . . .

Cold thin hands took his, pressed the hot metal of the lantern into them. Long nails like claws. He managed to shout, ‘I found it,’ and coughed again, almost nauseated, as he fumbled for matches.

With the first flicker of the lamplight, Mizukami seized the detonator and pressed the plunger home.

Deep, deep below them the earth surged. Dust erupted thickly from the shaft, blurred the lamplight; filled what Asher saw now was a small rock-cut room, its walls carved with column after column of Buddhist scripture, engraved into the stone.

After the bellow of the explosion, silence. Karlebach dragged himself to the shaft’s edge and knelt beside it, gazing down, crippled hands folded in prayer. The priest Chiang, standing behind him with the lantern, seemed to understand what had happened in the gallery, for he laid one skeletal hand on the old man’s shoulder and over the shaft made a sign of blessing.

Of Ysidro, no trace remained.

TWENTY-SEVEN

I must have fallen asleep at the Infirmary again.

Her feet were freezing, even in the sturdy hand-me-down boots that her friend Anne had sent her (which were too wide and had to be filled in with rags) after Lydia had walked out of her father’s house. Her corset pinched her waist, and the hospital smell of chloroform had given her a splitting headache. When Dr Parton was on duty at the Radcliffe Infirmary Lydia was all right, for he treated her like any male orderly and understood that in addition to lectures, study, and practicum she was also tutoring students from the other colleges in science. The other physicians persisted in the belief that this unwanted ‘bacheloress’ (as they called her) could be pushed out of the male medical preserves by being given all the nastiest duties. So falling asleep in odd corners of the Infirmary was nothing new.

She’d dreamed she was married to Edmund Woodreave.

Dreamed she was tied to him inescapably. Was forced to stay at home and organize teas and pay calls on relatives in an endless round of hypocritical chit-chat . . .

Dreamed of wishing he were dead.

Dreamed of seeing his eyes as someone stabbed him before her . . .

Oh, God, that really happened—!

She woke. Slivers of twilight through shuttered windows showed her painted Chinese rafters overhead. She lay on a carpet. When she turned her head she made out the enclosing shape of a Chinese bed, like a little wooden room faintly smelling of cedar and dust. The carpet had simply been pushed on to the bare platform, and the whole room around her smelled of mustiness, and of something rotting nearby.

The carpet, she thought cloudily.

There were workmen with rolled-up carpets in the lobby. That must be how they got me out of the hotel, rolled up like Cleopatra in a rug.

And how they got poor Mr Woodreave’s body out. She shuddered again, at that last sight of his eyes. Ellen and Mrs Pilley won’t know I’m missing. They’ll think I went off somewhere with him.

She moved, and somewhere in the room there was an instant scrabble and scurrying. Rats. She sat up hastily, groped for her reticule with her eyeglasses in it and had only to think of it to give the matter up in despair. Her money was in it, too, so the man in charge of the carpet-carriers had undoubtedly simply appropriated it as part of his pay. Her exploring hands found the protective silver chains gone from her throat and wrists. Her cameo, earrings, and necklaces of jet beads – suitable for mourning – were also gone. She pulled up her skirts and found the little roll of picklocks still buttoned to the bottom edge of her corset, and whispered a prayer of thanks to Jamie