Tso's Blood Emporium had not changed, Chen thought. The row of huge, sinister jars remained in the window, still covered with a patina of thousand-year-old dust. The banners that hung from the balustrade still swayed restlessly in the winds of Hell and the air smelled of iron, of meat, of the sour sweetness of death. Chen remembered the stench that used to emanate from the ventilation grates during distillation days, and grimaced. Shortly after his last visit here, he had brought Inari out into the bright, fresh air of his own world, and he had hoped never to set eyes on Tso's Blood Emporium ever again. The badger sidled up against his legs.
"Now do you know where we are?" Chen murmured. The badger twisted its head in the animal approximation of a nod.
"This is Lord Tso's property."
"Not any longer. I understand he's been demoted to a more menial position," Chen said grimly. The badger's eyes were opaque and blank, and he realized that it was in a sense incapable of acknowledging such an upsetting fact. The badger-teakettle was a retainer, after all, one of the familiar spirits which had attended Inari's family ever since the birth of their First Ancestor; their woes were its own. "Anyway," Chen continued. "Tso might still be useful, nonetheless."
He stepped out from beneath the shelter of a balcony, only to leap back again as someone came around the corner into the square. Chen and the badger-teakettle had managed to weave their way through the alleys without meeting anyone; it appeared that their luck had now ended. Warily, Chen watched as the demon—an elderly woman with the clawed feet of a hen and a sharp, beaky face—made her slow, grumbling way across the square. She carried a bag, tightly clasped in both hands, which squirmed and wriggled: Chen did not like to contemplate what might be in it. At last the old demon disappeared into a basement entrance, and was gone.
"Come on," Chen said to the badger. "Quickly!"
They slipped through the shadows cast by the tall buildings of the square, keeping close to the walls, and after a few fraught minutes they found themselves standing directly in front of the Blood Emporium.
"There's a back way in," Chen mused. "We'll have to be careful. Tso's unlikely to be the only one around."
"How do you know he'll be there?" the badger asked. "It is early."
"That's why I expect him to be there. The normal distillation process takes place overnight, and it's the task of the minions to oversee it. It's a job that tends to get landed on the lowliest of the low and I don't suppose Tso's in terribly high favor, since he was the one who helped Inari escape from Hell." Chen smiled. "When Tso was running the Emporium, as I recall, he rarely rose before midday, but he's not running it any longer. . . Well. We'll see."
With the badger at his heels, Chen crept around the corner of the building and found a pair of wide double doors. A metal ramp led up to them, and its surface was scuffed and scratched.
"This is where they bring in the blood-barrels, I remember. . . I don't want to go in here. Let's try further on."
At the back of the building was a small, pinched doorway. The door itself was ajar, and Chen could hear voices coming from within. This seemed promising, and he cautiously put his ear to the crack of the door and listened.
"—was perfectly in place last night!" a voice protested. Chen smiled. The voice was thin and self-pitying, conscious of great and constant injustices perpetrated upon its owner. Tso may have fallen from favor, but it didn't seem to have made any difference to the way he spoke. He'd always sounded like that, no matter what the circumstances. And yet, Chen reflected, Tso wasn't really a bad sort, as demons go. Self-pitying he might have been, and he was certainly an inveterate sycophant, but at least he had found from somewhere the courage to help his sister escape from a marriage which she had no wish to make.
"—all over the floor now! Look at it! Half a pint, quite wasted. There's a leak in one of the seals, only a moron could fail to see that. Now do something about it." Chen did not recognize this voice. It was pompous and ill-natured, with a thick note of decadence beneath: typical of the aristocracy of Hell. Or anywhere, if it came to that.
"But—" That was Tso. There was a sudden soft, brutal sound, as of a gloved fist meeting the back of someone's head, and then a faint cry. Chen grimaced. It sounded as though Tso was having a hard time. He drew back into the shadows as mincing footsteps retreated into the distance. When he was quite sure that they had gone, he slunk to the doorway and glanced in.
His brother-in-law was kneeling on the floor, muttering and clutching the back of his head with one grimy hand. The other hand was busily occupied in scraping a rusty red substance from the flagstones with a pallet knife, and depositing the resultant residue into a jar. Chen looked around, craning his neck to get a better view. He could see no one else in sight. Very softly, he called, "Tso!"
There was no response from the figure on the floor. Chen called again. "Tso! Over here!"
This time Tso looked up. He glanced wildly about him for a moment, then saw Chen peering in at him through the open doorway. Chen gave a little wave. Tso's mouth dropped open into a perfect O of astonishment. His small, red eyes darted in all directions, like red-hot marbles. He made anxious flapping motions with both hands, dropping the pallet knife. Taking the hint, Chen stepped back from the doorway. After a moment, the door creaked and Tso stood teetering on the step.
"What are you doing here? I thought never to see you again. Don't you know how dangerous it is for you to be here?"
"I know," Chen said. "I didn't have a choice. Look, Tso, I need to talk to you. It's urgent."
"But I don't want to talk to you," Tso said petulantly. "You've caused me enough trouble. Go away."
There was movement from the shadows and the badger's elongated monochrome figure glided forth. It bowed its head in obeisance as soon as it set eyes on Tso.
"What's that creature doing with you?"
"That's one of the things we need to discuss," Chen said, meeting Tso's red gaze. The demon drooped. "More woe, I suppose. I finish my shift this evening, not before then. It's nearly three now. I'll see you later. But not here."
"Where, then?"
"There's a place not too far away. I sometimes go there, they have private rooms, spell-guarded. It's the only place we can talk without the risk of being overheard. I'll take you there when I come out, but no one must see you."
"What shall we do then? Stay here?"
"No! Someone might smell you. You'd better wait in the dray," Tso said. Hurriedly, he took them around the corner to the back of the Emporium. A cart stood in the uncertain light, packed with barrels. Something stood patiently in the shafts and Chen recognized the heavy haunches and sinuous, twitching tail of a ch'i lin; one of Hell's most common beasts of burden. It turned as Chen hoisted himself up among the barrels, and he glimpsed a hot eye and a row of needle-teeth beneath the thick spiral horn protruding from its forehead. It grinned at him for a moment with malign intelligence, and then its long tongue flickered out to impale one of the myriad buzzing flies.
"Stay here where it can't smell you," Tso instructed. He picked up the protesting badger and heaved it into the dray on top of Chen, then tottered backwards.
"Are you all right?" Chen asked with some concern. "You don't seem very steady on your feet."
"And whose fault is that?" Tso hissed. Turning, he hobbled back in the direction of the entrance, and Chen saw then that the taloned toes of his brother-in-law's feet, instead of pointing backwards in the ancient and regal manner of respectable demons, were directed in a more human direction. Chen looked down at the badger in his lap and met an unfathomably dark gaze.
"Worse than I had thought," said the badger-teakettle softly, and Chen could only agree.