The Demon and the City

of Heaven are much too refined to sweat, but Miss Qi certainly glowed: a wan, ambient light of her own that made her stand shadowless in the glare of the sun.
    "Miss Qi, you're melting," Chen said. "Let's get you somewhere cooler." He stepped out into the street and flagged down a cab.
    Interestingly, it transpired that the taxi driver could see neither Zhu Irzh nor Miss Qi. The demon was not infrequently invisible to humans, but Chen wasn't sure what an inability to see either Hell or Heavenkind betokened. A wilful atheism? Had the taxi driver been able to see mad Senditreya during her rampage through the city? Again, interesting, but he did not press the point and they arrived at Miss Qi's hotel in peace. At least they'd put her somewhere pleasant: a small, family-run place behind a green stand of trees, at the back of the Opera House. The girl behind the desk seemed to be expecting Miss Qi and greeted her warmly. His duty thus discharged, Chen let the demon talk him into a beer after all.
    "So," Chen said, half an hour later. "This case of yours." They were sitting in a bar next door to the Opera House; a cramped little place, with hundreds of photos of opera stars adorning the walls.
    To his surprise, the demon was relatively forthcoming.
    "I've been meaning to talk to you about it. It's an odd one. It has to do with Sulai-Ba."
    "What, the temple of Sulai-Ba? It's a ruin, isn't it?"
    "It is now, yes. In all the worlds—well, I don't know for sure about Heaven. I should have asked little Miss Qi. But I made enquiries and someone told me that it has been abandoned even in Heaven."
    "I've lived here for years," Chen mused, "and I've never known much about Sulai-Ba. It was supposed to be a temple to the goddess of the sea, that much I do know, and it was here long before Singapore Three grew up around it. I heard it suddenly fell into disuse, about twenty years ago."
    "It fell into disuse because the goddess died," Zhu Irzh said. He curled long fingers around his bottled beer.
    "Goddesses don't die," Chen said, startled. "At least—well, Senditreya isn't dead."
    "No, she's a cow, in Hell. She might work her way back up to being human again one day, if they let her reincarnate. I should think she's blown her chances of ever being a deity again, though. But this goddess was called Sulai-Ba. She fell in love with a mortal—one of those —but he wouldn't leave his wife for her, so she killed herself. In such a way that her spirit did not go to Heaven or Hell, or anywhere that anyone knows about. She disincarnated."
    "That's technically possible," Chen said. "But it's very rare. I've never heard this story. Where did you learn it?"
    "I asked Mhara," Zhu Irzh said. "Thought a prince of Heaven might know, and sure enough, he did."
    "Fair enough," Chen said. "But what does your case have to do with a long-ago dead goddess?"
    "I don't know. You see, Sulai-Ba's been locked for years, but people have gone in and out of it all the same. And lately, it looks as though the earthquakes jarred something loose, because there's been a lot of activity around Sulai-Ba: things heard in the night by people who live near it, things seen."
    "What kind of things?"
    "Big things."
    "Mmm," said Chen. "What do you mean, exactly?"
    "Someone saw something huge flying around Sulai-Ba. Something with wings and a tail."
    "Something dragon-shaped, perhaps?" There was one of those disturbing instincts again, smacking him right in the solar plexus.
    "Well, we don't know that for sure," the demon said. "It might have been something else—a trapped Storm Lord, for instance."
    "That's not reassuring. I'd rather have dragons." Dragons were essentially ancient, civilized creatures, guardians of Celestial courts, keepers of old books and forgotten spells. You could reason with a dragon. They weren't like the Storm Lords, kuei, Hellkind's centipede law-enforcers.
    "The thing is," Zhu Irzh said, "there aren't many dragons in China these days. They're ideologically unsound. Most of them left when the Communists took over. A handful in the mountains, perhaps. But otherwise, they all retreated to Sambalai, a little way off from Heaven."
    "Cloud Kingdom," Chen said. "I've heard of it."
    "So, I don't know whether it's a dragon or what it is. But in light of recent events, I thought I'd better check it out."
    "What concerns me," Chen said, "is this missing girl from the Opera. And I don't know why. It's hardly uncommon for those sorts of people to disappear,