Categories > Books > Harry Potter > When Mister Carrol Came By
China (The Celestial Bureaucracy). 2038 (one year following the end of the India War)
Instantly, the darkness was replaced by light. Blinding light, overpowering his senses. He could see no more than he could before they had taken the bag off his head.
"Welcome back to the land of the living, the once-lost, the prodigal songs."
The words slammed against his skull, battering, shattering.
"Sons…" he mumbled under his breath.
"No," the voice said, and this time he identified it as belonging to a woman. Chinese, though she was doing a passable job of imitating a British accent. "We are songs, sung and resung, generation upon generation. And you have being sung again."
His vision, slowly returning as his eyes adjusted, resolved the image of a woman standing near him. They were both by a table; she was half-sitting on it. She wore blue silk robes, from which hung lotus flowers, probably under preservation by a spell. He could see little of her skin, what was visible bore black threads that wove and crisscrossed over— and under— her skin. He wondered if it were a single thread winding its way around her body. The colors sparked something in his memory, but he couldn't recall it.
Something bad.
Something that made him think of the Death Eaters.
"Quentin Tintwhistle," she suddenly said after the silence had settled. "Employee of the British Ministry, in charge of managing one of the districts of Hong Kong. That right?"
He nodded.
"Good. I'd hate to have hurt the wrong man." The woman smiled. "My name is Li Mei." She extended a hand and, after a moment's hesitation, he shook it. Quentin looked around him to judge his circumstances. He wasn't bound, he wasn't under the effects of any spell so far as he could determine… But he could be carrying spells of which he was unaware, too. Not all could be sensed so easily, even with the training that he had.
"From one bureaucracy to another, then, from the Celestial Bureaucracy to the Ministry of Magic, I extend greetings and apologies. Your most recent distress was necessary but nevertheless a cause for regret. If there had been some other way, but alas…" She trailed off, looking away, and her hand made a motion as if it were tracing a character out in the air.
"We need to talk about India, Quentin."
"What?" He pored over what he knew of the recently-ended war there. It wasn't anything that he thought was very useful. Certainly nothing
But perhaps that was why they were having this conversation to begin with. They'd realized, somehow, that he really didn't have what they wanted to know.
"Your Ministry was hiding something from the world, but they couldn't destroy it. It was something that they thought they might need again one day."
"What was it?"
She shook her head. "We don't know for sure, but to go to such lengths has certainly piqued our interest. If it can be any use to us, whether in India or Hong Kong, then we need to get it. Denying it to the Ministry is just icing on the cake."
"Hong Kong? Ah…" He nodded to himself. It was becoming a little clearer in some ways. "You want to retake Hong Kong."
She nodded herself. "Nearly two centuries you've had it. We've been patient, we've been cordial, but… Your people are tired from the fighting in India."
"Never again," Quentin said. "The Americans were the first and the last." He stood up, despite the memory of what he had experienced only an hour before. "We just fought an eleven-year war to retain India. We will fight to preserve Hong Kong."
"I wonder," was her only response. She withdrew her wand and held it lightly between her fingers. It was crafted out of bamboo, like he had seen only once before. And the wizard who had wielded it, Quentin realized, had worn the same blue robes and black threads
"Do you believe that our wands can shed light on our character?" she mused. Her tone almost suggested that she was talking to herself, and she carried on before he could react to the sudden turn in conversation. "It was so ordained from before the beginning of the world. Even you ignorant devils know it. But alas, alas, you know what but not why.
"We are the children of Heaven, all of us," she said, still sounding as though there were something else subtly drawing her attention away. "And though we are born and born and born again, we never lose the sign of the Three Pure Ones." Blue and green light poured out of her water like a river, entwined together and pooling on the floor where it rose in magnificent spires and walls from out of a dream.
Quentin wondered what spell she was using to make the city and how she was guiding her thoughts. Light-sculpting, through any of the spells that one could use, wasn't a popular art form in the Empire.
"And as we all have our duties to perform as the gods and children of gods, we must have a way of learning and relearning what it is that Heaven would have us do as its earthly hands."
/As the representatives of the Celestial Bureaucracy on the Earth/, someone had said to him as they had explained the Chinese mindset. It was when he had first been sent to Hong Kong, and it was a little alien to him even now. The Chinese wizards of Hong Kong were very British in some ways, especially where religion was concerned.
With as low of a position as he held, there had been few occasions for Quentin to meet with Bureaucracy-aligned Chinese.
"I want to explain your purpose. Can I— Can I do that for you? This is important," Lu Mei added in a low voice. She held the bamboo wand in front of him. "Bamboo, with a core made from a qilin's hair. A Chinese unicorn, your people would say." Lu Mei shook her head at this. "So blind, you devils."
She pulled the wand away from him but continued to hold it carefully in his view. "The qilin is a peaceful creature. It flies rather than walks because it refuses to break a single blade of grass and it feeds only on fruit. Its commitment to preserving life is extraordinary." She ran her fingers along the wand. "Bamboo grows very quickly. Some of the species can, in optimum conditions, grow three-and-a-half meters in a day. What does this tell you about me?"
"You're…" He paused, but she encouraged him to go further, motioning with her hand as if she were shooing a fly. Quentin thought about it a little more, and he began to see what she was alluding to. "Life. Life! And peace. You… you don't want war at all. You want to find some way to work this all out." It came flooding out of him like from a broken dam, and with it went all his worry. Even the memory of what had been done to him so recently was now something distant, almost inconsequential. "You convinced them to free me, somehow."
She smiled. "The flowers of a bamboo symbolize many things. They are beauty, they are love…" She sighed. "They are famine. It is because of rats, you see. You remember the rats, don't you?" she asked, and Quentin shivered. As the memory came back, he could almost feel their breath on his skin. "The rats eat the fruit and multiply, and when the fruit is gone their numbers are too great for the forest to supply their wants. So they descend to the fields. That is the other side of bamboo."
"But it's natural," Quentin said, his mind racing. "Things can't help but happen the way that they do, but you can make sure that it doesn't get out of control, can't you? That's complemented by the qilin."
"And yet there are no two sides of the coin, but only a single essence. Bamboo is torture, Mr. Tintwhistle. We have a long tradition of using it as so. You suspend your victim above a young shoot, and it grows so quickly— even the slower ones can grow inches in a day— that it gradually, so gradually and so painfully/, grows /through his body." The bamboo wand seemed to take on a different light as she spoke, so subtly that he couldn't tell if it were the effect of a spell or his own mind. "To be chosen by a bamboo wand is to learn that you were born, and reborn, to the Bureau of Hell."
She sighed, and it appeared as if all the power had gone out of her. "To teach the young as one of the Bureau of Brush Wood with a pine wand in my hand. I would have liked that. Or to be called by a peach-wood wand to care for the ill in the Bureau of Health. Do you know," she said, staring into his eyes, "to be ten years old and learn that you are not a god? That you are a demon, born to exact the judgment of Heaven and extract agony as the Chancellor is moved to direct you? We are not the Bureau of Justice, but the secret police that even they fear."
"That doesn't… That doesn't complement your core at all." He could understand, as she continued, what was going on in her soul. Was she even allowed to be doing this? Was she defying orders now, unable to continue with the work of torture?"
Was this why she was telling him about India, so that he could warn the Ministry? Let them know that the Chinese were looking for whatever it was that they had hidden away?
"But it does," she replied. "I don't enjoy it. I won't be corrupted." She looked at the ceiling. "I'll probably direct the Bureau one day. I can be trusted to not let my feelings get the better of me. To be… fair, as only a demon truly can. But it does make things difficult. I am glad that we are able to have an understanding together. To make peace."
"You mean, you're not…" He swallowed. "I'm going back to the rats. You're sending me back t-to the rats."
"That was just the appetizer. That was the foreplay, Quentin Tintwhistle. This is when we find out what the Ministry hid from the world."
"But I don't know anything," he said. "You have to know that. You have to know th-that…" He started to sob.
"You know more about India than you think you do, Quentin." Li Mei laughed. It sounded like knives running along a chalkboard. For her as well as for him, he thought. It was forced. "Legilimency can do more than read memories. It can implant them. It can bury them. And now that your thoughts are in the right direction, now that India has been drifting in your mind for all this time, and now, most importantly, now that you know why we must do this to you… Now the real interrogation can begin."
"No. /Please/. No!"
Lu Mei looked as if she didn't hear his screams. "We'll start small." She shook her head, and her wand brushed his wrist. "Kalasutra," she whispered, and then his mind was overtaken by the sensation of red-hot metal slicing through his skin. Like a saw, back and forth through his flesh. Like an axe, chop-chop-chopping through his bones.
"The first step to opening a safe," he heard her say, "is smashing it."
Fire. Fire without end.
Instantly, the darkness was replaced by light. Blinding light, overpowering his senses. He could see no more than he could before they had taken the bag off his head.
"Welcome back to the land of the living, the once-lost, the prodigal songs."
The words slammed against his skull, battering, shattering.
"Sons…" he mumbled under his breath.
"No," the voice said, and this time he identified it as belonging to a woman. Chinese, though she was doing a passable job of imitating a British accent. "We are songs, sung and resung, generation upon generation. And you have being sung again."
His vision, slowly returning as his eyes adjusted, resolved the image of a woman standing near him. They were both by a table; she was half-sitting on it. She wore blue silk robes, from which hung lotus flowers, probably under preservation by a spell. He could see little of her skin, what was visible bore black threads that wove and crisscrossed over— and under— her skin. He wondered if it were a single thread winding its way around her body. The colors sparked something in his memory, but he couldn't recall it.
Something bad.
Something that made him think of the Death Eaters.
"Quentin Tintwhistle," she suddenly said after the silence had settled. "Employee of the British Ministry, in charge of managing one of the districts of Hong Kong. That right?"
He nodded.
"Good. I'd hate to have hurt the wrong man." The woman smiled. "My name is Li Mei." She extended a hand and, after a moment's hesitation, he shook it. Quentin looked around him to judge his circumstances. He wasn't bound, he wasn't under the effects of any spell so far as he could determine… But he could be carrying spells of which he was unaware, too. Not all could be sensed so easily, even with the training that he had.
"From one bureaucracy to another, then, from the Celestial Bureaucracy to the Ministry of Magic, I extend greetings and apologies. Your most recent distress was necessary but nevertheless a cause for regret. If there had been some other way, but alas…" She trailed off, looking away, and her hand made a motion as if it were tracing a character out in the air.
"We need to talk about India, Quentin."
"What?" He pored over what he knew of the recently-ended war there. It wasn't anything that he thought was very useful. Certainly nothing
But perhaps that was why they were having this conversation to begin with. They'd realized, somehow, that he really didn't have what they wanted to know.
"Your Ministry was hiding something from the world, but they couldn't destroy it. It was something that they thought they might need again one day."
"What was it?"
She shook her head. "We don't know for sure, but to go to such lengths has certainly piqued our interest. If it can be any use to us, whether in India or Hong Kong, then we need to get it. Denying it to the Ministry is just icing on the cake."
"Hong Kong? Ah…" He nodded to himself. It was becoming a little clearer in some ways. "You want to retake Hong Kong."
She nodded herself. "Nearly two centuries you've had it. We've been patient, we've been cordial, but… Your people are tired from the fighting in India."
"Never again," Quentin said. "The Americans were the first and the last." He stood up, despite the memory of what he had experienced only an hour before. "We just fought an eleven-year war to retain India. We will fight to preserve Hong Kong."
"I wonder," was her only response. She withdrew her wand and held it lightly between her fingers. It was crafted out of bamboo, like he had seen only once before. And the wizard who had wielded it, Quentin realized, had worn the same blue robes and black threads
"Do you believe that our wands can shed light on our character?" she mused. Her tone almost suggested that she was talking to herself, and she carried on before he could react to the sudden turn in conversation. "It was so ordained from before the beginning of the world. Even you ignorant devils know it. But alas, alas, you know what but not why.
"We are the children of Heaven, all of us," she said, still sounding as though there were something else subtly drawing her attention away. "And though we are born and born and born again, we never lose the sign of the Three Pure Ones." Blue and green light poured out of her water like a river, entwined together and pooling on the floor where it rose in magnificent spires and walls from out of a dream.
Quentin wondered what spell she was using to make the city and how she was guiding her thoughts. Light-sculpting, through any of the spells that one could use, wasn't a popular art form in the Empire.
"And as we all have our duties to perform as the gods and children of gods, we must have a way of learning and relearning what it is that Heaven would have us do as its earthly hands."
/As the representatives of the Celestial Bureaucracy on the Earth/, someone had said to him as they had explained the Chinese mindset. It was when he had first been sent to Hong Kong, and it was a little alien to him even now. The Chinese wizards of Hong Kong were very British in some ways, especially where religion was concerned.
With as low of a position as he held, there had been few occasions for Quentin to meet with Bureaucracy-aligned Chinese.
"I want to explain your purpose. Can I— Can I do that for you? This is important," Lu Mei added in a low voice. She held the bamboo wand in front of him. "Bamboo, with a core made from a qilin's hair. A Chinese unicorn, your people would say." Lu Mei shook her head at this. "So blind, you devils."
She pulled the wand away from him but continued to hold it carefully in his view. "The qilin is a peaceful creature. It flies rather than walks because it refuses to break a single blade of grass and it feeds only on fruit. Its commitment to preserving life is extraordinary." She ran her fingers along the wand. "Bamboo grows very quickly. Some of the species can, in optimum conditions, grow three-and-a-half meters in a day. What does this tell you about me?"
"You're…" He paused, but she encouraged him to go further, motioning with her hand as if she were shooing a fly. Quentin thought about it a little more, and he began to see what she was alluding to. "Life. Life! And peace. You… you don't want war at all. You want to find some way to work this all out." It came flooding out of him like from a broken dam, and with it went all his worry. Even the memory of what had been done to him so recently was now something distant, almost inconsequential. "You convinced them to free me, somehow."
She smiled. "The flowers of a bamboo symbolize many things. They are beauty, they are love…" She sighed. "They are famine. It is because of rats, you see. You remember the rats, don't you?" she asked, and Quentin shivered. As the memory came back, he could almost feel their breath on his skin. "The rats eat the fruit and multiply, and when the fruit is gone their numbers are too great for the forest to supply their wants. So they descend to the fields. That is the other side of bamboo."
"But it's natural," Quentin said, his mind racing. "Things can't help but happen the way that they do, but you can make sure that it doesn't get out of control, can't you? That's complemented by the qilin."
"And yet there are no two sides of the coin, but only a single essence. Bamboo is torture, Mr. Tintwhistle. We have a long tradition of using it as so. You suspend your victim above a young shoot, and it grows so quickly— even the slower ones can grow inches in a day— that it gradually, so gradually and so painfully/, grows /through his body." The bamboo wand seemed to take on a different light as she spoke, so subtly that he couldn't tell if it were the effect of a spell or his own mind. "To be chosen by a bamboo wand is to learn that you were born, and reborn, to the Bureau of Hell."
She sighed, and it appeared as if all the power had gone out of her. "To teach the young as one of the Bureau of Brush Wood with a pine wand in my hand. I would have liked that. Or to be called by a peach-wood wand to care for the ill in the Bureau of Health. Do you know," she said, staring into his eyes, "to be ten years old and learn that you are not a god? That you are a demon, born to exact the judgment of Heaven and extract agony as the Chancellor is moved to direct you? We are not the Bureau of Justice, but the secret police that even they fear."
"That doesn't… That doesn't complement your core at all." He could understand, as she continued, what was going on in her soul. Was she even allowed to be doing this? Was she defying orders now, unable to continue with the work of torture?"
Was this why she was telling him about India, so that he could warn the Ministry? Let them know that the Chinese were looking for whatever it was that they had hidden away?
"But it does," she replied. "I don't enjoy it. I won't be corrupted." She looked at the ceiling. "I'll probably direct the Bureau one day. I can be trusted to not let my feelings get the better of me. To be… fair, as only a demon truly can. But it does make things difficult. I am glad that we are able to have an understanding together. To make peace."
"You mean, you're not…" He swallowed. "I'm going back to the rats. You're sending me back t-to the rats."
"That was just the appetizer. That was the foreplay, Quentin Tintwhistle. This is when we find out what the Ministry hid from the world."
"But I don't know anything," he said. "You have to know that. You have to know th-that…" He started to sob.
"You know more about India than you think you do, Quentin." Li Mei laughed. It sounded like knives running along a chalkboard. For her as well as for him, he thought. It was forced. "Legilimency can do more than read memories. It can implant them. It can bury them. And now that your thoughts are in the right direction, now that India has been drifting in your mind for all this time, and now, most importantly, now that you know why we must do this to you… Now the real interrogation can begin."
"No. /Please/. No!"
Lu Mei looked as if she didn't hear his screams. "We'll start small." She shook her head, and her wand brushed his wrist. "Kalasutra," she whispered, and then his mind was overtaken by the sensation of red-hot metal slicing through his skin. Like a saw, back and forth through his flesh. Like an axe, chop-chop-chopping through his bones.
"The first step to opening a safe," he heard her say, "is smashing it."
Fire. Fire without end.
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