My mouth dries. Lungs flatten, breathing deregulates into wet spasms. The agonal phase hurts, no matter how times you’ve endured it. Ventricles begin to spasm shut. My vision strobes. One by one, organs shutter into failure, and I hit the ground hard as biological death, malodorous and cold, descends to claim the real estate. My last thought before unconsciousness takes over is that I probably should eat better: the reek of my slackening bowels is quite appalling.
An indeterminate moment later, non-existence is replaced by a juddering of vertigo. Colors glimmer into rivulets, converging, too quick to parse or separate into individual hues, from loam to subterranean shadow to the auspicious shades of Youdu. Somewhere in between, I register the squeal of my own voice as it climbs into the highest register.
Crunch. The impact would kill me were I not already dead. I rock onto my feet, fingers clasped around the bottom of my skull. “Nrrggrrh.”
I pound the heel of a hand against the side of my neck and cartilage wrenches sullenly into place. I take a deep breath, sulphuric air shuddering through my lungs, and immediately choke. Diyu was not made for humans, even those here on voluntary terms.
“Where are—”
“Hell,” I groan.
Sinew unknits from sinew, cartilage from bone. I feel the slithering of Jian Wang’s muscles as he tests the limits of his restraints. We both arrive at the same conclusion at pretty much the same time. He bolts. Except he doesn’t get very far. My tattoos have limited mobility on the earthly plane, constrained by entire battalions of provisionary clauses. Here, though, they can go anywhere.
They shriek free. A forest of hands and teeth and forked tongues, quivering into eye-watering two-dimensionality. I’m struck, for a moment, by their number. Who knew one man’s skin could house so many spirits of semi-legal status? Then the moment passes when Jian Wang screams in panic, even as the tattoo-spirits overtake him, papering themselves over his chest and his back. On the rim of hearing, I catch threats and promises of violence. Obviously, they didn’t appreciate how he had enforced their silence.
“Good job, er, men.” I stride over to where Jian Wang lies writhing amid his captors, all of three feet away. I squat down. “So. Jian Wang. I see two solutions here. First, you tell me what’s going on. And second—you tell me what’s going on after security beats it out of you. Both options work. I really don’t care.”
The only answer is vigorous squirming, and the rhythmic thump of Jian Wang endeavouring to worm away from me. I grab his foot.
“Kick once for yes, twice for no.”
He doesn’t reply. Feeling mildly vindictive, I stretch up and begin dragging Jian Wang along behind me, trailing spirits like a frayed umbilical cord. It’s an unappetizing sight, but Diyu isn’t a place for the squeamish at the best of times.
CHAPTER TWELVE
AS FAR AS gods go, Yan Wang is pretty swell.
“No, you’re not interrupting anything. We’re just playing chess. Come! What news do you bring?” the Lord of Hell booms as he rolls from his chair, each mammoth step raising tiny shockwaves. I reconfigure into a meek kowtow and grit my teeth, my head rattling against volcanic rock with every tremor.
“Oh, stand up. You needn’t stand on ceremony with me. We’re old friends, are we not?” Yan Wang stoops to collect me in a palm. He’s absolutely massive, of course. Primordial forces, especially those housed in their own environments, tend to grow that way. His amiability clashes with the ferocity of his face, which is a sunburnt claret and perpetually contorted into a grimace. As per legend, his eyes bulge alarmingly from within the frame of his colossal beard.
“‘Friends’ is a word I’m”—I spread my arms to steady myself, wobbling onto my feet—“not worthy of using, I believe.”
“You’re too harsh on yourself.” Yan Wang stomps back to his chair and sprawls over the gilded structure, setting me atop a table piled high with scrolls. A glance reveals millions of names, written in neat handwriting, each prefaced by a seemingly random number. I don’t ask. Jian Wang, hogtied, remains wisely quiescent. “You’ve been excellent in your job. A few more decades and you’ll no longer be in debt.”
I incline my head. Discussions about my hellbound status, however tactful, tend to make me uncomfortable.
“But I’m digressing. How can Diyu help you, Rupert?”
Glancing sidelong, I jab a thumb in Jian Wang’s direction. “I think someone’s trying to cause a war.”
“Jian Wang?” The King of Hell opens his eyes even wider, an impressive feat by any measure of the phrase. “I am surprised. That is quite ambitious for—”
“No!” I reel from my own enthusiasm. I cough into a fist and then continue, pitching my voice low and respectful. “I mean, no, Your Majesty. I don’t think Jian Wang is, um, responsible. I think he knows who.”
The titan lowers his bushy brows, mouth bent in his trademark scowl. My tattoo-spirits recede, worming back into the shelter of my skin, all the while prostrating themselves, performing tongueless obeisances. Jian Wang struggles loose from his restraints, and immediately crumples into a kowtow. “This one intends no harm. This one is not worthy to speak to you. This one—”
“Jian Wang.” A warning note clips between the child-spirit’s babbling.
“This one—” Jian Wang looks up, gaze round with terror. “They promised they would let me go. All I had to do was hinder Rupert.”
“Who promised?”
The specter of Chinatown licks pale lips once, before lowering his forehead to Yan Wang’s palm again. In a whimper, so soft that it might have been illusionary, he gives a name. A family. The boss’s family. My boss’s family. I breathe out, sharply. I hadn’t realized I had been holding my breath till then.
“Why?” I ask.
Jian Wang glances over his shoulder, shrugs. “You don’t tell your knife what you’re cooking, do you?”
He had me there. Before I could reply, Yan Wang interrupts, face lining with thought, his eyes shrewd. The King of Hell rumbles deep, a sound that digs through the marrow. “The heavens have been troubled of late. Rumours abound, of houses toppling, of offices abandoned, of dissolution in the West”—a disparaging curl of his lips—“and even dissent in our ranks. Lately, the Chinese and the Malay pantheons have been jostling for superiority. This could be a coup by the Malay.”
No shit. “Have... tensions really been that bad?”
Yan Wang shrugs to potent effect. I topple over, and barely succeed in turning the collapse into a messy kowtow. Jian Wang remains on his belly. “All gods are competitive.”
“But Islam—” I hesitate. “Islam is a monotheistic religion allegedly overseen by a benevolent entity of immeasurable power. It shouldn’t, you know—” The words clatter behind my teeth: it shouldn’t come to violence. (A truth to take back to your country with you, ang moh. Not every Muslim is an abomination. In fact, very few are. The rest, much like most atheists and neo-druids, are lovely individuals.)
“The ways of the world are mysterious,” Yan Wang replies, tone disconcertingly sly, more appropriate in the mouth of a drinking buddy, as opposed to an omnipotent deity in charge of—actually, nevermind. Omnipotent deities do as they want.
I gnaw on the inside of a cheek and try to retain my calm. “Of course.”
Yan Wang is having none of it. He erupts into full-bellied guffaws that carry throughout his antechamber. As far as such places go, the nook is rather modestly appointed. Volcanic rock connects floor to walls to ceiling, a smooth grey interrupted by tributaries of pale gold. Ornaments are few and far between here: an antique dresser, a map of Diyu, a mirror the size of a stadium ground, and the corner that Yan Wan uses for cerebral entertainment. Ignoring scale, this is more a space for an everyman scholar than a puissant monarch. Which is probably why Yan Wang keeps it this way.
“You’re much too serious, Rupert.” His laughter smooths into a low chuckle. “Live! There are so many years for you to accomplish that.”
“I’m trying—I—Yes
, Your Highness.”
“Pantheons will fight and they will bicker. Such is the way of siblings. It’s a small matter. Don’t think too much of it.”
I weigh my protests on the tip of my tongue. Yan Wang doesn’t get it. He can’t. He exists on a different scale from the rest of us, both figuratively and literally. So, I bite down on my argument and lower my forehead to his palm again. Even if I can’t have the King of Hell lumber up to terra firma and solve my problems for me, I know exactly who I need to talk to, to finally close this sordid loop of lies.
“Your Highness?”
“Mm.” He sounds like he’s still threading through the waters of his own contemplation.
“If it’s not too much problem, would it be okay for you to send me topside?” I flick a glance at Jian Wang, still inert, still in a pose of abject submission. “And, um, for me to leave the kid with you.”
An emphatic nod that knocks me back onto my knees when I make the mistake of trying to wobble upright. “Of course. We shall be more than happy to provide such a small favour to such an important—”
The snap of his fingers splits my hearing like a thunderclap. My world fills with white light, and I feel a lurching in the pit of my stomach, pulling me up this time. Yan Wang’s final words dissipate into a thrash of static, meaningless, all-consuming. The wrenching sharpens into rippling nausea as I, centuries or seconds later, plunge back into my meat suit.
Something stinks. Me, most likely. I roll over onto my back and groan. There’s plastic under my skin, and the glare of the noon sky above my head. I think I smell durian, so completely rotted that not even its most ardent proponents would defend it. Carefully, I stretch out my arms and wince at my protesting muscles. I crinkle my nose. Definitely in a dumpster.
And that smell is definitely me.
(One of the sad realities of life, ang moh. No one will change the underpants of a presumed corpse.)
“HEY, BOSS. I’VE got a question.”
I shouldn’t have taken the bus. I shouldn’t have taken the bus. Especially not the cheapest ride I could find. Gasoline fumes tangle with the stench of unwashed armpits, rust, and vomit. The seats, a sliver of fabric over creaking metal, rattle loudly, even as the passengers rock and sway in place, trying in vain to keep from spilling into one another’s laps. I crane my head as far as it will go as my aisle mates, an obese man and his shih tzu hybrid, fall on me. Neither of them appear particularly acquainted with soap.
On the bright side, no one has commented on my aromatic presence either.
“Rupert! Ahahahaha,” the boss chimes down the phone, pitch-perfect. In the background, I catch the silvery murmur of opulent dining: jazz music, a delicate tinkle of silverware, voices pitched low but confident. “If you’re calling to ask about my favorite way to prepare a Fury, the answer would be: whatever way you impress me with.”
I carefully slant my legs away from the dog. There’s a look in its eyes that suggests the owner should have probably taken the mutt to the toilet before they got on the bus. “Actually, it’s something else.”
“Yes?” His voice doesn’t so much harden as arch; bright and attentive. “I am completely free and at your service.”
“Why are you trying to kill your foreign guests?”
A beat. The answer unfurls, brimming with plasticky cheer. “Sorry?”
“Why are you trying to bread and fry the Furies? You invited them here. The least you could do is offer them amnesty from your appetites.” The bus lurches across a speed bump and I barely avoid severing my tongue as I jolt upwards, nearly tumbling into the walkaway as I crash back into the so-thin-it-might-as-well-be-skipped cushion.
The boss doesn’t answer. I can hear furniture being pushed back and the sounds of fine dining (ghouls have bottomless appetites and varied tastes; it isn’t sustenance they pursue, so much as consumption) recede into the snarl of traffic. It isn’t until there is absolute silence on the line that the boss, charm unruffled, begins to speak again. “Because it is sadly necessary.”
“To eat... a goddess?”
“Why, yes.” Surprise knots around an edge of malice. “Do you really think I’d give up the opportunity to sample such a delectable delicacy?”
“That’s not what I meant.” Guan Yin save me, the dog is actually peeing on its owner. Despite the warm, acidic puddle spreading over his leg, the man remains, astonishingly, dead to the world. In a fit of morbid curiosity, I raise a palm over his nostrils. Still breathing. “You know what I meant.”
“Absolutely not, Rupert. Why don’t you outline the situation clearly for me? Careful with what you say, though. I don’t want to have to sue you for libelous conduct. Ahahaha.” He is absolutely not joking, I’m sure.
I swallow and glance out of the window. Oil palm trees as far as the eye can see, an endless stretch of serrated bark and yellow-green leaves. “You called the Furies to Malaysia. You sponsored their stay. You want them dead so the Greeks will attack.”
“You are a smart one, Rupert. I keep telling my wife, but she wouldn’t believe me. She thinks you’re a talented chimp.” The boss laughs musically, the reverberations overflowing with calculated amounts of goodwill. “But, yes. You’re right. I did. It’s—I don’t know if you can understand it. But I am so very sick of the power disparity in this country.”
My eyes travel the bus. Power disparity, especially in monetary terms, is something I understand exceedingly well. I clamp down on the impulse for unnecessary witticism. “Mhm.”
“Sick of it. I was here when your first ancestors landed on the soil, you know? And I watched as they gained the advantage. Your grubby little pantheon grew with them. Miserable stuff, all and all.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Look at you, Rupert. Always so scintillatingly polite. It’s why we keep you around. Anyway, without going too much into ancient history, I decided it was time for a change.”
Evening swaddles the horizon in blues and shadows. The dog has finally gone back to sleep atop the fat man’s lap; his owner, in turn, has finally slouched against the window instead of my shoulder. “Why now?”
“You should really keep up with the world news.” A dangerous note of coyness, as the boss chuckles to himself. “Find out yourself. I’ll tell you this much: it’s an excellent season for new ideas.”
I nod, realise he can’t see it, and make more affirmative noises. If I’m lucky, he’ll talk himself into a confession.
“Anyway. Yes. I want to dethrone the Chinese. Take them down a few notches, or possibly get rid of them entirely. I’m nowhere near fussy about the matter. I just want to see justice where justice is due.”
“Sure. Fair.” I can never leave anything well and alone. “But what about me? Why am I—what’s with the whole ‘cook us a Fury’ deal?”
“I want conflict. It doesn’t matter who instigates it. You or Ao Qin. It’s all the same to me. Except I’m slightly more confident of one party’s survival than the other’s. No offense. You understand.”
“None taken.”
“Coincidentally, since we’re on the topic of betrayals and callous manipulation, I’m going to take this moment to point out that Minah belongs to us.”
I freeze.
“She is, officially, the property of our wonderful little tribe. George too, if you recall. Now, had you been a better employee, she might have already acquired her freedom. But you’re not. She’s still ours, and officially, we can do anything we want. Including pulp her for serunding, should a certain Dragon King come knocking on our doors. Are we clear?”
My voice emerges as a croak. “Crystal.”
“Perfect. Enjoy your trip to Port Dickson. Send Ao Qin our regards.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“TYPE O NEGATIVE! You remembered!”
“Only the best.” I incline my head and try to feign indifference as The God of Missing People suckles on the blood bag like a juice pouch. It helps, of course, that the deity has provided phenomenally effective discretion.<
br />
The ghost of Xiao Quan is precisely as I imagined: decorous, elegant, beautiful in the way only dangerous predators can be, and very slightly translucent. Her eyes are large and sad within the sharp-jawed frame. As I study at her, the Dragon King’s daughter flows into a low bow, every inch a model of sinuous grace.
“Forgive this one for all of the trouble she has caused.” Her manner of speech is appropriately archaic, several centuries too formal for this irreverent millennium.
“No sweat!” The word pulses free. I rub the back of my neck, awkwardness heating my cheeks. I like respectful people as much as the next person, but you can feel unqualified for the attention. If she knew what I’d been up to, she’d likely have choicer words. “I’m, I mean. I’m very honoured you could make an appearance.”
“This one did not intend to cause trouble. This one had her own desires, her own... agenda. This one wanted to die.” No drama colors that proclamation, only wistful frankness. This one wanted to die. The words seep through my bones. Minah has never so openly articulated her desires, but she had always desired escape. Instinctively, I run my fingertips over my phone, hoping for the buzz of an incoming message. Nothing. “This one also knew her father would not accept—”
So, feeling rather like a sexist heel, I talk over her, and over the thoughts extricating themselves from the morass of my memory. “Couldn’t you have just told your father about what was happening?”
Xiao Quan’s laugh is hollow. “And what? This one’s sire would have simply told this one to go home, and preserve face. One cannot abandon the fate they’ve made for themselves.”
Waves smash into the rocks of Port Dickson. We’ve found a secluded corner in spite of the area’s popularity among the country’s overworked and underpaid middle-class. I probably didn’t need to be adjacent to an ocean to summon Ao Qin, but the idea had romantic appeal. Sort of. Up until the point I discovered one of my fellow passengers suffered from explosive bowel troubles. Of course, by then, there was nothing to do but grin and bear it.
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