Chapter Twelve Kasu
The residents of Ghost City liked to call Lady Camellia a skeletal beauty.
Kasu had never been able to figure out if this was a joke or simply a statement of fact.
The demon swept into the hall in a backless crimson gown of brocaded silk and golden lace that showed off the bones of her spine and the lumps of flesh still clinging to her shoulders.
“A disturbance? In my establishment?” Lady Camellia towered over all others, her head almost brushing the ceiling.
One side of her face was bone-bleached skull, its empty eye socket filled with red flowers.
The other half almost looked like that of a regular human, except her skin was the translucent greyish-blue of a corpse and her hair was as white as snow.
Her one good eye pinned Hanyu with a piercing gaze.
Lady Camellia’s beauty struck Kasu every time she laid eyes on her.
Despite the way she wore her skin like a tattered cloak, exposing the bones beneath it, despite the broken ligaments woven around her bony fingers like red string, she carried herself with a grace that Kasu had never seen in any other demon.
“Apologies, Lady Camellia. We will deal with it.” The dog-headed guards jumped to their feet and readied their swords.
“There’s no need.” Lady Camellia extended one skeletal hand towards Hanyu and snatched him up.
The screech that emerged from the ghost’s mouth echoed through the hall.
Kasu clapped her hands over her ears as the walls shook.
Hanyu struggled in Lady Camellia’s grip as she lifted him off his feet and tipped back her head.
Her jaw dislocated like that of a snake, giving her room to stretch her mouth impossibly wide.
Kasu saw Hanyu reach a desperate hand towards the ceiling a moment before he disappeared down Lady Camellia’s gullet.
“Disgusting.” The demon pulled a face. “Now, would anyone like to tell me what happened here?”
Everyone looked at Arun.
“You’re a new face. Where did you come from, boy?” Lady Camellia stooped over him, the bones in her spine creaking as she moved.
Kasu panicked.
“I died last week,” Arun lied with an almost aggressive ease. Kasu did her best not to gawk at him.
“Ah, poor thing, and who owns you now?” Lady Camellia circled the edge of a hall with a skeletal grin.
Arun sat up with a shrug. “No one. I died in a war and now I can’t move on.”
“You were once a hungry ghost, were you? Then you came to terms with your demise awfully quickly. Most hungry ghosts take at least fifty years to accept their deaths.”
“I always was an overachiever,” Arun said smoothly. As if he didn’t even know how suspicious that was. As if he did not care how ridiculous he sounded.
Kasu kept her forehead pressed to the ground so that no one could see the sheer terror on her face.
So Arun was obviously lying. Who cared? Some ghosts were defensive about their deaths.
No, what was important was that Lady Camellia did not find out Kasu had given away a handful of gambling tiles for free.
Her eyes darted across the floor. Arun’s tiles had fallen among the colourful stones when Hanyu had upturned the table. Slowly, she reached for them.
“Kasu.”
Kasu jumped. “Y–yes, my lady?”
“It’s unusual to see you away from your post.”
“I’m sorry, Lady Camellia!” How long had she been away from her counter?
More than eight minutes, she’d bet. She knew she should have set the sign to fifteen.
Maybe she should not have stepped away at all.
What if there was a line of customers waiting for her when she got back? What if they were angry with her?
“Oh no, that wasn’t a criticism. You’re entitled to a lunch break.” Lady Camellia’s tone was light and graceful, as if her very words were dancing upon the air. It was easy to forget that she had just swallowed an entire ghost whole.
“I will return to my post at once, Lady Camellia!” Her mistress might say that she was allowed a break, but there were still customers to deal with, trades to be sorted through and boxed up for the next demon bazaar, tokens to cash out and a million other tiny things she had to take care of.
So much to do, so little time. No time, certainly, to waste wandering about the gambling halls.
Lady Camellia placed a skeletal hand on Kasu’s head. Her fingers were large enough to crush Kasu’s skull like a grape. “This is why you’re my favourite,” she cooed.
Kasu did not dare speak or move.
Turning to the rest of the patrons, Lady Camellia fluttered the lashes of her single remaining eye. “No need to be alarmed,” she assured them. “Please, continue as you were and do enjoy yourself here at Camellia House.”
With that, she swept out of the hall, the train of her silk dress gliding after her.
While tables were righted and stones returned to their correct sets, Kasu hurried back to the safety of her exchange desk. Fortunately, no one was waiting for her there. She tucked away the sign, grabbed her rag and started polishing the edges of her counter.
A moment later, Arun strode by and slid his tiles across the cherrywood.
“Here. Fifteen tiles, as promised.”
It took everything she had not to snatch them away.
Traitor. Oath breaker. Fiend. What would have happened to her if Arun had gambled his tiles and lost?
She bet he had not thought of that. She bet he did not even care.
Despite everything Kasu had done to help, Arun thought of no one but himself.
The spoilt prince probably considered it normal for other people to lie down in the mud so that he could keep his shoes clean.
He probably had a thousand maids and servants who would let him walk all over them back in his fancy royal palace.
“I have twenty extra tiles. What do I do with them? Can I cash them out?” Arun asked.
“You get nothing. You were not supposed to be gambling,” she snapped.
“You’re angry,” said Arun.
“I’m not.” Anger was a failing, a sign of one’s lack of self-discipline and control. The Celestial Empress has infinite patience for you. Therefore, you must show infinite patience when dealing with those who have wronged you.
“I wouldn’t have lost. The palace cook used to let me play kirit with him and the other servants.
I know how to play and I know how to cheat,” he said with an infuriating sense of self-confidence, as if every statement he made was not an opinion but a declaration of fact.
Kasu was so annoyed she hardly noticed that he had admitted to cheating.
Another mark against the Heavenly Principles.
“I have a job to do. I’ll talk to you later.” She seized his tiles and dropped his sword onto the counter.
Arun grabbed his weapon and fastened it to his waist with a scowl. “You don’t have to talk to me at all. You don’t have to help me. I got all the information I need.”
Hanyu had said that there was a lady from the heavens with a reincarnation wheel in the theatre district.
A lady offering ghosts the chance to be reborn in exchange for payment.
Something didn’t sit right with Kasu, though.
If that was true, surely the gods knew about the missing wheel.
So why had the heavens not taken action?
Kasu squared her shoulders like a fighter about to enter the ring.
“If you want to find the truth, you need to be smart about it. Smart and safe. Just because you’re disguised as a ghost doesn’t mean nothing will hurt you.
The streets change every day and there are plenty of demons who eat ghosts for fun. You need a guide.”
“Eat.” Arun met her unflinching gaze, his dark eyes flickering over her as if he could take her apart like a clockwork mechanism.
“You mean like what happened to that ghost … to Hanyu? I didn’t realize that he was suffering.
I wouldn’t have antagonized him so much if I had…
” His expression turned contrite. Was he actually feeling guilty about what had happened?
Kasu could only imagine the kind of anguish one had to endure before becoming a hungry ghost. For a regular ghost to turn like that, they had to feel an intense and sustained hatred, a seething despair that lasted months, years.
Had Hanyu really been suffering that much?
Who had he hated with such burning intensity?
Or perhaps it was not a matter of who but what.
Maybe it was his situation, his entire un-life, that he despised.
The doors to Camellia House blew open.
“Kasu! Miss Kasu, you’ve got to help me. I beg you!”
A ghost woman in ragged robes ran straight for her exchange desk, almost colliding with the hard edge of the counter.
“What have you brought me?” Kasu took a step back and waited for the woman to recover her breath.
The ghost stretched her hands behind her neck and unfastened a simple gold necklace. Kasu held it up to her face, inspecting the delicate metal links, searching for a goldsmith’s mark stamped into the clasp.
The value of each trade came down to a simple equation of knowing how much the item was worth to the patron and how much it might be worth to everyone else.
There were no hard and fast rules; it was something Kasu had learned how to intuit over the years.
Whenever ghosts came to her, wanting a handful of tiles in exchange for bolts of silk, a memory of a beloved pet or a locket from a lover, she could always feel how much each item meant to them.
It was in their eyes. She could always see it in their eyes.
Kasu placed the chain on one side of the counter and a handful of tiles on the other.
“I can give you ten for it.”
“That’s it?” The ghost gaped at her.