Chapter Twenty-Four Kasu
A strange hush lay over the streets when Kasu and Arun, tired and disheartened by their failure, entered the western quarter.
Musicians plucked the strings of their instruments to a markedly sombre tune.
The booths putting on puppet plays seemed to have vanished overnight, the teahouses had shut their doors and the street performers had left to find other dingy corners to put on their shows.
Kasu had never seen the theatre district so quiet before.
The usual crowd of theatregoers was absent and the streets seemed so much more shabby and lifeless than usual.
“Closed until further notice?” Arun read the sign on the doors of the Grand Pavilion Theatre.
It was not just the Grand Pavilion; most of the theatres along the main street were shuttered, with rope barricades across the doors and signs that announced their temporary closure.
“What’s going on?” No one had told Kasu about this. Camellia House’s rumour mill had failed her. This was the kind of strange event that Banse and Manzu and other servants could normally never shut up about.
Perhaps she had been spending so much time with Arun that she hadn’t been around to listen to them. Maybe she had been so preoccupied with the mystery of his mother that she hadn’t paid attention to the usual stirrings around the gambling parlour.
“Did you have tickets for tonight’s show? It’s been cancelled, I’m afraid. There won’t be any more performances of General Shusa: Life and Love of a Loser God.” A young ghost woman in a simple cotton tunic was sweeping the road outside the theatre, brushing all the dirt into a cloth bag.
“Why is that?” asked Arun.
The girl studied them for a moment, then leaned on her broom. “There’s a curse on the prowl.”
“Curse?” Kasu immediately looked down to where Ruo would have been had the cat come with them. Except Ruo had disappeared, and there was nothing and no one there but the dirty road.
And I might never see Ruo again. She tried not to think about it. About how disappointed and frustrated the cat had seemed before they left. If she called for Ruo now, would they even answer her?
Kasu was too afraid to find out.
“A curse is striking down the Pale Lady’s actors. It’s already killed five of them! Well, three, actually. Two more tried to quit, so the Pale Lady ate them.” The girl’s face split into a ghoulish grin.
Kasu thought back to the white wolf they had seen before. She was certain that was the curse responsible for these deaths.
“Anyway, the theatres will open again soon. Once there’s a new schedule, you can get a refund.” The girl returned to her sweeping. Arun bowed his thanks and led Kasu away.
“So, what now? If we can’t find the Pale Lady at the theatre, where can we find her?” he asked.
Kasu pondered this while her feet carried her aimlessly through the streets.
Though the western quarter was not as lively as usual, not everything was closed.
Away from the Grand Pavilion, some of the teahouses were still open, and there were vendors set up on the street corners shouting about their wares.
Musicians remained installed on the sloping rooftops, their soft notes drifting over her.
Kasu paused. All fortune tellers are performers and therefore they belong to me. I see what they see. Hear what they hear. “There is another way. One last way we can talk to the Pale Lady.”
They found a fortune teller’s tent on the edge of the western quarter, where the buildings grew sparse and the paved roads petered into simple dirt paths.
Beyond the last of the ramshackle huts lay the rest of the under-realm, sprawling out beyond the reach of the city’s lanterns and into the shadowy horizon.
The fortune teller was a horned demon in muddied rags. She sat crouched in front of her table and moved empty tortoise shells around a chalk grid like they were pieces in a board game, looking up only when Kasu cleared her throat.
“Madam Pale Lady. You can see and hear us, can’t you? We have something to report. Can we please meet somewhere?”
A flash of fear passed through the demon’s six pitch-black eyes. Without warning, the fortune teller’s body split at the seams. “Holy Celestial—!” Kasu bit back a curse. Unclean words invite unclean thoughts, but she had not expected the demon lord to erupt out of the fortune teller like that.
“I am here.” The Pale Lady clambered out of the demon’s body, letting it sag to the floor around her feet. Despite emerging from a pool of blood, her white dress was unmarked. Her long, pale hair tumbled to the ground as she sat in the too-small tent, her antlers poking at the top of the fabric.
“Do you have to do that every time?” Arun asked, queasily.
Kasu tried not to look at the fortune teller’s body. The demon’s six eyes stared up at her, glassy and unseeing. Death was a part of the under-realm, but it did not get any easier to stomach.
The Pale Lady was unbothered. “Their lives are mine, anyway. They all signed contracts with me agreeing so,” she said.
It was not just ghosts who signed contracts of service – lesser demons also found work under more powerful ones.
The terms were often the same, except that, unlike ghosts, once their contracts were over, demons could not try petitioning the heavens for a chance at reincarnation.
A weak demon was often doomed to an eternity of servitude.
“They’re still people, all the same!” Arun scowled.
Calmly, the Pale Lady gestured for them to take a seat in front of her divining table. “I believe you have something for me.”
Kasu and Arun glanced at one another. After a moment, they both sat down.
“There was a problem,” said Kasu.
“We did our best,” Arun added, already on the defensive.
It wasn’t a great place from which to start negotiations. Kasu knew that if you wanted a good deal you had to be aggressive.
The Pale Lady’s moths vibrated their wings in displeasure. “So you failed.”
Kasu and Arun exchanged looks a second time. Carefully, Arun pulled the bottle of green smoke from his sash.
“We have this.”
“I know about Lady Camellia’s memory collection. That is not what I asked for.” The Pale Lady sounded uninterested. This was not as fun as an elixir that could be used to torture someone into reliving their worst moments over and over again.
“It’s not what you wanted, no,” said Kasu. “We were stopped from finding and obtaining the elixir by another group of ghosts.”
“Another group of ghosts?”
“If you would like to know more, perhaps we can strike a new deal?”
“After you so miserably failed to uphold your end of our first bargain?”
“The ghosts mentioned Lord Cobalt.”
“Oh?” The Pale Lady tilted her head to one side.
Kasu nodded. Now that she thought about it, she still had no idea why they had broken into Lady Camellia’s quarters in the first place. Could Lord Cobalt have heard about the elixir too and sent his men to steal it?
The Pale Lady seemed to be thinking the same thing. Plucking the green memory bottle from Arun’s hand, she twirled it between her fingers before pocketing it somewhere inside her robe.
“Very well, tell me about these ghosts and I will tell you about Sunan.”
Kasu tried not to show how relieved she was as she recounted their experience sneaking into Lady Camellia’s chambers – the memory bottles, the ghosts, the mirror of departure they had found wedged into a tree.
“Now it’s your turn to tell us what we want to know,” said Arun.
Kasu gave him a despairing look. Well, if the Pale Lady had not eaten them both yet, perhaps she wouldn’t start now.
The demon grinned and made herself comfortable, her antlers still brushing against the top of the tent. “Some time ago, Sunan came to visit me. She had stolen a reincarnation wheel and needed somewhere to hide from the eyes of the heavens.”
Arun stiffened. For a moment, Kasu was sure he would insist that the Pale Lady was lying again, but this time he managed to hold his tongue.
“She didn’t stay long. I believe she moved on to the eastern quarter next. To do what, I don’t know. That was the last I heard of her.”
The Pale Lady allowed the silence to echo between them.
The eastern quarter. Lord Cobalt’s domain.
“There is one thing you may find interesting,” the demon continued. “A lady of the heavens, even a soon-to-be-exiled one, would draw attention. Every ghost and demon would know what she was and would want a bite out of her, but Sunan was able to move through the city freely.”
“She had an aura mask?”
“Precisely.” The Pale Lady spread her hands before her, fingers splayed like the branches of a sapling. “When Sunan arrived in the under-realm, she already had an aura mask.”
“Is that it?” Arun was wound as tight as a coiled spring. “Is that all you know? You haven’t told us anything.”
“I disagree. I believe I have told you quite a lot.”
Yes, and she had left them with more questions than answers. What had happened after Sunan left the theatre district? Why had she headed into the eastern quarter? They still didn’t have enough information.
“What about the reincarnation wheel?” Kasu asked. “I assume that’s with Sunan, wherever she is?”
The demon fiddled with her ring, twisting it this way and that. “You may assume whatever you like.”
“But you don’t know where she is. You don’t know anything at all,” Arun muttered.
Kasu’s mind was racing. Something wasn’t right. There was too much missing from the Pale Lady’s story.
“If you don’t mind, there’s one thing I don’t understand. You said that Sunan came to you for help when she first came to the under-realm. What did she want? Why go to you?”
“She wanted to sell a service. She stole the reincarnation wheel and came here in order to allow ghosts and demons to bypass the will of heaven and reincarnate. For a price, of course.”
“No! That can’t—” Arun began, but the Pale Lady ploughed on.
“As for why she came to me? She knew about me before she entered the under-realm. I’m somewhat famous in the heavens too.
When you first came to see one of my fortune tellers, you had a ball of star silk.
I do wonder how you managed to get hold of it, though I won’t push you for answers.
Did you know that Lady Moon gives it to all new entrants before they join the heavens?
They are supposed to use it to weave themself a celestial cloak, but many hold on to the silk as a memento.
Or give it to the family they leave behind. ”
Arun clenched his teeth, no doubt thinking about the curse that had stolen the star silk his mother had given him.
A coy smile fluttered across the Pale Lady’s face as she produced a small sphere of silk from the folds of her dress. A ball made of threads as pale as pure starlight, glowing with a soft radiance.
Kasu shot to her feet. “You? You were a member of the heavens?”
“I was a god.”
Mouth agape, Kasu could do nothing but splutter and stare.
The Pale Lady was a demon. No, not just an ordinary demon but one of the four demon lords that ruled the city.
How could she go from a god to – to this?
What had she done to end up in the under-realm, and how could she live with herself knowing how far she had fallen?
As if sensing her thoughts, the Pale Lady gave an amused chuckle. “I chose to leave. The heavens are full of nothing but self-righteous bastards. To say nothing of the Celestial Empress.”
Outrage clawed at Kasu’s throat. Chose? The Pale Lady had chosen to leave the heavens, the bastion of all goodness in the three realms? She had chosen to leave a place where there was always food aplenty and wine flowed like water – a place where everyone was noble and beautiful and kind?
Obviously, it was a lie. Demons lied all the time. Kasu bet that, like Arun’s mother, she had done something terrible and been kicked out of the heavens.
“To be a demon is one thing, but a traitor too?” The words slipped out before Kasu could stop them. She drew a sharp, horrified breath as her eyes quickly flit to the Pale Lady’s face.
“Traitor?” The demon’s laughter fluttered like the moths clinging to her face. “You talk as if you’re part of the heavens. As if they care about you.”
“B–but they do! The gods protect all who are righteous and good!”
“And that’s what you are, is it? Righteous and good?” If the Pale Lady had eyes beneath that swarm of moths, Kasu was sure that they were sparkling with mirth.
She blushed, furious. Her hands trembled with the urge to do something terrible. Of course a demon would mock the heavens; it was what demons did. Kasu would not listen to this blasphemy, this – this sheer arrogance!
The Pale Lady tilted her head and the bells on her antlers tinkled softly.
They reminded Kasu of the bells strung around temples and shrines calling out to the gods for mercy.
“Humans suffer, and that suffering compels them to commit heinous acts. Warped by hatred and anguish, they become demons. Humans who thrive gain notoriety and renown that attract the eyes of the heavens. As they commit noble deed after noble deed, humans may become gods. Yet, whether demon or god, at their core they remain the same flawed humans as always.”
Kasu spluttered in impotent rage.
“You do not see that,” the Pale Lady said. “You and your mistress share the same flaw.”
“What does Lady Camellia have to do with anything?”
“Lady Camellia is like you. A fool who puts her faith in all the wrong things. The wrong person. It’s amusing watching her make the same mistakes over and over again.
Amusing and pathetic.” The Pale Lady waved a dismissive hand, drawing their discussion to a close without giving Kasu the chance to ask any further questions.
Kasu could tell that the demon’s patience was at an end. It was time to go.
They were lucky to be leaving with their lives. Kasu knew that she shouldn’t have said half of the things she had. Lady Camellia certainly wouldn’t have been as tolerant.
“Thank you for taking the time to speak to us.” She bowed.
As she pulled Arun out of the tent, Kasu glanced back at the demon lord.
The Pale Lady smiled and the moths covering her eyes shook their wings with glee.