Page 26 of Between Ghosts and Gods

“Four quarters, four demon lords.” Arun committed the information to memory.

“The north belongs to Lord Onyx, who runs the fighting pits. The east contains the meat market run by Lord Cobalt. The south belongs to Lady Camellia and, well, you’ve seen what she’s like.”

Arun wished he hadn’t. He had never wanted to know what it looked like for a demon of that size to eat a ghost. How small Hanyu had seemed in Lady Camellia’s skeletal hands.

“The western theatre district belongs to the Pale Lady.”

“What’s it like?” Arun wondered what interest ghosts and ghouls had in the arts.

Kasu paused in front of a looming archway. Beyond the stone pillars, Arun could hear the faint sound of drums pulsing through the air like a heartbeat.

“Come and see for yourself.”

Chapter Fourteen Kasu

As Kasu dived deeper into the theatre district, she passed teahouses heaving with demons. She pulled Arun through the flowing crowd, careful they remained illuminated by the hanging lanterns at all times. When the streets were this noisy, it was hard to tell what were shrieks of delight and what were screams of terror. Musicians and jugglers, puppet masters and storytellers leaned down from teahouse balconies, clamouring to be heard.

“Little flower, dressed in red, blooming in obscurity.” A spider demon played a zither with two arms while her other hands beat the top of a small drum and dragged a bow against the strings of a violin. “The Song of Shusa’s Lover” was all the local musicians were playing lately.

“Plucked from the earth, the young man pinned her to his breast.

To work he took her, and to rest – never did they part,

Until a war did shake the land.

Little flower, dressed in red, left alone to wither and rot –

When the young man returned, he cast her aside

And into the mud she sank.”

“This is intense.” Arun’s gaze darted this way and that with every twang of the lute and every pluck of the zither. A ghost barged past them with a hoot of delight, carrying a demon’s head under one arm as he raced by.

“Ghosts and demons want to enjoy themselves from time to time as well.” Kasu avoided a stall at which a masked ghost invited onlookers to play a game of poisoned cups. The goal was to solve a series of riddles to figure out which of five cups was safe to drink. The trick was that none of them were.

“I thought festival days in Bakrute were chaotic. This is something else.” Arun gawked at the performers in their glittering costumes. Kasu wondered if he realized that the coloured streamers hanging from the teahouses were painted guts.

“We’re guests here, so try not to cause trouble.”

“Of course I won’t. I’m no brute who stabs first and asks questions later,” Arun grumbled.

Maybe not, but Kasu remembered how quick he had been to draw a sword on her in the shadow forest. Granted, Ruo had been trying to eat him at the time.

As if summoned by her thoughts, Ruo popped into the air next to Kasu, bumping against her legs.

“Kasuuu, you promised me snacks.”

Kasu glanced down at the cat. Neither she nor Arun had eaten all day. She needed to replenish her qi one way or another if she did not want to start losing her physical form.

Once the body starts to fade, next comes the forever death.

“Are you hungry?” She glanced at Arun. She was not sure how often a human would need to eat in the under-realm.

“Starving,” said Arun.

“Kasu! Eyeballs!” Ruo pointed both tails at a stall with several large, bubbling soup cauldrons.

Arun scrunched up his face and leaned over the pots. Eyes of various colours bobbed up and down in the soup like apples. “Are those … human eyeballs?”