Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Mother made a big deal when I came back with no grain, no salt, no fish, and a bipa with new silk strings (slightly worn). I was too old to beat, but she moaned about my betrayal nonstop. That woman really knew how to pick at a scab, keeping the wound fresh. She nursed that grudge a full season before she’d have a normal conversation with me again without all the hysterics.

She also banned me from going to market again for the next seven lifetimes. That lasted until the war had stopped and started again. By then I was 15, a man fully grown.

It was the pitchfork that did it. Precious little Jinae, my sister, all of five years old, was trying to get a head start on next year’s planting, swinging at the cold, hard ground, and hadn’t checked for rocks. One of the tines had come clean off. Our mother snapped laundry in the background, shaking it out before putting it on the line to dry.

Was I ever that dumb? I wondered fondly. “I’ll take care of it,” I said instead. I ignored Mother’s huff, my smile fixed firmly in place.

Jinae sniffled, the toe of her sandal twisting and digging into the hard earth. “Really? It’ll be okay?”

“Oh no, it won’t be okay. We’ll probably have to sell one of your arms. Are you a righty or a leftie?”

“Jinu!” she cried, punching me in the thigh. I said a quick prayer of thanks that she didn’t know to aim higher.

“You can just say ‘rightie’, you don’t have to demonstrate,” I said, grabbing her left arm and pulling it straight. She squealed, giggled, tried to wrench it away, but I kept my grip firm and twisted it this way and that, examining it from all angles. I felt a pang in my heart. She really was too skinny. “I can get three pitchforks for an arm like this.”

“We only need one! Just take enough for one!” she wheezed, face red with laughter.

I was halfway through my lecture on the importance of backups when our mother cut in. “Jinu, help me with something inside,” she said curtly.

Once we were indoors and away from Jinae’s ears, my mother turned to me, a scowl on her face. “I’m so glad you’re having fun,” she said, sounding anything but, voice low and tight, “because it’s going to take us twice as long to work the soil with only two tines. We already can’t keep up with our full fields.”

“Thank you for explaining that to me, Honored Mother,” I said blandly. She’s too nasty lately to waste wit on. Didn’t I say I would handle it? “Look, it’s the off season. The market is coming up soon. Perfect time for repairs. So don’t give Jinae a hard time, okay?”

Mother frowned. “You’re banned from the market.”

“Do you have a better idea?” I asked, knowing she didn’t. Yeah, you can’t tell me I’m the man of the house for years and then get mad when I take charge.

“You haven’t explained how you’re going to pay for it,” she snapped.

I kept my cringe internal. “I’ll handle it,” I said confidently, face and voice smooth.

“And if you meet any tigers—” she began.

“—get swindled, got it,” I cut her off, smiling fake and bright.

It was most of a day’s walk to an old field where a battle had taken place nerve-wrackingly close to our village. I timed it to arrive at night, not wanting observers. What I was doing wasn’t quite grave robbing, but…

“Oi! Grave robber!” A well-dressed man was waving at me from his crouch on a tree stump, illuminated by the moon.

I turned to him, frozen, panicked, bowing deep and staying low. “I—I’m not—I just…” I didn’t know what to say.

“Want to get ahead?” the man smiled slyly. “Don’t we all?” I was silent, straightening slightly, and after a moment, he continued. “What are you looking for? Fine barbarian steel, a sword to slay your enemies and rise through the ranks of the Righteous Army? A gun? I warn you, there are options, but shot and powder will be a problem; better the sword—”

“Iron,” I said, desperate to quiet his mad rambling. He perked up and peered at me with intense attention. “I’m not much of a fighter, but if I could—you see, my sister—that is.” I took a breath. “I’m just a simple farmer. My sister broke our only pitchfork. I’m here to find some scrap iron to make the repairs affordable.”

“How… boring…” the man said, still staring at me, eyes glittering with interest. “A ‘simple farmer’, you said? That’s a lie I can hear in my gut, boy!” He laughed, loud, slapping his leg. “No, there’s quite a bit more to you than that, I reckon. What’s your name, Mr. Farmboy?”

I was technically committing a crime here, but—well, what was this man doing here in the middle of the night, anyway? “Jinu,” I said. “And you?”

He smiled, wide and toothy. “Gwi-Ma.” I bowed and he inclined his head magnanimously. After a moment he waved his hand absently off into the trees. “There’s an abandoned soldiers’ camp over that way. Look for the fire pit. They left in a hurry, iron buttons and nails scattered about. You’ll want to—”

“Hey! What are you doing here?” A man cried from a distance, running towards us. He held a spear in one hand, a lamp in the other, light spilling wildly across the ground as he moved. “Thieves?” His head swung to me. “Deserters?” I froze, wondering if I should run, but Gwi-Ma remained calm. Maybe Gwi-Ma was some kind of official? He’d explain everything… okay, probably not the crime, but—

My thoughts stuttered to a halt as Gwi-Ma rose smoothly to his feet and changed. He moved, monstrous, swiftly disarming the man and shuttering his lamp, pushing him to the ground, and… consuming him. A light rose up from his chest, and Gwi-Ma inhaled, and that was the end of him.

“Right,” Gwi-Ma said, turned away from the corpse like he’d already forgotten about the man he’d just murdered. “So, the camp over there—”

“Demon!” I cried, pointing at him.

“Yes,” he said, “and just so you know, I do hate being interrupted. I literally just killed someone in front of you for it. So, the camp, right, it’s—” I opened my mouth, to say what I do not know, and something about Gwi-Ma’s face made me close it, heart pounding in my chest. He nodded, satisfied. “A camp, a short walk that way,” he said, gesturing. “Look for the fire pit.”

When I was sure he was done, I steeled myself and looked at his eyes. Yellow, elongated like a cat’s. Amused. “What are you?”

“A demon, Jinu, as you said,” he replied coyly.

“And you just devoured that man.”

It wasn’t a question, not really, but he seemed to feel the need to elaborate. “‘Devoured’ is a bit much. Hardly anything to that one,” he kicked backwards absentmindedly, hitting the man’s foot. No, the—the corpse’s foot.

I was silent a moment, trying to process that. “What does that mean?”

Gwi-Ma shrugged. “A man like that, no variety, no intensity, no talent. Bland.” He twisted his lips and sucked his teeth. “Barely a snack. If you could see his shade, right now, you’d get it. He doesn’t even have a face.”

I nodded, not like I understood, but just to show I was listening. That I accepted the mad demon’s words. My skin crawled, and I realized I truly did believe him. Gwi-Ma was powerful—he had no reason to lie to me. There was a shade, and it didn’t have a face. Because the man had been… boring? I wanted to ask if the shade was here, with us, but—instead I asked, “Why me?”

Gwi-ma tilted his head.

“Why didn’t you eat me?”

The smile spread across his face like a wildfire. I couldn’t breath with him looking at me like that: eyes wide and unblinking. Hungry. “Why would I eat a meal that’s only half cooked?” he asked, amusement dripping from every word.

I ran. His laughter chased me through the forest far longer than it should have.

At the town market, in the cold light of day, it was hard to believe demons were real. I closed my eyes, feeling the heat of the forge on my face, the noise a welcome assault on my ears, comforting, grounding. Can you get sunburn from a forge fire? I wondered idly. The forge was covered, but the smith’s skin was darker than mine.

“Farmer,” he barked, and I opened my eyes, hurrying over to him. “The forge weld took well on the first try. I’ll keep the rest of the scrap, so the cost is half the grain you brought. You can keep the rest, and your sack.”

I reached for the pitchfork, then froze at his barked, “Wait!” He paused to make sure I wouldn’t move again, then continued. “It needs time to cool before you handle it. You’ll only deform it if you touch it now.”

I frowned. “So put it in the barrel,” I said, gesturing at the water nearby.

“The farmer is a smith, now?” He rolled his eyes. “Rapid quenching makes the metal brittle. You want to let it cool slowly after being forged; it comes out strongest that way.”

My frown deepened; I didn’t like the idea of letting him take payment before I’d had a chance to check the pitchfork. “How do I know the work’s good? That it won’t break as soon as I put some pressure on it?”

“Should I inspect every grain of rice a farmer gives me?” he muttered. When I didn’t reply, he shrugged, motioning me closer, but standing between me and the pitchfork, still preventing me from grabbing it. “Here,” he said, pointing with his finger a good handsbreadth away from the mended tine, “see the color changes, the width of the band? That’s the mend, spread out across a wide area, instead of concentrated in just one spot.” I nodded along, though I didn’t really get it yet. Why was a big repair better than a small one? He seemed to intuit my confusion, moving his finger to gesture along the tine for further explanation. “And these lines? The grain of the whole length has been strengthened by the repair.”

I nodded again, dubious. “So, it won’t break again?”

He shook his head. “It’s not unbreakable, but it’s stronger now than before the break. Got it? Stronger than before the break. Take care, and it’ll last longer than it did last time.”

In the end, he seemed a straightforward enough person, so I took him at his word, paying him for his work and wandering the streets for a bit while I waited for the metal to cool.

It was a market day, and I saw the bastard string vendor, but thankfully he didn’t seem to recognize me. It’d been years. I laughed, thinking back, and the vendor looked at me, hawker’s smile falling into a frown as he focused on my grinning face. I turned on my heel and walked down a side path before he could remember me after all.

I really was still just a brat back then. Wandering the streets, no cup for coins, no space to busk in. Just expecting that I could play for the first time in years and make money. I shook my head at my past foolishness, then paused to consider my half sack of grain.

Even with a repaired pitchfork, our life wasn’t sustainable. We were stumbling through life, falling further and further behind. Father really had robbed us blind, selling anything of any value in his desperate desire to find peace in music. Now every setback was a disaster; we had no slack in our lives to absorb even the most petty everyday inconvenience.

I was 16 now, I’d hit my full growth, and likely wouldn’t be getting much stronger or faster, working any harder. It would be years before Jinae was any substantive help in the fields; meanwhile day by day we wasted away with hunger, always on the edge of illness, faces sallow and frames slight.

Looking forward, with this kind of rough life, neither Jinae nor I had any marriage prospects. Even my mother, as a young widow, would have options, if only we weren’t so pathetically destitute. It was like the very gods themselves frowned upon us, casting a pall over our family that everyone in the village was learning to avoid.

And a few nights ago, I stole iron from corpses and consorted with a demon. I shivered. We were truly at the bottom, desperate, and it was up to me to save us. It’s the Year of the Pig, after all. Fat and plenty. The perfect time to turn our fortunes around.

Feeling resolved, I searched the market until I found another vendor with silk strings, a tiny auntie who haggled fiercely if not well, and when I left I even still had some grain left on top of three new sets of strings.

My mother didn’t say anything about the strings, which was good, because I wasn’t going to listen. She did reinstate the market ban, and I nodded and shrugged noncommittally. Her words didn’t mean anything. She couldn’t stop me.

I leaned our repaired pitchfork against the wall smugly and settled down to practice with the bipa.

A month later, I had thick callouses on my fingers and one serviceable set of strings left. I stuffed my bowl down my shirt, slung my bipa over my back, and left the village while my sister and mother slept, moon still high in the sky. It was dangerous to travel at night—due to bandits moreso than demons, really, though either would be the end of me—but I had no choice if I wanted to arrive at the market early enough to get a good spot for busking.

It turned out I needn’t have worried. I was faster than the bandits, and the demon was quite cordial. Gwi-Ma sucked the two men dry, then turned and greeted me like an old friend. “Jinu!” he cried, smiling at me, eyes yellow in the moonlight.

“Gwi-Ma,” I said, bowing. Gwi-Ma quickly shed his demonic appearance, becoming more human, but I wasn’t fooled. I certainly wasn’t going to run; I’d been faster than the bandits, but not that much faster. Certainly not faster than Gwi-Ma.

I walked up to the closer bandit and kicked his leg. The dirt road crunched as his foot jerked with the movement. After a moment, I leaned down, rifling through his sleeves and pockets until I found a bundle of coins with square holes in the middle, held together on a string. His partner didn’t have one, though. Probably not both soldiers, then; maybe one was a former soldier, recently released from the army, still with his victory separation bonus, and he just happened to turn to banditry with a friend—but no, more likely they were both bandits, and they’d taken their single string of coins off some lonely sod who’d survived the barbarians but couldn’t survive his own countrymen. I stood to find Gwi-Ma watching me with amusement.

I hesitated, feeling a bit like a scavenger. “Do you want any?” I asked lamely.

Gwi-Ma considered the coins with surprising care. “Just two for each,” he said finally, a slight grin twisting up one corner of his mouth. I untied the string and counted out four coins, dropping them into his palm, which he then secreted away in his opposite sleeve. I squeezed my remaining bundle of coins and put it in my pocket. I’d eat well at market today.

I paused to see if he wanted anything else, but he seemed content to wait and loom. Eventually, I bowed, gesturing down the road, and started to walk. He chuckled dryly and began walking at my side.

After a time, he spoke. “How did your quest for iron go?”

I felt a chill go up my spine at the memory. I wondered if he already knew. He knew the iron was there in the first place. Such precise instructions. And he mentioned a fine sword, too, and firearms. Did he just… know everything? Everything that happened at night? Everything that happened on death grounds? I didn’t know anything about demons.

“It went well. Your information was good,” I said, keeping my questions to myself. Gwi-Ma seemed to be waiting for more, so I threw out a “Thank you,” and that seemed to please him. His eyes flashed yellow again for a moment.

We walked in silence for a bit, but then he asked me another question, and then another after that, and before I knew it I was talking animatedly as he nodded along, throwing in words of commiseration here and there. It was so easy to talk to him, not like at home with Jinae or my mother, or the villagers that were increasingly ostracizing us.

“Fame and riches, then,” he said, nodding in understanding. “Comfort. Acknowledgement. The desire to be heard. What else could you want? And what better way, than to catch the ear of the king with your beautiful music?”

My stomach dropped. It sounded so selfish when he said it like that, so grandiose. I just wanted to feed my family. I hadn’t even said anything about the king. “I just want what everyone else has,” I said, trying to defend myself.

“Of course,” he said easily. “Why should they be warm and full when you’re cold and hungry?”

That… it sounded wrong when he said it, but I couldn’t place my finger on why. I was dizzy, hungry, low on sleep and exhausted from a long day of work and a long night of walking and interacting with the supernatural. The sky was just starting to lighten, purple instead of black.

Vertigo hit me hard as I remembered I was speaking with a demon. “Why are you talking to me?” I finally asked. It probably should have been my first question.

Gwi-Ma’s eyes shone yellow. “You’re interesting. You’ve had a hard life, but far from being worn down, it’s only filled you with a hunger. A drive.”

I shuddered. “And that will make me tastier when you finally eat me?” I said with some heat.

He shook his head, a simple, honest movement at odds with the obvious lies of the rest of his appearance, his illusory human form and rich clothing. “It’s not that simple. I don’t think you understand how strongly you feel. Most mortals are content to wander through life, their wants petty and meager. Few are capable of the desire I can feel burning inside you. It’s scintillating.” He closed his eyes and breathed deep, and my stomach roiled in revulsion at the idea of whatever part of my essence that he was attuned to being inhaled and becoming a part of him. “So much potential.”

I had my disgust back under control by the time he opened his eyes again, and we walked in silence a while more. “So I don’t have to worry about you eating me quite yet, then?”

He paused at a crossroads. “I just want to continue giving you my aid.” He considered me a moment. “I’m not just any demon, you know. I have desires too. I’m going to make something of myself. And someday, I might need someone like you.” He looked me in the eyes, and something there in my gaze seemed to please him; his lips turned into a half-smile, and he nodded, before disappearing in a puff of red smoke.

I found a good spot in the markets to set up for busking, but some of the stalls there had been staffed in the same spot for generations. I couldn’t just take a spot because they hadn’t shown up yet. All their regular customers would expect them there, and they’d be none too pleased to find me in the wrong spot. That would cause problems for, in increasing order of importance, me, the customers, and the rightful stallholders.

All of this was explained to me in slow but loud tones by an auntie with a voice like a magpie. Eventually, her husband started throwing cupfuls of water around from a bamboo ladle, ostensibly to clean the space and settle the dust, but dousing me more than enough to get the message across.

I used the coins to buy a blanket to sit on and breakfast while I waited for the market to fill up enough that I felt safe choosing a spot. Flashing that string of cash was probably not the best idea; soon after I felt a tug, but when I turned around, the pickpocket was nowhere to be found. I sighed and turned back to my breakfast; it wasn’t even worth making a scene over the thrice-stolen coins. They weren’t coming back, and at least the ever-present pain in my belly had subsided.

I chose a spot with high traffic for my busking, but that ended up working against me as the constant stream of people and livestock passing by splashed through a nearby puddle, soaking my blanket through. There was nowhere else to go, though; the market was narrow and packed, and I was already practically in the street, in constant danger of being trampled and worried a careless passerby would trip and fall on me and crush my bipa. I set my worries aside, focused on the music and played my heart out, played till my fingers ached and bled, but only three times did I hear any activity at the bowl I’d put out.

The first was a bent nail, and the second was a scrap of cloth. A quick glance at the faces of my benefactors showed more pity than appreciation. I trained so hard. I know I’m not a bad musician. I know it. Even if singing and drums are more common in the streets, even if the bipa is an instrument of the court, someone here should still be able to enjoy this.

The third sound I heard was a hand grabbing the bowl and disappearing back into the crowd. I stared dully at the dry spot on the blanket where my bowl had been, wondering if it’d been the same person who robbed me this morning.

The next splash across my blanket blotted out that sorry spot of mockery, and my music crumbled as I hunched over my bipa, trying to protect it from the wet. My eyes were wet, too.

I glared at the stupid fucking puddle. The rest of the afternoon, I sat there, silent and hateful, as people and animals splashed me again and again. And when the people dwindled and the market started to close, puddle burning pink and purple and red from the reflected sunset, I heard Gwi-Ma’s voice for the first time.

I’d talked to him before, of course, twice now, but this was different. I know, now, that this was Gwi-Ma’s true voice. Just as he’d taken on human form and clothing, he’d used a human voice to talk to me. There was some otherworldly resonance from time to time, but that was only the barest hint of the demonic voice he began to unleash upon me.

You’re not good enough.

No one hears you.

But I can give you a voice.

He knew just how to push my buttons. I left the sodden, filthy blanket behind, my only worldly possessions my bipa and the clothes on my back, and stalked down the road. I waited at the crossroads, and that night, Gwi-Ma came to me.

I bargained for a voice. My bipa skills were fine, but they’d never been enough. It was the voice I was missing. Twelve years I’d get, twelve years with an undeniable voice that could make the king weep, fill my belly and warm my bed, and when next the Year of the Pig came around Gwi-Ma would collect my soul.

I know, now, that I could have asked for something else—adoration, or fame, or wealth, or power. A rich wife. An undefeatable blade. I could have bargained for my family. But also—I couldn’t. Because that’s not how demons’ deals work. They pull your desires out of you. You ask for what you want, not what’s smartest. And because everyone has some selfish wants inside them, our deals are almost always frightfully ironic for the people who make them, generally mostly good people who are then confronted with the consequences of just what they’d asked for in a moment of weakness.

I’m not trying to make excuses for myself. I’m just trying to explain. I’ve made my own deals, from the other side of the table. You wouldn’t believe how easy it is to bring out the worst in people if you just invest a little time in listening before you ruin them. It was an art, and Gwi-Ma taught me well, starting with my own object lesson.

Rumi’s twirling a pen in her fingers, and she’s mostly silent, but every now and then she marks the paper and then shows it to me for a correction. I’ve moved the chair closer, feet up on her bed as I type on the laptop, close enough that it’s easy to see whatever she’s trying to show me.

So I can tell pretty well where she is in the story. There’s a furrow in her brow as she flips back and forth over the conspicuous gap between one page and the next. She looks at me. I quirk an eyebrow. I’m trying for cool, but before I know it I’m sinking into her eyes, and I startle when she suddenly barks “Tea!” and then she’s on her feet, marching towards the door.

She comes back a few minutes later, carrying a tray with a bag of chips alongside a teapot and mug on top—and another mug hidden underneath. My little liar. I can't help the smirk that slides across my face.

She notices. “It’s not the same,” she says firmly, placing the tray carefully on the ottoman at the foot of her bed. I blink noncommittally. “I’ll tell them this time. I just need to hear it first, so I know what I’m even telling them.”

“As a good, reformed demon, I feel like I should point out they’d probably want you to tell them now,” I say. “Given that ‘telling them eventually’ was your plan last time.

She’s squinting at me. “I’ll tell them in the morning.”

I shrug. “If we’re done by then.”

She starts. “How long is this story of yours going to take?”

“I can confidently say,” I draw out gleefully, “that I have no idea at all.” I beam at her. She grunts in disgust, and my grin widens. She pours some tea and shoves it at me. Peppermint.

Rumi blows on her own tea for a good minute before she takes her first sip. “I’m willing to skip over that part if you want to,” she finally says, peering into the mug. “The details of your deal, leaving your family. As long as you say it’s not relevant. As long as it’s—as long as you only want to, you know? If you can’t confront it, if it’s something we should talk about, that’s another story. Since we’re being all mentally healthy or whatever.” She sips her tea, staring at Derpy curled up on the floor, dozing with Sussie perched between his ears.

I consider that for a minute, genuinely trying very hard to be honest. “I could talk about it, but it’s not important.” At the look she’s giving me, I rush to correct myself. “It is important, of course, to me. But historically… metaphysically, spiritually, globally, whatever, it isn’t. It’s not relevant. And, honestly, I just don’t want to. No need to dwell on the past. I’ve already told you the truth. More detail doesn’t change the bones of the story.”

Rumi nods, opening the chips and positioning the bag so we can both reach in. “Okay. It could be important to me, too, but okay. But… nevermind. Alright. So.” I prepare myself for her next question, getting a chip to give myself something to do.

But when her question comes, it’s not what I expect. I expected something about Gwi-Ma, the nature of his abilities, his rise to supremacy as the Demon King. Instead, she wants to know about the men Gwi-Ma killed. Not that first, unfortunate guard at the old battlefield—maybe she recognizes I couldn’t have done anything about that—but the bandits from the road to the market. The men whose corpses I’d robbed, back while I was still a mortal.

“I’ll remind you,” I say with strained patience, “that at that time, I was still an honest, hardworking farmer. They would have taken my bipa and my life, no question about it. They were chasing me, Rumi, so they could rob and kill me. And if I hadn’t taken their coin, the next person to come along would have.” I look down and see that I’ve cracked the chip from holding it too tightly, and gather up the crumbs, throwing them in the trash.

“So let the next person steal from the dead,” she says heatedly. “You didn’t have to do it yourself. That hypothetical next person has nothing to do with you.”

I look at her, marveling at her completely alien worldview. “What do they call you? ‘Kpop royalty’? It shows.”

“What does that mean?” she asks, bristling like a cat. I swear the hairs in her braid are coming loose to stand on end.

“It means you’ve never been hungry. You feel hunger like a notification on your cell phone, a reminder to partake of the cheap, plentiful food that surrounds you at all times. You’ve never experienced the hunger that gnaws at you because you didn’t eat yesterday and you won’t eat today, because you know you’ll have to work the fields tomorrow, so you save all the food you have for then, just to get you through the harvest day that decides your fate for the next year.”

She glares at me, the patterns on her skin glowing slightly with her anger. “I respect that you’ve suffered hardships beyond my own experiences,” she grits out. “I would like to take this time to remind you that despite my privileged century, I in particular have endured rather more in the way of working myself to exhaustion and watching what I eat than most people of my time. And I did it to myself. Volitionally. I think that’s worth something.”

I close my eyes and take a breath, and I can hear her doing the same. Right. Kpop idol. Demon hunter, even. It’s not like her life has been easy. I shake my head, take a chip and pop it in my mouth. And look at Rumi in complete horror and revulsion.

“What?” She says, blinking in bemusement. “What’s wrong? Did you get a bad one?”

“Yeah, I’ve got a bad one. It’s you. You’re the bad one. Spicy chips? With peppermint tea? What kind of monster are you?” I grab a tissue and spit the half-chewed chip into it, wiping my tongue and throwing the wadded tissue into the trash.

“What kind of Korean are you? Who doesn’t like spicy food? And, gross! Don’t throw that there!”

“Should I take it home with me?”

“You’re homeless!”

I ignore her, swishing tea in my mouth to wash out spice and artificial flavoring. In the end, I find that I really don’t want to swallow, and head to the bathroom to spit.

When I come back, Rumi is loudly alternating handfuls of chips with gulps of tea, glaring at me spitefully, and I can’t help laughing. I haven’t had this much fun fighting with someone since… well. That’s not a great sign.

Chapter Text

It was the happiest time of my life, for a certain sense of the word happy—a kind of hedonistic fulfillment, a lack of lacking, that I never could have dreamt of as a poor farmer in a backwater village. I now had my own house on the palace grounds, with no drafts or leaks, and wooden floors that radiated heat. New clothes and an endless supply of the finest strings. Porcelain cups and bronze chopsticks. Attention. Respect.

True to Gwi-Ma’s word, my belly was full and my bed was warm. It meant more, back then, when I still remembered the cold and hunger and loneliness so sharply.

And, of course, there was the praise of the king, gifts of gold and silk, acknowledgement and accomplishment filling a deeper void inside me that I hadn’t even realized was there. I drank it up, playing to wild applause and eating my fill during the day, slaking my thirsts at night. Drowning in delight.

It was three years before I came up for air. What a mistake.

The first time I saw Abby, I was honestly… more puzzled than anything. I’d been the crown jewel of the king’s court—okay, that’s a bit much. There were dancers, poets, philosophers at the top of their own fields, but amongst the musicians, I was head and shoulders above the rest. That simple fact kept me going despite the subtle bullying from my peers, career civil servants from lines that went back generations, aristocrats full of umbrage at the king placing me, once a peasant, at their head.

And then he showed up. You wouldn’t have recognized him—beauty standards have changed much since back then, he had a completely different build and vibe—but that magnetism, that was the same. No one could take their eyes off him. He played, and he was fine… but the reception was baffling. ‘Best since Jinu’, my ass! More like ‘another not as good as Jinu’! The king gave him gifts, and it felt like they’d been taken from my own hands.

The simpering fools of the court invariably compared me and Abby, as first and second of the king’s musicians, yet though the courtiers grudgingly agreed I was the better player and singer, the more technically skilled—any less would have been to defy the word of the king himself—somehow, I couldn’t quite win in terms of the raw pull he had over others, his inexplicable charisma.

And as much as I was confused by him, he too seemed confused by me. I still recall that first meeting, the slightest frown marring his middling features as he stared at me, as though wondering why I wasn’t fawning over him like the rest, like it was his due. If anyone has a right to be confused right now, it’s me, asshole.

Abby was the talk of the whole palace grounds, it seemed, and by the end of the week I was feeling almost hunted by the shadow of his presence. His name seemed to be on every courtesan’s lips as I waited at the front desk, and I got less than my standard amount of appreciative looks as Jinyi led me to her rooms.

She babbled as she danced, an endless stream of gossip from the court and the city beyond: rising crime in the city, demon attacks on the roads, and I tuned her out as I watched her move. But eventually one word broke through, like a discordant note wrecking a melody: Abby.

“Where did he even come from?” I asked, unable to hide the irritation in my voice.

“That’s the thing, he’s been around for ages,” she said, hardly out of breath at all. “Isn’t it curious? Son of a lower aristocrat, he’s been at court before, but suddenly he’s the talk of the palace! I heard he’s been trying to make it as a royal musician for years, but he never had the—well, have you heard him play? It’s not the best, is it? But there’s just something about him—don’t pout, you know everyone else is saying it, too—and suddenly, the palace couldn’t give him a position fast enough.”

A story was emerging in my mind, and I didn’t like it. The signs were there, if you knew what to look for. A sudden stunningly lucky break, unnatural attention, sinister serendipity. As Jinyi said, demon activity was on the rise… and not all of it was as obvious as roadside attacks in the dead of night. But while I had asked for skill to earn my accolades, it seemed Abby had bargained for, what, praise itself? Inattention to his inadequacy? How shamelessly direct.

I tried to warn Jinyi to stay away from him, but she only called me jealous. She laughed it, gasped it, teased me endlessly—and, honestly, I knew she couldn’t exactly say no to him even if she wanted to. She demurred as best she could, but I could feel tender pity in the way she tried to mollify me, and I didn’t like it—the way she thought my ego was the issue was insulting. Eventually, I left, trying to retain what dignity I could.

I dreamt of fire. Red, pink, purple: unnatural. It encircled me, a raging inferno clawing at the dark, cloudy sky above, inescapable. “Hello, Jinu,” the fire said in Gwi-Ma’s voice, flames dancing with his words.

“Nine years,” I gasped desperately. The fire, real or not, dream or not, was devouring all the air around me, and I felt like I was suffocating. “I still have nine years left!”

“Yes, but that’s enough about you. Let’s talk about me, now,” he rumbled. He seemed to be waiting.

I stared at the churning flames. “And how are you, my lord?” I hesitantly asked.

“I find myself facing a problem,” he growled. “Perhaps even two.” The blaze flared menacingly.

He’s really going to make me beg to help him. Sadist. “Please, my lord, tell me more,” I said, supplicating myself, head low to the ground. There seemed to be more oxygen down there, at least. I discreetly breathed as deeply as I could, trying to catch up on air.

“The first problem: a rival to the south. An upstart building his own demon army. I may need to step up recruitment.” I wondered if all the demon attacks I’d heard about were Gwi-Ma after all, or perhaps some other demon lord encroaching on his territory. What would it mean for someone to challenge Gwi-Ma? What would happen to me?

“And the second problem, my lord?” I asked.

“A minion who may not be as useful as I had hoped.” Sweat was running down my face. I no longer had any doubt this fire could burn me.

“Perhaps the minion could prove his loyalty,” I offered. Called it. Is it a demon thing, to never ask for help, or is that just Gwi-Ma?

A pair of eyes appeared in the fire, gazing at me with a kind of proprietary amusement I didn’t like at all. “Excellent idea, faithful minion.”

I waited to see if we were done with this farce.

“Deliver unto me one soul.”

I woke the next morning already exhausted, barely presentable as I shuffled my way to the dining hall. My eyes shied away from my fellows at breakfast; I hadn’t the energy today to deal with their backhanded compliments and barely concealed sneers at the peasant who’d clawed his way to the top. I ate slowly, darting nervous looks at servants in between the occasional bite.

I noticed the hush just before a shadow fell across my face, and looked up to find Abby standing opposite me. He bowed slightly. “Jinu, finest musician in the king’s court,” he said with a smile. Only a master musician’s trained ears would be able to pick out the subtle undercurrent of mockery in his voice. “I would be honored to share a meal with you and speak face to face.”

Nothing happened in public at court but three people saw it and told the next three people they could find. I could already hear the whispers about a meeting of rivals and how humble and respectful Abby was, a proper noble vying for the spot of top musician at last. There was no winning move for me here; the best I could do was avoid a loss. I kept it polite and motioned for him to sit across from me, and we exchanged pleasantries while he sampled the side dishes as we waited for a servant to bring him rice and fish.

“And what so consumes you, that you’re unable to take in such a glorious morning?” he asked. ‘Why you look like shit on such a nice day?’ I translated.

I looked around. A few people were keeping a curious eye on our conversation, but no one was close enough to hear over the clacking of chopsticks and spoons if we were quiet, and the servants wouldn’t be back around unless we motioned for seconds. I lowered my voice, peering into his eyes to see how he’d react. “I was considering killing a maid.”

He didn’t seem surprised at all, but he frowned slightly, unable to fully contain his confusion, lowering his voice as well. “Kill a commoner. Obviously. That’s what I did.”

His confirmation that he was also one of Gwi-Ma’s minions didn’t quite feel like the victory I’d imagined. What, was I going to go tell Jinyi to stay away from the soul-sold, now? His suggestion to kill a commoner did catch me off guard, though. “And where would I find one of those? People will notice if I kill one of the few allowed into the palace.”

Abby looked at me like I was simple. “You find them where we keep them, of course. Outside.”

I’d forgotten about the outside world… or was avoiding thoughts of it intentionally. But it wasn’t like I was a caged bird; I could leave at will. I even had money.

The Royal Music Bureau had been forwarding my stipend for years, and what didn’t go to my few friends or the occasional merchant had accumulated into quite the collection spread across a pair of mismatched jade bowls in my rooms. I grabbed a handful of coins, then realized I didn’t even have a pouch to hold them; I hardly ever went anywhere I would need to pay for something.

I didn’t get along with any of the other musicians, but I had a scholar friend who lent me a silk pouch. He seemed excited I was going into the city, but thankfully he had a prior obligation and wasn’t able to join; fortunate, for this wasn’t exactly the kind of outing for which I was seeking company.

I was a little surprised when the guards nodded and just let me walk out the palace gates, but I was well-known, and my clothing announced my rank besides, so of course they would never dare bar my path.

I wandered the dingy city streets, categorizing the people around me with new eyes—not as citizens or peers, or even necessarily by class or occupation, but by their suitability as marks.

A craftsman? Too important. His family and customers would note his absence immediately. A housewife? A strange man approaching a random woman on the street was already too noticeable. Guard? I certainly didn’t want to get the Ministry of Military Affairs involved. Tavern keeper, no, too popular; everyone would note me leading them out of the city to Gwi-Ma.

It needed to be someone whom no one would notice was missing until weeks later, when any memory of me had already faded and the case was cold, someone who travelled… an itinerant merchant. Often gone for weeks at a time, and, as Jinyi had said, people sometimes went missing on the road, to bandits or demons. No reason to suspect an upstanding citizen like myself. I headed to the trade district.

The markets in the city weren’t like the podunk town I’d visited in my youth, sitting at the nexus of a collection of backwater villages that didn’t even have names. The city markets were staffed every day. I took in the permanent storefronts as I wandered the streets, eating a giant steamed dumpling stuffed with meat. It wasn’t as good as what I ate in the palace, of course, but I could still appreciate the folksy charm of a street-side snack.

And then who should I see at a stall down the way but my old friend, String Vendor. Oh, I could kill him easily. I ducked into a clothing store, smoothing my garments, inspecting myself in a bronze mirror, straightening my hair and hat. I put my hands into opposite sleeves, and walked up to the vendor, coolly superior look fixed firmly on my face.

Like any good trader, he noticed my fine clothing as soon as I stepped up to his stall, bowing slightly to the woman he’d been talking to before turning away from the commoner mid-word. An ingratiating smile slid onto his face and he started to hawk me his wares, but I cut him off. “I hear you sell silk strings. For instruments?” He nodded nervously. “Show them to me.”

He seemed slightly taken aback, but bent over and pulled out the strings, laying down one set after another until they covered his table. The whole time, he was repeatedly glancing back at me and losing a bit more of his smile. His eyes darted around my clothing, my fine silk round collar robe, tall aristocrat’s hat, the crane embroidery across my chest marking me as a top ranking civil official. My face. I flashed him a smile, there and gone in an instant. My boy was starting to look positively ill.

I bent over the table, cupping hand to chin as I inspected his wares. Honestly? They were trash, compared to what I had back in my rooms. I told him I’d buy them all and he squawked. I took out my coin pouch and counted out the coins one by one. His eyes flitted back and forth from the pile in my hands to my face with increasing unease.

“My lord certainly needs a lot of strings,” he said weakly.

“Of course. I am the king’s finest musician,” I said smugly.

He fell to his knees, babbling apologies for his past transgressions.

“I’m surprised you remember me,” I teased cruelly. “Some brat farmboy bipa thief from the backwoods.”

He brought his head to the dirt, grinding it into the ground, rubbing his hands desperately, begging for mercy. Good instincts. He knew I could destroy him, though not quite how. It wouldn’t help.

As much as I was enjoying his degradation, it was making a scene, and I didn’t want to be this memorable. And it was just unseemly. I ordered him to his feet, reached out to straighten his clothing, but stopped short. I didn’t want to touch him; he looked filthy.

“I find a drink between men can mend most ills,” I said, and he was only too quick to agree. I told him to meet me at the nearby square at sunset and walked away from the desperate hope in his eyes with a smirk on my lips.

I bought some more casual clothes, appropriate for a well off tradesman, and rented a night at an inn to change. I met the trader in the square and led him to a tavern, asking if he’d ever been there before; he hadn’t. Good. I didn’t want to go somewhere he was a regular, somewhere he’d be remembered.

We drank and talked, of his family, his hopes and dreams. He poured my cups, and we ate lavishly. He spoke. I listened. He wanted to expand into the luxury markets; small carvings and jewelry were coming back as the war faded into memory and the economy improved year by year. I told him I happened to know a merchant who might be able to help him out; unfortunately, my friend was heading out of the city that very night, so an introduction would have to wait until next month. Wine sloshed over the side of my bowl as the fool filled it, so excited was he; he insisted on going to talk to my merchant contact immediately.

Well, I explained, it’d be a bit rude to just show up like this, but perhaps if we brought him a bottle? We got two each for the road. We kept drinking as we walked down the streets; I pulled my hat low as we passed by the guards out of the city. The trader drank one of his bottles, and I passed him the one I’d been pretending to sip on when he ran empty, as we diligently saved the seconds for my nonexistent merchant friend.

Finally, we arrived at a crossroads out of sight from the city walls, and Gwi-Ma… didn’t appear. I stood there awkwardly, cleared my throat, and called, “Gwi-Ma!” The trader seemed confused, looking around, asking who that was. Where was the merchant? “Have another drink,” I said coldly, holding out the last bottle, and his eyes darted back and forth nervously, finally seeing the pattern. He looked at the bottle like it was poison. Looked at me the same. He’s getting cold feet. “Gwi-Ma!” I called again with a snarl.

A demon appeared. It was not Gwi-Ma; red skin with purple patterns, black sclera and yellow eyes. Small. “You’ll have to do. Kill him,” I said, turning and pointing at the trader, who was already running away. “Shit!” The demon looked at me dully for a moment then started to trundle after the trader, but he wasn’t nearly fast enough. “Fuck!”

I chased after the trader. We weren’t that far from the city; I’d stopped at the first crossroads I could. That said, I was young and fit and much less intoxicated. I grabbed him, but he bit, scratched, cried wildly. I hit him, he hit me back. Crap. This old man is stronger than me, fighting for his life. The demon was ambling his way to us, walking half on his knuckles. I snarled and grabbed the trader, dragging him over. Held him down at the demon’s feet. Finally, the demon drank him, and his body started to dissolve. Well, that's new.

I knelt in the dirt, panting, bleeding. The demon was staring at me hungrily. I almost yelled at him, but in that moment I didn’t even know if that pissant understood human words. I bared my teeth, and after a moment, the small demon averted his eyes and left.

I went back to the crossroads and turned, walking through the night to approach the city from another gate. I headed back to my inn and washed my face and hands, my arms, of dust and dirt and blood. Bastard better not have given me anything, I thought, inspecting the red furrows in my skin. When the scratches were as clean as I could get them, I went to bed.

“Well, that was embarrassing,” Gwi-Ma said to me in my dreams that night, flame burning bright. His voice lacked the tinge of amusement that was so often present, and I realized he didn’t care for my embarrassment—he was mad I’d embarrassed him.

The heat was suffocating, and I was immediately on my knees. “Send a better demon next time, my lord,” I gasped defensively. “I thought you were coming personally. I didn’t know I was going to get some lackey who doesn’t even know how to talk.”

The colors in the inferno swirled in outrage. “Have the servants ever-ready at your beck and call at the palace rotted your brain? You think I can spare a mid-level demon just to collect one tiny soul with my brother nipping at my heels?”

I hunched, coughed, straightened. “Then why did you ask me to get it for you?”

“You were to send it to me directly!” He sighed. “I forgot how early I recruited you. I guess I never did explain how to take a soul.”

I shivered. “I’m… I’m not one of your demon minions. I’m human.” It’s stupid, but this was the precise moment I realized him taking my soul wouldn’t be the end of me. My eternal damnation was going to be more… personal than that. I had kind of thought I’d be dead, like, done, after he came to collect on our deal. What a fool.

“Mostly human, for now, but a minion is a minion,” he equivocated, and I didn’t like the sound of that at all. “Don’t you get it? You’ve been bound to me since the moment we met. You are an instrument of my will. And you’re more than capable of taking a soul and sending it to me. Here, I will show you.”

My vision was tinted red. It was the middle of the night, but I could see every corner of my bare inn room as clear as day, from the cobwebs where the wall met the ceiling to the creases in my court robes, folded on the floor. I looked out the window at the moonless sky, at the roof of the building across the street, and with a poof, a pull, I was there.

I crouched low, slinking across the tiles, jumping between closer rooftops, teleporting the longer distances, until I found my prey: a short man in simple clothes, hunched, hands held together at the small of his back, walking along to who knew where at this ungodly hour. I jumped on him, pushing him to the ground, one arm sliding across his throat and cutting off his cry; my patterns peeked out of my sleeve, crawling across the back of my hand in front of my face as I choked off his air with monstrous strength.

I bent down, mouth open, fangs prepared to tear out his neck, ravage his shoulder, tear the meat and drink his sweet life’s blood, but instead— Not quite, I heard, Gwi-Ma’s voice, rich with vicious amusement and hunger—a breath, and pull his soul into you, and I did, and feel our connection, and heaven help me, I did, and send the soul—

—and I came to in the street, standing over a disintegrating man. I released the stolen soul and the contents of my stomach all at once. The soul sank into the earth, and my dinner splattered across the street, rich meat, sweet wine, and sour bile filling my mouth and nose.

Make sure most of them end up here, Gwi-Ma ordered as I heaved, throat burning and eyes watering, mouth coated with sick. Something about the wording there stuck in my ear, but I ignored it, ran back to the inn, but my room was locked, and I ended up having to climb to the second storey and crawl in the window, ruining my clothes and tearing new bloody scrapes into my arms.

I didn’t sleep again that night, and early the next morning I was back in my regular clothes and heading towards the palace. I ditched my soiled tradesman’s clothing on the way. There. The evidence is gone. The bodies—the bodies are gone. It’s all gone. Like it didn’t happen. Back in the safety of my rooms, I managed a couple hours’ mindless peace before restlessness overtook me again.

I should visit Jinyi. She’s always good for gossip to take my mind off things. Just let her natter on and dance until the world disappears. And I know just the present to bring. I took my closet half apart trying to find one specific hand mirror I remembered receiving from the king that I’d never gotten around to giving away. When I finally found it, I took my time looking it over. It wouldn’t do to give a poor gift.

The design was appropriate, turtles and cranes, and there didn’t appear to be any scratches or scuffs. I opened it, meaning to inspect the face to make sure it was still polished to a shine, and recoiled at my reflection. No. This can’t be! My eyes were too light, but I could almost ignore that—bronze changed colors, made them warmer—but nothing could explain the patterns that flashed across my skin. Patterns like Gwi-Ma’s demon. Patterns I could vaguely recall from my own skin the night before, when Gwi-Ma had taken me into the night to tear out a man’s soul.

I stared into the mirror for an hour, but the patterns never returned, and my eyes remained the same dark blurs. Eventually, I convinced myself it was just a trick of the light, an overactive imagination and lack of sleep. I headed to the courtesans’ quarters.

Jinyi was not impressed. “Were you out drinking?” she asked, wrinkling her nose. “I can smell it on your clothes, your sweat. Why are you wearing yesterday’s clothes? You don’t even have to do laundry!” I shuffled my feet, wondering if I should leave, and she motioned me inside. “Come in, Jinu, come in, we can’t have you walking around the palace grounds like this. The aristocratic vultures would never let such an opportunity pass.” I smiled sheepishly in gratitude and presented the mirror, which she took with suitable appreciation and praise before preparing a basin and ordering me to strip.

“Jinu, what is going on?” she gasped at the marks on my skin. Scratches, not patterns. “Were you in a fight? Did you fight Abby?”

I couldn’t let that rumor get started, not one bit. “I would never fight another courtier. And I would never lose a fight to Abby, of all people.”

She looked away demurely as she wet a cloth, declining to respond to that. She tsked as she wiped the abrasions on my arms and hands clean. “Then?” she asked leadingly.

“I went into the city,” I said, trying to sound casual while I frantically thought up a believable lie.

“The city? You did? Where, why? Tell me everything!” her eyes sparkled as she wrung out the cotton cloth, then started, seeing how dirty the water had became. She moved to dump the basin out the window and fill it with fresh water, which gave me time to think.

“Well, it didn't go well. Obviously. I had some drinks with… with some street musicians I met. They seemed nice at first; I assumed they just wanted me to treat them to a meal. But they kept plying me with drink… I think they wanted to rob me.”

“How horrid! Well, that’s certainly not the city I want to visit,” she huffed, outraged on my behalf.

I smiled, then panicked, realizing where this was going. “Still, I was a street musician like them once upon a time… Jinyi, don’t tell anyone about this.” She looked at me with all the innocence in the world. I didn’t buy a bit of it. “I don’t want the guard going after them.” I don’t want the guard looking for people who don’t exist, looking into what I was really doing. “Please, Jinyi. I’m fine. It all worked out.”

She looked at me with kind eyes. “You’re too sweet. But okay. I can keep one secret, just one, mind you! One per person, that’s my limit, just so you know.”

I smiled in relief, warmth blooming in my chest. “So, tell me about the city you want to visit someday?”

This girl was ready. “Clothes,” she said without a second thought. “I want to buy my own clothes. Choose my own colors, my own patterns. Then: restaurants. Do you know, I’ve never…” I let her chatter crash over me like a wave as she wiped me clean. She never did get to dancing, but I left feeling better all the same.

I brought my bipa to lunch and caught Abby’s eye, raising it and motioning him towards the gardens. He seemed a little annoyed, but nodded. After the meal, he returned to his quarters for his own bipa, and then met me by the pond.

“Careful. Wouldn’t want people to get the wrong idea about us,” Abby said dryly. He sat on a rock and began tuning his bipa.

I snorted. “I doubt anything could damage your reputation at the courtesans’ house,” I replied, equally dry.

“Better not. I paid a lot for this life.”

I couldn’t let that slide without comment. “Why, anyway? You were already a noble. You didn’t need this life.”

“So that’s how the poor think? Like there’s nowhere for the rest of us to climb? How short-sighted. Like ambition knows how to end.” I gritted my teeth at that. The way he so easily saw through to my origins annoyed me. He wasn’t done. “If you’d any sense, you’d have stayed a commoner. They can do quite well for themselves, you know. You didn’t have to vault into the aristocracy, with no family, no wealth, no backing, no education. No place.”

“‘No place?’ As a court musician? This, from the man who asked for, what? Not talent, certainly.”

“Adoration,” he sneered. “Why beat around the bush? It’s what we all want. I just took a more direct route. Like asking for your bipa skills and voice so you could ‘earn’ your supper is so much better.”

“The bipa skills are my own,” I smiled like a blade bared, and Abby squinted slightly, superior look falling off his face, unsure for the first time. “My deal was just for the voice. So you see, I was always an astounding musician; I just needed a bit of a boost to get my due.”

However much my specific circumstances had surprised Abby, he was unmoved. “Whatever, man. You needed a deal, just like me. We’re the same in the end.”

I sighed. He… wasn’t completely wrong, there. I strummed, adjusted my bipa a hair. “Well, perhaps we’ll beat some skill into that head of yours, in case you ever meet anyone else immune to your infernal charms,” I said mildly, and started our lesson. His mouth tightened, but it wasn’t like he could turn me down. There were always eyes on you at court. Who knew what people might say if he turned up his nose at my lessons.

As the ape struggled to wrangle his fingers, I wondered what the specifics of his deal were; if, should we come at odds, the power of his gift would overcome my own, and I’d end up out on my ass. I had musical skill, which the king appreciated, but I would never be more than a musician—Abby was right in that unconditional adoration as his starting point gave him an advantage over me. Still, I couldn’t find it in myself to care, to back down.

He played along for a while, but he had no stamina and soon he was making more mistakes, not fewer. “What did you want, anyway?”

I plucked the strings idly in a nameless tune to generate some noise. “I delivered a soul yesterday.”

“We’ll call a feast.”

“My first soul.” This seemed to surprise him.

“Who are you, that you have a deal but you didn’t have to work for it at all, prove yourself?” I could see fresh spite flooding his face, and I didn’t hate it.

“He found me interesting,” I said smugly.

“Must be nice.” Yes. Keep looking at me with those eyes.

“So, did it bother you?” I asked, coming to the crux of the matter. “We’re still in our deal periods; we’re supposed to be enjoying ourselves right now.”

“I’m enjoying myself just fine,” he said irritably. “Stealing souls? It’s a perk. You might want to take one or two for yourself, now that you’re all caught up. You’re looking a little weak, there, bud.”

I dragged out the lesson another wretched hour for that bit of insolence.

In retrospect, Abby had a point, the bastard. Whatever pressure Gwi-Ma was feeling from his rival—his brother?—a handful of extra deliveries from the soul-sold probably weren’t going to tip the balance. It wasn’t about recruiting, it was about corrupting, refining, training us for our future roles in his army.

And for those with the cleverness to realize the leeway in Gwi-Ma’s instructions, the boldness to keep a few souls for themselves, the prudence to not take so many they needed to be put down… a self-selecting group of the strongest would rise to the top, for eternity. I was determined to never fall behind again.

The next section is ready, but I haven’t handed it over yet. Rumi’s sitting at the edge of the bed, one leg crooked in front of her, the other dangling off the side, foot not quite reaching to the floor. She’s hunched over, leaning with one elbow on her knee, fist on her cheek, while the other hand flips pages. She finishes the whole section without saying a word, body oddly still. She rubs the last page between her fingers, making sure there isn’t another hiding beneath, before gracefully placing it face down to complete the opposite stack.

She picks up her tea, cold now, sips. Sips again. Straightens up a little, lowers the mug and rests that hand on her knee. “Jinyi was a friend?”

“A dear friend. A royal courtesan; had lived at court all her life. She never left.”

Rumi nods. “And her ‘dancing’… is that a euphemism?” She’s running her thumb along the rim of the mug.

“She was a courtesan,” I say again, carefully. “And I did not sell my soul so I could die a virgin. But the dancing was real.” Rumi nods again, not saying anything. I elaborate, “Music, poetry, conversation, the royal courtesans of the king’s court were all trained to entertain, but dance in particular… that was the fire at Jinyi’s core. Her passion. She lived for it. Eventually, she died for it.”

Rumi isn’t responding. I’m not even sure she’s listening, so I keep talking. “I’m trying to be careful of how many people I introduce to the story, but she… Look, she is important. Important to me, and I need to say it. I… I owe it to her to tell her story.”

“Okay,” Rumi finally says. Not happy, but supportive, at least, or trying to be supportive, which is very nearly the same thing. “But speaking of keeping the cast small… Abby? No way that’s his real name.”

I snort. “Let his human name stay dead. No reason to learn who he was when you already know him by this name. ‘Abby’ is good enough for him.”

Rumi nods, looking down at the pile of papers. “The dialogue, with Abby specifically, sometimes it gets a little…” There’s a small line between her eyebrows, the tiniest furrowing of her brow.

I nod, pretty sure I know where she’s going with this. “It’s easier to keep the rest suitably archaic, because it happened so long ago, and my relationships with those people stayed in the past,” I explain, head tilting up to look at the ceiling. “The conversations with Abby and the others, though, they kind of bleed together in my head. Our speech evolved with the times, and it can be hard to remember how we used to talk to each other back then.”

Rumi accepts that easily enough. She gathers the latest bundle of pages from her bed, stacking them orthogonally to the topmost section of the rest of the pile on her desk. She stretches, her shirt hiking up. “I’m tired,” she says.

It is rather late. Even hunters, with their supernatural stamina, need a few good hours of rest. “Okay,” I say, inching towards her bed.

“Nope.”

I emote disappointment as hard as I can. She is unmoved. She watches me with arms crossed as I move over to Derpy, waits until my butt’s on the floor and I’m leaning back into his fuzzy warmth before—

“You can sleep on the balcony.”

“Not even inside?! You let the tiger sleep in here!”

“He’s cute.”

“I’m cute!” I insist, to no avail.

“Not like this you aren’t.” Her face is cool, gaze lidded, but she’s definitely enjoying herself.

“Don’t you have a couch in the living room?” I try.

Rumi is undeterred. “Someone might see you. No. It’s the balcony for you.”

I wonder if I’m about to get burned, but I have to ask, “Is this about Jinyi?”

Rumi looks at me with perfect puzzlement. “Why would this be about Jinyi? Your dear friend.” She turns and goes to her dresser, pulling something out. “Here, have a blanket,” she says, offering me my handkerchief from months ago, the fight at the bathhouse.

Even in the current circumstances, I’m surprised and pleased to see she still has it. I hold that feeling in before she notices and throws it in the trash. “I’m good,” I say, squinting. “Thanks.” She smiles wide. Too wide.

I grumble as I drag her giant wicker egg chair out onto the balcony while she’s in the bathroom. I can hear her brushing her teeth. I settle in with her laptop, and after a moment of consideration, I take her guitar, too. It’s electric, but whatever. I practice my fingering, trying to get used to six strings.

When she comes out of the bathroom, face shiny from her skincare routine, she looks at me out on the balcony and rolls her eyes. She points at the corner of her room, back to the guitar stand, but I only look at her in apparent confusion as I play gently. She rolls her eyes again, more dramatically, grabs the stand and carries it over, places it out on the balcony next to me. “Don’t scratch my guitar. And keep it down.” The air smells of mint for a moment, and then she’s sliding the glass door closed.

When she turns off the lights and hops into bed, she doesn’t bother getting under the covers. She sleeps on her side, facing away. My eyes trace the curve of her body from shoulder to waist and flaring out to her hip.

Suddenly, she turns around, locking gazes before I can look away. “Stop staring at me, weirdo. It’s creepy,” she says through the glass. I huff and turn the chair so I’m looking out over her balcony instead, taking in the city below and fingering the strings.

Chapter Text

Two years passed. Gwi-Ma continued to demand a steady supply of souls, but the tenor of his requests changed—at first, it was almost perfunctory, like making us perform the act was more important than the value of the souls themselves. But as the pressure from the Southern King built, Gwi-Ma became more desperate. More vicious, too.

Abby was sanguine at first, but even he couldn’t claim to be enjoying himself these days. Gwi-Ma’s ‘encouragement’ was never subtle—whispers in your ear, shaming you with your worst moments. Visions out of the corner of your eye. I don’t know what Gwi-Ma had on Abby, but for me it was my family: “you abandoned them,” and “you left them behind,” and “they’re worse off now than ever before,” like it hadn’t been Gwi-Ma himself who’d coerced me into that deal.

He tried other things from time to time, “you’re a murderer” and “he had a daughter” and so on, but eventually, it always went back to my family. Sometimes the things he tried didn’t even hurt the first time. I wondered, once, if he even know what his voice was saying to me in my head. How active were the whispers in my ear? Was it something he had to think about, or… did Gwi-Ma just radiate shame? Did he emanate spite like a miasma, seeping into those around him, infecting us like worms or plague?

Gwi-Ma’s yoke chafed, but my frustration had no outlet; there was no way to strike back at my lord. I could only endure his moods. Ironically, Abby and I found that as much as we despised each other, it was only in each other’s company we could unleash our true selves. We had faces to maintain amongst the others of the palace, and it wore. Even Jinyi would only tolerate me every week or so, these days; she had her own problems, and little patience for my moods, lately.

There was a new threat, as well: demon hunters. I’d never seen one myself, but learned some from Gwi-Ma’s rages: shamans, weapons powered by song, slaying demons in a single blow, tearing through his armies. I didn’t have personal experience with them, but even from the capital, far from their hunting grounds, I could recognize the power of their voice, pushing against the castle walls, falling against my skin like spiderwebs, not quite able to catch me.

Eventually, things came to a head when Gwi-Ma started asking for stronger souls. He wouldn’t be content with the faceless anymore, or the random few with enough fire in them to become middling demons that we managed to snare. He wanted bargained souls, like our own. And he wanted us to do the bargaining.

I had no trouble choosing my first mark.

Minseo, my scholar friend, was brilliant, but he was still in his 20s and stuck at a perfectly respectable rank for his tenure. It wasn’t enough for him. And for all his Confucian ideals, he knew there was something to the superstition and rumors of power that could balance the scales, put him in his proper place. It took hardly a hint that I could harness such for him before he agreed to meet me in my rooms.

“I want to be the best,” he said, the moment he was settled in a cushion at the table across from me. His eyes were wide, shining. Hungry.

I nodded. Almost too easy, as I expected. “The deal is thus,” I intoned, staring at Minseo’s face by the light of a single flickering candle. We were alone. It was midnight. The air was heavy with incense. None of this was necessary except the words, but a certain amount of pageantry felt appropriate, so I’ll admit I was playing it up a bit.

“You will be the king’s top scholar, your wit unquestioned,” I offered. He nodded eagerly, unblinking. There was sweat on his lip. “In exchange, I will take your immortal soul.” I gazed at him impassively, waiting for his terms. He was a friend, but in this, I was an instrument of Gwi-Ma’s will; my job was to get the best deal I could.

“I accept,” he said desperately, and I internalized my screaming. Oh, you precious fool. I closed my eyes, felt the barest hint of a connection between us on the cusp of consummation. I breathed in, took the tiniest whiff of him inside me, and exhaled my own power into him. It didn’t take much. He hadn’t asked for much. I reached out and killed the candle, savoring the burn on my fingertips. I stood and motioned him towards the door.

Minseo seemed startled at the abrupt end. “When… when does it start?” Minseo asked, a tinge of impatience in his voice.

“Anon,” I said dryly.

He scoffed, grinning weakly. “Stick to simple speech, Jinu,” he said, and it was so him, so us, but suddenly I couldn’t stand it. I turned on him.

I saw the barest flash of yellow reflected in his eyes, and his jaw dropped. He stared at me like a rabbit looking at a snake. “Minseo. I own you. Moreso than the king. This is not a metaphor or a joke. You don’t talk to me like that anymore,” I said, caressing the portion of him I could feel inside me with the barest hint of claws.

He shuddered. I saw it, felt it in my mind. He dropped his eyes. “Yes… my lord,” he said softly.

I waited a moment to ensure the lesson had stuck; he remained cowed. “Within the week,” I said, sliding the door open; he nodded, bowed, rushed out, and I stood there, taking in the moonlight for a time.

“A week, before I can reap you,” I murmured sadly. I shook my head. Idiot. At least ask for a year and a day. Well. There went half my friends.

I went to see Jinyi the next day, to take my mind off things, and she sensed my moodiness immediately. “You know I’m sweet on you,” she said firmly, “but I just can’t handle this from you right now.” Her words lay between us like a barricade. Things had been strained between us for a while.

She reached out, put her hand over mine, and when she spoke her voice was more gentle than a moment ago. “Sometimes… Jinu, I feel like I don’t even know you anymore. You’re always traveling, now, and you—” and she frowned, real hurt bleeding into her voice, “—you go into the city all the time, yet you hardly ever remember to bring me anything back these days.” That was true. I gave her coin, or passed on the occasional reward from the king, but those were less personal than what she deserved. “Maybe… maybe there was something special about those first couple years, when we were both new, and we’ve just drifted apart.” I felt a stab in my heart. “Maybe it’s time you started seeing someone else.”

Abby understood, at least. I was having breakfast and meals with him more often in the dining hall, these days. “I got a soldier,” he said. “My guy wanted ten years or to go down in glorious battle. I can respect that.” He chewed for a bit before continuing, “I’m surprised you gave that nerd such a raw deal, though.” He understood, but he was still insufferable. This asshole can’t be my only friend left. He just can’t be.

However much Gwi-Ma’s corruption had spread—I wasn’t unaware of the changes in me, the eyes and patterns, the powers, the uncontrollable rages and episodes of cruel humor—I still didn’t exactly relish the idea of sticking around to see Minseo’s disappointment when he came to understand how his ask to be the greatest of the king’s scholars would be effected. It’d be prudent to let him come to grips with his wretched gift on his own; having to explain it to him would be tedious.

I had made a good deal. Minseo’s soul had a decent heft to it, and I’d bought him for a song. Gwi-Ma would have nothing to complain about. But I personally wasn’t too thrilled. I felt a little… grimy. In need of ablution. Or absolution. Whichever.

Point being, I was going to help my family. I’d been avoiding them these last five years, first in denial, then shame, and then no small amount of fear. Gwi-Ma clearly knew I still cared for them—else why would he torture me so, whispering in my ear of them, specifically? I was afraid if I actually tried to go back and make amends, he would simply escalate, and my family would be worse off. But I’d been careful, and crafty, listening, watching, thinking, and I was pretty confident I’d discovered the bounds of his infernal knowledge.

I’d wondered, once, if Gwi-Ma was omnipotent, or if his sight was based on nighttime, or the moon, or death. It was nothing so mystical. He simply saw and heard what his minions did, when he happened to be paying attention. But he couldn’t read our minds. Of this I was certain, else he’d have eviscerated me a hundred times over by now. He hadn’t the restraint to endure what I thought of him, not even to hide his trump card. So, if I could bring aid to my family without seeing them or talking to them…

I packed to travel. I wore a sword at my hip—pure bluff, I hadn’t the slightest idea how to use the thing—and I had some knives secreted about my person as well. I couldn’t actually use the knives either, but they’d made for a convenient excuse once when I’d had to defend myself while collecting souls and my hands had formed into razor-sharp claws.

I filled several pouches with coins from an assortment of containers on my dresser, silver dishes, porcelain cups, fine wood boxes, bowls of tortoiseshell and agate and jade. Gwi-Ma probably won’t count them and keep track, but… It felt silly, but I looked away and pretended to rest, sighing heavily, as I filled one last pouch behind my back and tucked it away.

I was about ready to leave when I was hit with a sudden burst of something like nostalgia. The last time I’d left home like this, it was my village in the middle of the night, mother and sister sleeping in their blankets on the floor, moonlight from the window slashing across them. I’d stuffed my bowl down my shirt to catch coins and snuck out to busk, fail, fall… I hadn’t returned.

On impulse, I went back to my somewhat depleted stash of coins. One of the jade bowls… yes, here. I’d had my name engraved on one of the early ones. I wasn’t a peasant anymore, couldn’t stuff such a heavy and expensive thing into my shirt, but I put a couple pouches inside and packed it away in between some clothes in my travel bag. I’ve already let Gwi-Ma see this, so I’ll just have to lose it out of his sight when I pass it on to my family.

I’d need an alibi. Gwi-Ma could not know I was covertly providing for my family; I had to be ready to present an alternative story for what I was doing. So I rested during the days, traveled late at night, and filled up on souls. If he asked, I’d tell him I was proactively recruiting to help him against the Southern Ki—No, he’ll never buy that. I’d tell Gwi-Ma I was stocking up to get him off my back. Much more believable.

My court official robes were hidden by my overcoat, and I’d changed out my nobleman’s hat for something less conspicuous, but my clothes were still nice and I had a fine sword on me. The bandits seemed to take the weapon in particular as less of a deterrent and more of an invitation, same as my rich clothing, but that suited me well enough. I had over a dozen souls in me, and they made me stronger, faster. Meaner.

After a few days, I arrived at the town near my old village early in the morning, got a room and breakfast at an inn, and did my best to rest. I was a little tired from having traveled through the night, but more that that, I was feeling antsy. Anticipation, and also nervousness.

The plan was simple: leave late, avoid crossroads, and arrive at my old village in the dead of night. Don’t see family, don’t speak to anyone at all. Nothing for Gwi-Ma to pick up on. I’d see my old house, of course, but Gwi-Ma had never seen it, so he shouldn’t recognize it. I just needed to covertly drop my gifts at their doorstep and leave.

It rained that night, and between that and the tiny sliver of a moon in the sky, it was pitch black as I walked the roads. I had a wide-brimmed hat and a straw cloak to protect me from the rain, but still I felt a chill run down my spine, gooseflesh down my arms, as I realized I could see just fine despite the near total absence of light. I quickened my stride irritably, wanting to get this night over with.

And that was how I came upon the only other sad soul unfortunate enough to be out that night in the cold and dark and wet. And not just any traveler: a woman, based on height and build and her short strides. Short, but quick—this woman clearly had somewhere to be, but the gloom and miserable weather fought her, her covered lantern hanging from a pole only casting a small pool of light in front of her, holding her back.

I hesitated, unsure of how to approach her, or if I should at all. I wasn’t thinking of killing her—more than enough bandits out and about—but being caught skulking behind her, or trying to overtake her, didn’t seem prudent either. Even a simple greeting might send her screaming, and I could not afford attention this night of all nights. I shook my head. I have my own shit to deal with tonight. Anyone out this late should be tough enough to share the road.

I’d just resolved to ignore her after all, walk past her with a politely wide berth and be on my way, but she must have had the hearing of a tiger because at twenty paces she suddenly spun and caught me looking right at her. We both froze. The diminutive light from her lantern hardly seemed like it should have been able to reach me at this distance, but she stared unwaveringly at my face. I prayed my eyes weren’t glowing yellow, that I wouldn’t have to kill this random traveler tonight.

I inclined my head slightly, and silently thanked my large hat for exaggerating the motion. “Hello. Good evening for a stroll, isn’t it?”

“This weather is wretched,” she replied, voice strong. At least she doesn’t sound scared. My eyes are probably fine. “Why are you following me?”

I shook my head. “I’m following the road, madam.” She scoffed angrily at that, muttered something I didn’t quite catch.

“And where are you headed at this time of night?” she demanded.

This was getting ridiculous. “To attend to my business,” I said curtly. “And you?”

“My business, isn’t it?” she mocked. I rolled my eyes, started to walk again, and with a quick flick she’d deposited her lantern on the ground and was holding the pole in both hands. No, not a pole—a staff. “Stay back!” she yelled.

I raised my hands, slowed from a walk to edging sideways, but didn’t stop. “I’d love to, but it’s not a wide road, madam,” I said as reasonably as I could, a tight grip on my straining patience.

She considered this a moment, and then with a motion I could barely follow, her lantern was back on her staff and she was striding away. “I’ll go ahead.”

I sighed again. With my unnatural nightvision and longer legs, I was faster than she was—that was how I’d caught up to her in the first place, after all. It’d make more sense for me to go first, but this woman didn’t seem the type to take instructions from strangers. And anyway, she was moving rather quickly… I probably wouldn’t have to hold back much to avoid catching up to her.

“I know you’re back there!” she called from a good thirty paces ahead of me, kicking up puddles as she went.

“I can see you, too!” I returned cheerfully. She swore. I chuckled.

We continued like that for a time, walking through the night, her letting me know she still had her freaky hearing on me, and me trying to be as oblivious and non-threatening as possible, but eventually the rain picked up, coming down harder and harder, until I actually couldn’t see her anymore.

I couldn’t see, but I could feel… something. I cursed, speeding up and pulling out a knife.

Demons, but not like any I’d ever seen before. They were crawling out of purple portals wherever the puddles were big enough, blue-grey skin of the drowned and lanky hair falling over bulbous yellow eyes with black pupils. Not Gwi-Ma’s, though I’d certainly heard him talk about them before. The Southern King’s signature minion. Perhaps it was the rain that drew them out.

“Water demons?” I spat, genuinely outraged. My family lives nearby! “How dare you encroach on my realm!” I slashed one still crawling out of a portal across the back of the neck with my knife, but its split flesh quickly healed and it raised its head, snarling at me.

I stabbed it in the face with demonic claws, and the surprise there as it evaporated was glorious. I took out another couple of solo demons as I rushed down the road, looking for the traveler. I couldn’t fight more than one demon at a time, but if I found her, if we ran—

She was surrounded by six or seven. Well, nothing I can do about that. Traveling late at night is dangerous, madam. You knew the risks. I was about to start running away alone when I noticed her weapon. A rod, but not the simple staff she’d been using to hold her lamp—this stick had teeth. A spear. A glowing spear.

Oh, and she was singing. A fucking hunter. I turned my head, scanning for the others. Don’t they usually hunt in packs? But her comrades were nowhere to be found. No other demons, either—unless there were more hiding in the rain, it seemed they’d all congregated on her.

And now I had a decision to make. Option 1: run, before either of them can kill me—a solid baseline. Option 2: kill the hunter, and the water demons kill me—no to that. Option 3: kill the water demons, don’t let the hunter know I’m part demon, send the hunters south, hunters and Southern King kill each other, Gwi-Ma calms down and I enjoy the next seven years of my human life—high risk, high reward.

I considered the hunter in her little ring of light. It was hard to tell which was brighter, the lamp on the ground at her feet, or the spear in her hands, but either way, the demons remained spread out, a ring just at the edge of her light with her at the center. The pouring rain pounded into the dirt road, hit puddles and jumped back into the air as spray, framing her lamp and spear in soft halos.

A couple of the smaller demons kept backing out of the circle around the hunter, darting in the dark, trying to get into her blind spot. She was turning constantly, spinning her spear in wide circles around her like a staff, doing what she could to discourage attacks from behind, but those movements would tire her out fast. Her clothes were soaked, flinging water about and slapping wetly as she moved. She was holding the demons off, but she’d yet to kill a single one of them, surrounded as she was. It was only a matter of time.

I watched impassively as she took a slash across the arm, stumbled, and a cocky water demon walked face-first into her thrust, dying instantly. Six-to-one, but she was hurt. A matter of less time, now. I considered. I really do like seeing the water demons die, though. I wonder how much of that is the Gwi-Ma in me?

I approached the circle of demons. No one had noticed me, not the water demons, focused on the hunter as they were, nor the hunter herself, who couldn’t see me in the dark beyond the ring of enemies taking all her attention. But as soon as I decided to help her, I found myself trying to join her song almost unconsciously. Maybe it was just the singer in me, or maybe it was something more mystical. The moment I started to sing, the hunter turned towards me, peering into the darkness, but she couldn’t find me in the void. And I quickly quit the song—the notes seared my throat like acid, left me coughing and gasping.

I snarled silently, choking back the burn, gripped the knife with both hands and stabbed at the nearest water demon’s back. At the last moment, I let go of the knife with my right hand and formed claws, stabbing in and ending the creature. The demons stopped circling the hunter, turning to stare at me; the hunter’s song surged as she took advantage of their distraction to kill one, two more. Three left.

I hacked a cough and spat. “You,” I said with seething rage, “are trespassing,” and I tackled one to the ground, struggled until I got my knife between our bodies, obstructing the hunter’s view, and gutted it with my claws. It dissolved into red energy that tingled my cheeks as it fell over me like sand. I lay on the ground, trying to catch my breath, felt the cold and wet across my back as the rain soaked into my clothes. 

A moment later the hunter was standing over me, hand out to help me up. “You fight like an idiot. Or a child,” she grunted as she hoisted me to my feet.

“Thanks,” I said, reaching out and patting her on the scratches that had torn through her sleeve and into the flesh beneath. She hissed and flailed, moving away, eyes widening in barely restrained outrage. “You fight like someone who gets injured.”

She glared at me sullenly. “What about you? Are you hurt?” I shook my head. She looked me over from head to toe, gaze lingering on my straw cloak, thoroughly drenched from the rain and my recent tumble into the muddy road. I tried to hold back a shiver. “Do you live out this way?” she asked dubiously. “The only inn is back at the town we came from.”

I hesitated. The hunter was right—I could catch my death of cold continuing to travel tonight, now that I was soaked through. My plan to stop by my family’s house, drop off some money, and head back to town was no longer viable. Option 3 it is.

I began undoing the ties on my cloak, and then my coat beneath. The hunter stared at me, frowning. “Actually, I have a confession to make,” I said, and her eyes narrowed. “I was following you after all, to tell you the truth,” I lied. I pulled apart my cloak and coat, exposing my round collar robe, the uniform of a government official, and the crane embroidery across the front that marked me as the highest rank of civil officer. “My name is Jinu, and I’m from the Ministry of Rites.”

The woman’s eyes bulged in surprise and she jerked into a bow, only managing to lower her gaze after a moment and with some difficulty. I let it slide. “You’re a shaman, yes? Which means you fall under our purview. Do you have somewhere out of the rain that we might speak, Hunter?”

We arrived in the middle of the night like two drowned rats. The hunter lived in a small village very similar to the one I grew up in, just another of a score of satellites to the local town. Her home was humble, but nicer than the one I’d grown up in—the government didn’t have much respect for her kind, but the locals cherished her, and her roof, thatch though it may have been, did not leak in a hint of the rain pouring down outside. The place smelled strongly of roots and herbs, animal parts and incense and wine—folk medicine.

She rushed about the main room, lighting the fire pit to get the floor heating started and prepare tea before going to an unusually fine dresser of lacquered wood against the wall and gathering dry things to change into. I could see the altars and idols of local commoner superstition well-kept in a separate room off to the side before she ducked in and slid the door closed to change out of her sodden garments.

She’d given me a towel, and I took my time drying off and shaking the rain out of my cloak and hanging it and my overcoat up before settling on a cushion on the floor. The hunter emerged shortly, dry and composed, and began to move about the kitchen area in the flickering firelight. She talked as she moved, stiffly at first, but with increasingly fluency as she fell into the role of hostess receiving an honored guest. Her name was Hana, and she was essentially a journeyman, embedded in the village to gain experience helping the locals on a daily basis with only distant supervision from her master, her maternal grandmother, who lived at a shrine on the outskirts of another village nearby.

I sifted through my pack as Hana talked, nodding and murmuring encouragement and sympathy as I listened to her tale. I brought to the top of my pack several of the coin pouches, and, after a moment’s thought, the jade bowl as well. I had others. My family will have to wait. Perhaps for quite a while—until I’m done with the hunters. Option 3. All in. I retrieved my nobleman’s hat. The wings were a bit bent from having been stuffed in my pack, and I furtively fluffed them up as best I could before placing it on my head, covering my bun. I needed all the authority I could muster if I was going to pull this off.

I mostly let her direct her story as she chose, with only a few questions here and there. She’d grown up in yet another village nearby, moving in with her grandmother after both her parents had passed in the same year when she was twelve. Her father, lost to the war. Her mother, another shaman, lost to childbirth, and the baby girl as well. Her grandmother was still raising her brother, eight years old now. I looked at the hunter. She was younger than I’d thought, back on the road, younger than me.

She knelt at the table and her breathing hitched as she stretched out to set up the tea, arm tilting awkwardly as the cup clattered in front of me. Through mutual unspoken agreement, we ignored her blunder, and she settled in on a cushion across from me, joining me on the floor, her words guttering to no clear end as we sipped. The heat of the fire was already circulating, radiating up through the clay flooring.

“Hunter,” I said finally. She straightened. “Before we begin, do you need to take care of that?” I asked, tilting my chin at the small stain on her sleeve from the scratches on her arm; apparently, she’d only changed into dry clothing, not bothering to attend to her injury. I didn’t really expect her to strip and stitch up her arm in my presence, but I wanted her off balance.

She hardly glanced at the blood before disregarding it. “No need, sir. If I manage any rest tonight, it’ll be healed by morning.” At my raised eyebrow, she elaborated. “We heal fast, Master Jinu.”

“Convenient,” I murmured. “Shouldn’t you at least wash it? Wrap it?”

She looked me boldly in the eye. “I’ll take care of it after you’ve left, sir,” she said a little coolly.

It’ll take more than that to fluster this woman. “Very well. Accelerated healing. Spirit weapons? You didn’t have that spear, that was so effective against the demons, when we first met on the road.” I frowned as though frustrated, dropping a hand to my hip to finger my own knife that I had been pretending to fight with; she winced. “And, of course, the song. A sutra?”

Hana took a moment to compose herself, gather her thoughts, before nodding sharply. “I should start with the Honmoon,” she began.

I won’t bore you mansplaining your own construct back to you, but you need to understand, the information I acquired that night was revelatory for our cause. Gwi-Ma had had some understanding of what the hunters were doing, had raged about it in our dreams, but having the hunters’ ultimate weapon laid out for us by the very person leading its creation, the theory and mechanics of it all… Gwi-Ma was furious, at first, almost incinerated me on the spot for conspiring with the hunters, but when he found out how I’d duped them, the treasure trove of information I’d brought back, I became his right-hand man overnight. There never was much structure to his army—he was always more about power than discipline, as I’m sure you’re aware, and I genuinely don’t know if he was capable of trust—but if he had any kind of lieutenant, it was me, and it went back to this moment.

I noticed that Hana’s home had grown quiet except for a slight grinding sound. I had the butt of my dagger in two fingers, spinning it back and forth as the tip dug into the table while I thought. I’d been sitting for awhile, taking in the information the hunter was disclosing. She was watching me with dark eyes. I brushed the table. I’d dug a tiny divot into the wood. I apologized absently as I put my dagger away and Hana said not to worry about it, seeming a little surprised.

I had more questions, about the hunters themselves, their structure, schedule, leadership, but the rain had stopped while Hana talked and I could see the sky purpling into early twilight through the window. I needed to be gone before the village awoke. Peasants got up early. I shook my head, accepting that I’d need to make this a long-term subversion. Wait for me, Jinae. Brother’s working.

I sat up; Hana matched my posture. “This ‘Honmoon’ thing sounds great,” I allowed, “if only you had the resources to develop it further. But what you’re describing, banishing all demons, sounds like it’s years if not decades away. Joseon needs you now, particularly in the south.”

“Respectfully,” Hana said, eyes narrowing, “Joseon is your responsibility, not mine. ‘My realm’, you called it, didn’t you?” Her hearing really was freaky, to have picked that out of the rain and battle. “My people need me here,” she concluded evenly. We stared at each other, the silence heavy between us.

“May I speak, Master Jinu?” she asked; I inclined my head, and she continued, “Why does the government suddenly care about demons? Why is it a Confucian scholar from the Ministry of Rites that has come, and not an officer from Military Affairs, whom we’ve been begging the attention of for the last three years? And why are you here in the middle of the night?”

Good points, all of them—though of course she didn’t know about my appointment by royal fiat which had allowed me to skip the scholarly examinations or my other circumstances. Technically, I really was an official of the Ministry of Rites, though I was part of the Royal Music Bureau under Rites, not an officer of the Ministry itself, and I had none of the classical education that biased those men so—in the villages, everyone worked. But Minseo, for all his soft-spoken kindness, never would have suffered to sit with this woman in her humble house and share tea; she was almost as far beneath him as it was possible to be, and that mattered to him.

And class aside, at the end of the day, the Neo-Confucian scholars who dominated the court absolutely hated shamanistic folk traditions. Beyond the religious differences, the scholars and officials despised the women providing intercession to spirits and ancestors directly, instead of following proper hierarchical protocols, which led very conveniently through themselves. It directly weakened their own power, and made Joseon look backwards and superstitious to Ming.

I lowered my eyes and gave Hana a crooked smile as I swirled the tea in my cup. “The government cares for the only reason it ever cares—the demons are disrupting trade and killing taxpayers.” The shaman seems disappointed but not surprised. “As for why it’s Rites, well, even if fighting this ‘Gwi-Ma’ and his demons lately has become more of a… physical activity than the exorcisms from back in your grandmother’s day, it remains the case that Military Affairs is for invading armies and insurrection—you don’t want their attention, believe me, so stop asking—and Rites is for spiritual matters. Thus it falls to Rites to fix the problem of the imaginary monsters of commoner superstition that we are very certain are not real.

“And if Rites, assuming we knew you hunters existed, which we vehemently do not, has a problem with heathen shaman weapons being more effective than proper civilized weapons, well, that’s certainly not something I’m going to take back to the minister or the king. We have a reputation to uphold. We could never reach out to cheonmin trash.” Hana’s eyes flashed at my reference to her status as a member of the lowest caste, alongside butchers, slaves, and whores. “Which is why I am absolutely not here, in the middle of the night.” I gave her a wide smile, all teeth, before tossing back my tea to the bitter dregs.

I maintain it was the finest series of improvised lies of my career. Her class would ensure she’d never be able to speak to anyone who could verify a word of it. I heard her mutter something about “godsdamned politician doublespeak” under her breath and let my smile widen. I wonder which group of infernal assholes I learned this kind of duplicity from more, Gwi-Ma or the courtiers?

I needed to bring her attention back to the south, but she still seemed upset. Time for a carrot. “Shamans are healers, too, right? Do you have anything for a headache or fatigue? I find staying up all night talking to charlatans and missing out on beauty sleep leaves me cranky the next day.” She glared at me, but when I only looked back placidly with a dopey smile on my face, she stood and walked over to some of her containers of various herbal ingredients and began putting something together with professional efficiency.

I opened my bag and took out the jade bowl, letting it thunk onto the table. The shaman turned and stared a moment before turning back to her work, a furrow in her brow. I took out a coin pouch, two, three, and they dropped heavily one by one into the bowl; she frowned a little deeper at every jangle. Eventually, she returned to her seat, pushing a fragrant bundle at me. “Make a tea and it’ll help with restful sleep,” she said, eyeing the bowl and pouches. “Don’t rebrew or you’ll get the runs.”

“Fantastic!” I said, sliding the jade bowl across the table to her. “I hope this covers it.”

She opened one of the pouches, looked inside. Looked at the other pouches. The bowl. Looked at me. “This sum would buy me several times over. If I were on the market,” she said flatly.

“I hope this covers it,” I repeated, letting the empty smile fall off my face. “So, when will the hunters be able to take care of the water demons to the south?”

She pushed the bowl and pouches back across the table. “My village needs me. And we’re not for sale.”

I ignored the bowl for a moment, leaned back on my palms. The village… she’ll fold for them. Tie it back. I thought of my mother, of a conversation from that first winter just after Jinae was born. It hurt—it infuriated me—but I tried to cloak myself in my mother’s cool tones, her heartless delivery. “So many babes die in their first two years,” I said, apropos of nothing, and Hana started. “If food is tight, why would you invest in a infant who might not make it? Instead of an older child who already has, or an adult who can work. If you leave her out at night,” and my voice cracked just a bit, and I’d said ‘her’, dammit, “she’ll go quietly. Like falling asleep.” The shaman hardly seemed to be breathing, eyes shimmering. It would be girls, too, usually.

I wouldn’t be singing in front of the hunters, not after that nonsense with the Honmoon earlier, but I’d sold my soul for a voice to make people listen, and I knew how to use it. Hana leaned in as I continued at a whisper, “The blizzards stop, the snow thaws, and you go outside; check in with the neighbors you haven’t seen in months. And everyone in the village knows, if the winter was hard, if the poor family has fewer kids come spring, you don’t ask questions.” I shook my head, tossing off the memory of my first fight with my mother as a man, aged thirteen, a thousand years ago. Too real. Didn’t intend to reveal that much of myself there.

Hana looked stricken. A little more. “You’re the village midwife, too, I assume? How many?”

“W-what?” she stuttered.

“How many babes have you shepherded into this world?” I asked softly. “How many mothers have you looked after, like you wish someone had looked after yours?”

I wasn’t sure if she was going to cry or throw something at me. “Sixteen children,” she said hoarsely. “Fourteen women. One twice; and twins, both survived.”

I gave her a half bow from my seat. “You do your lineage proud,” I said earnestly. She looked away, hid her face behind her hand. I slid the bowl full of coins gently back across the table. “It’s not for you. It’s to help this village you’re so fond of. Maybe…” I hesitated, pulled on a memory of hunger, of fear and cold and anxiety and dread; I hated it; I used it to push a wistful quaver into my voice, “…maybe, no one dies this winter.”

I wasted a couple minutes putting away the herbal remedy and swapping out my official indoor hat for a wide-brimmed traveller’s hat, then rearranged my pack while she got herself under control. She coughed wetly, cleared her throat, and when she spoke, her voice was still a little raw. “I’ll need to consult with my sisters,” she said, referring to the other hunters. They weren’t her actual sisters, but they’d all trained together under her grandmother.

We made plans to meet in about a month’s time, and I slipped out of the hunter’s house just before dawn hit. I made it to the edge of the village without being seen and was heading back towards town when I felt Hana accept the jade bowl and coins I’d left on her table. The recently awoken memory of a peasant within me cried out, but my demon’s heart felt nothing but satisfaction at the completion of a tricky but successful operation. The hunter owed me now, and that debt had power.

Here’s a tip: never take anything from a demon. Giving might be okay, but the rules are complicated, and if it’s the demon’s idea then you’re definitely being tricked. In fact, don’t even talk to us. Really, kill on sight is the safest protocol.

I got back to town and slept the day away at an inn. I half expected Gwi-Ma to appear in my dreams, but my sleep was restful, undisturbed. I woke to orange afternoon sunlight slanting in through the window, falling across the teacup next to my blankets. Huh. Her tea really did help me sleep. I wonder if it also protected me from Gwi-Ma’s influence… I shook off that foolish thought. Nothing could protect me from Gwi-Ma except myself. Mystic tea, even tea from a hunter, wouldn’t save me.

I repacked my bag, much lighter now without the bowl and coins, and put on my traveling clothes. I had a quick meal and set out at sunset, planning to once again travel through the night. On my way out of town, I noticed a couple of rough-looking men idling at the side of the street, watching people pass by. I put one hand on the pommel of the sword inexpertly belted at my hip, letting the sheathed blade swing sloppily behind me. One man noticed—he’d better, the amount of effort I was putting into looking an easy mark—and elbowed his fellow; they both grinned, and started following me. I pulled my hat low over my eyes and smirked. Once we were out of sight of the town and they made their move, I sent one to Gwi-Ma and kept the other for myself. It’s practically a public service.

I walked half the night without rest, stopping only to relieve myself by the side of the road. It was well into autumn at this point, and the nights were getting pretty cold, but I was dry so the chill hardly bothered me. The souls I’d been hoarding fed the fire within. I wonder if the extra souls make me tougher overall, or if it’s more to do with the fire metaphor? Would I do so well with scorching heat?

I always kept an eye out for crossroads, these days. The moment I crossed the center, I noticed a second pair of footsteps behind me. I immediately fell to my knees in a bow, heedless of the road dirt grinding into my fine traveler’s cloak. “My lord,” I said as calmly as I could.

Gwi-Ma abandoned whatever pretensions of subtlety he had, and I felt his furious flames roar to life behind me, heat across my back and rage in my mind across our connection. I sweated as he continued his slow walk around me. This heat doesn’t count. I’m not sweating because of the temperature; it’s just that I’m going to die is all, I thought, somewhat hysterically. No. Calm down. He could have come in my dreams, or sent someone for me. He came personally to torture me to talk.

Gwi-Ma finally paused in front of me. I kept my head lowered, his fine leather aristocrat’s shoes filling my vision. I haven’t seen him in this form in years. Is it nostalgia, or—

He wants to end it the way it began. No! I am not going to die here this night.

“Jinu,” he crooned, voice horrifyingly gentle. “Fancy running into you out this way.” I waited. He hadn’t asked a question, so I wasn’t to speak. “Where the hunters are.” I kept my breathing even, back straight. Don’t look guilty. “Where my brother’s minions invaded my territory, just last night,” he said, his voice twisting from mocking gentility into a hiss at the end.

A drop of sweat fell off my nose into the dirt below. Another, and another. Finally, Gwi-Ma growled, “Did you all have a nice chat?”

I kept my voice as steady as I could. “The hunter and I killed the water demons together. And then she welcomed me into her home as a guest and we talked,” I said, projecting a confidence I definitely didn’t feel.

I saw his weight shift to his toes, and imagined him straightening above me, posture less of a beast crouched over prey and more like a man. “You’re trying to turn her? Oh, Jinu, you’ve overreached.” He sounded disappointed. “It doesn’t matter how strong her soul is, if the other hunters and the Southern King finish us off first and you never collect. And you won’t collect—my influence is incompatible with whatever magic the hunters are working. Either she’ll notice the corruption before it gets too deep, or else her spell will reject her and the other hunters will put her down.”

“That’s not the plan,” I said diplomatically, shaking my head slightly. You had to be careful disagreeing with people who held your life in their hands and might execute you on a whim. I’d learned that from both kings, over the years. “I believe the hunters can be turned against the Southern King’s armies. The hunters want to expand their reach and their operations, but mundane concerns have kept their attention focused here.”

Gwi-Ma grunted and finally bade me rise. I stood, brushing road dust off my knees. Gwi-Ma looked contemplative, yellow eyes staring off into space. “So you want to make one foe stronger, until they can take on the other… bold.” He looked at me, frowning. “Clever, which is like you, but the boldness isn’t.” I was telling him a reasonable story—it was even true!—but it was undermined by his distrust of me. I had to explain this away before he went digging himself and started asking uncomfortable questions that led back to my family.

“I’d like the second half of my deal to go smoother than the first half,” I said blandly, letting him draw his own conclusions. He’d trust them more that way.

Gwi-Ma snorted. “You’re solving my wars for me so I’ll leave you alone? Jinu. Half those whispers in your ear aren’t even mine. You’re just unfortunate enough to still have enough humanity in you to feel bad for the terrible things you’ve done. That’s nothing to do with me.”

Lie better, asshole. I didn’t fall for it, but I’ll admit I got a bit heated. “The hunter has already accepted coin from me.” Gwi-Ma seemed surprised to hear this, eyes widening. “We’re to meet again in a month’s time. Eventually, I’ll meet the others, learn what drives them, and convince them the Southern King is the only thing standing in their way.” The demon king still didn’t seem convinced. “You’ve fought your wars your way for two years. Give me two years, and I’ll finish them both.”

Familiar amusement drifted across his face. Laughter really does suit him best, even if his personality is just the worst. “And what would my faithful servant expect in return, for such a feat?”

I want my family back. But I’m not near stupid enough to tell you that and give you time to plot. “A boon,” I said instead. Best to keep it open-ended for now.

“Absolutely not,” Gwi-Ma with a shrug, sounding unimpressed. “In any case, it hardly matters what fanciful deeds you think you might accomplish in two years’ time when the hunters’ barrier presses down on us day by day.”

“Oh, the Honmoon?” I said breezily, and that certainly got his attention. His eyes locked onto me like a hawk, and it took all of my composure to put on a smug smile. “Hana told me all about it.”

That… may have been a miscalculation. I was hurtling through the air—he didn’t reach out and grab me, he reached out and I flew to him—he fisted his hands in my cloak and the robes beneath, claws shredding the cloth and poking into my chest. I looked down, eyes wide, and saw my garments singeing at the edges. He still wore his human face, but his skin was darker, and he radiated heat. “And now,” he growled, “you will tell me all about it.” I licked my lips, opened my mouth, and he cut me off before I could begin, “No jokes, Jinu. No lies. You will tell me everything you know about this ‘Honmoon’, or I will devour you.” I thought briefly of our deal, my twelve years, and he must have read it off my face, because his next words were, “I can spare one default.”

I closed my eyes, squeezed them tight. It only made the unnatural heat radiating off Gwi-Ma more pronounced. He squeezed the fist holding me tighter, and one claw dragged across my chest. It felt like it was bleeding. It felt like it burned. I realized I was hyperventilating.

He shook me. Somehow, over the pounding of my heartbeat in my ears, I heard him hiss, “Focus, boy,” and it’d been ages since he called me that. I froze, thinking back to that first night at the old battlefield. He’d seemed to know everything, back then. He’d given me information, and I’d thanked him, and he’d owned me ever since; though it’d taken me years to see it and understand how. He was mysterious—he made me fly, just now!—but I’d catalogued his abilities, over time, even come to master one or two of them myself, as I’d grown in power and influence.

He is—manageable. Every moment felt like the last I’d get before fainting, but I took a deep breath, all the way in, and all the way out. Another. He is mighty, and he has some powers beyond me, probably some I still don’t even know about, but he’s not omniscient. He has limits. He doesn’t know about the money for my family. He didn’t hear the conversation I had with Hana. I have power here. I just have to use it.

I opened my eyes, met Gwi-Ma’s gaze, and put my hand on his fist. “It’s a long story,” I said, out of breath and voice still shaking with adrenaline, but that couldn’t be helped. I pushed down gently, and after a moment, he dropped me to the ground. I stood, but even at my full height, Gwi-Ma still loomed over me. A flash of deja vu, and I tilted my head, gesturing down the road with my chin. He nodded, and we started walking.

I talked. I told him everything I could remember about what Hana had explained to me of the Honmoon. Then we went over it again, Gwi-Ma asking probing questions that reminded me of nothing so much as watching Minseo argue his theories with his scholarly peers. I wasn’t used to being a participant in these kinds of discussions at all, let alone having such conversations with the demon lord—I was seeing a whole new side of him. Beyond that, the terminology Gwi-Ma used didn’t line up with what the shaman had described to me, which I had at least recognized as being based on Buddhist principles and commoner folklore, and we spent much time going back and forth just trying to define terms and find common language. The experience left me feeling oddly ashamed, like I’d failed some kind of test.

After that, we spoke of Hana herself. For all his disapproval from before about the idea of turning a hunter, Gwi-Ma was much more engaged in this bit. He had a real passion for corruption—like I said, awful personality—and seemed to genuinely enjoy talking about what I’d deduced, my theories of what her weaknesses might be, and scheming over how to break her. Her fixation on mothers and children, after how her mother had died; how she’d instantly known how many lives she carried; how I’d gotten her to accept coin to save starving children and families on the verge of infanticide.

“You’re almost there,” he encouraged. “Her mother and sister, and the village women and their offspring, yes, you’re on the right track. But you’re missing the bigger picture. Why did she fold for the village, take your money to save lives? Why does that matter to her so much?”

A trio of travelers was approaching in the pre-dawn light—we must have been nearing the next settlement—heading the opposite way down the road, and we paused our conversation, giving me time to think. I’d just said it’d been because her mother had died in childbirth; that couldn’t be the answer. This wasn’t like the oddly academic discussion on the Honmoon’s spellcraft, where I’d just been completely lost—I could feel the answer Gwi-Ma was searching for, just out of reach. I agreed with him, knew he was right; my instinct for how to present the money had been correct, but it’d been little more than a lucky guess—I didn’t know why I’d known it would work. It frustrated me.

Gwi-Ma waited a long moment after the travelers had passed before he spoke up, “How about this: how does she see herself?”

“She’s a leader,” I said immediately. I hadn’t quite gotten confirmation, but I was almost certain she led the band of hunters. Aside from that, she was a village mystic, medic, and matriarch all in one, respected in the community for her skills and judgement. “She’s educated, in a very practical way. Tough, strong, a fighter. Not that independent, though—collaborative.” Gwi-Ma nodded, but waved a hand, hurrying me along. Wrong track. More personal? “She’s a survivor—” My eyes widened. That’s it.

Gwi-Ma nodded, satisfied. “Survivor’s guilt is a strong possibility. Abandonment, too. Not necessarily, but likely. Look for both.”

I nodded, still slightly stunned, as it came together in my head. I could see it, see her shame, how it fit. “That’s why she doesn’t want anyone else to die. She feels bad for outliving them. Guilty, but also… left behind.”

Gwi-Ma grinned at me, reached out and patted me on the back.

I cannot express to you how much I hated that I didn’t hate it.

“You’ve got a real talent for this, Jinu,” the demon king said, still showing teeth. “Good thing there’s no real reaper in you, or I might be worried.” He chuckled to himself at his own private joke, squeezing my shoulder with a hint of claws. I kept the pain off my face, and after a moment, he released me. “Careful with her shame. Don’t try to make her heart fight her head. Don’t ask how many she’s lost or any such ham-handed attempt to force her to wallow. Support her, make her trust you. Become her safe place. Be there. And especially, if she ever does lose someone, be there—because when she’s truly distraught, when she loses her reason, that’s the moment to strike.”

We walked in silence for a while after that. He seemed to be lost in thought, and I wasn’t fool enough to bring his attention back to me. Finally, with the sky bleeding from purple to red and the next town visible in the distance, he stopped me. “It’s not such a stupid plan after all,” he said, and I bit back a scoff. “But two years won’t do. I claimed Joseon as my own, but every year, the lands to the south flood over and over, whole villages lost. The Southern King is wrecking my land to build his armies.”

Gwi-Ma paused, eyeing me up and down. Taking my measure. “You want a promotion?” He laughed. “A ‘boon’, was it? A gift from the Demon King himself? Very well, but it’ll cost you.” He took a moment to compose himself, blinked and his eyes were fully yellow, and when he spoke again, his voice filled the area around us, vibrating through my skin, “The deal is thus: you will defeat the hunters and the Southern King, and remand him or his remains to my custody; or I will immediately collect your soul, and all those you contain, and your family’s. For this, you will recieve some trifling favor.”

My stomach dropped word by word, and when he got to my family, I choked. “I can’t bargain my family away!”

“You can, in fact,” he countered with a smirk. “You’re the man of the household, after all. Even if you abandoned them. You could sell your mother or sister to me the same way you could marry them off, even now.” He shrugged. “Blame your human king for this one. I don’t make the rules.”

I grit my teeth. “I’m not comfortable trading my family like livestock.”

Gwi-Ma eyed me aloofly. “And I’m losing interest in this deal.”

I thought frantically. I was pretty sure he was just haggling with that last bit—he wasn’t nearly ready to walk away from the table yet—but I didn’t have much leverage. ‘I can spare one default’, he’d said earlier. If I didn’t go forward with some version of this deal, he might kill me just to get me out of the way before I could stir up more trouble with the hunters. Think, Jinu, think! You can still save this, make it right. “I will recieve an unlimited favor.”

Gwi-Ma laughed, not even bothering to respond to that. Damn it! I can’t let Gwi-Ma know what I want—he’ll ruin it out of habit if nothing else—but he won’t commit to something too vague. “One favor, that it is within your power to give.”

The demon tilted his head. “So you could ask for my life? My kingdom? No chance.”

I growled in frustration, closed my eyes. Found my connection to Minseo and pulled, opened my eyes and locked gazes with Gwi-Ma. “One favor, that it is within your power to give, and that does not manifestly harm you physically, metaphysically, or spiritually, with a reasonable projected opportunity cost to your future potential power or, or—” I stumbled, Minseo’s insight stymied, not even knowing what word I was looking for; the demon king was staring at me in surprise, and whispered a concept I couldn’t comprehend into the silence, and it hit me like a headache; and I continued, “—a reasonable projected opportunity cost to your one-year future potential power—martial, economic, or ṣ̷͗͝p̴̥͌į̷͔́r̵̼̠͘i̴̯͒t̴̙͓̅u̷̲̾a̴̺̝͠l̶̝̕—not to exceed one-tenth.” I stopped, brought my hand up and wiped my nose. It felt like I should be bleeding, but my index finger came away dry.

“One-one-hundredth, projected after the defeat of my adversaries, a hundred years into the future,” Gwi-Ma countered, watching me curiously. Honestly, he seemed more interested in observation than negotiation, but a demon is a demon, and a king a king; he could bargain with half his attention and still keep me on my toes.

“One-twentieth, projected immediately after the removal of specifically the hunters and the Southern King, up to ten years into the future,” I replied. A headache was blooming behind my eyes, but I kept my face as unconcerned as I could; it wouldn’t do to let Gwi-Ma know how much this back and forth was costing me.

Silence fell around us as the demon looked at me evenly. Behind him, the sky was lightening—it was nearly dawn. I could hear the town waking up in the distance. “Done,” Gwi-Ma said suddenly, and I blinked as I felt the power of the agreement sink into me. “Don’t let me down, Jinu. I’m rooting for you this time, I really am. I’ll even allow you some help. Take Abby and the newbie. Oh, and don’t worry about your human king—I’ll take care of him. You’re going to have a busy winter.” Gwi-Ma stared at me as I took that in. ‘Newbie’? “Don’t fail me. Your poor family won’t survive you letting them down again.” My lip fluttered in a snarl I refused to let him see. He smirked. “Hurry back. You haven’t much time.”

And with that, a purple portal appeared at his feet in the middle of the road and he sank back to his infernal domain, watching me the whole way. Show off. He probably just wanted me to know he doesn’t need a crossroads. I shook my head and started for the town. I’d eat, nap an hour or two, and head back out. Gwi-Ma’s warnings were not to be taken lightly.

I arrived back at the palace with much to do and little time to do it in. I went to Jinyi first thing, loaded up with presents, to apologize and catch up on news, and she filled me in: thankfully, I was to be spared my duties performing for the king for the indefinite future. There were rumors of plague at the ports to the west, which might spread to the capital, and our monarch, elderly and of failing health, had suddenly declared he and his family would be spending the winter in solemn seclusion and pious reflection. Like anyone buys that. Honestly, I could respect the self-interest if only they were more honest about it.

With the king gone, the courtiers had a lot of free time to fill. Jinyi seemed to appreciate the extra attention—she was getting older, for a courtesan, so it was like a bumper crop for her, I guess—but her problems with the other courtesans had grown worse in my time away.

There seemed to be one instigator in particular who was causing her trouble, a brilliant dancer, highly ranked, who refused to share her choreography and accused Jinyi of stealing her work. I offered to kill her or at least break her legs, but with a laugh Jinyi allowed that while that might be necessary someday, her situation was not yet so dire, so I left it for now.

Among other things, I’d picked her up a nice set of scarves in the city, and she took this in particular as a didactic opportunity, pointing out everything that was or wasn’t there that she did or didn’t like. I tried taking notes, but she only giggled and pushed me down. It was fine, I’d been half doing it as a joke and the notes wouldn’t have helped much anyway—I hadn’t truly understood most of what she had been saying, other than that next time I should try to find red and orange.

Afterwards, we lay in her blankets, her running her fingers up and down my arms, where she’d washed and bandaged me once upon a time. There were no scars, nothing to see or feel there, but she liked to do it anyways for whatever reason. “We need to be careful of the time we have. I can only hope the king is so conscientious with his physical and spiritual health every year from now on,” she said softly.

Abby had a less charitable view to share, when he showed up at my house uninvited on my first morning back, a strange courtier in tow, ordering my servants to bring breakfast for three. “Don’t expect his majesty to emerge until spring,” he sneered. “I’m sure he’ll turn up coincidentally right when the sick season passes, just like he hid from the barbarians during the war.” Abby had many friends in the military—many bargained souls, too—and they had a rather dim view of the king’s flight from the capital to Pyongyang and then the border with Ming during the war, leaving his second son to oversee the country and command our defense. Getting out of the way of the surprisingly competent crown prince had worked out for us, and the barbarians were defeated, but no soldier could forgive the king abandoning the heart of Joseon to dwarf savages.

I agreed with Abby, but I always took pains to avoid saying so when I could, so I turned to observe the newbie while we waited for our food to arrive. He was young, a child really—but no. He was probably about the same age as I’d been when I came to the palace, sixteen or so, come to think of it… but I’d aged a lot since then. It was hard to see the person I’d been back then as anything other than a brat, and perhaps that was coloring my impression of him. Well, only one way to find out who he is.

I heard footsteps approaching. “What Lord Abby means to say is that we have nothing but the utmost respect for his royal highness,” I said, as the servants entered and efficiently set us a table with rice, fish, soup, and sides. They appeared to be entirely focused on their work; they were absolutely listening and would gossip as fast as their little tongues could wag once they were out of sight, if we gave them anything to work with. “The king’s dedication to strengthening his spirit does him credit; we can only hope it helps with his incontinence.” One of the servants choked on nothing, dropping a dish the last handsbreadth to clatter to the table; the others froze. “Are you okay?” I asked.

She nodded frantically. “Yes, my lord.” Still, none of them moved.

“Good thing nothing spilled,” I said blandly with an empty smile; she nodded again, uncertainly. After a moment, the servants recovered, finishing quickly and bowing their way out of the room.

“What was the point of that?” the newbie asked, frowning.

I tsked and started digging into the food. “Abby, are you going to introduce this kid?”

Abby grunted, quickly joining me at the table. The man ate like a horse. “Baby. Another soul-sold.”

I nodded. As I suspected. “Baby,” I said, and he turned to me, already shoving food into his face. His eyes… they weren’t insolent, exactly, but definitely bored and not trying to hide it. And a little red, sunken. Someone didn’t get much sleep last night. A glance at Abby showed him similarly afflicted. Two someones. Baby hadn’t chosen to come here to pay his respects to his senior—someone made him come here, and it wasn’t Abby. I chewed a moment, thinking. That, or they’re fucking and Abby couldn’t wait to introduce his new lover. I snorted, tossing that thought aside.

“The point of that was we don’t know each other,” I said to Baby, gesturing between us a moment before switching to point at Abby and then myself, “and we hate each other; yet here you are, eating with me in my private quarters at the crack of dawn. That’s gossip-worthy. But you know what’s even more gossip-worthy? The king of Joseon chronically pissing himself.” Abby snorted a laugh. “And I guarantee you, we will not merit the slightest mention in that story, which is convenient, on account of all the crimes we do and are planning on doing.”

Baby nodded sullenly to let me know he got it. We ate a moment in silence before I asked, “Gwi-Ma or Abby?” At the confusion on Baby’s face, I elaborated, “Your deal.”

Baby glanced at Abby and laughed. “No offense, but I don’t need a subcontractor. I’ve been working for Gwi-Ma for years, and I finally earned my deal with the head honcho himself.”

Years, to earn a deal. Not my experience, but I’ll keep that to myself. “And last night, he came to you in a dream and gave you a message,” I prompted. Baby’s eyes widened in surprise. Oh, you’re just precious. It wasn’t that hard to figure out. You’re going to need to get a lot savvier real fast if you’re going to survive in the palace. Or against the hunters.

Abby’s lips twisted in a grimace. “We’re both to work with you on your mission.”

“‘With’ me?” I probed softly.

Abby’s eyebrows drew down, the frown deepening. “I misspoke. We’re to work for you. You’re somehow our leader, now.” He threw me a smile, sharp. “Don’t fuck up.”

We had more to discuss, but I wanted to add one more to our group first, so we agreed to daily breakfasts in my rooms. The other two would bring their instruments, and we’d pretend we were spending our time practicing so we could wow the king once he came out of seclusion. Nothing could be more boring, which would keep us safe.

Minseo was none too happy to see me. He was justified in his anger—I thought briefly of my family—but… what had Gwi-Ma said? ‘I don’t make the rules.’ This is just how things go. And it really isn’t my fault you made such a shitty deal.

“Look,” I said, trying to sound reasonable, “you wanted to be the top scholar and you are. Still in your twenties and a Special Advisor to the king! You get to lecture him! And your uniform,” I said, gesturing to his red robes and two-crane insignia, “looks quite fetching. You outrank me now, you know, and I had my own deal.” I gave him a sardonic smile—it was true, in a way; I just wanted him to remember it wasn’t a way that mattered.

“I wanted to be the smartest, the wisest, the cleverest!” he said shrilly. “You made me the meanest! I’m the top scholar because no one will dare argue with me! They make—valid!—valid points!—and something comes over me, the words flow off my tongue like boiling pitch over the barbarians at the gates, and they’re—my peers, my friends—they’re quivering in humiliation.” He was panting, red-faced and distraught. “You have to fix our deal, make it right. Jinu, you made me a monster.”

“You asked for what you wanted, and a monster fit the bill,” I said tonelessly, and he flinched. “If you wanted to be the smartest, you would have asked for that.” He shrunk. “If you wanted to be the kindest, the most well-respected fellow, then something approaching that meaning would have crossed your lips. No. You were frustrated at your completely normal progression through the ranks, and you sold your soul to be—and you will listen to me right now,” and I’ll admit I leaned on my control over him in the interest of time, pushed some power into my voice, “—you sold your soul so you could be the best, so you could dominate. That was the wish in your heart of hearts. I only enabled your own desires.” He was looking down, and he was still my friend so I didn’t call out his weeping. Instead I pushed as much genuine gentle compassion as I still had in me into my voice. “I’m sorry you’re not as good of a person as you thought you were.”

Minseo’s quarters had a fire going to keep out the autumn chill, and I put on a kettle and made tea while he got himself under control. Once we were both seated and sipping, I spoke, “A rival demon and some human shamans are threatening our king.” At the confused look on his face, I elaborated, “Our true king.” He blanched. “The human king is hiding until the plague passes, and we have no official duties. This frees us up for a mission for our true lord. You will join me and some others under my command in my quarters every morning for breakfast so we can plan.” I thought a moment, then added, “Bring some books of poetry; if anyone asks, you’re helping us inject proper Confucian metaphors and symbolism into our songs.”

Minseo was shaking his head. “I’ve heard the king is sequestered, but he could come back at any time. And… I’ve already had more dealings with you than I care for, Jinu. I don’t think I want to have anything else to do with you.”

It hurt, a little, to hear my friend try to abandon me like that, but it wasn’t like he could actually do it. I reached out through our connection and stroked his shame, tightened it; he choked on air and his eyes widened; he hunched over, wrapping his arms over his head, covering his ears. It wouldn’t help. I didn’t listen in to what the whispers were saying, though I had some idea. After a long couple of moments, I released him, and he slumped over the table, panting. “Please don’t make me do that again,” I said softly.

He was silent as I stood, walked over to the door. I turned back to him; he wouldn’t look at me. “The king will not be a concern until our business is concluded. Who do you think was behind him going away in the first place? I have business to attend to, and no time for the human king, so Gwi-Ma took care of him. Don’t make Gwi-Ma take care of you, too,” I warned, and Minseo hunched further over his table. Regretting every decision in his life that had brought him to this point, if my own experience was anything to guess by. I didn’t know if Gwi-Ma had actually started a plague, or just rumors of one, or channeled existing rumors to the king’s ear, or simply driven him to distraction at the thought of disease, but… “Gwi-Ma is powerful, and you would not care for his attentions,” I said honestly. “However you feel about me, I promise everyone else is worse. Work with me, and you will be rewarded.” And I left.

Zoey and Mira are across the room at the kitchen island, flipping through their own copies of the story so far and getting caught up. At one point, Zoey elbows Mira and shows her something with a conspiratorial grin, but Mira only grunts, not seeming nearly as amused, and the two turn back to their reading, the younger hunter more subdued than before.

Rumi’s taken her laptop back and is busy with something on the couch, so I occupy myself looking out their floor to ceiling windows at the city below. It’s nearly noon, and the city is alive with cars and pedestrians, sights and sounds even all the way up in the hunters’ penthouse.

Derpy headbutts the back of my knees and almost sends me falling over him, Sussie squawking as she flaps out of the way, but I manage to keep my balance. The bird lands on my shoulder, claws digging in slightly in reproach. I lift a finger and she nips it, hard; I take it, and after a moment she lets me go. The pair have hardly changed since they were alive, over four hundred years ago, and we’re used to each other, comfortable. They feel like home.

“Yook-shik's dead,” I whisper, just in case Sussie didn’t know. Derpy hears, but doesn’t really seem to understand, absorbed in rubbing his face against my pants. He’s still just glad to have me back, I guess. I reach down and rub his cheeks with the back of my hand. The bird gets it, though, and smirks a moment before whistling a question. “Mira did it, apparently. The redhead.” She turns to peer at the hunter with three eyes, then the other three; ruffles her feathers a bit and flies over to show her appreciation.

Mira… does not enjoy her attentions, and the pair get into a bit of a screeching match before the two hunters start heading over to me together. Rumi pauses, looks up from her laptop to watch the other girls approach me.

I put on a friendly smile. “She’s just trying to say thanks. It might not have come out right.”

“Yeah, don’t care,” Mira says bluntly, stopping several feet away and crossing her arms. Zoey joins her at her elbow, the barest half-step behind her, posture much less confrontational, but not the least bit apologetic. They haven’t thrown me out yet, but I am not welcome here. “Tell me about the hunters. How did they fight?”

Funny, that Mira of all people would ask that. Almost too on the nose. I consider for a moment before deciding the best answer is a demonstration. I gesture to the wide open space between the stairs and table, but when neither of them seem inclined to follow directions, I start walking over alone, raising my hand and snapping my fingers right as I cross them. I probably shouldn’t be tempting fate like this, trying to startle them, but I am just a touch annoyed.

I transform, and it’s a good thing I’m so experienced or I would have stumbled, what with the reduced height and shorter gait, and that would have just been embarrassing. Hana would kill me for making her look silly, especially like this, in her ceremonial clothing. The thought brings a smile to my face, a real one.

“It look—” I cough, trying to cover my surprise—I hadn’t been ready to hear her voice—clear my throat and start again, “It looked different from your modern Korean fighting styles of the last century, which have been heavily influenced by Japan to have more solid stances and strikes.” I walk, excessively long sleeves trailing behind me, until I arrive at the wide open, level space, and turn; the other two have been following me at a short distance, and before they can crowd me, my feet are already flowing through the familiar triangle step. I’m not dumb enough to try singing one of the hunters’ songs, but I hum a tune, and between that and a bit of a stomp in my steps, I’ve got a beat.

The girls’ eyes widen—all three of them; Rumi, too, has abandoned the laptop to stare. “Taekkyeon was like a dance, a game, popular amongst the common folk at festivals. There were punches and kicks, locks and throws, but the core stance was this three-point pattern, always moving, arms fluttering about deceptively like the wings of a butterfly. It’s a fighting style, and a performance.”

The girls watch as I do a couple rotations, stepping through instead of returning to position. Zoey’s most interested in the footwork, Rumi in the arm movements, the potential feints and strikes, and Mira’s whole body is twitching like she might join in. Technically, Mira asked for how they fought, and this is the performance footwork, not the typical ready stance of the combat form… but that form specialized in one-on-one fights; when the hunters fought, it was three of them together against a horde, and they moved like dancing.

I snap again, forming two spectral partners to fill out the formation. Mira drops a hand, and I can almost see her weapon materialize, but she just manages to hold back, fingers clenching slightly. The dancing forms are blue, transparent, with poorly defined features, but enough to see their clothing matches mine, especially the long, flowing sleeves trailing behind our arm movements and obscuring our motions.

We continue dancing, swapping places now, sleeves overlapping, forms blurring together, until suddenly, the two spirits break off to run around the house, parkouring over tables and furniture, wallrunning across the windows, firing arrows and slashing swords at imaginary enemies. Zoey and Rumi turn to watch them move about the room; Mira holds still, watching me. I send her a slight, knowing smile that she does not return as I dance alone a couple more rounds, before letting the memories of the other hunters fade. Finally, I bring my feet together, breaking the pattern and bowing before snapping again and shedding the illusion.

The three girls shake themselves like they’re coming out of a trance. Mira would need to go first. The other two looked away, followed the obvious distraction, but she has better sense. I shake that thought off and smile, saying, “A squad of three is the natural size for taekkyeon practitioners using the triangle step, and the movements already constitute a dance, so why not lean into the performance aspect of it, and get the audience involved…? I don’t know how much of hunter traditions come from the mechanics of taekkyeon, and how much is coincidence, but it’s an interesting bit of your history either way. Did your master never tell you about this?”

That gets their attention. Mira and Rumi’s faces both close off, and Zoey winces, saying, “Celine is… not a great topic right now.”

That surprises me, in more ways than one. Old Celine taught them as hunters, too? I guess she was around, looking after them and preparing them for their idol careers, but… that one woman was at the center of their lives, raising them as parent, boss, and master, all at once? What could have happened between them? And where did the other hunter get off to? No. Set these thoughts aside. I’m not really in a position to ask. “Okay, maybe another time. What else for now?”

“So that was Hana?” Rumi asks forcefully. I nod, smile feeling a little strained. I’m afraid she’s going to ask to see Jinyi, next, but instead she follows up with, “What about Dool and Seht?”

My smile is definitely feeling forced, now. “…You mean Duri and Se-eun?” I ask blithely.

“Ugh, you’re kidding me,” Mira says with renewed disgust, rolling her eyes. “I didn’t even catch that.”

“You named them ‘one’, ‘two’, and ‘three’?” Zoey asks, sounding like she’s disappointed in me. “Isn’t that kind of rude? I get you probably killed them because you were enemies and all, but you could show a little courtesy.”

“Hana really was the first hunter’s name. As for the others…” It’s a bit embarrassing to say it, but an honest question like that deserves an honest answer. “As for the other two, I don’t really remember their names.”

The girls don’t like that at all, and I wait patiently until they’ve each had a chance to pile on their feelings before I even try to explain myself. “We spent a few weeks together over the course of a season, but Abby and Baby were their primary contacts. And then they were gone, and I stuck around for much, much longer. Do you remember the names of everyone you’ve ever met, even just the important ones? Your first nursemaid? Your pre-school teacher? The friendly uncle down the way who gave you candy?” Mira, of all people, seems to find this resonates with her. Rich background, servants? Poor relationship with her family? She probably got friendly with more than one of a rotating ensemble of help who were then replaced for their temerity in making her inattentive parents feel inadequate. I pinch myself when I realize where my thoughts have gone yet again. It’s a struggle to remember I don’t need to constantly be on the lookout for weakness and advantage anymore.

Zoey is the first to speak up, “Didn’t you ever feel bad for betraying your friends? Minseo? And Jinyi, that’s why she’s around too, right?” Rumi looks up at that, dark eyes meeting mine, but she doesn’t say anything.

I shrug. “I had Gwi-Ma’s knife at my throat. I liked my friends, but I didn’t like them more than my life. And there was a part of me that thought, eternal life, even as a demon, might be better than death. Especially with what eventually happened to Minseo; when I collected his soul, I really thought I was saving him from oblivion.” None of the girls seem satisfied with this, but I push forward; I deserve to say my piece. “And I didn’t just take souls willy-nilly—people came to me, asking for deals.”

Rumi is glaring at me. “Like Gwi-Ma offered you a deal?” she asks. ‘Do better’, the look she’s giving me says.

Her words set me off. Gwi-Ma and my family are both triggers, it seems. “Exactly,” I say, voice full of venom, and Rumi blinks, leaning back slightly, but she shouldn't have worried—my anger is for myself, as always. “If I’m responsible for what I did—and I am—then so are they. And if Gwi-Ma was an asshole for giving me that deal—and he was—then yeah, I guess I should feel bad for what I did for my friends…” I trail off, my rage fizzling out a bit at the end. Huh. Guess I never did think of that before. I chew on that for a minute, getting my emotions under control and filing them away for later. “Okay, yeah, maybe I should feel bad for the deals I gave to my friends. I’ll think on it.” Zoey smiles weakly from halfway behind Mira.

After an awkward moment, Rumi finally speaks. “Yaaaay, progress,” she says, with a half-hearted thumbs-up and one of her creepy symmetrical smiles. Mira grunts something about demons under her breath, and Rumi widens her smile like that’ll help. Does she seriously not know how unnerving that is?

“Still, I could never turn on my friends like that,” Zoey says.

Brow wrinkling, looking from Zoey to Rumi and back, I’m still puzzling out the thought even as I say, “Uhhh, except for the time that you did?” The two react like I’d slapped them.

“Hey—way outta line!” Rumi says, stepping into my personal space, and I have to take a step back, hands up.

Zoey reaches out and places a hand on Rumi’s arm, soothing. “No—it’s okay, Rumi,” she says. “He has a point, after all. A bit of one. But,” she says, turning to me, “it’s not the same, y’know? They didn’t do anything to you. It wasn’t, like, the result of a fight.”

“Fair enough,” I allow, “but I wasn’t as close with them as you are with your hunter sisters, here. It was more like—well, they weren’t strangers, but—you care for the people of this city, right? You consider it your duty to protect them?” The hunters all nod at that. “But when you were under Gwi-Ma’s influence, you obediently filed into the stadium at Namsan Tower and were ready to watch them walk into the fire and follow right after.”

The girls are stunned. Mira is the first to speak. “Are you trying to start a fight with us?” she asks rhetorically.

“I guess,” Zoey says, subdued, after a moment, “I forgot what exactly being under Gwi-Ma’s control was like.”

Rumi waits a bit to see if they have anything to add before asking, “Was it really that bad?”

I’m overcome for a moment with envy for whatever power protects Rumi from Gwi-Ma’s influence. She never did hear Gwi-Ma speak, except in person. She’s never felt the full force of his true voice whispering in her mind. Even the other hunters understand—I can tell from the harrowed look on their faces that they get it.

Mira gives me a slight nod before cutting her eyes away and turning to Rumi. “Yeah, Rumi. It was bad.”

After a moment, Zoey steps in and mumbles something that sounds like ‘horrible’, the other two hunters moving to form a tight little triangle with her, arms coming up to wrap around each other and seal out the rest of the world. I wander over towards the kitchen, forgotten, while the girls have a heart to heart. They’ve clearly opened up to each other a lot since I last saw them, but I guess there’s still ground to tread.

Sussie is pecking at a giant glass jar of nuts on the kitchen counter. I know she could get in herself, but she likes to make me do things for her, and I’m happy to oblige. I hold a handful and snack, the bird occasionally taking one for herself, still not being too careful about catching skin.

“Are they always like this?” I ask, but she ignores me. She often does, so I don’t know if she doesn’t know, or if she’s holding their confidences, or if this is just another part of her campaign of punishment for leaving her and the tiger alone for so long. I dig around in the cabinets for a minute until I find a wide mug, then steal a bottle of water from the fridge and pour half for the bird. I have a sip of water myself and grab another handful of nuts.