Yep! Boy, am I happy to see you! I have a really important question to ask you, and I’ve been trying and trying to figure out how to find the Hall of Vermilion Clouds, but now I don’t have to because you came here!

That was probably the most I’d ever said to Flicker at one time. Truly, I’d been starved for conversation that didn’t go along the lines of, “Awwww! Aren’t you so cuuuute!”

Flicker, on the other hand, didn’t act nearly as happy to see a soul in his charge as he should have. In fact, he looked as frozen as a Northern Serican ice sculpture. Swimming up to him, I waved both fins in front of his eyes, sending clicks bouncing around the atrium. He blinked, but couldn’t seem to sort his thoughts into a coherent sentence.

In my generosity, I allowed him time to recover by prattling on. Hey, Flicker, did you know that Heaven looks much better when you come in the main gate? This Sky Breeze Pavilion is pretty nice too. The crabs are fixated on that lotus pond out back, though, so don’t be surprised if you see them swimming in it –

“But what are you doing here?” he burst out. “You are not on the attendee list! I would know!”

Oh. Was that what was bothering him? An extra, unregistered conference attendee whose presence might upset his precise scheduling and seating plans?

Oh, don’t worry about that, I didn’t sneak in or anything. The Dragon King of Black Sand Creek adopted me and brought me along. He couldn’t bear to leave me behind. I gave a casual flip of my tail.

Flicker’s eyes practically bulged out of his head. Too late, I realized that the clerk had leaped to the worst possible conclusion.

Don’t worry, I repeated, toning down my chatter and hovering sedately before him. I’m not his adviser or anything. Just his pet. His adviser is –

“Nagi, a water snake spirit,” supplied Flicker numbly.

It figured that he had all the attendees’ names, natures, and job descriptions memorized.

Yes, I confirmed. Nagi. The Dragon King did want to take me to the banquet tonight, but she insisted that it would be a breach of protocol. I’m glad she did, because I needed to find you, and this was the perfect chance to look around.

“A pet,” Flicker muttered to himself. He rubbed one temple, then massaged both for good measure. “Reincarnate Piri as a catfish and she finds a way to become a dragon king’s pet.”

Personally, I thought it was an impressive achievement given how common and how ugly catfish were, but his tone suggested otherwise.

“Glitter was against it from the start….”

Against what? Making me a catfish?

Unless some massive upheaval had happened in the Bureau of Reincarnation in the past few months, Glitter was the one who assigned souls to mortal forms. Well, except when Cassius meddled. But presumably the Goddess of Life had instituted a new oversight committee or something to prevent repeats.

“No, not that. I meant the Goddess of Life’s – ”

All of a sudden, Flicker remembered that we were chatting in the middle of an atrium above a banquet hall full of dragon kings, who might come back upstairs at any moment to overhear a clerk criticizing a goddess’ decree. Snapping his mouth shut, he pointed his eyes at the servants’ stairwell and stalked into it.

I swam after him, noting that it was even more cramped than the one in the Hall of Vermilion Clouds. It also lacked a window for serving tea to star sprites, suggesting that the clerks didn’t spend nearly as much time in the Sky Breeze Pavilion. This must be a specialized conference facility.

At the bottom of the stairwell, a door opened onto a staging courtyard. Unlike the public side of Heaven, it was unadorned and utilitarian. Here, the plain, white walls were just plain, white walls, not feats of architectural imagination that conveyed elegance through their very simplicity. Along one wall stood a row of spare chairs; heaped in a corner were empty crates draped with limp vegetable bits. On the other side of the courtyard, a small canal flowed past the building’s loading dock, where imp boatmen waited by their rafts.

Flicker led me behind the crates. “All right. You said you had something to ask me. Ask.”

Offended by his flatness, I needled him, But you don’t seem to want me to ask. If you don’t really want to hear my question, I wouldn’t dream of subjecting you to it….

His jaw clenched and his lips pursed into a line. He must be modeling himself after Glitter, although it would have been more effective if he’d added white hair, wrinkly skin, and maybe a pair of wire-rimmed glasses.

Unobstructed by corrective lenses, his eyes were glaring at me.

Oh, fine. I made a show of surrendering to his stuffiness. I was wondering how much karma I’m earning for bringing joy into the life of a dragon king.

That question did not surprise Flicker in the slightest. “Still the same old self-centered Piri, I see. Well, I wouldn’t know. I’m not an Accountant.”

A convenient excuse. Someday, I was going to have to corner an Accountant, interrogate them, and check for myself whether they really were these omniscient beings. But for now, I was stuck with a clerk.

Stolen novel; please report.

Surely you can make an educated guess, I coaxed. After all, you’ve been reincarnating souls for millennia now. I’m sure that even when you don’t know precise figures, you can draw on all that experience to make very accurate estimates….

Flicker shook his head. “You’re not the first to barge up to Heaven demanding answers, you know. So we have rules about revealing sensitive information to a being that is still in the cycle of reincarnation.”

Unsurprising. Heaven had a rule banning everything I wanted.

Okay, I said, to Flicker’s relief. Here’s a more generic question then: If it’s a choice between actions that benefit a dragon king versus a human noble, helping the dragon king is worth more positive karma, right?

The clerk sighed but accepted that he wasn’t going to escape without answering one of my questions, and this one apparently was not prohibited by his handbook of Heavenly conduct. “It’s not as straightforward as you think,” he replied. “It depends on which dragon king and which human noble.”

Really?

“Yes. Really. Now, I’ve answered your question, so if you will please return to your room before anyone comes looking – ”

Why does it depend on which dragon king and which human noble? Why isn’t one always worth more than the other?

“Because one is a member of the Heavenly hierarchy but not necessarily a high-ranking one, while the other makes offerings to Heaven, but not necessarily high-quality ones.”

While I was still processing that breathtakingly mercenary assessment of individual worth, Flicker started to step out from behind the crates.

Wait! Darting forward, I bit down on his sleeve and demanded, The Dragon King of Black Sand Creek and Baron Claymouth. Between those two, which one is more valuable?

He tried to yank free, but I drove my teeth through the cotton. He’d have to rip his sleeve to break away, and I’d bet these robes didn’t come cheap, at least not on a clerk’s wages.

“I don’t know, okay?” he snapped. “This isn’t the sort of thing I know off the top of my head!”

Thank goodness I’d hedged my bets over the duck demons and the pearl farm. Can you look it up then? This is important. I need to know!

“No, this is precisely the sort of thing you don’t need to know! Go back and live your life, Piri. All of your deeds will be tallied up after you die, so unless you’re planning to live a hundred years and turn into a catfish spirit, you’ll find out soon enough.”

Heaven forbid that Flicker actually be helpful.

But it didn’t look like I was going to get any more information out of him, so I unlocked my jaw and released his sleeve. Disgusted, he examined the damp cloth, tugged at it to hide the toothmarks, and hurried towards the dock. As for me, I swam back around the building to the east wing, hoping that the crabs had left the windows open.

----------------------------------------

Alas, the rest of the conference proved less exciting. Terrified that they’d lose me again, this time for good, the head crab assigned trustworthy minions to supervise my cage at all times. Every time I so much as approached the door, the nearest crab would scuttle over and clack its claws at me, shooing me off.

I’m not trying to run away, I tried to reason with them. I just want to explore.

Warning clacks.

I’ll come back. I promise.

“What if you don’t? What if you get lost, injured, eaten, captured, killed, kidnapped, or confiscated? How will we face His Majesty? Please, Miss Mooncloud, do us all a favor and be a good catfish.”

Honestly, how the dragon punished his servants was none of my concern, but the crabs’ determination prevented a second jailbreak.

I did, however, manage to cajole the dragon into taking me out for fresh air himself one night. He was exhausted after another tedious committee meeting where he’d served as note-taker, but he wordlessly picked up my cage and trudged to the nearest garden. This one had a wide lake crisscrossed with arched bridges and dotted with gazebos. Lost in thought, he meandered along a wooden gallery until it terminated in the Pine Sweep Pavilion. Finding himself surrounded by furniture all of a sudden, he dropped into a chair and stared blankly at the pines across the lake. Behind us, Nagi waved for the crab attendants to stay in the gallery while she stationed herself inside the doorway, eavesdropping.

After letting the dragon brood for a few minutes, I prodded, So, how’s the conference going?

“Hmmm?” He shook himself, dog-like. “Oh. Meh. So-so.” He sank back into silence, but this time it felt more like a thinking silence, as if he needed to talk to someone but wasn’t quite sure where to start. At last, he said, “We come up every year at the end of Dragon Moon to give our reports on the past year to the Commander.”

It was the longest sentence he’d ever spoken to me. Unfortunately, I knew its contents already, but it was still an improvement over babytalk. I squeezed my face through the bars, broadcasting as much rapt attention as a catfish could.

“We also hold committee meetings – do you know what a committee is?” I bobbed my head, urging him to keep going, but he paused to explain anyway, “It’s where a group of people get together to talk about something important.” (Well, that last part was debatable. In fact, I’d argue that most committees met to discuss unimportant topics.) “They analyze how the weather affected different regions of Serica, how the humans’ crops fared, that sort of thing. At the same time, we project how the upcoming year’s agriculture will go given different weather patterns. At the end, the Dragon Kings of the Four Seas review all the committees’ findings in order to make a formal recommendation on rain allocations. Once the Dragon Commander approves it and stamps it, the Master of Rain will implement it.”

I recalled Nagi mentioning ‘rolling droughts’ and stressing the importance of networking. So how much rain will we get this year? I asked, making sure to use the plural.

The dragon’s head drooped. “They haven’t finalized the recommendation yet, but…it’s not looking good.”

Oh no! My horror was genuine, if not quite for the same reason as his. Your Majesty, you have to tell them we need rain! For – What crops did humans plant near Black Sand Creek anyway? Rice? Wheat? Cabbages? For the farmers. The human farmers. They work so hard!

“I know!” snarled the dragon, making Nagi jump. “I know,” he said more quietly. He laid an apologetic hand on my cage. “You’re really growing up, aren’t you, Mooncloud?”

Nothing about my mental capacity had changed – only his perception of it – but arguing would waste time. Go to the Dragon King of the Eastern Sea! He’s our liege lord. He’ll help us, right?

But even as I spoke, I already knew the Dragon King of the Eastern Sea wouldn’t bother. Not after the dismissive glance he’d flicked over our offering.

My dragon confirmed this in a defeated tone. “I tried already. He said he would do what he could.”

Which meant he wouldn’t. We needed another way to convince him. Although the strategies I’d deployed against Cassius wouldn’t work here, I did remember how his courtiers sometimes got me to do favors for them.

You have to be persistent, I counseled my dragon. Polite – but persistent. Like a cricket chirping in the wall when you’re trying to sleep. Make sure he remembers you. Then he’s more likely to put in a word for you when the time comes.

Hope kindled in my dragon’s eyes. “Polite but persistent,” he mused. “That sounds doable.”

It is! I know it is! And I meant it – he had hangdog earnestness down to an art.

“That should be doable,” he repeated, sounding more confident. “Yes, I can do that.”

Yes! I pumped my fins, cheering him on. Yes, you can! I believe in you! You’ll get rain for us!

Caught up in the moment, he threw out his chest, making his pearl bounce, and declared, “Yes, I will!”