The grey stone columns of the Bureau of Human Lives towered over Flicker and me. Peeking out of his sleeve, I glimpsed openwork carvings of bulbul birds frolicking among plum blossoms gone dark with age. Above them, the gold, red, and teal paint was dull and flaking off the carved wooden beams. Was this shabbiness meant to evoke the humble beginnings of humankind, or had the Bureau simply run out of money to buy soap and paint?

Compared to the gaudily resplendent Bureau of Reincarnation, there was a starkness to the Bureau of Human Lives. Aesthetic choice or not, it had to feel like a comedown for the Goddess of Life.

Flicker lowered his arms, cutting off my view, to gather up his robes so he could step over the foot-high threshold. “Before we see the Goddess of Life, you should know what she’s been doing on Earth.”

You mean besides plaguing the humans with a literal plague?

Oh sure, the gods could afflict humans with all manner of suffering and face no consequences. Me, on the other hand – spread a divinely-ordained disease once and get a barge-load of negative karma for it. What was this system anyway?

But when I pointed that out, quite reasonably in my opinion, Flicker replied, “She’s the Director of Human Lives. It is her right and duty to decide what happens to them.”

But how is that fair? Why does she get to slaughter them in droves when I’m not even allowed to nip a single toddler?

During one of my most recent lives, I’d bitten a small boy who was swinging me by the tail. If his older sister hadn’t rescued me, tamed me, and derived much comfort from my presence before she died from a fever (which wasn’t my fault! Not this time!), I would have dropped into Green Tier.

“It isn’t fair.” Flicker’s whisper was barely audible. “But the Accountants are doing their best….” The rest was drowned out by a rustle of cotton.

I didn’t catch the last part. The Accountants are doing their best to what?

“To help.”

To help…what? Or whom? All those plague rat souls, you mean? I couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of my voice. As if the Accountants with their hard, cold abacuses and their hard, cold mathematical models knew the meaning of “help”!

“I don’t know about all the souls who are reincarnating as plague rats, but….” Flicker hesitated, so I bumped his arm to encourage him to continue. “But…haven’t you wondered why you still haven’t dropped a Tier? Even after all these lives?”

Now that he mentioned it, some of the deeds for which I’d earned positive karma did seem a little nebulous. Bringing comfort to a dying girl? How did you even quantify that?

Does that mean they’re on my side? I could use a very heavy finger on the scale.

“They’re not on anyone’s side. They are fair.”

Are they now? I thought I did an admirable job keeping the sarcasm out of my tone, but Flicker started to bristle, so I threw out a different question: Do they have their own Bureau?

I could work with a Bureau of Creative Accounting. I had many, many ideas for creative accounting that I would be happy to impart to it, for a little extra consideration, naturally.

“They do not have their own Bureau.” Flicker dragged out the words, as if ashamed on the Accountants’ behalf. “They applied to form one but were denied. Instead, they’re individually assigned to different Bureaus.”

Aha. A group of disgruntled star sprites who would be a political force in Heaven, if they weren’t dispersed throughout the bureaucracy. I could work with that too, if only I knew which Accountants to reach out to. The extra positive karma that Aurelia had given me for protecting Taila and making Black Sand Creek safe for the girl – which Accountant had approved that?

“Seriously, Piri? We’re about to meet with the Goddess of Life herself, and you’re thinking about how to subvert the Accountants?” Flicker demanded. “How about surviving this meeting first and then going back to your plotting?”

Technically, I’m already dead. There is no “surviving” that I need to do. And what could she do to you anyway?

A shudder rattled his body. “I don’t want to know. You don’t want to know. Now come on! Stop getting distracted! Figure out what you’re going to say to her!”

Okay, okay, fine, fine.

Before I could get to it, however, a new voice spoke. “Ah, Clerk Flicker, welcome to the Bureau of Human Lives. Please, come this way.”

Flicker bowed so low that I nearly fell out of his sleeve. “Head Clerk Shimmer, thank you very much for arranging this meeting.”

“Of course. I should warn you that I may have done you no favors, though. Her Heavenly Ladyship has been in a foul mood of late.”

Still fuming over how she should have stayed at the Bureau of Reincarnation so she could have reaped her share of the windfall of offerings that I’d devised?

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“Did something happen…?” Flicker probed delicately.

I couldn’t see the head clerk’s expression, but his voice was a little too casual as he answered, “Her latest…attempt backfired.”

Flicker’s posture sagged with relief before he straightened his spine once more. “Ah. I see.”

Attempt to do what? I wanted to ask, but didn’t dare with the head clerk around.

“Indeed. It was a most…unfortunate backfire, as it put the mage and the spirits on guard. Did you hear that they separated the five-tailed fox from her wolf allies?”

Five-tailed fox? Wolf allies? There couldn’t be that many five-tailed foxes with wolf allies who also associated with a mage and other spirits in Serica. Sphaera! What had that wretched fox kit done now?

“They did? Where did they send the five-tailed fox and the wolves? I assume, since you said the attempt ‘backfired,’ that the Matriarch still lives?”

Lodia! The Goddess of Life had tried to assassinate Lodia again! Without noticing it, I started to hum with rage. Flicker clapped a hand over his sleeve to silence me.

Shimmer replied, “Yes, the girl lives. The mage and spirits are keeping the fox with them so they can supervise her. They sent the wolves to conquer the rest of West Serica, after which they have been instructed to move into North Serica.”

“North Serica, hmm?” Flicker mused, and I could tell he was thinking the same thing as me: I was getting reincarnated over and over as rats in North Serica. Of course, the kingdom was large enough that it was unlikely Steelfang, One Ear, and the others would run into me. And even if they did, I wouldn’t have my memories, so I wouldn’t recognize them, and to them, I’d be any other ordinary rat.

Did wolves eat rats?

No, I was not going to fret about getting eaten by one of my own allies. As Flicker had warned, now was not the time for that. I needed to focus on handling the Goddess of Life. I wiggled as far forward in Flicker’s sleeve as I could and peeked out around his wrist. Shimmer was leading us down an arcade that ran around a courtyard. The potted pines were scraggly. Weeds sprouted between the flagstones. The birds carved on the stone columns were chipped and missing wingtips or beaks. The very light that shone into the courtyard felt weak and sick. How had a Bureau of Heaven fallen into such disrepair?

We passed a doorway with a wooden grill carved with lions in different poses. The carvings themselves were intricate, but the wood was weathered and cracked. Beyond the grill, in a dark room, was a display of thick, tan clay jars that had obviously been raised by hand, not shaped on a potter’s wheel.

“The first human pottery,” Shimmer declared with pride. “Look at the fine pattern on the body.”

I looked. The first human potter had pressed a rope into the clay to texture it before firing it. Honestly, I thought Taila could probably do a better job, and Lodia certainly could without any special training.

Flicker made the appropriately impressed noises, which apparently pleased Shimmer so much that he started playing tour guide as we passed more displays of human pottery through the ages. It advanced from the crude tan jars to black vessels etched with boars, and improved significantly once humans invented paint and started painting geometric patterns onto their basins. There was another jump once they discovered porcelain and glazes. Their techniques improved until we reached the dinnerware of the Imperial Court. I even recognized a plate that Cassius’ father had been particularly fond of.

And then the displays ended.

The showrooms continued, but their stands were empty. I nudged Flicker’s forearm, hoping he’d guess what I wanted to know.

He cleared his throat. “Ah, I assume you are still in the process of acquiring pieces of note, for the post-Imperial period?”

Shimmer didn’t answer for many footsteps. Then he replied in a clipped tone, “There has been nothing of note produced in the post-Imperial period.”

Indignation surged in me. Nothing of note produced post-Empire? Had he seen Lodia’s embroidery? The carvings on my Temple to the Kitchen God in Goldhill? They were as fine as any art created during Cassius’ reign!

Oh. Hmm. But they weren’t ceramic art, were they?

Fine, I told Shimmer silently. I’ll just have to go commission a pair of vases next time I’m in Goldhill, and then you’ll see what these post-Imperial humans are capable of! You’ll be fighting with the other Bureaus to add them to your little gallery here!

Flicker’s hand clamped down on me again. I stopped buzzing.

At last Shimmer’s footsteps slowed, and I heard three tentative taps of fingertips on wood. Hinges squeaked. “The clerk from the Bureau of Reincarnation has arrived for an audience with you, Heavenly Ladyship,” Shimmer murmured.

Flicker again lowered his arms to raise his robes so he could step over a high threshold, and I again made sure I didn’t slip out of his sleeve. Then I had to dodge to a side so I wouldn’t get squished under his forearm when he dropped to his knees and prostrated himself.

Shimmer’s footsteps moved towards the door. They slowed as he passed us, and he whispered, “Good luck.” The hinges squeaked again, and the door thudded shut. For a good two minutes, there was no sound in the room but the rhythmic squelch and thump of a seal stamping documents.

At last, the Goddess of Life spoke. “Clerk. You may raise your head.” Her voice was as light and musical as I remembered, with a coldness underneath, like lotus petals heaped over a dagger.

Flicker sat but did not speak.

“Yes, yes, you may speak as well. Otherwise that would defeat the purpose of this meeting, would it not?”

“Your Heavenly Ladyship is too kind.” Flicker bowed once in thanks. “I am honored beyond words that you would take the time to grant me an audience.”

A tinkling laugh swirled around us like an ice storm. “But of course. The little star would pout and mope so if I didn’t at least hear out her…well.”

The “little star”? Was that what she called Aurelia? And Flicker was “her…well,” as if simply associating with him was a sordid scandal?

They’re both worth a hundred of you! I wanted to shout. Ten thousand! A number so large that not even the Accountants can tally it on their abacuses!

Flicker, however, didn’t give any sign that her contempt had touched him. Maybe he’d become inured to it during her tenure as Assistant Director of Reincarnation. Maybe that was how all the gods, except for Aurelia, treated him.

“Thank you, Heavenly Ladyship. We were blessed to have you as our Assistant Director at our Bureau. As a token of thanks for your kind treatment, I was hoping to render you some small service at your new Bureau.”

“Oh? And what small service can you render me?”

From her casual disbelief, I’d have bet anything that she expected him to offer to spy on the Bureau of Reincarnation for her. She was preparing to be unimpressed by whatever trivial intelligence a mere second-class clerk could glean.

So she was completely unprepared when Flicker lifted his arm and shook open his sleeve. Ha. I knew exactly what he wanted me to do – which was also what I wanted to do.

I zoomed out of the folds of fabric and executed a dramatic twirl and dip above his head. Heavenly Ladyship, how would you like to transform this Bureau into something that can rival even the palace of the Jade Emperor in splendor?