For the first time since I’d met her – and apparently since the farmhand, Floridiana, and even the Jeks had known her – Bobo looked like the venomous viper she was.

Balancing on her tail, she raised herself to eye level with the ex-soldier. “Why did you run away during the battle?”

Maca actually backed up. “I didn’t run away! I didn’t!” she insisted, but her defensiveness confirmed that she had. “I was there all the way until the end! I saw that turtle get eaten. I was on the ice when it happened!”

Bobo swayed from side to side in a hypnotic “no.” “I don’t mean the end of the battle. I mean the beginning. You abandoned the Emisssary in the river and ssswam away. Why did you ssswim away?”

“Oh, that – I – it was the middle of a battle! I had to make an on-the-spot decision! That turtle already got Lord Silurus out of his hole. We didn’t need her anymore!”

A gasp from all the humans present. Jettisoning the Emissary from Heaven like last night’s garbage? O, the sacrilege!

I, on the other hand, wasn’t the least bit surprised. Maca was a demon, after all. What else would you expect from a demon?

“You thought we didn’t need the Emissary from Heaven anymore, so it was okay to feed her to Lord Silurus?” Mistress Jek demanded.

A demon shouldn’t have bothered justifying herself, but Maca fumbled for words anyway. “No – no? Look, she was just a turtle! It wasn’t like she could fight or anything! And – and – she was sent by Heaven! Heaven wouldn’t have let her die!”

(How very naïve if that were how she thought Heaven operated. I could almost forgive her for abandoning me – if it hadn’t gotten Stripey killed.)

In the face of all the incredulous stares, she hung her head.

“You got Ssstripey killed.” Bobo’s voice was raw. “You abandoned her, so he had to go to sssave her, and Lord Sssilurus ate him. You got Ssstripey killed.”

“Stripey?” The name didn’t ring any bells for Maca, and for a moment, I thought Bobo was going to strike. “Oh, you mean the duck demon bandit?”

“Yesss. Ssstripey. The whissstling duck. He was my bessst friend.”

“He saved us from starving to death,” Mistress Jek added.

“He was also a member of the taskforce,” Floridiana put in.

Maca looked blank at that. She must have ranked so low that she hadn’t known what her leadership was up to. But while I could pardon her for not understanding what Stripey had meant to the people of Claymouth, I could not forgive her for getting him killed.

“Hold on.” The farmhand, who’d been watching silently up until now, finally realized that this job interview wasn’t going well at all and that maybe he should step in. “That’s not fair. Maca didn’t kill him on purpose. In fact, she didn’t kill him at all!”

“But ssshe ran away, didn’t ssshe? Ssshe abandoned her duties and ran away. What kind of sssoldier runs away at the firssst sssign of danger?” In a flash, Bobo was in his face, making him flinch too.

“See here! Her duty was to get the catfish out of his hole! Which she did! The duck demons were there to get the turtle out!”

The ducks were there to get me out? What was he talking about – oh. That was kind of true. That had been why Stripey and the ducks were in the river in the first place. But they were supposed to be backup, there to extract me only if everything went not only sideways but also backwards and upside down. Which, I supposed, it had, from Maca’s perspective, after Lord Silurus ate two of her comrades and started chasing us up the river.

I hated her anyway.

“Is that true?” Bobo swiveled to look at me for confirmation, remembered that we were keeping my identity secret from strangers, and kept revolving until she was facing Maca once more.

“Yes,” mumbled the rock macaque, digging her toes into the rushes on the floor.

“Oh. Oh. I sssee. I sssee.” After a long moment, Bobo’s spine relaxed back into its natural curves.

Mistress Jek, on the other hand, wasn’t nearly so understanding, at least not where her children were concerned. “Maca. Does that mean you’ll cut and run at the first sign of danger if someone or something threatens my children?”

“No! No! Not if my whole job is to protect them!”

Two pairs of brown eyes stared into each other, one pair fierce and probing, the other desperate. Maca wasn’t the most articulate person around, but I found her clumsy plea more convincing than an eloquent speech.

Breaking their gaze first, Maca noticed the rushes that she’d disarranged. She started using one foot to pat them back in place. “You can trust me, Mistress Jek, Master Jek, Mage Floridiana, Bobo. I – I – I want this job not just because I need work. I gotta – I gotta earn good karma.”

My blood ran cold. If anyone in Heaven happened to be watching….

“Good karma?” Floridiana pounced on that. “Explain.”

“I – I – it was something the Emissary said. To Lord Silurus. In the river, and then again on the ice. She said – ” Maca scrunched up her face in the most unattractive manner, struggling to reproduce my wording. “She said, someone gave him the chance…to learn how to earn good karma. But he ate them. And now he was out of time to earn good karma. So he was going to reincarnate as a tapeworm or something…something that…‘lives on humans, always doing them harm.’ And never gets a chance to earn good karma.”

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The farmhand took up the story. “So afterwards, some of us sat down and talked about it, and we thought it meant that we could earn good karma by doing good for humans.”

Silence. Just as a precaution, I fluttered down to the floor and started burrowing into the rushes.

The farmhand looked from frozen face to frozen face. “Was that wrong? Did we get it wrong?”

“No…. That makes so much sense….” Wonder crept into the mage’s voice. “Why did I never think of that? Of course it makes so much sense.” The others hadn’t grasped the implications as fast, so Floridiana switched into teaching mode. “From where do the gods and goddesses derive their strength? From the offerings dedicated to them. Who dedicates most of these offerings? Humans. So of course. Of course they would reward that! It makes so much sense!”

“So…if we made more offerings to Heaven…we would earn good karma too?” The farmhand laboriously worked through the logic.

“Probably.” Floridiana nodded, then nodded a couple more times. “Yes, almost certainly. Making offerings to Heaven, while not harming the humans who make offerings to Heaven. Yes, yes, that’s it. That’s the trick.”

“Oh…oh! So I can – ” Maca’s face lit up, only to fall again. “Oh, but I don’t have money to spend on offerings…which is why I need this job. Please, Master Jek, Mistress Jek, I will guard your children! I will guard them with my life! Please give me a chance!”

The three human adults exchanged long looks.

Then Floridiana said, “I think we can trust her desire to earn good karma to balance all of the evil she’s done,” and Master and Mistress Jek agreed.

As Maca flung herself to the floor and genuflected in gratitude, I wiggled back out of the rushes. It didn’t look like Heaven was sending anyone to execute us. The gods probably hadn’t been paying attention at all.

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Just to be on the safe side, I told Bobo to impress upon the rock macaques not to spread this knowledge of how the karma system worked. Heaven would be enraged, I warned.

“But why?” she asked, puzzled. “If everybody knows, doesssn’t that mean everybody’s going to ssstart making offerings? Isssn’t that good for them?”

To that, I could only shrug. Flicker had been very clear that the Accountants did not want people, even people within the Heavenly bureaucracy itself, to know how they computed karma. And I certainly wasn’t going to oppose them!

I’ll see what I can find out, but for now, make sure they keep it a secret.

So Bobo had a talk with Maca and the farmhand, both of whom had developed a healthy respect for her and her fangs, after which she reported, “They sssaid they weren’t planning to tell anybody anyway. They don’t want anybody getting a leg up on them.”

That logic I certainly understood.

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With the matter of childcare settled, Bobo and I were free to head south at last – or so I thought. The night before we planned to leave, familiar footsteps tapped up the path to the bamboo stand, and who should peer between the stalks but Floridiana?

“Good evening, Bobo, Rosie. Do you have a moment?”

Bobo moved to the edge of the stand, flowing from bamboo to bamboo like a ribbon. “Of courssse! Come in! Oh, maybe there isssn’t enough ssspace for you inssside. We can talk here!”

She coiled around a stalk on the outermost ring of bamboo, at about Floridiana’s head height. I stayed where I was, since I was comfortable and the stand wasn’t so big that I had to shout to be heard.

“Ssso, what can I do for you?”

“Oh, I was thinking – since it’s summertime and the farmers’ children should be helping out in the fields anyway, it might not be such a bad time to give them a break. Let them have a little vacation, clear their minds, help out on their farms, come back in – let’s say, maybe the fall? – feeling refreshed and eager to learn once more.”

Floridiana had clearly rehearsed this argument before coming here, but she still stumbled over her words. Probably because even she realized how self-serving they were.

“I heard from Vanny – Mistress Jek – that the two of you are planning to leave for South Serica tomorrow?”

“Uh huh! We’re all ssset!”

“Ah, yes. Yes, I did hear that. But I was wondering – if you might consider delaying your departure? Just by a couple days?”

A couple days? I asked from the depths of the bamboo stand. Why?

Floridiana’s shoulders tensed, and she seemed to steel herself. “Because I would very much like to accompany you.”

Bobo’s jaw dropped. A long ways, given that she was a snake.

You want to come with us?

Floridiana’s desire didn’t surprise me at all. What did surprise – no, disappoint – me was that she was willing to abandon her teaching duties after all. I’d thought she had come to value her obligation to her students and their parents and to Baron Claymouth, for that matter, over her own passion for thrill-seeking.

The mage clenched her hand around her seal, not in a threatening way, just as if she needed the comfort of a familiar physical sensation. “Yes. I want to go with you. I believe the children and their parents would all benefit from a recess in classes. A…summer vacation, we could call it, similar to the break everyone gets for the New Year. I would improve as a teacher, too, if I could speak to other educators and gain exposure to different pedagogical methods. And also…the geography test taught me that not all the information in A Mage’s Guide to Serica is up to date. It would be best if I supplemented it with my own observations.”

Ha. That was a clever argument – travel as a way to improve the quality of education in the barony. I stayed quiet, though, curious about the rest of the arguments she must have concocted.

“Having me along would benefit the two of you as well. I do have some savings I can draw on for travel expenses, and if we take my horse and wagon, we’ll make better time than walking. Flying. Slithering. You get my meaning.”

Well, as a spirit, Bobo could move faster than a normal animal, so I’d been planning to ride on her, but if we had a wagon, then she could take breaks. Except normal horses traveled so much more slowly….

How fast can your horse go? If it takes us months just to reach Lychee Grove, you’re definitely not going to be back by the end of summer.

I half-expected her to bristle and act defensive, but Floridiana had a ready answer. “Master Gravitas made improvements to the wagon design, to make it lighter and easier to pull. And as for my horse…my horse awakened recently. It came as quite a shock, I assure you.”

What? I nearly fell off the bamboo stalk and had to flap my wings to stay upright. Your horse awakened? And you weren’t expecting it? Didn’t you know how old it was?

“Oh yeah! Sssorry, Rosssie, I forgot to tell you!” Bobo whipped the top part of her body around to grin at me. “The barony has a new baby ssspirit!”

Floridiana answered, a little stiffly, “When I purchased my horse, I was informed only that he was old, not that he was that old. I imagine that he changed hands many times over the years, and that the sales records did not keep careful track of his age. Proximity to the Jade Mountain Wilds might also have speeded his awakening.”

Okay, that all made sense. I thought for a moment. No way could a human mage of mediocre ability and a newly-awakened horse spirit match Bobo’s top speed, but a wagon to rest in and two extra pairs of eyes to watch for predators and bandits might prove useful.

And, as Floridiana had confessed, her textbook was woefully out of date.

Okay. Fine. You can come along.