Rali stared in shock at the elderly man whose arms he was stabilizing. He’d heard his twin say on various occasions—usually when Rali talked about sword legends or back when Hake still wanted to find a way home—that there were no such things as wormholes, no matter how often the Celestial Spirits tried to create one. The hyperweb was sure wormholes didn’t exist, so Kest was sure.

  But Sushi had just pulled this honored elder from another world through something and into Xing Sishen. The little purple and white fish had passed out a moment after the job was done, and now lay quietly snoring on the invisible ground by Rali’s bare feet and the old man’s socked ones. That seemed to go a long way toward confirming Rali’s thoughts about wormholes: that the Celestial Spirits hadn’t tried hard enough yet to create one.

  “This is unacceptable,” Uchiko said, breaking the stunned silence. “That little piscine must have broken a myriad laws. Reaper Two will know which ones.”

  “That burrito must not be sitting right,” the old man muttered, looking from Uchiko’s brilliantly white marble face to the endless darkness of space and twinkling stars surrounding them. “Weirdest dream I ever had.”

  “I don’t think this a dream,” Rali said. “At least, not beyond the sense that all of reality could be one big dream someone else is having about us. Are you… Hake’s grandfather? Gramps?”

  The old man’s pale blue human eyes darted over to lock on Rali’s and immediately doubled in size. He snatched his arms out of Rali’s grasp. The move made him wobbled a little, but focusing on Rali’s face seemed to help the old man balance.

  “Grady calls me Gramps,” he said, squinting suspiciously.

  Rali pressed his hands together and bowed. “It’s my pleasure to meet you, honored elder. I’m Iye Skal Akarali. Your grandson is my best friend.” Or was back before miscommunication and prejudices drove us apart, he didn’t add.

  “Grady’s here?” Gramps looked around expectantly.

  Immediately, the loss of perspective in the infinite made the old man wobble. He stuck out a gnarled hand, grasping for something to keep him upright. Rali caught it.

  “Hake’s not here in Xing Sishen, but he is in this universe. Or, he was. Until recently.” Rali frowned, grasping for the best way to explain and coming up empty-handed. “It’s complicated.”

  “No it isn’t,” Uchiko cut in. “Grady Hake was reaped from Terra and placed on Van Diemann, wherefrom he proceeded to wreak havoc with my career and across this universe. His terrible decision to specialize in Cursed Death despite my warnings began a war with the Reapers, and he was sealed in the hell dimension.”

  “Grady’s in hell?”

  “The hell dimension,” Uchiko corrected. “The only way to get there is to be sealed there for eternity by the Grand Reaper. It’s not a place you can reach in any other manner. If you’re as ignorantly optimistic as everyone else I’ve had to deal with on this fool’s errand, that means we cannot ever reach him. He’s gone. Forever. The end. Simple.”

  Shock and confusion painted the old man’s craggy features, quickly morphing into anger as he processed what the Reaper had said.

  “You got the wrong Grady, honey. My buddy boy never hurt a fly. He was a good kid. Smart. On the fast-track to college.”

  “I did not get the wrong Grady! Reapers don’t make mistakes!”

  Gramps’s whiskered jaw hardened. “Sounds like you made a whopper of one if you think my boy deserves to be in hell. I took Grady to Sunday school every week after he come to live with me. I know he’s a good’un.”

  Furious, Uchiko leaned into the old man’s face. “You listen to me, you decrepit sack of mortality! That good boy—”

  “Hold on, everyone.” Rali squeezed between them, raising his hands. “Let’s come back to the discussion of Hake’s character later. There are some complications Uchiko forgot to mention. Right now, I think we should go back to Jim-nang’s ship. We can talk in a more private setting and hopefully get Sushi to explain why she thought Gramps could help us find Hake.”

  The Reaper started to protest again, but Rali interrupted.

  “Besides, Uchiko, your fellow Reapers seem to be annoyed by all our shouting.”

  Her silver eyes darted to the Reapers flying past. Whether it was due to the noisy disturbance or the presence of an unauthorized old man in their city, disapproval was written clearly in furrowed marble brows and downturned mouths.

  “Fine.” Uchiko went silent for a moment. “There. I’ve reserved a shuttle to return us to the cargo transport. Let’s go.”

  Rali bent down and scooped the unconscious Sushi into the pocket of his shorts.

  “What about Jim-nang?” He glanced around, wondering where Xing Sishen’s marketplace was. “Should we find him first?”

  Uchiko sighed. “I’ll request someone escort him to the shuttle to meet us.”

  ***

  Rali stayed close by Gramps for the walk in case the old man lost his balance again. Gramps shuffled, the hiss of his socked feet on the invisible street drawing the occasional tight-lipped glance from Uchiko, but didn’t topple over.

  Now and again, as they walked, flashes of awe briefly lifted the dark clouds from the elder’s face. Like when a star out in the distance suddenly flared, and a wave of neon pink sparks passed over everyone in Xing Sishen, painlessly popping and crackling across their skin. Or when Jim-nang met them at the shuttle, accompanied by faceted Pale Reaper who looked as if she’d been grown in a crystal mine.

  While Uchiko thanked the delivering Reaper, Rali made the introductions.

  “Honored elder, this is Jim-nang.”

  “Call me Carl,” the old man said. He nodded at Rali. “That goes for all a y’all. Can’t go around biting off a mouthful like ‘honored elder’ every time you want my attention.”

  “Carl?” The young master cheerfully slapped Gramps on the back with one of his six hands and took Gramps’s proffered shake in the other two on that side, pumping the old man’s arm up and down cheerfully. “Excellent to meet you. I’m meeting so many new contacts today. Or is it night already?” He checked the time on the HUD on his topmost right wrist. “Universal night! So hard to tell time here. Well, Carl, it’s an honor any time of day to meet a friend of Guru Rali’s. Tell me, who is your gold and precious gems supplier?”

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  “You’re asking the wrong man,” Carl said. “I farmed cows all my life. The only gold I ever saw was corn for feeding up a steer.”

  Jim-nang chuckled. “I had to try. I’ve been on a roll since I first set foot in this city, making contacts and taking orders hands over fists.” The young master shot Rali a wide grin. “It’s all thanks to you, Guru Rali. This quest has been a look into the essence of what it truly means to have Gold Spirit.”

  Rali tried to hide his skepticism. “And you got that from finding one new marketplace?”

  “An entirely untapped marketplace,” the young master said, as if that made all the difference. “I’ll be the only supplier to this side of the galaxy. I expect to advance to Sho any minute now!”

  Like trying to explain to Jim-nang that not all quests ended in rewards of monetary value, Rali doubted he could get the young master to realize that not all Spirit names were inherently attached to their physical counterpart. Instead, he followed Jim-nang and the others onto the just-opened shuttle.

  When they disembarked a few minutes later into the waiting intergalactic transport’s shuttle bay, Jim-nang bustled off, announcing that he must immediately begin setting up shipments and alerting departments.

  Rali, Uchiko, and Hake’s grandfather headed for the cafeteria and common area. Uchiko, either annoyed by the sound of Carl’s shuffling socks or his slower speed, pulled ahead. Rali kept pace with the elder. The old man gazed out the windows at the stars as they walked.

  “You’re taking this all really well,” Rali told him. “Being dragged unexpectedly from your world by a fish.”

  Carl shrugged his bony shoulders. “If this ain’t a dream, then I figure I’m in a padded room somewhere all doped up on goofy juice.” He frowned. “Or maybe a nursing home. They probably don’t take crazy old farts to the loony bin. Either way, might as well go with it.”

  Rali nodded. That was how he dealt with the uncertainty of whether his experiences were reality or illusion.

  Up ahead, Uchiko took a corner sharply and disappeared around the bend.

  Carl’s blue eyes narrowed. “That Chico gal’s got a real attitude problem.”

  “She has a very rigid perspective,” Rali said. “Especially when it comes to Hake. But it isn’t as hopeless as Uchiko makes it sound. It can’t be. I’m sure Sushi had a reason for bringing you here.”

  “You can’t just come after a man’s grandson like that. Calling him bad and saying he’s in hell and what-all.”

  “I think Uchiko’s as angry with herself as she is unwilling to admit any fault in Hake’s death. He saved her when he could have left her caged up and helpless. She may have thought she could square that debt by warning him not to choose Cursed Death as a Ten specialization because it would bring an army of Reapers down on him, but…”

  Seeing the old man’s confusion, Rali trailed off.

  “I forgot. You don’t have Spirit on your world. Hake thought it was magic when he arrived, but everyone has a Spirit. Your Spirit is central to who you are. Mine was Warm Heart Spirit. I could use it to heal my friends or infuse food with restorative properties. Sushi—” He pulled his gaping pocket out a little so Carl could see the sleeping fish. “—hers is Lost Mirror Spirit. She used it to bring you here.”

  Carl grunted. “Sounds like magic.”

  “If my twin Kest were here, she would explain how it’s all very grounded in reality.” Rali shrugged. “But then, her Spirit is Metal. We don’t think alike. I see kishotenketsu as an everyday miracle, but Kest sees it as mundane because it’s part of our anatomy. Our hearts pump, our eyes blink, our Spirit seas contain what we’ve cultivated from our surroundings… As if all three of those things aren’t wonders in themselves.”

  “So you’re all magic, then. It’s inside you.”

  “Is it magic if everything and everyone in the universe has it?”

  “Sure.” Carl shrugged. “Last I heard, it didn’t have to be rare as a high-dollar hotdog to be magic.”

  Rali grinned. “I hope I remember that so I can use it the next time I’m arguing with Kest about Spirit.”

  “Rali?” Carl pronounced the name like he was testing whether he’d heard it right. Rali nodded. “You’re Grady’s friend, you say? Why’s he in hell? Give it to me straight.”

  They took the corner. At the far end of the corridor, the double doors to the cafeteria swung as if Uchiko had just slammed through them.

  “It comes back to Spirit,” Rali said. “Hake has Death Spirit, which is rare here. When everybody found out, they all wanted him to become their own personal weapon. On top of that, every Death cultivator seems to struggle with the rightness and wrongness of killing. When and how it might be justified. A lot of them, at least historically, are known for becoming power-hungry mass murderers.”

  Carl’s eyes widened, and Rali hurried on, not wanting to give him the wrong impression.

  “Hake wasn’t like that. I don’t think he ever wanted to hurt anyone if he didn’t have to. But there was a complication. Hake killed a creature he shouldn’t have been able to kill. A heavenly scale balancer. He did it to protect my twin, myself, and another of our friends, but the act was in such opposition to the laws of nature that Hake started taking devil corruption.”

  The confusion resurfaced on the old man’s features.

  Rali cast around for a quick explanation. “Do you have sword legends where you’re from?”

  “Never heard tell of such a thing, but I’ll make do with what I got. Devil corruption’s bad?” At Rali’s affirmative, Carl waved his hand. “Then keep right on going.”

  “Got it, moving on. Uchiko and I think the devil corruption overrode Hake’s good side to push him into doing some things he wouldn’t have.” Like murdering an entire slice of a planet to take revenge for the girlfriend he thought was dead. “One of those things might have been his decision to specialize his Spirit in Cursed Death instead of Blessed Death.

  “The last Death cultivator who did that used her Cursed Death Spirit to set herself up as a goddess. This self-made goddess had to be sealed in the hell dimension to stop her reign of terror. To keep that from happening again, when they found out Hake had chosen to become a Cursed Death cultivator, the Reapers sealed him in the hell dimension too. Uchiko and I came to Xing Sishen to stop that from happening—we thought we could stop the devil corruption and return Hake to normal before it was too late—but by the time we got here, Hake was already in hell.”

  They reached the cafeteria doors, and Carl slowed to a stop. He crossed his arms over his barrel gut, looking through the porthole at the couches loosely arranged around tables on this end of the common area.

  At one table, a few off-duty crew members played a boardgame that Rali had started learning on the journey from the Shinotochi system. The point was to use your script tiles to change the meaning of the sentences your opponents had constructed with their tiles.

  Beyond that, he saw Uchiko headed for the food station. The cooking crew kept their compartment meticulously clean, but against the Reaper’s brilliantly white form, everything else looked slightly grungy.

  “Six weeks ago, I buried my grandson,” Carl said in a low voice. “A damn tweaker killed him. He shoulda been safe. Wasn’t like Grady was out galivanting around, looking for trouble. We were at home. We don’t even live in some big city. Stabbed him right in front of me. He died in my arms ’fore the cops or the ambulance ever got close. He died protecting me from that guy. Grady was just a kid, but he was always watching out for me. Like it was his job. And when he was little, he used to do it for his mama, too. Always taking care of her when his daddy wasn’t around. That ain’t the way it shoulda been. I’m his grandpa, for crying out loud. I shoulda protected him. Stabbed in my own damn kitchen, with me standing right there.” Carl shook his head. “I never felt so helpless in my whole sorry life.”

  Rali knew what he meant. He’d felt it when the Bailiff shot Kest through the heart. He’d been so desperate and scared that he’d pressed his hand to the bullet hole, trying to heal it with Spirit he didn’t have anymore. It wasn’t that he’d forgotten his Spirit sea was broken, but that part of him was convinced he could overcome that lack to save his other half. But it hadn’t happened. He’d been totally and completely useless in the one moment his twin had truly needed him.

  “Now you’re telling me Grady’s alive.” Carl frowned at the round circle of glass. “Alive, and I can’t get to him. It’s all outta my hands again. Well, I ain’t having it. Not this time. Not if this is real. And damn sure not if this is my dream or delusion or what-all.”

  As the old man spoke, Spirit flowed and congregated around him. With his own Spirit sea broken, Rali couldn’t look at it using Ki-sight, but he felt it gathering in and around Carl. The old man had found the vein without even trying. Maybe this was where Hake got his skill for advancing so quickly.

  Carl locked eyes with Rali. “So you tell me. What’s next, and how fast can we get a-shucking and a-moving on it?”