Back in the safety of Flicker’s office, I exclaimed, Whew! That was nerve-wracking!

“I wholeheartedly concur,” he replied, dropping into his chair with a loud thump.

That went on record as the third time we’d ever agreed on anything, but I was too rattled to taunt him. I was already second-guessing my decision to swear a formal oath with Aurelia. That she’d hold up her end of the deal to the absolute best of her ability, I had no doubt. But the only actual guarantee she’d given was that she’d try to prevent me from receiving negative karma for incidental harm done to other humans while protecting her daughter, and to wring some positive karma out of the Accountants. Which was roughly the same as if I weren’t protecting her daughter and were staying far away from all humans instead. I didn’t even know how much weight her words carried with the Accountants.

I don’t know why I promised to do it, I grumbled.

“I’m surprised you did too,” agreed Flicker, which did not improve my mood. “It was almost altruistic of you.”

Ugh. It really was, wasn’t it?

“Minus the part where you bargained for positive karma, of course.”

Which just meant I should have haggled harder. But there’d been something so earnest and hopeful about Aurelia – and what was a disembodied soul supposed to do when a goddess issued a direct order?

Ugh. Ugh ugh ugh. Blech.

“If it’s any consolation, the Star of Reflected Brightness enjoys the esteem of all her colleagues.”

That did comfort me somewhat. Including the Accountants?

Flicker hesitated. “Yes….”

Aaaand? I prompted. Keep going.

“Yes, although I wouldn’t necessarily count on their esteem when it comes to awarding karma,” he finished reluctantly.

Of course. What else should I have expected? Groaning, I sagged all the way into a puddle on his desk. I’m cursed, aren’t I? This is karma. This is fate. This is Heaven punishing me for wrecking Aurelia’s life while we were both alive.

Flicker didn’t disagree. Instead, he let me mope while he searched his bookcase, rifling through the documents and muttering to himself, “Where is it…. Where is it…. Did I misfile it? How did I misfile something? I never misfile things…oh, here it is!”

He returned triumphantly with a file that had “human” written on the front, opened it, and flipped to the back. Curious now, I popped into a ball and rolled forward to read along with him, but he slammed the cover shut.

“Piri! Don’t look at other souls’ records! We have privacy rules around here!”

Somehow, I doubted they’d been worded to apply to my specific case. Aww, but Fliiiiiicker, you can’t put a document in front of me and expect me not to read it!

“Actually, I can,” he said drily. “At least, I would prefer to believe that you didn’t read half the documents you approved and stamped as Prime Minister.”

Since he preferred to believe that, I didn’t correct him. Fiiiiiine. What does it say? What are you looking for?

Angling the file so I couldn’t see its contents, he skimmed it. “I was looking for…hmmm – ” he leafed through a couple pages – “ah, here we go. Current name: Jek Taila. Current place of residence: Honeysuckle Croft, off Persimmon Tree Road in the Claymouth Barony in the Kingdom of East Serica.”

Wow, was Flicker actually helping me without being pestered or blackmailed into it? He must really want to impress Aurelia.

How far is Honeysuckle Croft from Black Sand Creek?

He gave me a rather cross look but rose again, bent in half, and pulled out a giant scroll from the bottom shelf of his bookcase. When he untied the ribbon and started to unfurl it, I saw squiggly black lines and miniscule writing and –

A map! You’ve had a map of Serica all along? You never told me!

“I’m not sure why I would have.”

Fully unrolled, the map ran all the way across his desk and dangled off the sides. He weighted down one side with his inkstone, and I helpfully plopped down on the other side.

Eek!

If he hadn’t been holding it, the paper would have sprung back and rolled me up tight.

Flicker sighed. “Go on, have a look.”

Fascinated, I hovered over the map, tracing the lines of the coast all the way around Serica. In some places, it extended further out than I remembered, while in others, it had receded. Many of the forests had shrunk too, transforming into farmland dotted with villages. As for the regions where demons held sway, the sweep of the Jade Mountains along the northern coast, the great swathe of the Snowy Mountains dividing north from south, and the entire western region were still labeled “Wilds.” They covered more land than they had during Cassius’ reign, though. Huh. I guess I shouldn’t find that surprising.

Is this map up-to-date?

“Yes,” Flicker answered absently. He pointed at the kingdom in the northeast. “This is East Serica.” Leaning in so close that his nose practically bumped the paper, he squinted at the miniscule writing. “Here’s Black Sand Creek and the Claymouth Barony.” With his fingertip, he traced a blue wriggle from the Eastern Sea up to a tiny plot of land. “Within the Barony…here’s Persimmon Tree Road, and if you move west from it, here’s Honeysuckle Croft. So, it looks like it’s about – ” he consulted the scale bar at the bottom of the map, then used his fingers to measure the distance – “half a mile from the closest point of Black Sand Creek.”

He started to roll the map back up, but I bounced urgently. Wait, wait, I’m not done yet.

Greedily, I absorbed the new Serican geography. Thick red lines marked country borders: two kingdoms north of the Snowy Mountains, three to the south. Even as I watched, the red line between East and North Serica (which was hemmed in by the Wilds on two sides and curved awkwardly around East Serica) suddenly bulged to the right.

Whoa! It moved!

“Of course it moved. The border there is particularly unsettled.”

Why? What’s going on? Are the two kingdoms at war?

“Piri,” Flicker said with exaggerated patience, “the whole of Serica has been at war for hundreds of years. Peace is the exception rather than the norm.”

Oh. Well, the border was pretty far away from the Claymouth Barony, so I shouldn’t have to worry about warfare wiping out the Jek family. At most the sons might get conscripted, but that wasn’t my problem. I’d only sworn to protect Taila, after all.

“All right. We’ve wasted enough time. I need to get you reincarnated.” Flicker started rolling up the map with such determination that he’d have caught me in it if I hadn’t lifted off.

Okaaaaay, fiiiiiiine.

This time, at least, I had thoughts of revised geography to distract me from the pain.

Oracle-shell turtles, as it turned out, had an even longer incubation period than softshell turtles. All in all, I was inside my egg for three months this time! By the time I hatched, absorbed my yolk sac, and toddled down to Black Sand Creek, it was the Moon of Hungry Ghosts. I knew because the humans obligingly came to the river that evening to set afloat their votive lamps. In the darkness, the small yellow flames illuminated their solemn faces, and the breeze carried their whispered wishes that the lamps would light the way for some dead loved one or other.

Dodging lamps and peering up at the faces, I swam carefully along the bank, searching for a four-year-old girl and trying to remember what Master and Mistress Jek looked like. A shame I hadn’t paid any attention to them the one time I might have connected them to Maila. All peasants looked the same anyway – stocky figures, bent shoulders, rough hands, filthy nails. And they all had the same, thick, horrible accent. I was on the verge of giving up, waiting until the morning, and then striking out over land to search for Persimmon Tree Road and Honeysuckle Croft when I got lucky.

“Maila…,” breathed a round-faced woman with coarse black hair and reddened eyes who knelt by the water. “Oh, Maila….”

Changing direction, I swam into a stand of rushes to spy.

The woman was holding a lotus-shaped lamp in her dry, cracked palms. “Maila, if your soul still tosses – beneath these cold waves – may this light guide you safely…to reincarnation. May your next life – be better than the last.” She spoke with an odd rhythm, as if she were reciting something unfamiliar. Lowering the lamp to the surface of the water, she gave it a gentle push, and it drifted softly downstream along with the others.

With a wet sniffle, she heaved herself to her feet and stumbled away from the river. I clambered onto the bank and struggled after her. I hadn’t developed much muscle yet, and turtles weren’t exactly the speediest of creatures at the best of times, especially not on land, but she seemed to be in no hurry to get home. I managed to follow her all the way back to a cottage that did, indeed, have a tangle of honeysuckle growing up one wall. In front of the lone door, Mistress Jek paused, sniffled one more time, then straightened her shoulders and walked inside. I pumped my legs as fast as I could but didn’t reach the door before it slammed shut.

Curses. I’d wanted to explore the inside of the cottage, count the inhabitants, and check whether one of them looked like a four-year-old girl. Ah, well, that was all right: I’d just wait outside until morning. Farmers got up at the crack of dawn, right? Something about seeing to the farm animals and starting, uh, other sorts of farm chores? Poets had always romanticized that industrious, impoverished lifestyle, although they hadn’t gone into detail about what it entailed.

Well, whatever. It was just one night. Settling down in a patch of weeds, I tucked my legs into my shell, pulled in my head, and drifted off to sleep.

Noooooooo! Fliiiiiicker! Why am I back here? How did I die again? I don’t remember dying! Did I get cooked? Did I get eaten? Did I get stepped on by a horse? An ox? Crushed by a wagon wheel?

One second, I was closing my eyes and letting the cool summer breeze lull me to sleep, content in the knowledge that I’d found Taila and could get started on protecting her. The next, I was waking up inside an all-too-familiar archival box.

What happeeeeeeened?

Flicker was sighing and shaking his head. “Piri. Piri Piri Piri. You were a turtle, remember?”

Yes? And?

“And – turtles are predominantly aquatic creatures. They need water. You stayed out of the water for too long and died from dehydration. Didn’t you notice?”

Uuuuuuuh. I decided not to tell him that I’d fallen asleep without even realizing that my body was drying out. Per my oath to the Star of Reflected Brightness, I was too engrossed in considering all the possible ways in which Jek Taila could get injured or killed and coming up with plans to keep her alive.

Flicker looked as if he didn’t entirely believe me, but he let it pass. “Well, on the bright side, you did succeed in finding her home.”

Hmph.

So I had, for all the good it had done me. Although…the time frame that Aurelia and I had settled on was the duration of my lifetime or Taila’s residency near Black Sand Creek, whichever was shorter. Technically, by dying, I’d already fulfilled my half of the oath. Did I want to call in her half now? She wouldn’t be happy, but she would honor it.

I hesitated. There was a real chance I could earn positive karma from protecting a human girl. Plus I’d win a goddess’ favor, which might prove crucial if, no, when Cassius messed with my file again. I needed more information before I could decide.

Apparently Honeysuckle Croft is too far from the river for me to be able to watch Taila effectively. Is there a pond or creek or some other body of water close by?

“I’ll check.”

This time, Flicker got out both the map and a fat, dictionary-like book whose cover proclaimed Catalogus Draconis Sericae. He flipped to the back, grumbling about the organizational system. Apparently the entries were ordered by the draconic hierarchy, with geographical locations listed under the dragon king who managed their weather. There was no easy way to search in the opposite direction, going from a specific location to its draconic overseer.

At length, after much flipping back and forth, Flicker said, “I believe Caltrop Pond is the closest body of water to Honeysuckle Croft. Here.” He pointed at a blue speck, so tiny that I’d assumed it was an ink spatter. “It’s too small to be labeled on the map, though.”

Caltrop Pond, Caltrop Pond. Why did that name sound so familiar?

Oh right – I’d seen the Dragon King of Caltrop Pond at the dragon conference! He’d been so tiny that even the star sprites had thought he was adorable. Well, hopefully he wouldn’t mind sharing his pond with a turtle. (And if he did, I could bite him. Turtles had powerful jaws.) All right. Good enough. I’d give this protection racket another shot.

Okay, thanks!

Flicker jerked, looking so shocked that I pulsed in surprise too. What did I say wrong this time?

But all he said was, “You’re welcome.” And then, “Well, shall we?”

Yep!

And off I went to my second life as an oracle-shell-turtle bodyguard.