In a flash, all of my annoyance at Taila’s tardiness vanished. A proposal? What sort of proposal?

With Bobo beaming at his side, Stripey explained, “Unlike most people, we do have a stash of savings at the moment.” (Translation: The duck demons had filled their coffers by robbing New Year’s travelers, and unlike everyone else, they didn’t have to spend it on rent, taxes, tolls, fees, or fines. Apart from the baron and the wealthiest townsfolk, they were the only people in the barony with spare cash right after Settling Day.) “We are willing to lend the Jeks the rent they owe in exchange for aid at a later date.”

Owing aid to a band of bandits didn’t sound like a healthy state. What sort of aid are we talking – I started to ask, but that was when Taila charged out of the cottage.

Half dressed.

Mistress Jek was really failing at the whole parenting thing this morning.

“Jek Taila!” she roared. “Get back here this instant! You’re going to freeze to death!”

“It’s a duck!” squealed Taila. “Hi, Mr. Duck!”

Stripey wisely waddled backwards before she could fling her arms around his neck. From a safe distance (i.e. greater than her arms’ length), he replied, “Hello, Miss Jek.”

She was so excited about the talking duck that she forgot all the etiquette I’d drilled into her. She squatted with her bare legs showing the same way she had the day she met me. Then she tipped her head ninety degrees to the side to examine his left side, and a hundred eighty degrees the other way to study his right side.

When she was older, maybe I should take her to the nearest city and apprentice her to a natural philosopher. She did seem well-suited for the study of animals. If she ever learned that they came in more than one gender, that was.

“Taila! Taila! Get back here right this – ” The harried mother dashed out the door, flapping a padded jacket. She stopped short when she saw Stripey. “Taaaaaila? What did we say about treating guests with respeeect?”

“Oops! Sorry!” Still squatting, as if she couldn’t bear to put so much as her height’s worth of distance between herself and the duck, Taila rattled off, “Welcome-to-our-humble-abode-Mr.-Duck-’tis-a-pleasure-to-make-your-acquaintance!”

Stripey took another careful step back, nearly tripping over one of Bobo’s coils. “It’s a pleasure to meet you too, Miss Jek.”

She leaned forward on her toes to follow him. “You’re a spirit too, right? Like Bobo and Mr. Turtle? Nailus told me aaaallll about spirits….”

She could have expounded on the topic at length (maybe I should apprentice her to a mage – she certainly had the droning-lecture part mastered), but I intervened. Taila, you’re late for class already. Write down the twos times tables, from two times one to two times twelve.

That should occupy her long enough for us to negotiate with Stripey.

“Aww, but I want to talk to Mr. Duck…,” she whined.

“You can talk to him later,” her mother said firmly. “Finish your math first.”

“I wanna talk to him noooooow….” But Taila did retrieve her writing stick, which she stored under the honeysuckle bush so it wouldn’t get burned for kindling, and started scrawling out multiplication problems.

“Won’t you come in for some tea?” invited Mistress Jek.

“Ah, yes, thank you,” replied Stripey, still in a slight daze. It was a common reaction for people meeting Taila for the first time. And the second. And the tenth. “Yes, I would appreciate a cup of tea.”

He circled around the girl, careful to keep two of her arms’ lengths between them.

While Bobo went off to start the chores, the rest of us moved the conversation indoors. Or rather, Mistress Jek and Stripey went inside and sat down for tea. I stayed in the doorway so I could keep half an eye on Taila and her times tables. Her answers were mostly correct.

After slurping half a cup of tea, Stripey laid out the duck demons’ proposal. Upon hearing from Bobo about the baron’s unreasonable rent increase and the Jeks’ struggle to raise the funds, he explained, his “organization” had voted to lend them the money.

What do you want in exchange? I asked. You mentioned aid at a later date.

“What sort of aid?” asked Mistress Jek, hopeful but wary. Good.

The duck demon shrugged his wings. “Shelter, if we need it. Storage space, perhaps.”

In short, you want a safe haven.

I was going to reject it on behalf of the Jeks, but Mistress Jek did it herself. “I’m not sure we can agree to that. We’re in enough trouble as it is. If we add aiding bandits on top of everything else…. Well, we don’t have a kinsman who works closely with the Baron.”

In retrospect, I supposed that it shouldn’t have surprised me that the locals had also figured out why the baron kept the duck demons around. The Claymouth humans were often smarter than they looked.

Stripey shrugged his wings again, as if he’d expected her answer. “In that case, we are also willing to accept repayment in installments with interest.”

“How much interest?”

“Oh, let’s say, ten percent?”

“Ten percent?!”

That’s usury, I pointed out.

“No, that’s a reasonable rate for the risk we’d be taking. Which is entirely unnecessary, let me remind you. We don’t need to extend this loan.”

“Ten percent…ten percent…,” muttered Mistress Jek to herself, trying to calculate compound interest in her head.

Allow me to make a counterproposal, I said, the fuzzy outlines of an idea taking shape as I spoke.

She gave me a hopeful look, Stripey a suspicious one.

As you both know, I am familiar with the inner workings of Heaven. I cannot divulge the details, but I believe that the general concept of karma exists on Earth?

At least, it used to. I didn’t see why it would have died out in the intervening centuries, either. It seemed like the more terrible your life was, the more you needed to cling to the notion that the ill other people did you would be punished. Somehow. Someday. Whether you got the satisfaction of seeing it or not.

Stripey nodded, confirming my guess. “It does. What does karma have to do with this?”

What indeed?

As you both also know, I was sent here from Heaven and, as such, have insider knowledge of how the system works.

Stripey caught the implications at once, just as you’d expect for a demon. “Aha. There’s an official karma system. How does it work? How do you get good karma?”

I’m afraid that I cannot divulge the details – because, really, only the Accountants knew those – but the general idea of “Good karma for good deeds, bad karma for bad deeds” is correct. What you don’t understand is just how important good karma is.

“Because good things happen to good people?” asked Mistress Jek dubiously. “That doesn’t always happen.”

Like I said, I can’t go into detail. But you know how people get reincarnated after they die? Let’s just say that having lots of good karma is important for that.

Thus far, I hadn’t done anything except confirm the fuzzy notions of karma and reincarnation that humans and spirits already believed in, although my words did carry more weight than those of, say, Grandpapa or Old Mistress Yea from down the street.

You and your “organization,” I informed Stripey, have been earning a lot of negative karma for your “activities.”

“That’s not exactly news,” he retorted, but there was an edge in his voice. It was one thing to suspect that punishment was coming, and another to have an emissary from Heaven confirm that it was.

I’m glad you realize that. My proposal is this: In exchange for your lending the Jeks the three silvers they need without charging interest, I will tell you how to earn positive karma to cancel out at least part of your negative karma.

“How much of it? And what would we need to do?”

I ignored the first question, since I couldn’t answer it. At least, not until I twisted Flicker’s arm into looking up Stripey’s file. Where was the clerk anyway?

I can’t tell you what you need to do until you agree to lend the Jeks three silvers.

“Hmmm. Yes.” Proving that he knew me well, he asked one final question: “What’s to guarantee that the information you provide us will actually work?”

Because a clerk in the Bureau of Reincarnation told me it would.

Because I have personal experience with it. I have used this method to earn a significant quantity of positive karma in the past. I told you that I used to be a catfish in Black Sand Creek, remember? How do you think I earned enough karma to move on to turtle?

“Hmmm. Hmmm. That’s true.”

Have you ever seen a duck scrunch up its face to think? It’s hilarious. While Stripey debated whether to take the deal, I fantasized about setting up a stage in the marketplace and charging people to watch him think. The joy it would bring into humans’ lives would net both of us a windfall of positive karma.

“Hmmm. Okay. Yeah, okay.” Straightening his neck, Stripey met my eyes. “It’s a deal.”

Don’t you have to consult with the other duck demons first? Are you authorized to make decisions on their behalf? I double-checked. I didn’t want the other bandits voting to reject the deal later, at least, not before we got the three silvers.

Stripey spluttered a laugh. “I am, in fact, authorized to make decisions on their behalf.”

How so? Did your leader give you free rein to negotiate here?

His bill opened in a big grin. “I am the leader.”

Whaaaat???

Wait, you’re the leader of the bandits? Oh, but – but –

How had I missed that?! I scoured my memories for anything that hinted at it. I supposed that he did attend the Caltrop Pond parties fairly often, he had brought the extra-fancy brandy they’d robbed from a merchant that one time, and, most importantly, he was related to Seneschal Anasius up at the castle….

Well, good, I concluded. That means we won’t have to worry about anyone vetoing the deal.

Mistress Jek’s expression shrieked that there was nothing good about hosting the head of the local bandit gang in her home, especially not when everyone in the barony hated her family already. But she kept her mouth shut and let the magical animals talk.

“Okay. I have three silvers here.” And Stripey opened the leather pouch at his side and tipped three large, blackened coins onto the table.

I trotted over, and Mistress Jek picked me up and set me on the table so I could see them. Unlike coppers, silvers didn’t have holes in their centers, which made sense: Unless you were a duke or something, you’d never carry more than a few at a time (wouldn’t even possess more than a few at a time), so you wouldn’t need to string them together. One side of the coins had a blobby crowned head, the other a triangle with three stars over it. If the emperor’s Twelve Symbols had survived into modern-day Serica, the triangle would be a mountain representing stability, and the three stars would symbolize happiness, prosperity, and longevity. All the coins were tarnished. Obviously, the bandits didn’t bother polishing their silver.

Putting out a trembling hand, Mistress Jek picked one up with the tips of her fingers, as if it might break or evaporate.

With a smirk on his face, Stripey let us gawk at the silvers to our hearts’ content before he prompted, “All right, Rosie. It’s your turn. How do we earn good karma?”

Kill Lord Silurus. I gave him the same answer Flicker had given me.

Mistress Jek froze. Stripey burst into laughter.

“Ha, oh, ha,” he gasped at last. “That was a good one! Gods, I haven’t laughed so hard in – I don’t know when!”

“What’s ssso funny?” Bobo’s head poked through the doorway. The rest of her followed, with a bucket of water suspended from her tail. She was already grinning in anticipation of a good joke.

As she slithered to the hearth and dumped the water into the cooking pot, Stripey explained, “We were talking about how the Jeks could repay us for the loan, and Rosie suggested we kill Lord Silurus for the good karma!” He burst out laughing again.

“Kill Lord Sssilurus? But that’s – that’s – ” I thought she was going to say “impossible,” but after some flailing, she settled on, “That’s too dangerous! No! You can’t do it! Don’t do it!”

Wiping his eyes with a wingtip, Stripey calmed down enough to reassure her, “Of course not. It’s a joke, Bobo. Don’t take everything so seriously.”

At his words, I felt a twinge of guilt. Bobo did take everything seriously, didn’t she? It was why she’d believed me at once when I’d told her I was an emissary of the gods. And, more recently, when I’d promised to find a way to help her pay rent. Which, in my defense, I did plan to do eventually…. It just hadn’t been very high on my priority list.

Well, now that the problem of the Jeks’ rent was settled, I had time to think about hers.

“Oh, good,” sighed Bobo. “I’m glad that was a joke.” She forced a giggle that lacked conviction.

I felt another twinge of guilt as I corrected her, Actually, it wasn’t.