Death and the Emperor

Book 1 Chapter X: Something Wrong Somewhere

"I can't remember things before they happen."
"It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards," the Queen remarked.
"What sort of things do you remember best?" Alice ventured to ask.
"Oh, things that happened the week after next," the Queen replied in a careless tone.
-- Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There

As the head of Death's Reapers, Ngugelzi was well-used to unusual situations. She had collected souls in the most extraordinary of circumstances, had witnessed some truly awe-inspiring brawls between enemies in life who unexpectedly came across each other after death, and had endured the foibles and caprices of Death herself.

Thus, when she went in search of her Queen and found her apparently dozing next to a sleeping mortal who was neither dead nor dying, she merely shrugged and dismissed it as yet another of Death's oddities.

"We need your help," she informed the Queen, ignoring the mortal. "Some of the junior Reapers have gone and gotten Hourglasses confused again."

"Again?" Death scowled. "How many souls have they taken by mistake this time?"

"At least ten. We can't be sure yet."

Death made an inarticulate sound of exasperation, fury and contempt mingled into one. "Damn them! Can they do nothing right?"

"What's happened?" the mortal asked sleepily, opening its eyes.

To Ngugelzi's well-concealed surprise, Death brushed a hand through his hair and gave him an almost gentle smile. "Nothing for you to worry about."

This must be the mortal, then; the lucky (or, as some would say, unlucky) mortal who had currently caught Death's attention. Ngugelzi looked at him curiously. There was nothing about him that immediately set him apart or marked him as special. He was just a typical Caranilnav -- dark hair, skin somewhere between pale and brown, eyes shaped slightly more like a cat's than average citizen of the Carann Empire. Nothing extraordinary about him, except that he had hugged Death. And he came from a family that had caused the inhabitants of the Land of the Dead a good few headaches.

"Where are the little horrors?" Death asked, turning to Ngugelzi. Just like that, the hint of tenderness she had shown towards the mortal was gone.

"Lined up in the throne room. I have my more sensible generals searching for the mistakenly-reaped souls."

~~~~

The next few days were a whirlwind of activity in the Land of the Dead. It was, unfortunately, not unheard of for inexperienced Reapers to take the soul of someone not fated to die yet while leaving alive the person who was supposed to die. When this happened, it meant Death and her more senior Reapers had to work feverishly to locate the souls that should not have been taken, return them to their bodies, and collect the souls that should have been taken, before the whole business tore a hole in the fabric of reality.

When the crisis was past and Death could -- metaphorically -- catch her breath, she decided to visit Kilan and see how he was getting on in his new role.

She found him in a room that had once been a diplomat's office. It was hardly the sort of place one would expect to find the Emperor's brother. The carpet had long since been taken away, leaving only the bare stone floor. A chair with a broken leg stood behind a desk almost buried beneath a coat of dust. Two moth-eaten armchairs sat at odd angles in front of the desk, as if someone had knocked into them and not bothered to set them right. A bookcase lined with mouldering books took up most of one wall, and the other walls were devoid of pictures or any decoration beyond discoloured, peeling wallpaper.