But to succeed in life every detail should be arranged well beforehand. -- Agatha Christie, Death on the Nile

If Varan never saw a number again, it would be much too soon. In life she had never had much need for maths. In death she needed only to count how many souls she collected. This complicated adding, subtracting and long division made her head spin.

"Here," she said, holding out the piece of paper on which she'd scribbled her calculations. "I think these are right."

Gialma took it and glanced over it. His eyebrows flew up. "Good heavens! According to this, the amount of money unaccounted for is more the budgets of the last five years combined!" He gave her a disbelieving look Death would have been been proud of. "I think some of your calculations must be wrong."

Varan buried her head in her hands.

~~~~

Years may pass, but Death's realm remained as illogical as ever. Kilan would never quite get used to looking out a window and seeing a garden, then opening a door and seeing a frozen wilderness. He stared blankly at the snow and ice for a minute. Then he decided that staying in Death's castle was much warmer and possibly safer than visiting any of his relatives. He closed the door and turned to stare at Death.

"Why is your realm so odd?" he demanded, not for the first time.

"It doesn't exist in the mortal world," Death said. "Why should it abide by your world's rules? And besides--" She gave him a far-too-wide grin "--what would be more boring than eternity in a place that stayed the same?"

Kilan decided he couldn't answer that.

"Where's Varan?" he asked, changing the subject. "I haven't seen her for a month or two."

Death grimaced. "She and some of her friends have started watching the Malishese court. Apparently they think it's funny to laugh at people who can't see them. Now I believe she's with Gialma."

Kilan thought about the sort of chaos a group of bored Reapers could cause in Malish. Perhaps the Malishese would be too busy panicking about strange occurrences to care much about Carann. That led his thoughts back to Death's strange remark earlier. "What did you mean, about the High Council?"

He could have sworn Death winced. "Let's just say Fate thinks She's very clever. And She doesn't like anyone saying She isn't."

Fate again. Kilan had never met the woman -- er, being -- but he'd heard plenty about Her. If he ever did meet Her, he'd have a few things to say to Her.

~~~~

Fate didn't care what one mere mortal thought of Her. She was busily weaving lives into a web for Her own amusement. One of those lives was Shuradin's. He was hard at work spreading discontent among Malish's people. Jalakanavu remained blissfully unaware any of her late husband's brothers were still alive. She warned no guards to look out for him, sent out no spies to search for him. Shuradin went on causing trouble, unsuspected and unimpeded.

"The Iquisaal is giving high positions to members of her family," he said to a group of clan leaders. "They're incompetent and ignorant. But she had an official executed for opposing her."

To a gathering of merchants, he said, "The Iquisaal intends to raise taxes on goods. She says it's to build new hospitals. People in the capital say she really plans to keep the money herself, and the economy will suffer for it."

When he met a religious leader, he had another story to tell. "I've heard the Iquisaal is going to grant heretics the right to worship. Some say she doesn't believe in any of our gods."

And so gossip travelled further and further, and more and more people heard of Jalakanavu's supposed plans. The more they heard, the angrier they became.

Everything went exactly as Fate planned.

~~~~

Death's Reapers were hardly paragons of normalcy. Someone who voluntarily chose to spend the rest of eternity gathering souls was not likely to be someone who had much common sense -- or sanity. Gialma had discovered this two years ago, when he learnt some Reaper with too much time and too few brains had turned a mirror into a gateway to the Land of the Dead. It was an antique heirloom of a mirror that had hung in the hallway. Hiding it in the attic had seemed a shame. But accidentally falling into the underworld would have been worse, so Gialma and Varan had hidden the mirror behind a pile of old rags and papers. No one had been able to reverse the spell that had been used on the mirror. The Reaper responsible refused to step forward. Luckily, Death had never found out about it... yet. But the thought of someone discovering that mirror still preyed on Gialma's mind.

Today, however, he wished he had brought it with him to the Council chambers. A trip to the Land of the Dead was just what Counsellor Mixiu needed.

The audience of curious Reapers -- invisible to everyone but Gialma and (presumably) Tinuviel -- hardly made this shouting match any less stressful.

"I have done nothing wrong!" Mixiu bellowed. He appeared to be labouring under the delusion that the louder he yelled, the more convincing his argument became. It only gave Gialma a headache. "You've made a mistake in your calculations!"

Gialma looked over at his cousin. Even from the other side of the room he could see Tinuviel was grinding his teeth.

Varan sat perched on the arm of Gialma's chair with her wings spread over his head like a feathery canopy. She made a disgusted sound as Mixiu continued yelling himself hoarse. "Someone please gag him. He's driving me mad."

Gialma didn't reply. He already had a reputation for being odd. He didn't want the other counsellors to see him talking to thin air. That would consign him to the list of mad Caranilnavs before the meeting was over.

On the other side of the room Dilves gestured angrily to the still-ranting Mixiu. She tried to speak. Her words were completely drowned out. A few of the other Reapers scattered around the room began to disappear, shaking their heads in disgust.

"This is much too loud for my taste," one of them grumbled to Varan.

Varan winced at a particularly loud shout. "If he doesn't shut up, I'll take away his voice."

"Can you do that?" Gialma asked, and immediately wished he hadn't spoken. Luckily, no one nearby had heard him.

"Technically not," Varan said. "There are a lot of things we technically can't do but do anyway."

She was spared a demonstration. Her brother's patience had finally run out.

"Enough." Tinuviel didn't shout. He didn't even speak loudly. But he silenced the room more effectively than all Dilves's futile attempts to keep order. "I have informed the Chief Inquisitor of this matter. Everyone on the High Council is going to be investigated. Shouting will do nothing but make yourself look worse."

Mixiu took a deep breath, obviously preparing for another round of trying to deafen everyone. The emperor gave him a cold look. Suddenly the counsellor thought better of whatever he was about to say. Dilves looked utterly disgusted.

"I have one more thing to say," Tinuviel continued. He spoke in a cold, hard tone Gialma had rarely heard him use before. "Plans for the renovation of the palace are being prepared."

The Chief Counsellor opened her mouth. Tinuviel gave her a copy of the look he'd just given Mixiu.

"This is not open for discussion."

Wonder of wonders, Dilves actually closed her mouth and sat down. When and how had Tinuviel learnt to silence her so effectively?

"This meeting is adjourned," the emperor said.

Gialma got up. He bumped his head against Varan's wing. Her feathers got stuck in his hair. There was a confused moment as they tried to disentangle themselves without anyone noticing.

He could have sworn he saw Tinuviel look over at them and smile.

~~~~

Princess Linyie was of very little importance to either of her parents. Once a week Kilan visited and asked how her schooling was going. Qihadal, less frequently, visited her daughter -- to make sure she was still alive, Death thought sourly -- and then forgot about her existence. Once again, Death was the only friend of a neglected Caranilnav child. It was, to say the least, infuriating.

She really wasn't surprised that Linyie reacted to her isolation by trying to get attention.

She still didn't expect to arrive in the little princess's room in time to see Linyie struggling to pick up a vase.

"What are you doing?" Death asked curiously.

Linyie scowled at her and folded her arms. "Gonna bweak it."

Good grief. Was no one in this family normal? Death gave Linyie her least impressed look.

"And why are you going to break that poor, innocent vase? It's done nothing to deserve such treatment."

Truth be told, the vase was an eyesore of black and umber that clashed horribly with the pale violet flowers growing in it. Death wouldn't have minded it meeting with a tragic accident. But it was never wise to encourage a child to commit vandalism. Especially when that child was a future empress.

"Is mum's," Linyie said sulkily.

The vase had been a wedding gift to Qihadal from a noblewoman. The empress had accepted it politely then hidden it away where she never had to look at it again. Its loss would hardly make her shed a tear.

Death knelt down so she could look the toddler in the eye. "Why do you want to destroy your mother's vase?"

Linyie pouted. "'Cause then she'll notice me."

Some people really should not be parents. They were utterly inept at raising children, and their ill-advised methods were damaging the innocent souls in their care. Death had seen much cruelty in her existence. The utter neglect of a child was one of the worst forms of cruelty. It had terrible consequences for years to come. Countless lives were damaged because of it. And the perpetrators didn't even realise they were being cruel.

"If you break that vase you'll only get a scolding," Death said. "Why don't you write a letter to your mother instead?"

The little princess scrunched up her face. "Don't know how."

"I'll show you how."

The Reapers would have been dumbstruck to see their queen teaching a child how to properly address a letter. But what they didn't know would never hurt them.

~~~~

If Rualnim had been less patient she would have thrown up her hands in despair. Losradan had no talent for speeches, whether it was writing them or delivering them. Every word had to be checked and double-checked by Rualnim to make sure it was right. She had to cross-reference the words with a dictionary, as Nirnian was not her native language and she was not always sure her phrasing was correct. It was a maddening process.

Then there was the exasperation of rehearsing the speech. Rualnim read it aloud with such haste and so little interest that it was clear she thought this an unpleasant chore. She stumbled over some of her words. She shortened paragraphs if she thought they were too long, without thinking first if the speech still made sense without the lines she removed. She said everything in a bored monotone.

Rualnim was sorely tempted to strangle her.

She's still useful, she reminded herself. Killing her now will do no good.

Everyone's usefulness ran out sooner or later. She just had to be patient. And in the meantime she had to try to make something vaguely competent out of this childish pest.

"No, you must sound as if you care what you're saying," she said, interrupting Losradan's interminable stumbling through the simplest of lines. "Just reciting the words isn't enough."

The princess pouted. "But I don't know how to sound as if I care!"

Gods grant her patience. Or an untraceable poison. She didn't care which.

~~~~

Death made it her business to keep an eye on everyone who would become Fate's pawn. She saw Rualnim's growing exasperation. She grinned. Good. Let that little pest suffer something for her sins. If Death could find some way of arranging it, Rualnim would suffer a lot worse than an incompetent co-conspirator.

Perhaps -- incredible though it seemed -- this was a job for the Reapers.