Hundred Ghost Soup (Bureau for Eternal Prosperity Book 1) by Robert Chansky

Author:Robert Chansky [Chansky, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781620070383
Publisher: Curiosity Quills Press
Published: 2016-09-08T05:00:00+00:00

If the worst happens and they get you, Mr. Vulpin had instructed, stay quiet. Not a word.

The mouse is gone. No needle claws rest on my shoulder. He has left me.

The worst has happened.

We have been led to a cell not far from Minister Xu’s office. Offices, media center, prisons, tea garden; Zhongnanhai has all. We have been unshackled by guards equally polite, calling both of us géxià, Excellency, carefully watching our response, keen to untangle the confusion.

It should be my job to parry, to keep up the pretense that I am the real Minister Xu and he the impostor. But a heavy weight oppresses my voice, I am weary unto death, and I know execution is my only fate.

The true Minister Xu chooses one bunk, opposite the small cell from mine. He glares at me, making no effort at conversation yet. To make it worse, he sits so our four thick knees touch, draped in crisply creased identical slacks. When I try to recline on the cot, he tells me no with such authority that, instantly as a dog, I obey and sit up, knees again touching knees.

He speaks as if to someone else. “Look at this. Do you believe this?”

I would like to answer him. I truly would.

He hunches his fists on his knees and stares at me. My own hands are clasped together as if there is anyone left for me to pray to. He scrutinizes my (his) face, dress, shoes, and puffs out his breath in astonishment, then quickly disguises that with curses and threats, which eventually wind down. I fix my gaze on the floor.

“You insult me. Surely I’m not so ugly.”

He strokes his thick black hair, curling it from one side to the other, and my own hair ruffles in response. Mr. Vulpin’s magic makes me a copy of the man.

“I know what’s happening here.” Minister Xu puts on a conspiratorial grin and waggles a finger at me as a new idea strikes him. “The one who sent you has noticed our ‘Uncle’—at last—and this ruse has been organized to get at my files on him. I admire your economy. Easier to pore over my years of research, and my father’s, than do your own. Easier still, of course, would be to ask me!”

These last shouted words make me jump as if shocked by a live wire.

Minister Xu converses with himself now. “Ministry of Defense? No, they think Uncle’s spirits are laughable tricks. Transport showed interest after that engineer got possessed and derailed his train. Minister Feng. State Security. Could be… State Security had to clean up Uncle’s mess when that little kingdom disappeared—what was its name. They’d want to know how Uncle fixed that. China may want to vanish the same way sometime.”

From being stunned by my situation, I am now stunned by this talk. Demons possessing a train driver? A country disappeared? And, of course, the strangest of all: me, disguised as a Minister.

Minister Xu spreads his hands with apparent good humor.

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