"Wen Gang is the name," Wen said. "About fifty, slight of build, had a weird way of sort of looming toward you, because his eyes were a bit weak. He read a lot, you see."
"I don't see," said the demon, "and I don't care. I don't have time to help you. Anyway, physical descriptions are irrelevant when you're dealing with tens of millions of souls. Do you have any idea how many people have gone to hell since time began? That was a rhetorical question, by the way," it added. "Please don't feel obligated to respond."
"Believe me," said Fengzi, "we don't want to try."
It was hard enough to look at the demon, much less talk to it. Wen had the impression, whenever his eyes were drawn to the creature, of a lean, vulpine sort of face, but pocked with pustules that oozed something the color of cinnabar when it spoke. There were supposedly hot springs in the interior that oozed this way, but Wen no longer wanted to visit them. And this was a minor functionary demon, not even a department head. Gods only knew what one of those would look like.
Wen was still having trouble accepting that he was inside the precincts of hell. He and Fengzi had simply walked up to the first gate they had seen; Fengzi had presented some sort of paper—he couldn't read the calligraphy because the characters refused to stay in one shape—and, after examining the seals, the demon guarding the gate had let them in.
"Are you sure you can't help us?" Fengzi, Wen noted, had less difficulty looking the demon in the eye. Eyes. There seemed to be at least three of them, though it was possible there were more, or fewer; they seemed to be moving... "This is the right department, I know that. He's become a hungry ghost, you see."
The demon grumbled. No doubt, thought Wen, somewhere a cup of tea is getting cold because you can't get back to it. "You're right; this is the subdivision of the hungry ghosts within the Hell of the Mirror of Retribution. But I still don't know how you expect me to locate one ghost. It's not as if I have time to go through the books."
"I thought time was something everyone here had in limitless quantities." Wen found that by looking into the vast hall beyond the demon's desk it was possible to avoid the stomach-churning response the demon itself generated.
"Let me deal with this, Xia," said Fengzi. She turned back to the demon, but she'd smiled at Wen so perhaps she had stopped being angry with him. "You keep your records in chronological order, I assume."
"We note every arrival as he or she comes in, yes."
"So all you have to do is go to the end of your file and start reading backward. It hasn't been that many days since Wen the elder ...entered your department."
"And I keep telling you, I don't have the time to do this," the demon said. "It's not that I don't know how. I just don't want to."
What you really need, Wen thought, is the right sort of incentive. He was reaching for his sword before he remembered that he no longer had any sort of weapon; Chin Gwai had disarmed him completely before putting him in that cold, unfriendly island prison. I wonder how my body is doing, Wen thought.
"You mean you have something else you have to be doing right now."
"Yes! How difficult is it for you to understand that?"
"Not at all difficult," said Fengzi, "had you had the decency to inform us of this when we first arrived." Her voice was chilly and clipped, and Wen had a vision of just how terrifying the prince's civil service could be if it were put in the hands of mothers and mothers-in-law. "You are not the only one with places to go and things to do."
The demon stuttered—Wen had to dodge something that, from anyone else would have been spittle but from this creature, burned with a stink of sulfur as it flew by—and shuffled its feet. Or hooves. "Not my fault," it said. "I am too busy. Overworked. They never give me any peace."
"Oh, shut up," said Fengzi. "Clearly you are much too inferior for our needs. Tell us where we may find your superior, and then leave us."
The demon bowed its head to the floor, muttered a set of directions that, to Wen's regret, included the phrase, "just past the flaming pit," and then scuttled away.
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