Ministry Protocol: Thrilling Tales of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences Page 15

  *****

  Moonlight on water wakes me, and then I realise that I am still in my berth, still abed, with my hand on the gun. The book is heavy on my chest.

  I’m trying to get my sleep-crusted eyes fully open when the phantom thrusts her face toward mine. I scrabble for the gun and plaster myself against the wall, while the useless book slides off the bed and crashes onto the floor.

  “Ni shi shei?” she asks. “Who are you?”

  No one, I want to say. I am no one.

  “Charles Gordon. Gordon Zhongwen.” Chinese Gordon some people have called me because of my help with the Taiping rebels.

  She receives this information in silence. The room is freezing. Ice rimes the bedstead and I can see my own laboured breath. Fretful ghostlight flickers through her form. She turns her face away from me and for an instant, I see the spots and whiskers of a leopard.

  I gasp and the cold reaches deep into my lungs. I cough and she is looking squarely at me again, her eyes blacker than a starless night.

  “Ni shi bao,” I say. You are the leopard.

  She inclines her head.

  “Weishenme?” I whisper. Why? How?

  “In the Emperor’s court, a powerful general named Li Dajun became enamoured with me. He wanted me for himself. Shi kun rao…” She shakes her head as if searching for a word she’ll never find.

  “Obsessed?” I venture. I cannot believe I am having this conversation.

  She nods. “What I didn’t know was that Li also followed the dark path of gu.”

  Chinese black magic. Gu practitioners were said to be capable of breeding demon worms from which they decanted poisons so subtle and refined as to be almost untraceable. But that didn’t seem to be the case here. I had never heard of anyone being able to poison someone into becoming a ghost.

  “He waited for me on the mountain when I went to visit the tomb of my old master. He tried to make me break my vow to the Emperor, but I would not. Li used the gu to transform into a leopard. And then he devoured me.”

  I have to remind myself to shut my mouth. My fingers are loose on the cold barrel of the gun.

  “But he was not content with this,” she continues. “He ground my bones into his inkstone. He painted the jar with that ink and sealed my spirit. He made me into a guizi, a demon to serve him. As a leopard, I kill. As a ghost woman, I frighten people with my mourning.”

  She is very nearly weeping now. “Li’s son gave the jar over to the Emperor when Li died. The Emperors have kept the jar as an heirloom and as a weapon. I have begged them for centuries to break it. None of them would.”

  I can see why. A ghost assassin chained to one’s service would indeed be a powerful thing. And such an artefact might be useful at some future date to the Ministry, particularly in unwinding the occult practices of China’s dark mages.

  Perhaps the Ministry could recruit this spirit and seek her aid against our supernatural foes.

  I shake off the idea immediately. Could this ghost truly be controlled? I think about the torture our men suffered in the Imperial Palace and I wonder if not all of it was entirely done by physical means. Wouldn’t it be better to free her and spare our agents any potential harm? Recruiting a spirit into the service of the Ministry? Preposterous.

  “You want me to break it, don’t you?” I ask.

  She nods.

  “If I do this, you will harm no one else?”

  “Dui.”

  “And if I do not?”

  “More will die.”

  I’m reluctant, I must admit. It’s a beautiful, ancient piece of art, a bit of history that can never be recovered. The archivist would be head over heels for it.

  The captain had said that something must die to stop the deaths of others. The sacrifice of one ginger jar is both easier and harder than taking a life and making a show of a burial at sea.

  “Do it in daylight,” she says. “And throw the shards into the sea.”

  Then, without another word she is gone. The room warms by slow degrees.

  I look at the jar. It is a small price to pay, I suppose.

  I rise and uncap the ink bottle, dip in the nib, and open my ledger.

  I write at the top of the lined page in an unsteady hand.

  One Ming Dynasty piece of chinoiserie. Lost at sea.