Harbor of Hungry Ghosts

Book 1: Chronicles of the Yiugwai Hunters

by Eliza Chan

Genres: Fantasy action & adventure; Dragons & Mythical Creatures; Historical Fantasy

Synopsis

A family of demon hunters find their hands full when unfamiliar monsters start stalking the streets of Opium War-era Hong Kong, in this historical fantasy adventure from the No. 1 Sunday Times bestselling author Eliza Chan.

The Au family serve the people of Hong Kong as demon hunters and exorcists: blessing shrines, honoring the dead and dealing with dangerous yiaoguai incursions. The expectations on eldest daughter Kiamling are high, which is not something her strict grandmother and mentor will let her forget.

However, when British colonists interrupt a hungry ghost ritual, and her grandmother disappears, Kiamling must step up and lead the search.

Her bumbling language pupil Archie and her youngest sister Jingling will offer aid, alongside Hoi Gor, Kiamling’s recently returned childhood crush from Canton.

But when British fables mingle with local Chinese monsters, how can Kiamling prove herself, when the old rules no longer seem to apply?

Release date: July 28, 2026

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 448

Sample

阿爸

ah ba

father

阿哥

ah gor

older brother, also generally used for older boys/young men

阿媽

ah ma

mother

阿 Sir

ah seh

general term of respect for authority figures

哎呀

aiyah

informal exclamation denoting surprise, dismay, anger

白眉神

Bak Mei San

god of prostitutes and brothels

八卦

batgua

eight-trigram mirror

白骨精

bat gwat jing

white bone spirit, a giant skeleton

水上人

Boat Dwellers

ethnic group living on boats in coastal areas of south China

本地

Bundei

indigenous inhabitants of Hong Kong

廣州

Canton

modern-day Guangzhou, a city in the south of China



Ceylon

modern-day Sri Lanka

叉燒包

charsiu bao

steamed barbecue pork bun

腸粉

cheung fun

steamed rice noodle sheets

清明節

Chingming

also known as Tomb Sweeping Day, a traditional festival in April for ancestor worship

菜

choi

vegetables; greens

鍾馗

Chung Kwai

god of demon hunting and king of ghosts

粥

congee

rice porridge

笛子

dektsi

bamboo flute

刀

dou

single-edged curved sword

八珍湯

Eight Treasure revitalising soup

soup to heal internal energy

芙蓉

foo yung

omelette-style dish



Formosa

modern-day Taiwan

符

fu

talisman paper on which words of power are written


福祿壽

Fuk Luk Sau

three gods of fortune, prosperity and longevity

九嬰

gau ying

monster with nine infants’ heads on a serpent’s body

殭屍

geongsi

hopping vampire/zombie

恭喜發財

gong hei fat choi

New Year saying: congratulations and wealth

關刀

guandou

type of polearm

關羽

Guan Yu

god of martial skills and military

石獅

guardian lion/stone lion

paired statues found in front of buildings

鬼

gwei

ghost

鬼佬

gweilo

slang for European/Caucasian, literal meaning ghost man

客家

Hakka

ethnic group/language in south China and south-east Asia

福佬

Hokkien

ethnic group/language in south China and south-east Asia

馬面

Horse-Face

one of two guardians of the underworld

好啦

hou la

okay; fine

鬼節

Hungry Ghost Festival

a traditional festival in autumn when the deceased are venerated

芥蘭

kai lan

leafy green vegetable

求籤

kau chim

fortune-telling through drawing sticks

劍

kiam

double-edged straight sword

臘腸

lap cheong

preserved sausages

里

li

traditional unit of distance

老闆

louban

boss

女鬼

lui gwei

female ghost



Malacca

state in modern-day Malaysia

文昌

Man Cheong

god of literature

饅頭

mantau

plain steamed bun

茅台

mau toi

clear spirit with strong alcohol content

無啦啦

mo la la

unexpected, suddenly

崑崙

Mount Kunlun

mythical home of the gods

妹妹

mui mui

little sister, also generally used for younger girls

農曆新年

New Year

also known as Chinese New Year/Lunar New Year

年獸

nin sau

year beast

牛頭

Ox-Head

one of two guardians of the underworld

琵琶

peipa

pear-shaped lute

北京

Peking

modern-day Beijing

婆婆

por por

maternal grandmother

氣

qi

life energy that flows through meridian lines

雄黃酒

realgar wine

alcohol containing arsenic

生

sang

honorific for mister, Mr

師父

sifu

martial arts teacher

燒賣

siu mai

pork and prawn steamed dumpling

叔叔

suk suk

uncle, also generally used for old men

身體健康

sun tai geen hong

New Year saying: wishing you good health

太太

tai tai

colloquial for wife, married woman

潮州

Teochew

ethnic group/language in south China and south-east Asia

天狗

tingou

heavenly dog, said to eat the sun/moon during an eclipse

湯圓

tongyun

glutinous rice-flour balls

箏

tsang

plucked zither

打小人

villain hitting

method of cursing one’s enemies

混沌

wandun

primordial chaos being

渾儀

wan yi

astronomy sphere

狐狸精

wulei jing

fox spirit

妖怪

yiugwai

supernatural being, monster

二胡

yiwu

two-stringed instrument

The dozens of joss sticks had already burnt to red spikes, ash like ribbons of shed snakeskin, and still Por Por had not returned. Kiamling threw another handful of hell notes onto the fire. They curled up in the flames, bright as tiger stripes before fading into the darkness. The heat rose to greet her. White and orange tongues flickered hungrily against the shadows between sunset and nightfall, the living and the dead.

Back in Canton, an auspicious date would have been chosen for the ceremony. Preparations and offerings made for days beforehand. Here they only had one night. Kiamling was tempted to start the ritual without her grandmother. She knew exactly what needed to be done. Ever since they had moved to the new colony of Hong Kong, her por por’s services had been in demand. The British threw up new buildings like they were clay pots, one after another after another filling the shoreline. To them it was an indulgence to let the locals bless the land, but to the Chinese labourers it was a necessity.

“You didn’t get the pineapple.” Kiamling’s grandmother had the eyesight of an eagle. Kiamling could barely make out the older woman’s hunched silhouette, and yet her por por could clearly see the offerings Kiamling had laid out for the dead: a boiled chicken, freshly slaughtered; a pyramid of mangoes, their sweet juices making Kiamling’s mouth water; and a heavily laden branch of jewel-red lychees. Always like Por Por to comment on what was lacking rather than praise what had been done. The old woman weaved her way through the burial mounds without so much as a misstep, her staff guiding her.

“It was too expensive.” Kiamling’s voice was high and defensive.

“Should’ve gone myself. They give me a discount.” Por Por prodded the basin of offerings with a stick. At least her silence over these meant implicit approval. Kiamling took it, desperate for any droplets of water on her parched tongue.

It had been five years since her apprenticeship had started in earnest. Five years since they had moved south to the island colony with thousands of other Chinese workers seeking employment and safety from the troubles. Five years of waking up at sunrise to meditate, do training exercises, practise calligraphy and study rice-paper scrolls. Kiamling had gone from a scrawny teen, delicate as a sapling, to a hardy young woman, skin as brown as those who worked the fields.

She may have been trusted with the preparation for the blessing, but Por Por always led. It did not matter how often Kiamling pleaded with her, the older woman insisted she wasn’t ready. Por Por rang a handbell, the sound echoing across the darkness of night. The Chinese knew to avoid the area, had seen the yellow fu talismans pasted around and were safely indoors under the protection of door gods and family shrines. The British had treated it as a spectator sport at first, showing up during the first few exhumations in their sedan chairs, tiffin tins filled with snacks and fine porcelain teapots. But even they grew bored of the novelty, until the spirit hours were left once more to Kiamling and her grandmother: the only yiugwai hunters in Hong Kong.

Por Por chanted, kneeling down beside each burial mound and whispering the ritual words. The earth responded in kind, tossing and turning like she had awoken it from a deep slumber. Loose dirt scattered under her steadying hand, and the corpses stood up in their graves.

Even after all these years, it was fascinating to behold. The dead rising not with smooth movements, or even the clumsiness of an infant, but springing up, limbs locked straight, like statues pulled to their feet. Their skin, where it remained, was thin and grey, barely covering the bones. Tattered robes and pants hung loosely from emaciated bodies, disconcertingly similar to those Kiamling wore herself. After all, before the British arrived this had been a fishing community, and practical, hard-wearing clothing scarcely changed from one generation to the next. The living villagers had long since been relocated, and their ancestors were being exhumed to make way for British expansion. This land would be a new police station, whether the locals wished it or not.

Kiamling worked quickly, expending a burst of qi to make her steps light and fast. Every living thing had qi – vital energy – that flowed through meridian lines in the body. Most people went through life without any real awareness of it, apart from an inkling when they were sick or dying and their supply was entirely spent. Through training or sometimes sheer force of will, a few had their qi unlocked. They could use it for skills beyond what the body was normally capable of: speed, strength, lightness, healing or even fire. Short bursts of qi could be quickly replenished with a good night’s sleep or revitalising foods. Longer than that and there was a risk the pool would be burnt away permanently.

She bounded across the rows of the dead, fastening a fu talisman to each forehead. The brief contact with the corpses’ skin chilled her fingers. She had been warned many times that prolonged contact could cause permanent damage. Por Por watched, arms folded like the governor-general himself. Then the old woman rang the bell again, and the corpses lifted their arms outwards. One more ring and they jumped out of their shallow graves on stiff legs, ready to move to the new burial site.

They hopped into a line following Por Por’s bell and the swaying paper lantern she had hooked onto her staff. Kiamling joined at the other end, stifling a yawn. If they were lucky, she would get a few hours’ sleep before morning, but it was not guaranteed. The corpses’ new home was far from the growing heart of the harbour. It had been a point of contention with the villagers, arguing vehemently that their ancestors’ spirits would be disoriented by the move and become hungry ghosts unable to find their offerings. Nothing good came of disturbing the dead. Worse than poverty in life, a hungry ghost was forgotten: neglected, destined to roam mindlessly for all eternity. But the British were not for budging on the matter.

The spirits should be satiated by Kiamling’s offerings. More food and hell notes than she made in a lunar month. By the time they’d finished moving the dead, the villagers would have demolished the physical food, barely leaving even a measly chicken wing for her to gnaw on. Por Por would get a white envelope of money for their services, but it was never much and would barely cover the cost of incense and paper. It would be another week of sweet potatoes and mantau, as always.

They were nearly out of the European quarter when things started to go wrong. Lightning lit up a cloudless sky like a warning shot. There was a noise like feral animals fighting, and something barrelled into the orderly line of hopping corpses. Limbs entangled as someone fell heavily to the ground. Kiamling stared in shock, waiting for the screams of horror to start. Instead, deep laughter and a heady smell of alcohol assailed her.

“I told you not to run!” The man’s intentions were as clear as his yelled English. His crisp uniform – ubiquitously worn by the British military stationed around the island – was almost unrecognisable, crumpled and unbuttoned to the navel. He ran his hands down the green-tinged neck of the corpse, clearly too drunk to realise this was not the woman he had been chasing, and mumbled words that Kiamling was glad her por por wouldn’t fully understand. The woman who had scrambled out of his grasp was watching further up the street. She held a hand to her mouth to hide a smile.

Kiamling was frozen to the spot, her brain working fast to catch up with what was happening. The woman, face heavily powdered and lips red, bowed – too shallow to be respectful – and turned away, her white tail dancing like an orchid stem as she slunk into the shadows.

Wulei jing. Fox spirits were incarnations of chaos. Most kept well away from yiugwai hunters, but this one had led a merry chase deliberately into their column. Clearly up to no good – wulei jing wouldn’t risk inauspicious energy by careening into animated corpses without reason. Kiamling’s interest was piqued. There was a thread to be pulled on here, one far more interesting than shepherding corpses from one burial ground to another. Without thinking, she coiled like a spring onto her back foot, ready to give chase.

“Ah Kiam!” Too late Por Por called her attention to the foolish officer. Inebriated, he ripped the fu talisman off the corpse’s face to kiss it, throwing the yellow paper carelessly to the ground. Kiamling cursed as she redirected her energy. With whip-snap speed she covered the short distance, dragging the man back by the collar of his uniform as the dead woman’s eyes turned liquid black and she bit at the space he had just occupied. No longer a corpse, she had transformed into a geongsi. The monster snarled, her teeth sharp as a butcher’s saw as she lunged for the yiugwai hunter instead. Kiamling hit at her paralysis points with two fingers and the geongsi froze in place, black claws screeching to a halt.

This shouldn’t be happening. The corpses in the graveyard had received proper funeral rites. They were empty vessels, their spirits crossed over to the afterlife without reason to return. All the proper offerings had been made.

The geongsi’s mouth twitched, a fraction of a second before the paralysis broke. Closing the meridian lines on an undead monster was not Kiamling’s best call; for a starter they did not have the life force to block. It was long enough, however, for her to unsheathe her coin sword in one smooth motion and cut across the monster’s torso. The creature’s scream pierced the air, causing the fu talismans on the other corpses to flutter with the strength of the blast. No time to mess around. Kiamling held her sword in both hands and lopped off the geongsi’s head. The yiugwai-hunting weapon was unique to their trade. Made of blessed coins threaded with red string around a peach-wood core, it was impractical against any living foe, but against the undead and their ilk, it sliced like the sharpest cleaver.

Only after the scream stopped ringing in her ears did she hear Por Por’s command echoing in the silence. “Hold, hold!” It was too late. Too late to consider the ways she could have contained the geongsi rather than dispatching it. Too late to investigate what had gone wrong. Por Por did not voice her disapproval; the thin line of her pursed lips was enough.

They locked eyes across the column of remaining corpses. Yellow fu talismans littered the ground. Words of power had been written on those paper slips, ineffective now they were no longer attached to the corpses. Some of the bodies crumpled straight down. But four of them, an inauspicious number, remained standing, bodies creaking like rusty hinges. Por Por eased a batgua mirror from her belt pouch and signalled to her granddaughter.

“What in the blazes…” the British officer said behind Kiamling. All the newly awakened geongsi swivelled towards him. His breath was an intoxicating scent to them: life and energy. Things they would sup on until he too was transformed into a qi-sucking monster. Por Por thrust her mirror forward in one hand, angling the eight-sided frame. The geongsi covered their eyes, blinded by the moonlight reflected on its flat surface, and Kiamling threw a handful of glutinous rice on the ground. The soles of their feet hissed as the rice grains blackened, leaching out the negative energy. The smell of sulphur filled the air.

Kiamling pushed the officer behind her, parrying the approaching geongsi with her coin sword. She slashed at one, the sword slicing a burning arc down through the creature’s collarbone, slaying the monster. The blade wedged in the hollow ribcage of the corpse. Kiamling pulled with all her might, desperately trying to retrieve her most effective weapon as the other monsters surrounded them. Of course, it had to be the least decomposed corpse, not one whose brittle bones would shatter with a single strong blow. The remaining three geongsi lurched forward and the British officer grabbed her shoulders, pushing her in front as a shield.

“She’s younger!” he offered the undead.

“He’s softer!” Kiamling shot back. She could not shake the drunken coward off, but she dared not turn her attention to him either.

She ducked, the officer having the foresight to follow her movements, and the leading geongsi’s sharp claw hands swiped uselessly overhead. Slamming her hand over his gaping gob, Kiamling mouthed in English: Hold your breath. The monsters did not have good eyesight, but the man’s hyperventilating was signalling their position like the smell of a roast suckling pig.

She needed a plan. A distraction. A—

A dull thud sounded as Por Por’s staff smacked into the side of the geongsi’s head. The monster swayed for a moment before toppling. For good measure she reattached a talisman to its forehead. The other two had been similarly neutralised. She looked down at Kiamling with faint displeasure. “Are you planning on squatting there all night?”

Kiamling stood, face flushed crimson, and wiped her hands on her tunic. The officer still clung to her like a frightened child, and she had to prise his vice-like grip from her. Por Por rang her bell and the corpses stood as though nothing had happened, as though they hadn’t just transformed into vicious monsters. One stepped out of line, and Por Por tapped at its feet with her staff until it took a side-hop back into position. She nodded approvingly at the neat column.

“Someone died angry,” she said, sucking her teeth. It was not unheard of. Resentful emotions at the end could not always be neutralised by the proper funeral rites. The negative energy remained, slowly turning benign corpses into geongsi.

Two corpses could not be recovered, the two Kiamling had all but obliterated during the fight. She knew exactly what her grandmother would say next. “You can come back for that lot.”

She’d need at least two trips with baskets, or if she was lucky, she could scrounge a wheelbarrow off someone. She could already feel the twinge in her shoulders from the fight, her internal qi reserves depleted.

“You aren’t leaving me here, are you?” the man said, tugging at her sleeve.

“You’re welcome to come to the graveyard with us,” Kiamling said innocently. He let go immediately. “Who shall we make the bill out to?”

“The bill?”

“For the exorcism. The destruction of property.” She brushed geongsi dust from her top. Was never entirely sure what that stuff was… probably not worth thinking about too hard. “And the laundry bill.” Chancing it there, but he did not have to know her clothes were threadbare and dirty before the incident.

Dismay coagulated to outrage on the officer’s face, a blotchy red flush spreading from his neck up. He looked as if he was about to give her a piece of his mind when the night caught up with him and he started throwing up.

“On second thoughts, never mind. We’ll figure it out.”

Kiamling could have warned him. The adrenaline rush, the stench of a geongsi’s breath and the realisation that they hadn’t been reincarnated as a street dog or a snake had a tendency to do that to people. Relief tinged with disbelief. By morning he would have convinced himself it had been an alcohol-addled nightmare.

For Kiamling, it was just another day.

The bamboo yoke creaked as the heavy baskets on either end slumped to the ground. There wasn’t a single wheelbarrow to be found, but a shoulder pole did the trick. Kiamling wiped the dust from her face on her wide sleeves. How much was dirt and how much was the ashen remains of the bodies, she no longer knew. Nor – truth be told – cared. After the first ten or fifteen exorcisms, they all blurred into one.

“You sorted them?” Por Por poked one basket with her staff. What she meant was: had Kiamling just scooped up the debris and dumped it into baskets or had she taken the time to separate the bone fragments and match the frayed shrouds to ensure each body was kept separate and complete? They weren’t complete anyway, not any more. Not that it really mattered. Hadn’t they already had funerals and crossed over to the afterlife?

“Yes.” Kiamling was pleased with her clipped response. Harder to catch the lie when she’d given so little. But perhaps too curt. Impolite even. She belatedly added, “Of course.”

She made the mistake of meeting her por por’s eye. No, that wasn’t fooling anyone. The woman could see through stone and iron. Kiamling tipped one basket into an open grave, the noise distracting her if not her grandmother. At least the dust hid the disapproval.

Por Por did not need to know that Kiamling had spotted bone shards at the original burial site, gleaming white like broken shells in the lamplight. Nor did she need to know that she had scuffed them away with her foot, covering them with a thin layer of earth.

“The main thing is, job done.”

The silence was as thick as the midday humidity. Por Por was furious. The nagging lectures were always forthcoming, but their ferocity was in direct proportion to the length of the preceding silence. The silence meant not just a usual amount of disappointment, but ancestors-turning-in-their-graves levels. Por Por’s fingernails drummed on her staff like a hawk’s talons. It must have only been minutes until she spoke again, though it felt like hours.

“Your mother would’ve taken more care.” Here it was. The inevitable comparison game. Kiamling had nothing against her parents, the supposedly incomparable yiugwai hunters of Canton province. She just resented how much her por por idolised them. They had been deified in death, raised on the household shrine next to Chung Kwai, the god of monster hunting himself.

If Por Por was to be believed, her parents were flawless. A perfect couple, quick-witted, dauntless, as beautiful as the gods, with excellent martial skills and deep wells of internal qi. Por Por had happily retired from the business, confident they could take over. Their expertise was sought across the southern provinces: dealing with dangerous creatures no one else could handle. That was, until their untimely demise at the hands of malevolent ghosts. Only once had Kiamling voiced the obvious – if they were so good at their jobs, how did they get bested? The question earned her ten lashes with a bamboo cane and she dared not speak it again. She still flinched when she heard the switch against an ox’s flank.

The thing was, the parents she remembered were not the yiugwai-hunting heroes who gleamed in her grandmother’s memory like the constellation of the azure dragon. They had been brusque. Busy. Inattentive.

One time she had watched her mother sleep. Squatted by her woven mat and stared in fascination at a woman she barely knew, moles she’d never noticed before and scars that ran up uncovered arms. She had screwed up her face and imagined that they were not strangers under the same roof. That her mother would sack off the monster hunting and take them for soup dumplings. Comb Kiamling’s hair tenderly rather than the eye-watering raking Por Por ministered. Tell her daughters something – anything – about their lives.

When her parents woke, it was training and fighting and travelling as always until Kiamling could only remember the shape of the scar and not the person who bore it. When they had died, she felt nothing. She was more distraught about leaving Canton city, the only home she had ever known. By then her training had started, and there were other things to think about.

“Well, she’s dead.” Deliberately callous, she watched the words lodge like splinters under Por Por’s skin. She couldn’t help herself sometimes, quick to fire and quicker to suffocate in her own smoke.

“She’d be disappointed to see her firstborn so reckless on the job.” It might’ve worked, three or four years ago. She might’ve yearned for the approval of her dead parents enough to buckle down. But Kiamling saw past Por Por’s rhetoric now. An old woman gripping on to shadow puppets. The bygone days.

“It’s done now, why does it matter how?”

“It matters, Au Kiamling, because cutting things down doesn’t solve every problem.”

“Works for me.” It was a circular argument, one they had repeated as many times as the fighting forms.

“Just… just go home. You cannot understand when you aren’t listening.”

Kiamling’s head rang with the echo of handbells. It was a lie, of course – the handbells had ceased long ago, but the hammering in her skull remained. Thoughts like buzzing mosquitoes, never keeping still enough for her to pin down. She was ready to lie down. Ready for the sweet bliss of a few hours’ sleep before dawn. Por Por had sent her home before her meeting with the village elders and their inspection of the new grave site. It was meant as a punishment for her transgressions, but Kiamling could not help but see it as a reward. She disliked the slippery etiquette around their line of work. The faded line between respect and disgust for those who worked with monsters and ghosts. Yiugwai hunters were social pariahs, their proximity to malevolence and death associating them with bad luck in the eyes of the locals. None so unfortunate as the Au family of female monster hunters, unable to produce a single male successor in six generations.

Kicking off her shoes, she lay on the hard matting and willed herself to sleep. A bony elbow jabbed her in the side until she turned over. Her sister lay mere inches away. “I’m sleeping.” Kiamling refused to open her eyes.

“And I am but a lovely dream.” Jingling’s voice was bright. The sound of someone refreshed after a whole night’s sleep. Two years her junior, Jingling was day to Kiamling’s night. Other families had gold and jade, rice fields and orchards, learned scholars and herbalists. The Au family had Jingling. Even in their darkest moments, Jingling was a spring breeze on a sweltering day. Her fair hands took to anything she tried: watercolour, embroidery and dance alike. The family couldn’t easily afford those things, but Kiamling was determined that her sister would have them one day. The life she was meant to lead.

“More like a nightmare,” Kiamling tossed back. Jingling tickled her stomach just enough that she could not sleep. Kiamling groaned, throwing a hand over her face. “What?”

“How did it go?” Jingling liked the stories. As children, Kiamling would tease her with tales of ghosts and monsters, but her sister was never afraid. She drank them in with saucer eyes and asked for more. Kiamling embellished them, adding actions and songs, leaping across their shared bed and kicking imagined demons to the ground. Even now Jingling wanted to hear each detail. Her eyes gleamed like she was pulling a paintbrush across rice paper. It was difficult to resist her powers of persuasion.

Jingling sighed as her sister concluded the story, smacking her lips together as if to taste the last sweet morsels. Then she curled up like a cat radiating heat, the words unspoken: I wish I could come too. She no longer voiced them. Kiamling understood the desire to be useful, to carry on the family business. When she had been about ten, she had snuck out with her sister to watch their parents complete an exorcism. They had held each other, clammy, jittering hands filled with nervous excitement. Kiamling had been so engrossed, leaning forward against the wall they hid behind, that she did not at first notice her sister had passed out. Carrying the eight-year-old home on her back, she’d understood that shared blood did not equate to shared mettle. Jingling had accepted this also, satisfied to listen instead to the stories her sister would recount.

“Por Por was on form. She just can’t accept things done differently. She needs to listen for a change. Stop assuming she has all the answers and pushing people away.” Kiamling heard her sister shift beside her. Could almost hear her smirk. She opened her bleary eyes, regretting it immediately but too impatient to ignore the bait. “What?”

“I said nothing.” Jingling kept an even expression on her face, but the corners of her mouth twitched.

“You thought it.”

“I dare not disrespect my older sister,” she said, tone in mocking opposition to her words. Kiamling sat up, so suddenly that her sister squealed and kicked out her legs between them, sensing the attack that was coming. Jingling might be able to wind her up as well as any sibling, but she knew well that her yiugwai hunter elder sister could – and in previous arguments had – target her paralysis points. It was an unfair advantage that Kiamling was willing to stoop to.

“Out with it!”

“You and Por Por are too alike. She wants you to do everything her way. You want to do everything your way, cut people off before you’ve heard them out. Perhaps you should be listening to your own advice.” Jingling scrunched her eyes closed, waiting for the lid to blow off the overspilling pot.

“When’ve I done anything of the sort?” Kiamling’s overtired brain decided at this moment that it would stifle a yawn and pluck out the answer. Held it dangling like a spider dropped down from the ceiling, spinning slowly before her.

“Hoi gor,” Jingling confirmed. Hoi had lived next door to them in the Canton slums. Childhood friends since birth, he and Kiamling had been inseparable u