The True Confessions of a Nine-Tailed Fox

[arianedartagnan]

Chapter 33: Etiquette Lessons

"ENUFF!" repeated Mistress Jek. "Everyone shut yer mouths RIGHT NOW!"

Everyone froze, from Master Jek, who was scowling at his finger; to the boys, who were swarming Taila and trying to pry open her hands; to Taila herself, who was stamping her feet in the beginnings of a major tantrum. Poor Bobo had been frozen all along while her employers fought.

"I've had ENUFF!" Mistress Jek stomped up to her husband, shoved her face into his, and shouted, "I am not a drunk or a crazy or a capper neither! The god came right down here to OUR yard." She stabbed a finger at the spot where Flicker had appeared. "He told us IN PERSON that that turtle is an emi – emis – emis'ry of the gods. You will treat it with respect, because if you don't, then you are DISRESPECTING THE GODS and Heaven will smite you with lightning!"

That was one lady with good lungs, I thought, impressed and even faintly awed by the display. That pitiful traveling mage, Floridiana, could have taken lessons from Mistress Jek. Who needed to learn magic to project your voice when you could develop lungs like that?

Master Jek had taken a hasty step back when his wife began to bellow, and as she continued her harangue, he seemed to shrink. It was as if the physical force of her words – and probably her breath – were striking him and compressing him into a doll-like caricature of himself.

(Yes, humans can shrink like that. I'd done it myself to many of Cassius' officials, albeit not by shouting. Smiling vitriol can accomplish the same effect with a much lower energy cost, while boosting your social standing. Maybe I should teach Mistress Jek sarcasm along with proper diction.)

In the end, Master Jek mustered a final defiant "Don't be so extra, woman," but in such a low mutter that he had plausible deniability if she called him out.

She didn't. Chest heaving, she spun on her offspring. "Okay. Taila, gimme the emis'ry."

Eyes as huge as a lemur's, Taila deposited me in her mother's hands.

Mistress Jek cupped me in her palms with satisfying reverence, raised me to eye level, and apologized, "Great One, I am so, so sorry about my fam'ly. My husband's just shook. Please forgive us. It won't happen again. You said something about 'etikit' lessons? We're ready now."

Etiquette was what I'd planned to start with, but now I was wondering if writing should come first. Because if none of the Jeks could write, then how would they take notes that they could review on their own? I certainly wasn't going to supervise them all hours of the day. And I doubted their brains were up to the task of remembering every word I uttered. You got the occasional human with an eidetic memory, but these ones looked pretty ordinary to me.

Except – even if I taught them how to write, they didn't have paper either, so what would they write their notes on? Bark? Corn husks? Ugh, civilization really had benefits. Maybe I shouldn't have deconstructed the empire quite so thoroughly.

Well, whatever. If I didn't know the best place to begin, then I'd start in the middle, the way I had when I entered Cassius' court. You couldn't expect all learning to be as systematic as a dance manual.

Thank you, Mistress Jek. I gave her a gracious dip of my head to reward her support. We will commence with an overview of basic etiquette.

"What's 'co-mens'? What's an 'over-vu'? And what's 'etikit'?" whispered Nailus to the oldest boy, who elbowed and shushed him.

I didn't bother to define the words for him. If he were smart enough, he'd pick them up from context. Immersion learning and all. Some of the Imperial tutors had championed it during their endless debates on the best pedagogical method to institute for the princes and princesses. Amusing that now Cassia Quarta had come full circle.

In Mistress Jek's palms, I rotated so I could see everyone. Then I started with the most important rule: First, never interrupt a superior who is speaking.

Mistress Jek scowled over my head at all four of her children. Apparently, that was a lesson she'd tried and failed to teach them.

Bobo. I looked down at the viper.

She slithered to Mistress Jek's feet and stood up on the tip of her tail. "Yes! Yes! Rosssie! I'm here! What do you need? How can I help?"

You are my teaching assistant, I reminded her. You will enforce the lessons I teach. For example – I pointed a foreleg at the middle brother, who was entertaining himself by digging a hole in the dirt with his toe – when a student isn't paying attention, you will hit the back of his hand as punishment.

Bobo's eyes practically popped out of her skull. "Hit! I will hit them? But Rosssie! I can't hit…." Her voice trailed off at my glare.

I won't repeat myself. Hit the back of that boy's hand. Now.

"With what? How?" she pleaded.

"A stick. Your tail. I leave it to you. Just do it now."

Terrified, Bobo looked from me to Mistress Jek, who nodded her permission.

That would not do. Bobo's first allegiance needed to be to me. But I'd fix it later.

The viper crept around the yard until she found a small twig. Curling the tip of her tail around it, she went up to the middle brother. "Ma-Ma-Massster Cailus," she stammered. "Pleassse…pleassse put out your hand."

"You can't hit me, Bobo," he informed her, totally confident in his immunity from his parents' hired help.

Said hired help cast a pathetic glance at me and Mistress Jek, who ordered, "Cailus! Yer hand! NOW!"

With a roll of his eyes, he thrust it at Bobo, and she tapped his knuckles with the twig.

Harder, I snapped. It's not punishment if he can't feel it.

Squinching up her face and cringing, she tapped him a little harder.

This was not going to work.

Mistress Jek apparently came to the same conclusion, because she transferred me to her left hand, strode forward, and smacked her son across the side of his head. There was a very satisfying crack.

Cailus yelped and cradled his skull. "Ma!"

"Behave! Or no dinner tonight! That goes for all of you!"

"Yes, Ma," chorused the other children, shuffling their feet and avoiding looking at their brother.

I rewarded Mistress Jek with another nod. Thank you for your assistance. Now, let's get back to work. Like I said, first of all, never interrupt a superior who is speaking. Second, never look sullen.

That one was mainly addressed at Cailus, who didn't seem to take discipline well. His expression didn't change one whit, but I didn't want his mother to break his head in front of me either, so I went on.

Third, never talk with your mouth full. Fourth, never stand with your hands on your hips. Fifth, never slouch. Sixth, never clomp around on the flats of your feet….

The list went on for a while, as I threw in everything they did that bothered me. By the end, the adult Jeks' eyes had glazed over, Bobo had tapped all of the children's knuckles with her twig at least once, and Mistress Jek had clouted them for good measure. And, like his son, Master Jek had completely failed at not looking sullen.

Exhausted, I surveyed their blank faces. Do you remember all of that?

Led by Mistress Jek, they bobbed their heads, but I could tell they were lying.

Do you remember all of that? I asked Bobo, whose eyes slid away from mine.

"Ummm, it went a little fassst," she said hesitantly. "Maybe if you sssaid it one more time…?"

Just like I'd thought. Without the ability to take notes, their memories simply weren't up to the task. I'd have to teach them to write first after all.

Heaving a long, inward sigh, I announced, All right. Change of plan. You need to learn how to write. Bobo, hand me that twig and clear a patch of ground with your tail. Mistress Jek, put me down.

"Write?" blurted out the oldest boy. "Like a scholar?"

Yes. Do you have a problem with redressing your ignorance?

He blinked at me, then looked uncertainly at his parents. At the mention of writing, their faces had grown grave.

But Mistress Jek set me on the ground as I'd commanded, and told her son, "Do as the emis'ry says, Ailus."

Most useful ally ever. The woman was growing on me, rough skin, chapped lips, coarse hair, and all.

I picked up the twig with my mouth – and then realized that I had no idea what to write. The Serican language consisted of tens of thousands of characters, which you memorized by copying them over and over, ad nauseam. I vaguely remembered the Imperial tutors arguing (they did that a lot) over some sort of phonetic syllabary that one of them had developed as a teaching device, but I couldn't remember what it looked like or the arguments for and against its use.

Again, when in doubt, start in the middle.

All right, everyone get a stick. I'm going to write some basic words on the ground, and you're going to copy them until you remember them.

What might a basic set of words look like? What was a simple sentence that a peasant might say? "I am a peasant"? No, too complicated. They probably didn't know what "peasant" meant. Let's go with "I am a farmer."

Laboriously, I scratched "Ego sum agricola" into the hard earth while reading the sentence out loud. All of the Jeks and Bobo cocked their heads and followed my progress with fascination.

"So that's how you write 'farmer'," muttered Master Jek to himself.

I considered instituting a rule that students couldn't speak without permission, but it seemed like too much effort. Plus I wasn't sure how well he'd would take to having Bobo rap his knuckles or his wife clout him across the ear. Enforcing the rule might cause more disruption than sporadic interruptions.

Now, here's how you write "You are a farmer." I scratched that into the ground too, and then proceeded to show them all the other variants: "He/she/it is a farmer," "We are farmers," "You are farmers," and "They are farmers."

As they set to work copying the sentences in hideous, deformed characters, I sat back and thought about what else literate people had to know. Unfortunately, Serican had tons of different endings that you added to nouns depending on how you used them in a sentence. The language also had tons of different conjugations for all the verbs depending on the tense, voice, and mood. Oof.

I'd spent a good decade at a public primary school in rural northwestern Serica, learning my reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic. And then when I'd moved to the nearest city, I'd had to unlearn many grammatical errors and relearn most of the syntax. The Jeks were going to have an even tougher time.

Well, no time like the present to start. I wrote out all possible declinations of the noun "farmer," plus the full set of conjugations for the verb "to be." It took a while.

All right. Memorize these. I'll test you tomorrow morning.

"Tomorrow mornin'?" blurted out Master Jek. He threw down his stick and jumped to his feet. "You said it was just now. You di'nt say nothin' about tomorrow!"

I glared at him, but this time he didn't curl in on himself.

Even Mistress Jek sucked on her cheeks, worried. "Um, Great One, the plowin'…. Um. How long will this take? Don't scholars take years to finish book learnin'?"

That was true, but – If you can't write, then you can't take notes. And if you can't take notes, then you can't remember everything I teach you. And if you can't remember everything I teach you, then you can't act as a good role model for Taila. She is the most important thing here.

All eyes turned to Taila. Surprisingly, the little girl still had her fist clenched around a sharp rock. With her tongue sticking out in concentration, she was carving lines into the packed earth that actually bore some resemblance to "I."

Master Jek's expression warred between fretful and proud. "My wife said you said sumthin' about great things for Taila. What great things?"

What indeed?

Modeling my voice after that of Lady Fate, I intoned, The ways of the gods are mysterious. All shall be revealed in due time.

All of a sudden, I remembered something. Secrecy. I needed to bind them to secrecy.

This must remain a secret, I warned. If you tell anyone, the gods will become angry – at least, some god somewhere would be angry at Aurelia for circumventing the rules – and take away Taila's great destiny – probably by recalling me to Heaven and re-reincarnating me as something horrible – and Taila will die young. Which, without me to protect her, she almost certainly would.

At those last four words, Mistress Jek nearly stopped breathing. Master Jek's mouth opened and closed a few times.

"Well, of COURSE this will be a secret!" declared Mistress Jek, and Master Jek nodded vehemently. "Right? None of you would DARE tell your little friends, RIGHT?" She gave her three sons a hard stare.

"Aww, c'mon, Ma, who'd believe us?" they protested.

Satisfied that no one was going to brag and blab the story all over the Claymouth Barony, I ordered the Jeks back to work practicing characters and memorizing endings until the sky was pitch black. Then I finally dismissed them to finish their farm chores while Mistress Jek started a fire to cook dinner.

As for me, I headed for Caltrop Pond with Bobo. I needed to relax.

---

A/N: Thanks to my awesome Patreon backers, BananaBobert, Blacklark57, Celia, Charlotte, Hookshyu, James, Lindsey, Michael, Pred Head, Voligne, and Anonymous!

 

[arianedartagnan]

Chapter 34: In Which I Become a Schoolmistress

My career as a schoolmistress lasted exactly three days.

In my defense, I tried.

I even came up with detailed lesson plans, cobbled together from what I remembered of the princes' and princesses' education and my own long-ago school days. (And by "long ago," I mean a couple millennia ago. You can't blame me if my memory was a little fuzzy.)

Anyway, every morning, while I recovered from a night of re-energizing partying followed by the Dawn and Chicken Dances, I'd test the Jeks on material I'd taught the previous day. I'd rattle off vocab and basic sentences for them to scrawl in the dirt, and call out simple arithmetic problems. They were supposed to write down the answers so they could also practice their numbers. After the test, I'd give a lecture on etiquette and deportment, which was also something I could do with a muzzy brain.

At midday, Mistress Jek always insisted on a recess so they could eat lunch and clean up. I'd use that break to soak in Caltrop Pond. No more accidental dehydration deaths for me!

After we reconvened in the early afternoon, I'd teach the three R's all the way until sundown, when I'd release them to go cook supper and feed the farm animals or whatever. Since it was winter, it wasn't nearly as long of a class as it could have been.

In short, I was running a cram school, like the ones that the Imperial Mages reminisced over with such a mixture of nostalgia and loathing. And it was working too. After three days, I noticed substantial improvement in the manners of Master and Mistress Jek, who were determined to do everything they could to please Heaven and protect their daughter; the youngest boy, Nailus, who found aping the mannerisms of his betters hilarious; and Taila, who was young enough to be malleable.

And by "substantial improvement," I meant that their behavior hurt my eyes and ears less. Master Jek and Nailus no longer ate standing up with one mud-encrusted boot propped on the bench. Taila knelt on the ground instead of squatting with her thighs and all her undergarments showing. And Mistress Jek now bellowed AT THIS VOLUME instead of AT THIS ONE.

However, the oldest boy, Ailus, was a simpleton who only cared about farming. No matter how many times I corrected his stride, he showed no motivation to learn how to walk right. And the middle boy, Cailus – well, it wasn't so much that he wasn't interested in any of the subjects as that he couldn't sit still long enough to listen to the whole lecture. It was aggravating! He had the mental capacity to learn. I could tell he did. He just refused to exploit it!

I was starting to understand why the Imperial tutors got so crotchety when I pulled Cassia Quarta out of class. Because it's impossible to teach someone the passive periphrastic when he keeps running off to chase sparrows. (Apparently, the Jeks supplemented their mostly vegetarian diet with small birds.)

But while Etiquette and Deportment 101 were heading in the right direction, or at least weaving drunkenly that way, the three R's were not. The Jeks learned so slowly! It took them hours to memorize how to write a character – and by test time the next morning, they'd have forgotten it again.

No, no, no! I'd exclaim, exasperated, for the thousandth time. You can't let this line cross that one! If you do, it turns into a totally different character! It doesn't say "up" anymore. It says "earth" or "soil"!

At which Ailus would mutter, "But saying 'soil' is a lot more important than saying 'up'."

At which I'd have to summon Bobo from doing Mistress Jek's chores to hit his hand with a stick.

Math wasn't going well either. For the life of me, I could not understand what was so hard about remembering to carry the one. And the times tables! What, pray tell me, is so hard about memorizing the times tables?!

I started wondering if I should just let myself die so I could go back to Aurelia and collect on my oath.

By the third day, the Jeks' attention spans had dropped off a cliff. When they were supposed to be watching me demonstrate long division (I'd taught addition and subtraction together on Day 1 because they're so basic, and multiplication on Day 2), Master and Mistress Jek kept peering up at the sky and checking the clouds. When they were supposed to be copying characters over and over until they became muscle memory, they were darting glances in the direction of their fields or staring blankly at the ground. The three boys complained incessantly about how their backs hurt, or their necks hurt, or their hands cramped up from all the stick-holding.

You're never going to learn if you don't focus! I berated them. Do you want to stay a rude, illiterate savage your whole life?

"Yeah!" Cailus finally yelled back on the fourth morning. Springing to his feet, he threw down his stick. It rolled across his misshapen handwriting. "Everything – ev'rythin' – was so much better before YOU came along! I don't see why I have to learn this! I'm never gonna use it! It's useless! I don't care!"

"Cailus!" hissed Mistress Jek. She tried to grab the back of his shirt, but she was too stiff from sitting. "Cailus! You sit back down right this minute and – "

"No!" he shouted. "No! No! No! I won't! You can't make me! I don't care if Heaven or the gods or this TURTLE say I have to do it. I won't!"

By this point, I was fed up too. FINE! I yelled. Fine! Wallow in your ignorance! See if I care!

Fuming, I stomped over to Taila, who was squatting (ugh! Again!) with her writing stick in one fist, gaping at her brother's rebellion.

Taila! Keep writing! Just because your brother has decided to consign himself to a lifetime of uncouth cloddishness doesn't mean you have to!

I turned my tail towards Cailus and ignored him while I praised her handwriting. It was better than his.

Behind me, the boy bounced on the balls of his feet, uncertain whether I had genuinely released him.

I didn't let him wonder for long. Go on! Get out of my class! Don't come back! That's what you wanted, right?

"Uhhhhh…." He blinked at his parents. "Uh, I'm gonna try ridgin' the soil?"

Heaving himself to his dirty work boots, Master Jek looked down at me. "Emis'ry, I…thank you for what yer – you're trying to do for my girl, but I don't have time. I have to get back to plowin'."

Mistress Jek softened his declaration by explaining, "Great One, maybe the fields in Heaven are better, but here on Earth, if we don't ridge the soil in the winter, it gets too wet and the roots will rot."

Rot? That sounded bad. Really bad. As in, their-crop-might-fail-and-Taila-might-starve-to-death-level bad.

What? That's why you're so obsessed over plowing? Why didn't you tell me that in the first place? Go! Hurry!

"Uh…." They gawked at me, not quite believing that all they'd had to do three days ago was explain the purpose of plowing.

Go! Now!

Calling orders to his sons, Master Jek ran off, still with that heavy-footed gait of which I couldn't cure him. Even though I hadn't dismissed her, Mistress Jek disappeared to check on Bobo. For the past three days, the bamboo viper had been taking care of all the chores around the place, including cooking. I hadn't tried any of her porridges, but apparently they tended to be burnt. I don't know how you burn a food that's mostly water.

Not you, I told Taila when she started to rise too. You're going to stay right here and learn to be a civilized human being.

"Awwww, Miiiiiister Tuuuuuuurtle," she whined, but she plopped back down. "I don't wanna sit anymore. I wanna go plaaaaaay. Play with me, Mr. Turtle!"

No. This is more important. Do you want to live in these conditions your whole life? Don't you want a brighter future?

I certainly wanted one for her. If I could find her a good apprenticeship that took her away from Black Sand Creek, such as a performer in the Green Frog's traveling troupe, then I could jump into Mistress Jek's stewpot and wrap up this life.

Softening my voice, I coaxed, If you want a brighter future, Taila, you need to be able to read and write. That character looks good. Write it just like that five more times.

She got halfway through the second time before she started whining again. "Yer no fuuuun, Mr. Turtle –

"You're," I corrected her. Not "yer."

"You're no fun, Mr. Turtle. I wanna – "

"Want to." Not "wanna."

"I want to go plaaaaaay! This is boooooring! Why do I have to do it? My brothers don't have to do it. It's not faaaaaaair!"

I sighed and rubbed my head with a forefoot. When in doubt, try bribery. It had always worked on Cassia Quarta. The problem was that here, I didn't have much to bribe her with. Okay. How about this? Finish writing your characters, and you can have the rest of the day off.

Through her pout, she brightened a little, although she didn't pick her stick back up. I wracked my brains for what else could pass for a treat.

In fact, why don't we go on a little adventure?

"Really? Really really really?! Where? Where, Mr. Turtle!"

Where indeed? My first instinct was Caltrop Pond, where she could hold a tea party for the pond turtles. However, if she didn't know the pond existed, I didn't want her finding out about it, falling in love with it, and sneaking off on her own to drown herself in it.

For obvious reasons, I didn't want her getting anywhere near Black Sand Creek either.

So, what else was there to do in this godsforsaken corner of Serica?

It wasn't like the Claymouth Barony had any fancy shopping districts or even craftsmen you could summon to your home to commission luxury goods. From what the elder Jeks had said, the closest you got to a luxury good here was a well-woven basket with a pattern on it. And you could try to summon Master Gian to your place to take your order, but he didn't make house calls. People went to him, not vice versa. I rolled my eyes at the idea of a basket maker commanding such respect.

"Where, Mr. Turtle? Where where where!" With each "where," Taila pounded my shell, nearly flattening me before I stuck out my neck and snapped at her fingers.

Finish writing and I'll tell you.

"O-kaaaaay…."

As she dragged her stick through the dirt, I tried to remember what I'd seen of the Claymouth Barony that time Yulus cast a vision for the traveling mage Floridiana. Lots of parched, brown fields, full of artists painting images of the dragon to symbolically roast him; Floridiana parading down the main street like a jester…. Oh right! There was a little cluster of shops and stalls just outside the castle!

We'll go shopping, get some sweets or something. Maybe a red bean bun?

The outing could even double as a lesson in deportment and diction.

Taila cheered up at once. "Yeah!"

She finished off the fourth and fifth characters in no time. They didn't even look half bad. If she could write this well when she wanted to, why didn't she just do it?!

As soon as she finished the last stroke, she dropped the stick and popped up. "Okay! I'm done, Mr. Turtle!"

Not bad, I praised. All right, pick me up and let's go.

---

Jouncing along in Taila's pocket, I surveyed the Claymouth Barony's main street. It was named, predictably, Main Street. Peasants in coarse tunics and muddy shoes were clomping around with baskets over their arms, gossiping as they shopped. We passed the local smithy, where a sweaty human man banged away on a piece of red-hot iron. (Blacksmithing looked dangerous. I definitely was not apprenticing Taila to him.) We also saw the carpenter's workshop, where a brawny cat spirit was carving wooden bowls and spoons. Despite his human form, he couldn't hide his dark grey ears and striped tail, so he had to be on the younger side for a spirit. Taila lingered in front of the pub, out of which greasy smells were drifting, but I chivvied her on. In the end, we found all sorts of street food stalls and vendors who carried their wares on shoulder poles – but no pastry shop, and not even a bakery.

Where do people buy desserts around here? I asked.

"Desserts?" asked Taila blankly.

Sweet foods, I translated, such as mooncakes for the Mid-Autumn Festival. Or mochi cakes for the New Year. Or those red-bean-paste sticky rice dumplings that you – I mean, your family – ate at the Dragon Boat Festival.

"Oooh! I know! Let's ask Auntie Jo!"

Taila pattered towards a rickety stall just outside the carpentry workshop, where a human woman was pulling a string of sweet potatoes out of a waist-height, cylindrical clay oven. Burn marks crisscrossed her thick forearms, and as I watched, she hissed and recoiled. Dropping the sweet potatoes on her rickety table, she scowled at the side of her hand.

"Auntie Jo! Auntie Jo! Are you okay?"

But Taila's well intentions came to naught as a clatter from the carpentry workshop distracted her. Abandoning the sweet potato vendor, she ran to the cat spirit instead.

"Uncle Tasy! Hi Uncle Tasy! Where's Pepper?"

The cat spirit didn't stop carving a spatula as he answered, "Hulloooo, little Taila! What're you doin' here on your lonesome? D'yer ma and pa know?"

"I'm not here on my lonesome, Uncle Tasy," she announced, puffing out her chest and putting one hand into her pocket. "Mr. Turtle's here!"

Oh, great. I should have remembered that small children can't keep secrets, shouldn't I?

---

A/N: Thanks to my awesome Patreon backers, BananaBobert, Blacklark57, Celia, Charlotte, Hookshyu, James, Lindsey, Michael, Pred Head, Voligne, and Anonymous!

 

[arianedartagnan]

Chapter 35: A Clowder of Cats

"See? This is Mr. Turtle! He's my friend!" Taila's muffled voice proclaimed as she fished in her pocket.

I shrank into the deepest corner and pulled my head and legs into my shell, hoping she'd get distracted by something else before she found me.

No such luck. Questing fingertips brushed my shell.

Well, there was no helping it. With a dart of my neck, I nipped the closest finger.

A shriek. The hand vanished. My world started bouncing up and down as Taila screamed, "He bit me! He bit me!"

Well, that seemed a little melodramatic. It was just a tiny, warning nip, to remind her that my existence was supposed to be a secret. I hadn't drawn blood. I hadn't even broken skin.

"Here, Taila, lemme see that finger." The cat spirit sounded patient, as if he had plenty of experience dealing with small children and their tantrums.

Something jostled me, and I pictured Taila thrusting her not-at-all-injured hand at him.

There was a brief pause, and then the cat spirit crooned, "It's just a lil' boo-boo. Lemme lick it better."

A rasping noise, followed by Taila's giggle. "That tickles! Uncle Tasy, that tickles!"

"What'd I tell you? All better now!"

Just then, a new voice, shrill with panic, broke in. "What's wrong? What's wrong? Taila! Taila! Master Gravitas, what's wrong with Taila?"

Ugh, I couldn't see anything from inside this pocket! I started chewing a hole through the cloth.

"It's all right, Mistress Khun," soothed the cat spirit in the same tone he'd used on the four-year-old. "Taila had a lil' boo-boo, but it's all better now, ain't it?"

Apparently she agreed, because I was bounced around some more, and then she was announcing, "Auntie Jo! I had a boo-boo here, an' it hurt a lot, an' Uncle Tasy licked it, an' now it don't hurt anymore!"

Oof, okay, that grammar needed fixing. Maybe I could work out a system in which I poked her or kicked her every time she messed up.

Throughout all this, I'd kept chewing on the fabric, and at last I broke the last thread. Through my new peephole, I saw a blur of stained, brown cloth that could only be Mistress Josy's skirt.

After ascertaining that Taila's finger wasn't in danger of swelling up and killing her with blood poisoning, the woman relaxed and stepped back far enough for me to glimpse more of her. It was that sweet potato vendor. And wait! The brown cloth I'd seen wasn't her skirt at all: It was her apron! Stars and demons, had the woman never heard of laundry? And she sold food for a living? Seriously, who'd eat anything she prepared?

At times like this, I yearned for Cassius' palace and its horde of impeccably clean chefs, sous-chefs, food tasters, footmen, and serving women.

Plonking her hands on her hips, Mistress Khun shouted in a very good imitation of Mistress Jek, "JEK TAILA! What're you doin' here on yer lonesome? Does yer ma know you ran off?"

None of Cassius' servants had talked like this either.

"Ummmmm…." In my field of vision, Taila's shirts shifted, and the toe of her shoe started digging a hole into the dirt.

Well, on the bright side, the girl wasn't a liar. That made her easier to handle. Marginally.

"JEK TAILA! Don't you DARE tell me you sneaked out and came all the way into town!"

At that, Taila started to wail. "But I didn't sneak out! Mr. Turtle said I could! Mr. Turtle! Mr. Turtle! Tell Auntie Jo!" She plunged her hand back into my pocket.

Seriously, could the girl not take a hint?! This time, I didn't try to hide. I stretched out my neck and nipped her finger again, harder since she was clearly a slow learner.

A scream, as loud as a dying goat demon, punctuated the wailing.

I was getting a migraine, and I didn't even know turtles could get migraines. Pulling my head into my shell – not that it blocked the noise one bit – I cursed Master and Mistress Jek for having Taila, Aurelia for continuing to care about her ex-daughter, Flicker for enabling Aurelia's obsession, Lord Silurus for not eating Mistress Jek while she was pregnant, the Goddess of Life for granting my request to let me keep my mind when I reincarnated, and Lady Fate for recruiting me to end Cassius' dynasty and hence setting off the whole chain of events that led to me being here, in this pocket belonging to a screaming, tantrum-ing child, right here and right now. I hate screaming, tantrum-ing children.

Seriously, could the day get any worse?

And that, of course, was when we got swarmed by a clowder of cats.

Jumping off rooftops and streaming out of alleys, they streaked across Main Street, tripping people and donkeys and turning the throng of peasants into a shouting snarl. Out of the tangle strolled a grey tabby with broken stripes, which started rubbing its head against Taila's legs.

Oh boy. The creature better not have fleas.

My world jolted again as Taila flung herself to the ground and wrapped both arms around the cat, howling something that might have been "star" as she wept into its fur – or tried to.

The cat, being a cat, meowed and squirmed and, when that wasn't enough to convince the girl to let go, kicked off her chest with its back legs, twisted midair, and bounded off. The other cats backed up a few steps and regarded her with sharp eyes and twitching tails, poised to flee.

"Noooooo, Staaaaaar! Come baaaaaaack!"

Well, it was good to see that I wasn't the only living creature she treated like a toy.

A different tabby, with thick whorls of dark grey, bright yellow eyes, and a white chest, skirted around Taila and padded up to the sweet potato vendor. "Meow-stress Josy, whatcha doin'?" He twined around her legs and flopped down between her clunky shoes. "D'you have any food for meow-e?"

In the blink of an eye, Master Gravitas leaped over his worktable, landed in a crouch between the sweet potato vendor and the rest of the cats, and swatted the tabby.

He shot behind the clay oven. The other cats' milling moved back by about a foot.

Master Gravitas growled and hissed in Cat, then commanded, "Stop buggin' people, all of you. You'll get fed when it's time an' not a second sooner."

"Oooooo-kaaaay."

"Fiiiine, Master Gravitas."

"Meow!"

Not acting particularly chastened, the cats, both normal and awakened, loped into the nearest alley and melded with the shadows.

But now Taila clomped forward to tug on the sweet potato vendor's filthy apron. "Auntie, Auntie, I wanna red-bean sticky rice dumpling!"

"A red-bean sticky rice dumpling? This time of year?" The woman sounded startled.

"Uh huh. Uh huh. Mr. Turtle said I could. 'Cuz I was good."

"Mr. Turtle?" The woman cast an inquiring glance at Master Gravitas, who just shrugged. Squatting so she was at eye level with Taila, she explained in that sickly sweet, singsong-y voice that people who are not me or Mistress Jek use on small children, "Sticky rice dumplings are for summer, Taila. For the Dragon Boat Festival. 'Member the Dragon Boat Festival? When we go to the river and watch the boat race?"

"Uh huh. Uh huh."

"So we don't have any right now. 'Cuz it's winter. But if yer a good girl, I'm sure yer ma will give you a biiiiiiiig one for the Dragon Boat Festival."

"Uh huh, uh – " Taila started to agree, before it registered that she wasn't going to get the promised dessert right now. "Noooooo! I want it nooooooow! Mr. Turtle said I could! Mr. Turtle! Mr. Turtle!"

Apparently, the sweet potato vendor was also hitting the end of her patience. "Taila – " she began in a warning tone, before a burning smell filled the air.

With a curse that shouldn't be used in front of children (or anyone, really), she sprang to her feet and scuttled back to her oven, where she hauled out a string of sweet potatoes. Her cursing doubled in volume when she saw how black and crispy the skins were, and flowed without a break from expletives to furious accusations such as, "That no-good sister-in-law o' mine, lettin' her kids run wild, ruinin' honest, hardworkin' people's work."

By now, many of the peasants who'd been tripped by the cats had clumped up to watch what passed for street entertainment in the Claymouth Barony. Naturally, they all had their own opinions on Mistress Jek's, Mistress Khun's, and one another's parenting skills, all of which they proclaimed loudly and definitively and, depending on your relationship to the parent in question, completely offensively. Some of the arguments got pretty heated.

I started wracking my brains for an exit, but Master Gravitas beat me to it. Throwing back his head, he let out a loud "Meoooooow!"

At once, cats raced towards his workshop from all directions. A fluffy black one even jumped out of a large bowl on a shelf. All told, a good dozen cat spirits and normal cats assembled in front of him.

"Take Taila home right now," he ordered, then meowed the same instructions (I assumed) in Cat.

"How 'bout some treats first?" bargained the whorled tabby who had hustled the sweet potato vendor for food earlier.

A lithe black cat with a skinny tail hissed, stuck out a paw, and smacked him while Master Gravitas glared at him.

"Done," a third grey tabby with a white face promised Master Gravitas. (Seriously, did cats around here only come in shades of grey?) "C'mon," he called to the other cats. "Y'all know what to do."

And apparently they did, because they surrounded Taila and started rubbing their heads against the backs of her legs and standing up on their hind legs to push her away from the workshop and sweet potato stall.

It was none too soon.

When we were one shop away, a brawl broke out behind us. Apparently people get pretty passionate in the defense of their or their relatives' parenting skills.

Well, if any humans got hurt here, it was not my fault – and even if it were, it was not my problem. Aurelia had promised to see to that.

Above the din, Master Gravitas' voice roared, "Pepper, get back here! Now!"

At the sound of its name, the fluffy black cat twitched its ears – and then kept ambling along as if it hadn't heard a thing.

"I'm not jokin', Pepper. I said NOW!" He added a long string of yowls.

The white-faced tabby that seemed to be head babysitter walked across Pepper's path to block it, but it still refused to turn back. So the same fierce black cat started rumbling a low growl, stalked up to Pepper, hissed, and swatted the side of its head. Only then did Pepper finally slink off.

As the rest of the cats herded Taila out of town, she whined, "Why can't Pepper come? I want Pepper to come. Liliiiiiiiiiiii, whyyyyyyy…."

Licking her hand, the white-faced tabby explained, "Pepper can't come out when it's cold, 'member? She'll get sick."

"But I wanna play with Peppeeeeeeeer."

"Well, sucks t' be you," muttered the whorled tabby, who apparently got grumpy when he was hungry.

"Oy, shut it, Tip," ordered the black cat. "'Less you want a smack upside yer head too."

Looking injured, Tip removed himself to Taila's other side. "C'mon, Bell! I was just sayin'…."

Ignoring them, Lili went on in a practiced way, as if he had to give this explanation all the time – or maybe just every time he saw Taila in the winter. "Pepper's Master Gravitas' only baby, 'member? Should I tell you the story again? Once upon a time, there was a family of cats who lived behind the carpenter's workshop. There was a papa cat and a mama cat and a whoooooole litter of kittens. You like kittens, don't you, Taila?"

"Uh huh! Uh huh!" agreed Taila. She sounded engrossed in the tale.

"The carpenter fed the cat family. The papa cat was big and grey, so he named him Gravitas. Now, Master Gravitas had lived a looooooong, loooooooong time, so he had already awakened and turned into cat spirit."

"Like yoooou!" squealed Taila. "An' Bell, an' Tip, an' Targee…."

"Yes," agreed Lili, cutting off the recital. "Like us. But his wife and babies were still young, so they were still normal cats. One winter, it was very, very cold. It snowed a whole bunch, and all of them got sick. They had runny noses – you know what runny noses are like, right? And they sneezed a bunch. The carpenter let them sleep in his workshop so it would be warmer. Master Gravitas and Pepper got better, but his wife and the other kittens didn't." Here Lili paused, as if their loss were too painful for words.

I couldn't see why. Feral cats died all the time – like all living creatures. Where would we be if everybody lived long enough to awaken?

"An' then? An' then?" pestered Taila, who had no more patience than I did.

"And then…the carpenter was very nice. He took Master Gravitas as an apprentice. When he died, he left the shop to him. And that's why Master Gravitas is our carpenter, and why he and Pepper still live above the workshop, and why Pepper can't come out when it's cold."

"When will Pepper turn into a spirit? I wanna talk to Pepper!"

"Don't worry, it's not long now. Mebe fifty more years?"

"Nooooooooo! I wanna talk to Pepper noooooooooooow!"

"But you can talk to Pepper now, 'member? You tell us what you want to say, and then we tell her, and then she tells us what to say back. And when she turns into a spirit, she'll have lots and lots to say to you."

"Oh, will she ever," muttered Tip.

Bell shoved her head under Taila's hand for petting. "So you be a good girl and listen to yer ma and pa and not go off on yer lonesome. And you'll live fifty years and be around when Pepper turns into a spirit."

I held my breath, waiting for Taila to claim that I'd given her permission to leave Honeysuckle Croft and accompanied her into town, but she didn't. She must have too busy dreaming about the day Pepper awakened and the two could converse directly.

It would never happen. I planned to have her trained and educated and working far away from Black Sand Creek long before then.

---

A/N: Thanks to my awesome Patreon backers, BananaBobert, Blacklark57, Celia, Charlotte, Hookshyu, James, Lindsey, Michael, Pred Head, Voligne, and Anonymous!

 

[arianedartagnan]

Chapter 36: Taila's Reward

After that fiasco of a jaunt, I assumed that Taila would forget about her reward – but oh no, she had a longer memory than that. Never underestimate the tenacity of a four-year-old who's been promised dessert.

As soon as the cats herded her back into Honeysuckle Croft's yard, rubbed against her legs, and trotted off, and even before they were out of sight, she reached into her pocket again. This time, I let her wrap her fingers around my shell and pull me out. Although I was expecting teary eyes and a blubbery expression, that was not what I saw.

On the girl's plain features, indignation warred with outrage. "Mr. Turtle! You PROMISED!"

Had Cassia Quarta also remembered all my promises? I'd made some pretty extravagant ones back in the day – paving the slums with gold, roofing the houses with jade, throwing her a birthday party where we invited every single child in the empire, forbidding the study of Serican grammar, issuing an edict banning the existence of older brothers…. If the princess had remembered my promises, she hadn't held me to them.

Or maybe she'd tried to but couldn't find me, and her nannies and governesses had prevailed upon her to give up. I wasn't an easy person to track down when I didn't want to be found, and making myself available to Cassius' children wasn't a top priority.

Hadn't been a top priority.

"You SAID, Mr. Turtle! You SAID I could have a red-bean sticky rice dumpling!"

I cursed whoever invented the things. Their soul had better be rotting away inside a tapeworm.

"I want my red-bean sticky rice dumpling!"

I sighed, craned my neck over her shoulder, and made sure that the cats were out of earshot before I soothed, It looks like they're out of season. Be a good girl and wait for the Dragon Boat Festival, all right? You'll get it then. Now put me down and go see if your mother needs assistance. We're done with classes for the day.

I thought that would be the end of that, but –

"Noooo! I want my red-bean sticky rice dumpling!!!"

Her screaming brought her mother pelting around the corner. The woman's eyes were wild, her hands and apron caked with mud, and her hair sticking out in all directions. "Taila! Taila! Where've you been! We've been searchin' everywhere!"

Among humans, panic is contagious. Which is sometimes a useful fact.

Just not right now.

Because Taila's reaction to to her mother's fear was to burst into tears and wail incoherently about red-bean sticky rice dumplings and cats while her mother berated her for vanishing and "scarin' the living' daylights outta us!"

Under cover of all the screaming and crying, I tried to slip away – but no such luck. Spotting me at the edge of the yard, Mistress Jek threw herself to the ground and prostrated herself.

"Emissary! Thank you so so so much for bringing Taila back safely! Where did this bad girl go?"

Oh, curses. I wasn't going to get to soak in Caltrop Pond any time soon, and I was exhausted. I should probably have ordered Taila to let her mother know where we were going, shouldn't I? It might have saved me a lot of hassle.

Still, maybe I could tell Mistress Jek about the dessert – or lack thereof – and let her deal with it. Since Taila behaved so well in class, I promised her a reward. We went into town to procure it.

"A reward?" Mistress Jek looked shocked, which puzzled me until she clarified, "Y'mean, like on them Wanted posters?"

"Those Wanted posters," not "them," I corrected automatically. And yes. In a manner of speaking. I told her she could have a red-bean sticky rice dumpling, since she appears to have a sweet tooth.

Mistress Jek responded the exact same way the sweet potato vendor had. "A WHAT?! But it's nowhere close to the Dragon Boat Festival!"

Yes. So I had gathered. As I was unaware that these desserts are not available year-round, I would like to enlist your aid in finding an acceptable substitute.

She gawked.

With another sigh, I translated. What can we give Taila instead?

"Oh…. Lemme – let me think about it."

I would appreciate that.

Giving her a regal nod, I escaped at last. I was going to swim around in Caltrop Pond until it was time for the Dragon King's party, and then I was going to dance all the way through the night and past dawn.

That was the reward that I'd earned for my hard day's work.

---

"Mr. Turtle!"

The next morning, Taila pounced as soon as she spotted me.

Briefly, I considered correcting her and telling her to address me as "Rosie" or "Rosette" or "Great One," or even "Emissary," but it was too much effort. Last night, the Dragon King of Caltrop Pond had been in a mood for some sort of newfangled dance that involved finding a partner, forming into two lines, and prancing in repeating patterns up and down the lines. Since Bobo had grabbed Stripey and my usual Dawn Dance rice paddy snake partner hadn't attended the party, I'd gotten stuck with a random frog who tromped all over my feet. He'd even kicked me in the shell!

In short, I didn't have the energy to care what one single human called me. Whatever it was, it wouldn't be "Piri" anyway.

Running all the words into one, Taila demanded, "Ma-and-Pa-say-I-can-have-an-egg-but-only-if-you-say-it's-okay-so-can-I-have-an-egg!"

An egg? As in, a chicken egg? She got that excited over a regular old chicken egg? Didn't they have hens laying eggs in their bedding every morning? Well, whatever. As long as it made her stop whining.

Only if you repeat that more slowly and more properly, I told her. It's "Mother" and "Father," not "Ma" and "Pa." And it's "may," not "can."

"Mother and Father say I may have an egg, but only if you say it's okay, so may I have an egg?" she parroted at a marginally less breakneck pace.

Good enough. Yes. You may.

"Yay!" She ran towards the cottage, skidded to a halt, turned back, cried "Thank you!" and vanished through the doorway.

What was the big deal about an egg?

Moving at my turtle's pace, I followed her into the cottage, where Mistress Jek was stirring a pot of porridge over the hearth. As soon as she saw me, she dropped the ladle and knelt.

"Mornin' – I mean, good morning, Emissary."

Good morning to you too. Taila tells me that you proposed an egg as her reward for studying hard?

Mistress Jek might have trouble producing proper speech on her own, but she understood it just fine. She nodded, her frizzy bun bouncing. "Yes, yes. It's no festival food, but it's the best we could come up with."

That will be acceptable. While she got a basket and started picking through the straw in the hens' corner, I asked, Don't you have fresh eggs every day? Why is Taila so excited about getting to eat an egg?

She flinched, as if she expected me to punish her for malnourishing the girl. "Emissary…the eggs are for sellin', not eatin'. We can't…we can't eat them."

I was stunned. The Jeks grew eggs – I meant, raised chickens that laid eggs – but didn't get to eat any themselves? How could this be?

You mean, you never eat eggs? Taila's never tasted an egg before?!

"Oh, yes, she has," Mistress Jek assured me as she picked up the brown eggs, gave each a quick inspection, and arranged them in the basket. "Every year on her birthday, she gets to have one. She chooses how to have it too. She likes pocketbook eggs."

Pocketbook eggs?

Mistress Jek was unsurprised that I hadn't heard of them. She'd long since painted a mental image of me living a pampered life in Heaven with no idea of what peasant lives on Earth were like. (Which was half true.) So she didn't hesitate before explaining, "You fry an egg until the white is crispy and the yolk is just about done, and then you fold it in half. So the yolk looks like a coin inside a pocketbook."

In short, it was the sort of crude, simple dish that anyone could make. Eh, not everyone had the talent to work as a palace chef, I supposed.

It was oddly soothing to watch her hunt through the straw and collect eggs one by one in a smooth rhythm. Long, long ago, when I'd first moved down from the mountains as a young fox spirit, the farmers in the plains of northwestern Serica had kept chickens too. I'd loved chicken eggs.

Actually, I'd loved chickens even more, but those were harder to catch, and if I ate too many, there wouldn't be any more chickens or eggs. Plus the farmers would go to their local lord for help, and he'd hunt me with his pack of foxhounds.

I hated foxhounds. Almost as much as I hated raccoon dogs. The one was a threat to my literal existence, the other an affront to my sense of aesthetics.

But that reminded me of something: According to Taila, raccoon dogs didn't live around here, but were there foxes that might steal eggs and kill chickens? I hadn't seen any so far, but that didn't mean much. Foxes were good at hiding, and fox spirits had no reason to reveal themselves to a turtle. Maybe fear of fox predation was why the Jeks kept their chickens under the same roof as themselves.

But when I asked, Mistress Jek just gave me a blank look. "Where do you keep chickens in Heaven, Emissary?"

Well, for starters, I was fairly certain that you didn't. In chicken coops, of course.

"Chicken coops?"

You know, a hen house? A small building where the chickens lay eggs and sleep at night so they're safe from predators?

"A hen house, a hen house…," she mused. After a couple repetitions, her eyes lit up. "What does a hen house look like, Emissary?"

And that was how I ended up designing my first-ever chicken coop.

In the winter, farmers had free time for building, so Master Jek, Ailus, Cailus, and Nailus cobbled one together following the schematics that I sketched in the ground. Their coop wound up looking a little wonky since they weren't carpenters and couldn't afford to hire Master Gravitas, but I figured it would be fine as long as it didn't collapse and crush the hens. My main goal was to get the poultry out of the bedding anyway.

After that, I – or rather, the male Jeks – tackled the pigsty. By the time the pig was out of the cottage, Honeysuckle Croft looked a lot more presentable.

All right, making progress here! Next up: beds!

---

Meanwhile, in town, Khun Josy was chatting with Master Gravitas, as she did every day when she had sweet potatoes to roast and his shop was open.

Or, rather, she was chatting at him while he made the occasional "Mmm" and "Mmmhmm" in response.

It didn't bother her. Master Gravitas had never been the vocal sort, whereas Josy, well, Josy could talk the ears off a parrot, according to that no-good sister-in-law whom her brother had insisted on marrying.

"Dontcha think Vanny's been acting weird lately?" she asked the cat spirit as she fed more branches to the fire in the bottom of her clay oven.

"Mmmm," said Master Gravitas, who was carving a ladle while Pepper sat on his work bench and chewed his tools.

With the fire tended, Josy started picking up sweet potatoes from a basket and ramming a hanger into each one. She was proud of her hangers, which she'd designed herself and ordered from the blacksmith, Master Shay. They had a hook on each end, bent in opposite directions, so she could stab the bottom hook into a sweet potato and then use the top hook to suspend it from the hanger in the previous sweet potato. When she'd built up a long string of them, she removed the pot that she used as an oven lid and checked the sweet potatoes that were already roasting. They were done, so Josy pulled them out and dumped them into the pot. Then she lowered the string of raw sweet potatoes into the oven, hooking the top hanger onto a hoop that ran around the inside edge. Back over the oven went the pot, to keep both the heat in and also the cooked sweet potatoes warm.

"I mean," she continued as she worked, "have you heard her talkin' lately? It's all 'thou art' and 'he hath' and 'I pray thee' this or that. Come on, who talks like that?!"

Clio, the pub serving maid who was Josy's sister's husband's cousin's daughter, ducked across the street to grab a bite to eat and overheard Josy's rant. As she plonked down a copper, she added, "The boys too! Have you seen how Cailus and Nailus walk these days? They throw out their chests and push back their shoulders and just – just – swagger! Like nobles in a play! What in the name of Heaven are they doin'?"

Josy passed her a sweet potato, still steaming hot, and Clio took a big bite without waiting for it to cool. "I don't know what they're doin', but I tell you what – that sister-in-law o' mine has always been crazy. The Loms have always thought they're better than the rest o' us, even when they're dirt poor. There's a streak of madness in that family. It's comin' out in Jek Lom Vanny now, you mark my words. She probably thinks she's some hoity-toity fancy lady livin' in the Empire! I told my brother when he started courtin' her, I told him, 'Nothin' good comes from hangin' with the Loms.' And I was right! See? Ten children born, only five still alive, and she lets 'em run wild! Did you see Taila th'other day? She's four! And her ma lets her run around on her own! No wonder Maila, may her soul have a better next life, got eaten by the catfish demon!"

The blacksmith's wife, Mistress Shay, was passing by on her way to bring him lunch. She also stopped to chat and, since she was there, bought a sweet potato to munch on. "I hear from Bobo that the Jeks have been buildin' fancy contraptions. A chicken coop? A pigsty? What's wrong with keeping their chickens and pig inside their house, like the rest o' us? Do they think they're too good to sleep with the animals?!"

At that, Master Gravitas actually spoke up. "A chicken coop and a pigsty?"

Mistress Shay nodded several times, making her messy grey bun bounce. "Yes! Very shoddy ones too." She clicked her tongue. "You should take a look, Master Gravitas. Mebe give 'em some tips."

"Mmmm," he replied.

"You do that, Master Gravitas," Josy ordered. "At this rate, those buildings are going to fall down and crush the animals, and then those poor children will starve to death before spring."

"I'll look into it," he promised.

Then he turned back to his carving and, no matter how soundly Josy, Clio, and Mistress Shay roasted Jek Lom Vanny, the cat spirit said no more.

---

A/N: Thanks to my awesome Patreon backers, BananaBobert, Blacklark57, Celia, Charlotte, Hookshyu, James, Lindsey, Michael, Pred Head, Voligne, and Anonymous!

 

[arianedartagnan]

One of you asked for a picture of the Dragon King of Caltrop Pond, and here it is! Those of you who have read the Patreon short story "The Apprentice Cats" might be able to guess who Agents G and P are.


View: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vIx_2oxp13G9DCOuudMX5hf2d3fCFEo-/view?usp=sharing

In case you can't see it, here is the direct link.

 

[arianedartagnan]

Chapter 37: That Cursed Chicken Coop

As the wintry days passed, Honeysuckle Croft and its inhabitants started to edge towards presentability. And by presentable, I mean that they no longer bedded down with the livestock, ate with one boot propped on the bench, or butchered the Serican language quite so often. I hadn't succeeded in getting them off the floor and into proper beds yet, but that was mostly because they lacked the supplies, the carpentry skills, and the money required to hire someone with aforementioned supplies and carpentry skills.

Still, overall, things were looking up for all of us – the Jeks because they no longer slouched along with their eyes on the ground, and me because just look at how much I was improving these humans' lives! Think of all the karma I was earning! Reincarnee of the Decade, here I come!

As the New Year approached, I was feeling optimistic.

And not just because of my career in home improvement, but also because the Kitchen God was due to leave Earth on the twenty-third of the Bitter Moon, return to the Bureau of Reincarnation for a week, and make sure Cassius wasn't trying to wrest power away from him. No matter how incompetent a bureau head the absentee Kitchen God was, I guaranteed that Cassius would be worse. He held a deep and personal grudge against me. As for the Kitchen God, well, I doubted that he was even aware of my existence. He was too busy flitting from kitchen to kitchen across the length and breadth of Serica, spying on families for his end-of-the-year report to Heaven and scrounging for offerings (a.k.a. bribes) from his worshippers. The zeal with which he tackled that portion of his responsibilities suggested that he wouldn't have much power in Heaven otherwise.

Always good to have a supervisor who doesn't bother to supervise you.

So anyway, I was in a good mood when that cat spirit carpenter, Master Gravitas, dropped by for a visit one morning. It wasn't too long after dawn, so I was still dragging my exhausted, danced-out self across the fields from Caltrop Pond when I heard Taila's squeal of delight.

"Uncle Tasy! Uncle Tasy!"

The cat's voice drifted to me on the wind. "Hullo, Taila. Mornin', Master Jek, Mistress Jek. Ailus, Cailus, Nailus."

"Master Gravitas!" exclaimed Mistress Jek in the second-most respectful tone I'd heard from her. (First place went to the one she reserved for me and Flicker.) "What a pleasure to see you!"

At the polite phrasing, I nodded to myself in congratulations. Just look at what a good teacher I was!

Her next sentence partially spoiled the effect, though. "What brings you here so early in the mornin'?"

Ugh, sigh. I rolled my eyes. She was still dropping her "ing"s. We'd have to work on it more.

The cat, however, didn't register her faux pas. In even worse Serican, he said, "I was hopin' t'catch both o' you afore Master Jek goes out t'check on the fields."

"Oh, fer real?" asked Master Jek, who didn't learn nearly as fast as his wife.

At the same time, Mistress Jek inquired, "What about?" Then, recalling her manners, she invited, "Won't you come in, please? Have you eaten yet? You should have breakfast with us. Rice porridge and pickled greens. Ailus! Go get Master Gravitas an egg! Master Gravitas, how d'you like your eggs cooked?"

"Oh no no no, no need, I ate before comin'. I'll just have some tea."

Their voices moved indoors as I finally plodded to the edge of the yard. Circling around it, I found an angle that let me see through the doorway and make out their vague shapes inside the dark cottage. Then I hid in a clump of dead grasses so neither Master Gravitas nor Taila would catch sight of me. No amount of berating or biting had ever taught her not to introduce her turtle friend to everyone she met.

Wooden spoons clunked dully against wooden bowls as the Jeks and their guest ate their breakfast porridge. Over his protestations, Mistress Jek had forced a bowl on Master Gravitas and even topped it with a pocketbook egg. Taila was staring at it, googly-eyed.

"I heard from Mistress Shay that you built a chicken coop and a pigsty," Master Gravitas was saying. "I was hopin' to have a look-see."

The elder Jeks exchanged nervous glances.

"Oh, haha, those!" Mistress Jek sounded too flustered to not be guilty of something. "They're not very good…we just sorta threw them together…they're really not worth seeing…. I'm sorry you came all the way out here for that!"

As for Master Jek, he raised his bowl to his mouth and slurped his porridge to hide his face. On the opposite bench, the boys were elbowing one another and peeking sidelong at their little sister.

Aww, curses. None of them possessed the slightest talent for dissembling. I needed to teach them how to act too.

"Oh, no, no," Master Gravitas assured them, "the coop's really interestin'! I got a bit o' a look from the road, and the design's different from what I've seen 'round these parts. Actually, I din't think people still built coops 'round here."

"Oh, haha, well, it's because it's not really a design, we just sorta made it up as we went…."

At that, Taila managed to drag her eyes away from the half-eaten egg long enough to meet the cat spirit's gaze and announce in an earnest voice, "It's because Mr. Turtle – "

"Eggs!" broke in Mistress Jek desperately. "Why don't we all have an egg to celebrate Master Gravitas visitin'? Go pick out an egg for yourselves, kids!"

Forgetting everything but their stomachs, the boys cheered and dove off the benches to hunt for the perfect egg. Taila stumbled after them, whining, "Heeeey! No fair! Wait for meeeeeee!"

I feared for the coop.

Although, come to think of it, it might not be a tragedy if the wretched thing collapsed before the carpenter got a good look. It had never occurred to me that chicken coops might have their region-dependent architectural styles. It was a box for hens to lay eggs in, for crying out loud! How many possible designs could there be?!

Apparently, too many.

If Mistress Jek had hoped to distract the kids from blurting out the family secret, she'd succeeded. If she'd hoped to prevent Master Gravitas from scrutinizing the design of the coop, however, she'd failed. Miserably.

"I'll just go with the young'uns and help 'em pick," he said, rising from the bench and padding after the children.

As his tail swished around the doorframe, Master Jek hissed at his wife, "Whatcha go and say that for? You were practically beggin' him to go look at it!"

She threw up her hands. "I freaked out, okay? It's not like you were helpin' any!"

"Well, what d'we do now?"

"You're askin' me?"

And they both scrambled after Master Gravitas. By the time they caught up, the children were fighting over who got first pick of the eggs, while the carpenter ambled around the coop, examining it from all angles. The tip of his tail twitched with curiosity as he ran his hands over the joins. Putting one palm on a corner, he pressed experimentally. The coop wobbled but held.

"That's a good design," he pronounced, and I smirked to myself.

Of course it was a good design. I'd come up with it, hadn't I? I, of all people, knew my way around a chicken coop.

Master Gravitas started to stroll towards Master and Mistress Jek, but right at that moment, Cailus shouted in triumph and dashed right in front of him into the coop. The cat spirit made a near-vertical leap over the boy's head to avoid crashing into him, landed lightly, and kept walking as if nothing had happened. "A little old-fashioned," he remarked, "but good and solid."

I grumbled a little to myself. Old-fashioned indeed! What was I – somebody's creaky old spinster great-aunt?

"Gladja think so," said Master Jek, not hiding his relief.

"You're too kind," Mistress Jek added, remembering what I'd taught them about good manners.

There were thrashing sounds off to the side, from the members of the Jek family who didn't remember my lessons. Ailus and Nailus had teamed up to haul Cailus out of the coop by the legs. He slithered out on his belly, hands cupped protectively around an egg.

Mistress Jek opened her mouth to bellow at them, then gritted her teeth instead.

"How'dja come up with the design?" asked Master Gravitas, pretending not to notice the civil war raging next to him. "It reminds me a bit o' how they build coops in the northwest."

I froze. Of course it reminded him of chicken coops in the northwest. That was where I'd come from, long, long ago.

You might expect animals and humans to awaken with the same frequency everywhere on Earth, but that wasn't the case. No one knew why, either. The Imperial Mages had had theories, of course, but since they ran the gamut from semi-probable to improbable to wildly improbable to obviously impossible, I'd ignored them. Apart from throwing funding at them when they groveled nicely enough.

Anyway, most spirits awakened in a few specific areas. The Jade Mountains along the northern coast were one, and the Snowy Mountains that ran down the western coast and roughly east-west through the middle of Serica were another. Since the mountains were also where demon kings and human bandits liked to hide out, and since newly awakened spirits didn't have the best grasp of, shall we say, socially acceptable standards of behavior, we called those areas the Wilds. I'd awakened in the northwestern corner of Serica, more or less where the two mountain ranges met. After serving as a demon king's courier and spy for a while, I'd decided to explore the settlements down on the plains.

Which was where I'd discovered chickens.

And chicken coops.

And chicken coop designs that were apparently specific to the region and a dead giveaway for my true identity–

Breathe, Piri. No one's going to connect a weird turtle with a nine-tailed fox from five hundred years ago. No one except for Aurelia and Flicker know you're here – and if Heaven finds out, the star goddess and the clerk will be in a lot more trouble than the soul they reincarnated.

It would be okay. Sucking in a deep breath, I forced myself to stop hyperventilating.

Meanwhile, Master and Mistress Jek weren't handling Master Gravitas' prying any better than I was.

"Oh, really?" asked Master Jek unconvincingly. "The northwest? That's really interestin'!"

"Mmhmm," agreed Master Gravitas. "You see the shape of the doorway? They do that in the northwest to keep foxes out."

"Foxes?" asked Mistress Jek with genuine blankness. "Are foxes a problem for chickens?"

Wait – was the reason that I hadn't seen any foxes around here that there literally weren't any foxes around here? At all? But there should be! We lived everywhere!

"Mmhmm," replied the cat. "Foxes steal chicken eggs and eat chickens. Not 'round here, o' course. The lords and ladies hunted 'em out. For fun, y'know, 'cuz foxes are smart critters? But last time I was in the northwest, they still had a fox problem. Dem'd things come outta the Wilds."

A shiver of rage went through me. How dare anyone hunt my brothers and sisters for "fun"!

Almost at once, the shiver of rage transformed into a cold shudder. Fox hunting had not been an aristocratic pastime back in the Empire. I mean, why would you do it? Why would you kill innocent creatures – okay, sometimes not-so-innocent creatures – for sport? What was the point? If you weren't a demon, I meant? Had this part of Serica had also turned into the Wilds?

But no, that wasn't the impression I'd gotten, and I'd spent enough lives in the vicinity of Black Sand Creek to tell. So that meant that sometime after the fall of the Empire, Sericans had begun to eliminate the fox population by casting it as fun and games.

Why foxes in particular? We had our rivalry with the raccoon dog spirits, of course, but also with the wolf spirits, who scorned the deer and serow spirits, who competed with the black bear and cloud leopard spirits, and so on. But no one group had ever considered eradicating another. Not seriously, anyway.

It couldn't be my fault that Sericans hated foxes so much, could it?

No, no, of course not.

No one would be so dumb as to blame all foxes for one nine-tailed fox demon's actions. That would be like wiping out all humans because Cassius had existed.

Modern-day Sericans were just weird. They wore weird clothing, lived in weird homes, spoke in weird ways, and had weird pastimes.

Well, I'd just have to fix that. One family at a time.

I turned my attention back to my current group of work-in-progress, modern-day Sericans in time to hear Master Gravitas praise them, "You did a good job here. The coop should hold. Lemme know if you wanna build anything else. I'm always happy to help out."

After some pleasantries about the weather and the upcoming New Year festivities, and some praise for Mistress Jek's cooking, Master Gravitas bade the family farewell and padded back down Persimmon Tree Lane.

I lumbered out of hiding to start Taila's lessons, giving the chicken coop a wide berth.

---

A/N 1: Thanks to my readers for fun discussions and cute ideas, especially Spectrum and Silvan Eldar!

A/N 2: Thanks to my awesome Patreon backers, BananaBobert, Blacklark57, Celia, Charlotte, Hookshyu, James, Lindsey, Michael, Pred Head, Voligne, and Anonymous!

 

[arianedartagnan]

Chapter 38: Porridge and Cabbage Soup

After that, we entered the New Year season. At least, so I gathered from the preparations in the Caltrop Pond Water Court. There was no change at Honeysuckle Croft, but the little dragon king and his courtiers (and his servants) observed the appropriate festivities. A watered-down version, anyway.

My first inkling of the upcoming holidays came one miserably cold night when I met Bobo by the pond. She was curled up on the same rock that she and Stripey been standing on the first time I saw them. It was their designated meeting place, where she waited every night to see if he'd gotten time off from highway robbery. I'd coopted it for our handoff spot, where she'd give me ale for my offering, but she always insisted on lingering well into the party in case he showed up.

Normally I had no objections – no one important arrives at a party right when it starts anyway – but it was particularly cold that night, and I wanted to get into the water and out of the wind. Bobo, however, wouldn't hear of waiting for Stripey indoors.

"It's the Eighth!" she insisted.

The Eighth of what? I asked, grumpily walking to her other side to use her as a windbreak. (In case you were wondering, no, snakes don't make great windbreaks.) Pulling my head and legs into my shell helped. Marginally.

Why didn't I just go in without her, you might ask? Well, I couldn't explain it either, which only made me grumpier.

"The Eighth of the Bitter Moon! Isssn't it ex-sssiting?"

Meh, okay, yes, in the sense that it heralded the coming of the holiday season near the end of one year and the beginning of the next. But the Feast of the Eighth wasn't much in and of itself. Its signature dish was eight-treasure porridge, for Heaven's sake: a peasant dish consisting of different types of rice supplemented by dried fruit, beans, and nuts. No matter how you dressed it up, in the end, it was just boiled rice. I'd always considered the Eighth to be a lead-up to the real festivities.

But Bobo was dancing around on her coils, making her an even more unreliable windbreak, and singing, "I'm sssuper ex-sssited! It's gonna be a feassst, and we're gonna get all the food we can eat, and there's gonna be tons and tons of eight-treasure porridge!"

Ah, now her excitement made more sense. If tonight's party were a feast that happened to include porridge as one of the side dishes, that was much better.

Let's go in then, I proposed.

"But Ssstripey," she protested. "He isssn't here yet. We have to wait for him. They don't ssseat you until the whole party is here."

To me, that seemed like even more of an argument to go inside now, before all the good seats were taken. If we're approaching the New Year, people are starting to travel, to go home to visit their parents and such. Stripey's going to be very busy for the next moon, I reminded her.

Bobo wavered, twisting her head as if that would make the duck materialize out of thin air, the way Flicker had. For a moment, I wondered what the clerk was up to, and what the eight-treasure porridge in Heaven looked like. I'd bet Aurelia had supervised its preparation.

Bobo's fretting yanked me back down to Earth. "Oooh, but he always comes to the feasssts. We go to the feasssts together every year. It's our thing. He knows I'm waiting. He wouldn't not ssshow up without telling me firssst…."

It's okay, this year you have me!

"That's true…."

She was right about to cave when a dark shape appeared in the distance. It lifted one wing and waved it.

"It's Ssstripey!" she cried, bouncing up and down on her tail. "Ssstripey Ssstripey Ssstripey!"

"Hullo!" the duck demon called back, waddling faster.

One of his sides looked oddly deformed, but when he got closer, I realized that he'd strapped a big glass bottle to himself. Probably some fancy liquor he'd stolen.

"I'm ssso happy you came!" cried Bobo, launching herself at him and wrapping herself around his neck.

He patted her with one tolerant wing. "Don't I come every year?"

"Yeah, but Rosssie sssaid you'd be really busssy 'cuz of all the travelers, ssso I thought maybe you weren't coming this year!"

"Hmmm." Stripey looked my way. Ducks can't really purse their bills, but that was the impression he gave.

The duck demon had never developed the same respect for me as Bobo and the Jeks. Each time he glared at me for upsetting the bamboo viper, I fantasized about revealing that I was an emissary of the gods and watching him grovel in the mud. Each time, though, practicality won out. I couldn't risk having a bunch of bandits blab my mission to everyone they robbed. I'd forced Bobo to keep it a secret from Stripey. If and when I needed him to help the Jeks, I'd tell him myself.

Pretending I didn't notice his disapproval, I chimed, I'm so glad you were able to make it tonight, Stripey. I was getting worried.

"As am I," he replied curtly. "C'mon, Bobo, let's go in."

Turning his back on me and wrapping a wing around the bamboo viper, he ushered her into the pond.

Hmph. Duck demons had no taste.

As it turned out, it was a dismal start to a dismal night. What the local spirits termed a "feast" was more what I'd call supper in the servants' wing. The crabs had set up mismatched circular tables on the dance floor, and a senior crab was leading groups of guests to tables that still had the appropriate number of chairs left. After Bobo, Stripey, and I were seated (alongside a family of shrimp with obnoxious children), the only dish served was a vat of porridge. With a wooden ladle in it so we could serve ourselves into wooden bowls, out of which we then ate with wooden spoons. If the porridge in the vat started to run low, we could wave at the crabs, and one of them would scuttle over to refill it.

But that was it. All we had for the "feast" was rice porridge! What kind of feast was this?!

"Purple rice!" one of adult shrimp exclaimed, spooning up some porridge and examining it. "He got purple rice this year!"

And what was the big deal over purple rice? Sure, it had a slightly different taste and texture from normal brown rice, but not that different, and certainly not after you'd boiled it to death.

Also, the dragon and his servants hadn't bothered to account for differing sizes among his guests, so the spoon was way too big for me. I had to stand on the table, lower my head into my bowl, and lap up my porridge like a fox kit. I wasn't the only guest relegated to that state – but it was uncouth and undignified and I detested it.

"And lotus ssseeds!" shrilled Bobo, devouring one with a slurp that made me cringe. Unlike me, she had no trouble looping her coils around her spoon and raising it to her mouth. "I love lotus ssseeds!"

"I like the dried red dates best," put in Stripey, who seemed determined to act extra solicitous tonight. "You like dried red dates too, don't you, Bobo?"

"Uh huh! I do! What do you think, Rosssie?" she asked eagerly. "How's this compared to the eight-treasure porridge in – "

My death glare chopped off the rest of that sentence.

Gulping, she stuffed her mouth with porridge and let out the most unsubtle "Mmmmm! Ssso tasty!" imaginable.

Stripey's eyes narrowed, but he didn't say anything.

After we mercifully ate our way to the bottom of the vat, some crab servants ushered us aside so they could clear the tables, more crab servants started passing out strings of dried caltrop nuts, the dragon king bellowed at the musicians to play "A dance tune! None of this formal stuff!" and the real party began.

---

After the Feast of the Eighth, the Jeks and their neighbors started their holiday preparations too. The primary one seemed to involve digging up white cabbages that they'd buried in the ground at the beginning of winter. According to Bobo, the shoots that sprouted without sunlight were tender and delicious, especially when made into soup. One of her jobs was helping to excavate the cabbages, although Mistress Jek insisted on cooking them herself. That kicked off an endless round of visits: the Jeks went to see their neighbors, bearing clunky crocks of the soup as gifts, and their neighbors returned said visits, bearing near-identical crocks of near-identical soup.

As she should have, Mistress Jek offered me the first bowlful, but I found it watery and tasteless. The cabbage shoots were much better raw.

Anyway, I was congratulating myself on training some modicum of manners into the Jeks so they wouldn't embarrass themselves too much this year – until I overheard a conversation between two of their visitors.

As a young woman who looked like a pub serving maid left the Jeks' yard, she ran into a farmer who was just clomping up the road.

"Yo! Clio! Wassup?" He waved his free arm, the one that didn't have a crock under it.

"Hi-hi, Jonjon!" she called back. "How's it goin'?"

"Good, good. How're – " he pointed his chin at Honeysuckle Croft – "today?"

That was an odd way to inquire after his neighbors' health, I thought. It felt as if he didn't want to say their names, as if he might be a little afraid of them, even. It was the same way Cassius' courtiers behaved when they thought a rival was plotting to destroy them.

Ha. As if there were anything in this barony worth destroying anyone over!

Sashaying up to Farmer Jonjon, Clio put a hand on his chest (to steady herself, of course) and stood on tiptoe to whisper into his ear. I was just assessing her technique and giving her a passing grade when I registered what she was hissing.

"They're still bein' weird. Like, super, super weird."

"Still actin' like they're inna play or sumthin', huh?"

"Yup-yup."

Okay. That was a big, fat fail. If she thought that the Jeks' behavior was wrong and hers correct, then she didn't know the first thing about etiquette.

The farmer, however, shook his head and heaved a long sigh. It was the kind of sigh humans gave when they heard that a favorite old great-uncle was on his deathbed, or a spoiled niece had just wasted her parents' last copper on a new ballgown.

Seriously, what was wrong with these modern-day Sericans? Just because they didn't know how to move and speak properly didn't mean they had to condemn those who did!

After the standard inquiries after each other's families, Clio continued on her way, and Jonjon proceeded towards the cottage. I followed him, staying in the dead grasses so he wouldn't see me.

Stopping a good six feet from the door, he called, "Hullo!"

It was Taila who opened it. As I'd taught her, she positioned herself to one side of the doorway, with her body at a slight angle to convey a welcoming air. She swept one arm around gracefully, finishing with her fingers gesturing into the cottage. Overall, it was a solid performance, except that she'd forgotten to point her toes out. I'd have to scold her later.

Tipping her head in a charming, innocent way, she dimpled up at the farmer and recited, "Thank you for gracing our humble abode with your presence, Uncle Jonjon! Won't you please come in?"

By this point, she'd repeated the sentences so many times that they flowed almost smoothly.

The farmer, however, had no appreciation for my training or her efforts. He recoiled. His back and shoulders stiffened, and his voice came out harsh. "Hullo, lil' Taila. Is yer ma or pa home?"

Maintaining her sweet smile, Taila recited the words I'd drilled into her. "Yes, of course! My mother is inside. Won't you come this way, please?"

That was when Mistress Jek came to the door, wiping her hands on her apron. "Ah, Jonjon! So good to see you again! It's a true pleasure!" she tacked on, remembering the lines I'd tried to teach her. "Come in, come in!"

The farmer backed away a few steps, as if he thought she might lunge forward, seize him, and haul him into the cottage. "Oh no no – no need. Yer too busy. I just wanted t' drop this off – the missus made it – she's hopin' you'll tell her how it turned out this year…."

Switching on the bright smile I'd taught her, Mistress Jek exclaimed, "Why, thank you, Jonjon! You're too kind! But please, do come in and sit for a while. I have the tea all ready…."

"Oh, but the missus is waitin' for me…."

They danced around for a while before she won, which pleased me: She could hone her tea ceremony skills. Goodness knew she needed practice.

I was much, much less pleased, however, by the next group of guests to come up the road.

It was a passel of young women, sisters to judge by the dull uniformity of their facial features, and they were passing a crock among themselves and squealing over how "Heeeeeeavyyyyy!" it was. Several feet from the yard, they stopped, huddled up, and started whispering while darting glances at the Honeysuckle Croft.

Suspicious, I crept closer to eavesdrop.

" – says they got their bodies stolen by fox demons!" one girl was hissing.

---

A/N: Thanks to my awesome Patreon backers, BananaBobert, Blacklark57, Celia, Charlotte, Hookshyu, James, Lindsey, Michael, Pred Head, Voligne, and Anonymous!

 

[arianedartagnan]

Chapter 39: The Holiday Season

Whaaaaat? Fox demons? There were fox demons around?! Hadn't Master Gravitas told the Jeks that all the foxes had been hunted out?

If there were still foxes around, I had to go find them! I couldn't tell them who I was, of course, but I still wanted to meet them. Or at least see who they were, how they lived, what they did…. It had been so long since I'd seen another fox!

But if my first reaction were ecstasy, confusion soon clouded it.

That girl had claimed that fox demons had been stealing people's bodies. Whose bodies? And why? It was possible in theory, but vanishingly rare. After all, any fox demon who was powerful enough to suck out and devour a human's soul was also powerful enough to transform into a human in the first place. Why bother to hunt down the perfect body to steal when you could just tailor your own form? It didn't make sense.

"Really??? Why? How can she tell?" gasped the shortest sister, a girl with messy pigtails, echoing my thoughts exactly.

In response, the first sister raised her bushy eyebrows. "Cuz they're bein' so weird. Haven't you seen how they walk and talk?"

"Clio's little sister's husband says he was passin' by and saw 'em through the window," put in the last girl with relish, her beady eyes glinting under droopy eyelids. "They din't think anyone could see, so their fox tails were all hangin' out under their clothing!"

That made even less sense! True, if a fox demon transformed into a human and got distracted or tired, they might slip up and let their tails re-form. But if they'd stolen the human body in the first place, there wouldn't be any tails at all!

Obviously, these humans knew nothing about foxes. Or were inventing tales to scare Messy Pigtails. She looked like the gullible sort.

And indeed, Bushy Eyebrows waggled them at her sister. "Better be careful, or they'll jump bodies and steal yours!"

Messy Pigtails squeaked and nearly dropped the crock.

I nearly squeaked too – from shock that she'd believe any fox spirit would want her body.

Leaning in close, Droopy Eyelids hissed, "Just like how Piri stole Lady Laelia's!"

Messy Pigtails and I jumped at the same time.

That girl had said my name.

She'd said my name.

No one on Earth had said my name in centuries.

An unbearable mix of yearning and loss roiled through me as I remembered the very last time anyone on Earth had addressed me by my true name.

---

It was five hundred years ago, the night the palace fell.

I'd known the end was coming for weeks, ever since the rebel dukes defeated the last general still loyal to Cassius and marched their army to the gates of the capital. Cassius had believed – or claimed to believe – that his Golden Bird Guards would hold the walls. Hold out just a little longer and salvation would come, he'd declared to his dwindling court. After all, wasn't he the Son of Heaven? Hadn't the Jade Emperor sent a chimera to his side as a sign of his divine right to rule? Didn't the chimera remain by his side even now?

Maybe the nobles had bought it, but I'd known better. Chimera or no chimera, Heaven would not save a man whom Lady Fate had decreed would die.

I was fairly certain Cassius had known better, too.

The night the rebels breached the palace, I was hurrying down a hallway, face and tails muffled in a thick cloak, dressed for travel. Perhaps Cassius expected his Prime Minister to die by his side, but I owed him nothing. My task here was done. The dynasty was finished. I was getting out.

The hallway was darker than it should have been, most of the oil lamps empty and unlit. In all the chaos, too many servants had seized their chance and slipped away, and without Aurelia, no one had tried to reorganize the remaining staff.

"Piri."

A voice from the shadows. A hand on my arm. Cassius.

I considered running: No human can keep pace with a spirit. But instead I lowered my hood and turned, waiting to see how he would ask me to stay. Would he accuse me? Command me? Plead with me?

He said: "It's over, then?"

No anger or recriminations, only a bone-deep knowledge of what my answer would be.

"Yes," I replied. I did owe him that much: the truth that his dynasty, his world, his life were all over. There was nothing left. He and I – we'd destroyed it all.

I expected him to ask, to order me to stay then, to see it through to the end with him. But again he surprised me.

"I see. You should go before they break down the gates."

The generosity of that gesture caught me off guard. For a second, I glimpsed the ruler he might have been, if Fate had foretold differently.

Then the moment passed. His face hardened into its habitual sneer. "I'm going to burn down the palace around them. See how they like that."

I smiled up at him, the coquettish smile that always worked on him. "Have fun, Your Imperial Majesty."

And with that, I continued down the hall, out a back door, over the palace wall, fleeing for the Wilds where Heaven's soldiers would eventually catch up and arrest me for high crimes against the Son of Heaven and, by extension, Heaven itself.

I'd never been Piri on Earth again since that night.

---

"Piri?" breathed Messy Pigtails, in the same tone that the Jeks might use to whisper "Lord Silurus."

Her fear was gratifying, but I had to wonder, who was this Lady Laelia whose body I was supposed to have stolen? There had been no one by that name in Cassius' court.

"Doncha remember?" Droopy Eyelids pressed, looming over her little sister until Messy Pigtails cringed back. "Gran told us the story. 'Member?" Her voice took on the singsong-y cadence of a storyteller. "Once upon a time, there was a fox demon named Piri who lived in the Wilds. This was back in the Empire, when the fair and just Emperor Cassius and his beautiful Empress Aurelia ruled the land."

I had to suppress a snort. The "fair and just" Emperor Cassius? The beautiful Aurelia? No one – not even her parents, I'd bet my next reincarnation on it! – had ever called Aurelia "beautiful." Intelligent, yes. Graceful, yes. Gracious, yes. But not beautiful.

Somehow, I didn't think Aurelia would appreciate her relegation to court ornament in the tale either. I hoped she was listening.

"Serica was a happy land. Everyone had a house to live in and warm clothing to wear and enough food to eat every day. But then Piri killed Lady Laelia and stole her body, took over the government from Emperor Cassius and Empress Aurelia, and messed ev'rythin' up."

That idyllic description of the Empire left a lot – well, everything – to be desired, but I was more concerned with this supposed "Lady Laelia." I had never known a Lady Laelia, much less stolen her body! Seriously, why were humans inventing random historical personages?

"Why?" croaked Messy Pigtails, who seemed to have a knack for asking the right questions. "Why'd she do it?"

"So ev'rythin' would be a mess and she could eat more humans. Duh," said Bushy Eyebrows. "What else would a demon want?"

Plenty. For starters, an accurate recounting of historical events.

But still, it was flattering that even these uneducated, backwater mortals remembered my name after five hundred years. And feared it too. Maybe the children's tale had gotten all the details wrong, but the thing that rang true was my power. I had brought down an empire. I was a force to be reckoned with.

While I gloated over my undying fame, Bushy Eyebrows was saying, "And now the fox demons are back. They're stealin' human bodies again!" She snapped her teeth in what she thought was an imitation of a fox demon eating a soul, I supposed. "Those aren't really the Jeks!"

Wait – the Jeks? She thought fox demons had eaten the Jeks? Who in their right mind would eat the Jeks?!

"So what're we gonna do about 'em?" asked Droopy Eyelids breathlessly. "What're we gonna do about the fox demons?"

With a shrug, Bushy Eyebrows took the crock from Messy Pigtails. "Give 'em cabbage soup. Cuz Ma said to."

Well, that was a little anticlimactic.

"Oh. Okay."

"C'mon! Let's see if we can see their tails!" cried Bushy Eyebrows.

And the three girls pattered up to the cottage in a state of giggly anticipation.

Dejected, I trudged after them. Master Gravitas had been right after all. There were no foxes in the Claymouth Barony, only bored peasants spreading nasty rumors about their neighbors. If I were the baron, I'd keep them working all year round. None of this time-off-for-the-holidays nonsense.

The girls knocked and called through the door, "Auntie Vanny! Auntie Vanny! We're heee-ere!"

For a change, it was Master Jek who greeted the visitors. "Mornin', girls. It's great to see you! Come in, come in."

Giggling and craning their heads to peek around his legs, the girls tiptoed into the cottage.

In a crestfallen voice, Messy Pigtails whispered to her sisters, "But there's no tail."

If I heard her, Master Jek must have as well, but I couldn't see his face, and he didn't say anything.

---

As time crawled towards the New Year, the number of visitors to Honeysuckle Croft only increased. Friends and relatives came bearing gifts, and peddlers showed up with long bamboo poles balanced on their shoulders, their wares and little scales dangling in baskets on the ends. Although all of them looked askance at the Jeks' improved manners and improved home, no one was so crass as to mention the fox demon rumors.

On the twenty-third day of the Bitter Moon, the Jeks ceremonially set a bowl of rice and another of cabbage soup in front of their effigy of the Kitchen God. For them, it was a greasy square of red paper with his name written in clumsy calligraphy. (Which they could now read! Thanks to me.) Kneeling before it, they thanked him for his protection all year, prayed for him to have a safe trip to Heaven, and begged that his report to the Jade Emperor be sweet. In case he needed extra convincing, Mistress Jek smeared a line of honey across the characters.

Then Master Jek ripped the paper off the wall, carried it into the yard, and burned it to send the god on his way. As the oldest child, Ailus got to toss a handful of straw onto the flames for the Kitchen God's horse, and as the second oldest, Cailus got to pour a cup of tea on the ground for it to drink. Too young to participate, Nailus and Taila looked on with envy.

Warm and snug in Taila's hands, I watched as the paper curled up and burned to ashes. I wondered what the Kitchen God would report on the Jek family this year – and what he would find when he finally returned to the Bureau of Reincarnation.

---

Once the Kitchen God was gone, we entered the Little New Year, the holiday season proper. Now there were so many visits to and from family and friends that I had to stop Taila's lessons altogether. There was no point in starting to explain a grammar point when she was just going to spot another group coming up Persimmon Tree Lane and run off to greet them, or in trying to teach her a dance variation when Mistress Jek was just going to pull her out of class to visit another aunt.

Instead, I entrusted her survival to her parents and took my own vacation in Caltrop Pond, hanging out with Bobo and Stripey when the latter was free. It wasn't as fun as it might have been, though, because the bamboo viper was depressed over getting fired.

"Missstress Ssshay sssaid ssshe doesssn't need me anymore. I dunno what happened."

The loss of that job was a disaster for me too, because Mistress Shay brewed the horrendous ale that the Dragon King of Caltrop Pond so loved.

Well, what reason did she give? I asked. You've worked for her for years. Surely she gave some reason.

Bobo dipped her tail into the pond and flicked water drops across the surface. Together, we watched the ripples. "Ssshe just sssaid ssshe doesssn't need my help after the New Year. I don't know how I'll pay rent next year."

Bobo lived in that stand of bamboo near Honeysuckle Croft, where I'd revealed that I was a secret agent of the gods. It was literally just a cluster of bamboo stalks, but she still had to pay Baron Claymouth to sleep there. Although the rent was low, she didn't make much from her odd jobs and needed every single one.

If he evicted her, I'd lose my companion and source of alcohol for the Caltrop Pond parties, Mistress Jek would lose her hired help, and Taila would lose her backup babysitter. It would be inconvenient all around.

Hmmmm, let me think about it. We'll think of something, I promised.

---

But that wasn't the only piece of bad news in the dying days of the year. One evening, Master Jek returned from town looking more exhausted than usual. He barely registered Taila's happy, "Father! You're back! Welcome home!" and hug.

Patting the top of her head in an absent way, he sighed to Mistress Jek, "It's no good. Master Gian said no."

"Oh no!" she cried. "But why? I thought it was all set! At harvest-time, he said Cailus could start after the New Year! He even took the first part of the fees!"

From his pocket, Master Jek produced a long string of coppers, tied together by the square holes in their centers. "He returned it. Says he's sorry, but he has too many apprentices."

Cailus stared at the coins, eyes huge.

"Oh, oh," fretted Mistress Jek. "Well…we'll just have to find something else. If not a basket maker…maybe a carpenter? Go ask Master Gravitas! He was impressed by the chicken coop!"

Master Jek nodded. "I'll ask next time I see 'im."

And on that happy note, we reached New Year's Eve.

---

A/N: Thanks to my awesome Patreon backers, BananaBobert, Blacklark57, Celia, Charlotte, Hookshyu, James, Lindsey, Michael, Pred Head, and Anonymous!

 

[arianedartagnan]

Chapter 40: New Year's Eve

"If everyone would please quiet down, His Majesty has an announcement to make. If everyone would please quiet down, His Majesty has an announcement to make."

I could barely make out the crab servant's clackety voice above the hubbub. For New Year's Eve, a bigger crowd of partyers had showed up at Caltrop Pond than usual, bringing a lot more alcohol than usual – and believe me, everyone there knew what to do with it! Although I'd shown up expecting another sorry "banquet" like the one on the Eighth, the dance floor was still a dance floor, and the musicians were playing cheery tunes onstage. About half the guests were dancing while the rest drank, chatted, shouted greetings to newcomers, and speculated on the program for the evening.

The poor crab scuttled side-to-side in front of the stage, waved his pincers to stop the musicians, and made another valiant effort to get our attention. "If everyone would please quiet down, His Majesty has an announcement to make – "

"SHUT UP EVERYBODY!" bellowed His Most Dignified Majesty.

That worked.

The room went silent, leaving only Bobo to shrill at her normal volume, "And then ssshe sssaid – "

"Shut up!" hissed the people around us. "His Majesty's making an announcement!"

Mortified, Bobo snapped her jaws shut and curled into a ball, while I cringed into my shell. Stripey looked entirely unconcerned.

With a glare in our direction, the Dragon King declared, "Listen up, y'all! We're invited to Black Sand Creek for dinner! So we're gonna head over right now, eat until our bellies explode, and then come back. For. Some. DANCING!"

The room erupted into whoops and chanting. "Din-ner. Din-NER. DIN-NER!"

Forgetting her embarrassment, Bobo bounced up. "Ooh! I remember going to Black Sssand Creek! When was it – the year before lassst? Ssstripey, d'you remember?"

The duck demon cocked his head to a side. "Longer, I think. It was the year the drought broke. They invited us over to celebrate."

"Ooh! Yeah! I remember now! It was the year the mage came!"

As for me, I'd barely heard anything after the Dragon King uttered those fatal words: "Black Sand Creek."

I couldn't go.

Drunk or not, the Caltrop Pond spirits must have figured out by now that I wasn't a real spirit, but such was the nature of this group that no one cared. As long as I could keep up with their partying, I could be the Jade Emperor Himself and no one would bat an eye.

Well, apart from asking, "Hey, how's the booze in Heaven?"

The Black Sand Creek spirits, on the other hand…. The Black Sand Creek spirits were uptight and persnickety and convinced of their own undemonstrated superiority. They'd realize I wasn't a spirit and goggle until Nagi noticed. One look at me, and she'd would be badgering Yulus to demand that the Dragon King of Caltrop Pond hand me over so she could send me off to the Dragon King of the Eastern Sea for vivisection.

Once upon a time, that had been an attractive option. But not anymore.

A scaley coil nudged me, jolting me from my thoughts. "Hey, Rosssie, you're from Black Sssand Creek, right?"

Mmm, I answered, confirming it in the vaguest way possible.

Most unfortunately, I'd been born on the banks of Black Sand Creek, which meant that Yulus wouldn't even have to demand that the lower-ranked dragon hand me over. I already belonged to him.

"This is ssso ex-sssiting! You can ssshow us around your home!"

I pulled myself together enough to joke, Weeell, I would think Stripey would be better at that.

"True," replied the bandit with fake soberness. "I can give you a tour of the pearl farm, if you wish."

"The pearl farm???" Bobo's eyes lit up.

"EVERYBODY SET?" roared the Dragon King of Caltrop Pond. Without waiting for the answering cheers, he shouted, "Off we go!"

As the spirits trooped after him (with varying degrees of enthusiasm depending on how much they loved food versus hated court etiquette), Bobo kept up a steady stream of questions. "What's the pearl farm look like? Is it like a wheat field? Oh no, but it's underwater, so maybe it's more like a rissse paddy?"

Hanging back, I let several people come between us, then several more. If I kept to the fringes of the crowd, I could "fall behind," hide, and then hang out here for a few hours until everyone returned for the dancing.

I was about to vanish into the feathery caltrop stems when Bobo realized I was missing. "Hey, where's Rosssie?" She contorted her top half into a knot so she could look for me and swim forward at the same time.

Stripey glanced back too, in a much more perfunctory manner. "She'll catch up."

His tone irked me, although not enough to spite him by actually catching up.

But it didn't matter, because Bobo didn't give either of us a choice. Breaking off from the main column, she swam back, calling, "Rosssie! Rosssie! Where are you?"

A couple other stragglers joined in the search, poking their heads around rocks and through the curtain of stems. "Rosie! Rosie! Where are you?"

A frog glimpsed my shell out of the corner of his eye. With a kick of his hind legs, he whooshed over. "There she is! Didja get tired already? C'mon!" Holding one of my front feet, he tugged me over to Bobo and Stripey. "Found her!"

"I got worried we lossst you!" cried Bobo, while Stripey and I struggled to maintain neutral expressions. "C'mon! It's gonna be fun! The Water Court of Black Sssand Creek is ssso big and fan-sssy, and they always ssserve the mossst amazing food…."

I let her ramble on while I ran through the geography of the river in my head. Where could I lose her? What was the best hiding spot? Or should I summon Flicker and have him claim that he was escorting me to the New Year's Eve banquet in Heaven?

Stripey's sharp voice cut through her chatter and my thoughts. "Hey, Bobo, mind if I talk to Rosie about something?"

She gave a start. "Oh! Yes, of courssse. I – uh, I'll jussst go ahead?"

"It won't be long," he promised. "We'll catch right up."

"Okie!"

On the muddy ground around the pond, Stripey and I slowed even more to let the last stragglers pass. While we waited for them to move out of earshot, I calculated what he wanted. He knew that I wasn't a spirit, of course. Had he figured out that I worked for Heaven? Had Bobo let it slip? The bandit was going to blackmail me, wasn't he?

Well, if he tried, I was going to summon Flicker and have him play god. The clerk could swear the duck demon to secrecy. I'd intended to bring Stripey into Aurelia's conspiracy eventually anyway –

"I don't like how you treat Bobo."

Wait, what did he just say? I beg your pardon?

Planting his webbed feet, the duck glared at me. "I said, I don't like how you treat Bobo."

That was…not the opening I'd expected. I let my bewilderment show. I'm sorry, I don't understand what you mean…?

"You know exactly what I mean. You don't see her as a friend. You don't appreciate her. You don't even like her. In fact, you look down on her. The only reason you hang out with her is that she gives you the alcohol you need to offer to the Dragon King so you can keep attending his parties. That stops now."

Well, given that the bamboo viper had gotten fired by her ale-brewing employer, it kind of would stop now, whether we wanted it to or not.

The old Piri – the better Piri, the Piri whose skills hadn't been eroded by centuries in dumb, ugly White- and Green-Tier bodies – would have known exactly what to do here. She'd have known exactly what to say to disarm Stripey. That Piri might have tossed her head to make her hair ornaments tinkle, or wrapped a tail around him to pull him close, before she whispered something that was clever and charming and utterly devastating. And afterwards, he'd totter off wondering how he could possibly have misinterpreted her actions so badly and agonizing over ways to apologize.

I groped for the words that would twist Stripey to my side, convince him that I was a true friend to Bobo, that I was just a well-meaning, if occasionally flawed, mortal turtle. But I couldn't push past the morass in my head to find them.

I sighed, feeling very weary. You're right.

The duck rocked back on his webbed feet, stunned that I'd actually admitted it.

I hid a smile. Maybe I still knew how to weaponize honesty. Bobo isn't the type of person I'm used to interacting with. She's so incredibly – ditzy and dense that she couldn't tell someone was using her if they bit her in the tail – naïve and earnest.

"That she is," Stripey agreed, less hostile now that he believed I'd complimented his friend. "She's good-natured and goodhearted. Which is why I can't let you take advantage of her."

Hanging my head, I fed him a little more honesty. I know. I know. And she's lucky to have someone like you looking out for her. It's just that – I made a show of scanning our surroundings for eavesdroppers, before continuing in a hushed tone, I come from a very different world, Stripey.

The duck didn't have eyebrows, but if he did, he'd have raised them.

My world – it's not like this one at all. It's very…political. No one does anything for anyone else unless it serves them, now or down the line. There's no such thing as true friendship. Just alliances. Temporary alliances, until politics changes.

How I missed the world of Cassius' court! How I missed dancing through it, toying with it, testing how far I could push its denizens before they broke or betrayed me! Cassius' courtiers were the opposites of these modern-day Sericans, who said what they meant and meant what they said and were just so ploddingly predictable. For Heaven's sake, the most exciting part of my day here was guessing what would trigger Taila's next rampage!

But at my words, Stripey's eyes softened, and he bobbed his neck a couple times. "I see. I see. Yes, I can see how it might be difficult for you to accept Bobo's friendship for what it is."

Well, strictly speaking, that wasn't true. I accepted her friendship for precisely what it was: slavish, one-sided hero worship. But I murmured, Yes. I haven't been fair to her. Then I lifted my chin and met his eyes. I have been trying to figure out what to do about her employment situation. I know Mistress Shay fired her without any explanations –

"Oh, I can tell you why Mistress Shay fired her," Stripey snapped, losing his temper again. "It's because Bobo refused to stop working for Mistress Jek."

I – what? That doesn't make any sense!

"Doesn't it?" The duck stared at me, challenging me to confess that I did know why.

Which I did. Of course I did.

Eyes pressed shut, I heaved a long, resigned sigh. She's jealous of the Jeks, isn't she?

The duck's eyes nearly popped out of his head. "Jealous? You think Mistress Shay is jealous of the Jeks? Stars and demons, you really have no idea what you've done, do you!"

Uh, educated the Jeks? Set them above their neighbors?

But even if I'd wanted to improve every peasant in this godsforsaken barony – which I didn't – I'd have had to start somewhere! I couldn't teach everyone all at once. As Master and Mistress Jek had pointed out ad nauseam, there was plowing to be done. There was always plowing to be done.

"Everybody thinks the Jeks have gone mad! They're like – like – the town drunks! Or lepers! No one wants anything to do with them!"

What? I cried. But why?

"Why do you think! Just listen to how they talk! Do you think normal people talk that way? Everybody thinks they're either crazy or possessed! We're all waiting to see what the Baron decides to do! Nobody's gonna touch a family that the Baron might imprison, evict, or execute for being a threat to the peace!"

A threat to the peace! I've been teaching them proper etiquette and grammar! Is the Baron jealous? Should I have taught him first?

Stripey threw up his wings. Feathers shook loose and flew around him. "What d'you mean, proper grammar! Nobody talks like that. Except nobles in plays! And not modern-day nobles, either – Empire nobles. The Jeks sound like they're either pretending to be nobles or mocking them!"

No they don't! That's how people are supposed to talk! I can't help it if everyone in this barony is wrong! You should be glad that there is one single family in this whole cursed barony who can talk without butchering the Serican language!

Stripey was so frustrated that he flapped a couple feet off the ground. "I can't believe you – "

"Actually," interrupted a familiar voice, in an exhausted tone that was also very familiar, "language does shift over time."

Stripey and I whirled.

Shimmering over the dark water of the pond was Flicker.

---

A/N: Thanks to my awesome Patreon backers, BananaBobert, Blacklark57, Celia, Charlotte, Hookshyu, James, Lindsey, Michael, Pred Head, and Anonymous!

 

[arianedartagnan]

Chapter 41: My New Demonic Ally

"We and the older spirits on Earth may still speak this way, but modern Serican has simplified the grammar and added new vocabulary," Flicker continued.

Next to me, Stripey gulped and fluttered his wings, as if torn between groveling at once or staying upright until he figured out who this interloper was.

Helpfully, I nudged his leg with my forefoot and informed him, That's a messenger from Heaven who serves the Star of Reflected Brightness.

I didn't think he needed to know that Flicker was a mere third-class clerk who toiled in the Bureau of Reincarnation under the Kitchen God and Glitter, not in the Bureau of the Sky under the Queen Mother of the West and Aurelia. Not that the duck demon would understand or care about the distinction, of course. But still.

Disrespecting him is the same as disrespecting the goddess.

At that, the duck bowed until his bill nearly hit the ground, his feathers fluttering in agitation. A most entertaining sight indeed. Who'd have thought that a demonic bandit would get so flustered in front of Authority?

Flicker floated over the caltrop rosettes until he could step onto solid ground, then minced his way through the mud. (At least, I could tell that he was mincing – Stripey probably thought that he was taking graceful steps as befitting a Heavenly being.) As the star sprite advanced, his skin illuminated the grasses and bamboo around us with a bright yellow glow. I had to confess, he looked a lot more impressive on Earth than he did in the halls of Heaven.

And then, of course, he ruined it by speaking.

"It's not just the matter of language," he droned. "Jek Lom Vannia's family has always had a slightly adversarial relationship with their neighbors. They claim descent from one of the cadet lines of the Lang Dynasty."

Wait! I blurted out. But you told me that all of Cassius' descendants died out! Within twenty years of his death!

"His direct descendants died out," Flicker corrected me. "But the Loms are related so distantly to the imperial family that it would have made no difference even in the days of the Empire. They have no claim to the throne, just a somewhat inflated sense of their own importance."

Ah. I had noticed that Master and Mistress Jek followed the proper human naming conventions for their children, with all the boys' names ending in "-us" and all the girls' names ending in "-a." None of this "Jonjon" or "Clio" nonsense. Now I knew why: It was because Mistress Jek's family understood the importance of upholding tradition. I approved.

What brings you to Earth, Flicker? Does Her Ladyship have a missive for me? For Stripey's sake, I adopted a formal tone. It never hurt to overawe your intended allies.

Flicker raised his eyebrows, further spoiling the image of a divine dignitary. "Why do you think, Pi– ?"

He caught himself just in time. Now there was another person I'd have loved to recruit for an incompetent Imperial spy.

Far be it for a humble emissary such as myself to speculate as to the motivations of a goddess, I replied.

After all, there was only person who would send Flicker to Earth to talk to me, and it wasn't Glitter. But my conversation with a whistling duck spirit about a bamboo viper spirit shouldn't have rung any alarm bells in Aurelia's mind. We'd touched upon the Jeks only in the most general terms, and Taila's name had never come up. Also, as the Star of Reflected Brightness, Aurelia should be supervising Heaven's New Year's Eve banquet right about now. I couldn't imagine that she had the spare time to monitor my activities.

Flicker heaved another of his long-suffering sighs. It had been so long since I'd heard the sound that I actually felt a little nostalgic. The clerk certainly made for a more intellectually challenging conversational partner than anyone in the Claymouth Barony.

As I recalled who else made for a more intellectually challenging conversational partner in Heaven, my amusement died. Aurelia wasn't the only boss to whom Flicker answered who might have an interest in my doings. Cassius also worked at the Bureau of Reincarnation.

I spared a moment to imagine the ex-emperor skipping the most important banquet of the year to sneak around the office stealing seals off Glitter's desk. It was my New Year's gift to myself.

But seriously, why are you here? Did something go wrong?

Flicker heaved another weary sigh, this time minus the passive-aggressiveness. "No, nothing's wrong in Heaven. The Star of Reflected Brightness sends New Year's gifts to everyone in her service, and she didn't want you to feel left out."

His words triggered a mix of excitement and panic in me: Excitement over what sort of New Year's gifts a goddess would dole out – and panic that she'd give away our connection. I'd carved out a useful role for myself here. I was churning out activities that were guaranteed to earn me positive karma, and that was on top of what she'd promised at the end of this life. I couldn't afford to get caught, recalled, and reincarnated now.

What sort of gifts? I asked suspiciously. I don't have anywhere to keep treasures.

Next to me, the duck demon's feathers shook harder. The bandit was probably dying to raise his head so he could gawk at the jewels they handed out in Heaven.

But Flicker reproved me, "The Star of Reflected Brightness has more wisdom than that. Give her some credit. What would a turtle do with gold and gemstones?"

For some reason, Buy food for the Jeks and textbooks for Taila and pay rent for Bobo was what popped into my mind. Ridiculous.

Admire them, I retorted, erasing the thought. What else would you do with gold and gemstones?

Flicker rolled his eyes Heavenward, as if beseeching the Jade Emperor for patience. "Be that as it may, she sent you something a little more practical."

And from his sleeve, he produced a rosewood casket inlaid with mother-of-pearl and trimmed with etched bronze.

Right. Because a rosewood, mother-of-pearl, and bronze casket was precisely what a turtle needed. I supposed I could sleep in it?

Fishing around in his sleeve again, Flicker located a key, unlocked the lid, and opened it to reveal that the box was full of – leafy greens. He set it on the ground.

"A New Year's Eve meal, for your hard work. Now eat it all so nobody finds out she sent it."

With a duck demon next to me stealing glances at the precious casket, it was a little late for that. Still, I was happy to obey. Sticking my head into the casket, I took a big bite of a mustard orchid stalk. Aurelia had prepared an assortment of spoon cabbage, ivory cabbage, mustard greens, and more, all of which were out of season in the middle of winter on Earth. Mmmm, so good. So fresh and crisp.

"You liar!" Stripey erupted. "You gods-cursed liar!"

I yanked my head out of the greens. Flicker jerked, his skin pulsing with light.

"You lied to me!" raged the duck. "You've been lying to me this whole time!

Flicker pinched the bridge of his nose, massaged his temples, and shot me a look that sighed, What did you lie about now?

I shrugged my shell.

"Oh no, you don't! You don't get to pretend you're innocent. You pretended that Bobo was drunk and hallucinated that you were a secret agent!"

Seriously, was he was still going on about how I'd treated his best friend? I thought we'd settled that already, before Flicker even showed up. Ugh, now I regretted ever considering spending gold and gemstones on the viper's rent! What had possessed me for me to have that thought? Ridiculous. It was all ridiculous.

Actually, I needled the duck, Bobo told you that I was a secret agent and then I confirmed it.

"In a way that was meant to make me believe you were joking!"

Here we went again. And when I had a Heavenly feast in front of me too. What would end this conversation in the fastest way possible?

I'm sorry, Stripey.

Oddly, my remorse didn't feel all feigned, but that was okay. It would just make my performance all the more convincing.

Off on the side, Flicker's eyebrows shot all the way up into his hairline. What – had he never heard me apologize before?

Humbly and earnestly, I explained, That was back at the beginning of my mission, before I knew I could trust the two of you. I'm sure you understand the need for secrecy, right? If you heard about an important merchant coming to town, but someone had just joined your, uh, organization and you weren't certain how discreet they were, would you tell them all the details ahead of time?

Flicker was pressing both palms to both temples now. The clerk must have read all of my associates' files before coming down here, and known exactly what type of "organization" and "details" I was referring to.

Stripey had no idea, though. Sliding a sidelong glance at Flicker, he bobbed his head to acknowledge my discretion. "And how long have you known us now?" he asked, a little less hostile now. "How many gods-cursed chances have you had to tell me the truth? I'm not asking for your whole life story here! All you had to say was, Actually, Stripey, Bobo was right. I really am a secret agent. I'm not asking for the details of your mission, Rosie! I don't want to know!"

He didn't? I rocked back in shock. Why the cursed Heavens not? If he knew the whole tangled tale that had led to me being here, protecting a peasant child, he'd have all the blackmail material he needed on a goddess. A high-ranking goddess, at that. Did the duck demon have no greater ambition than robbing travelers in the Claymouth Barony?

Well, it was to my advantage that he did not.

I see. You're right. I should have said something earlier. I'm sorry.

Skepticism radiated off Flicker in golden waves of light, but Stripey accepted my words at face value. With a rustle, he settled his wings across his back. "Well. Okay. Fine. Anyway, I'm not the one you need to apologize to. It's Bobo."

I nodded. I'll do that.

"Good. I'm going to go catch up to her. You can join us after you finish here." He made a rueful face, signaling that our fight was over. "I'm sure she'll insist on saving you a seat."

Ummm, actually, I can't go to the banquet tonight…. I cast about for a good excuse. I have to discuss my mission with the goddess' messenger.

Flicker's control over his facial features wasn't nearly good enough. Incredulity streamed off him.

Stripey's eyes hardened again. "Do you expect me to make your excuses to Bobo?"

All right, I was going to have to recruit him for Operation: Keep Taila Alive right now or risk alienating him forever.

Look, Stripey, I know you just said you didn't want to know any details about my mission, but there are reasons that I can't go to Black Sand Creek. When the duck didn't stop me, I kept talking. I was recruited by the goddess after many lives in the river. In the last one – well, second-to-last, technically – I was a member of the Black Sand Creek Water Court. Anyway, if they see me, they'll want to offer me to the Dragon King of the Eastern Sea as tribute, which would prevent me from carrying out my mission here.

"Thinking a little highly of yourself there, aren't you?" snorted the duck, but I could tell he was hooked.

No, I replied with complete honesty, I just remember what happened last time.

"That's impossible – "

Think about it, Stripey. I'm a mortal animal with a mind. How many mortal animals with minds have you known?

He thought about it for much longer than necessary. At last he shook his head. "None. But this barony is small and out of the way. I'll bet, in the capital…."

I shook my head too. No. You will not find another like me. I am unique in all the world.

Flicker made a noise. It sounded like a strangled goose.

Stripey and I both eyeballed him.

"If you could hurry this along," the clerk hinted. "I do have many duties, and my absence will be noticed soon."

"What duties – ? No. Who will notice – ? No." Stripey kept trying to pry, and kept forcing himself not to. "No. I don't want to know."

Of course he did. I had him.

You don't have to know the details if you don't feel comfortable, I soothed, but just know that I was sent here by Heaven to carry out an important mission that must remain secret, and sometimes, in order to maintain that secrecy, I will need to say or do things that you find…reprehensible.

I wondered if I were laying it on a bit thick – I mean, it wasn't exactly reprehensible to skip one single dinner with your friends – but Stripey soaked it up.

"I see. I see." He tried to examine Flicker without staring outright, and failed. "I get it. It's okay. I'll tell Bobo you were held up. She'll understand."

I felt a flash of warmth for the bamboo viper's capacity to understand and overlook. Thank you. I appreciate that.

Then I waited until he was out of sight before returning to the feast Aurelia had provided.

---

A/N: Thanks to my awesome Patreon backers, BananaBobert, Blacklark57, Celia, Charlotte, Hookshyu, James, Lindsey, Michael, Pred Head, and Anonymous!