The True Confessions of a Nine-Tailed Fox
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Would she have if she found out that she sent Piri?
Hmmm, yeah, she probably would. Actually, she would probably expect a lot worse out of Piri!
I love omakes! It's always fun to see how other people view the characters, plus it's so exciting to know that other people are excited about the characters.
Chapter 44: Settling Day
Chapter 44: Settling Day
"He raised the rent by HOW MUCH?"
The shriek that rent the air on Settling Day could only have belonged to Mistress Jek, but I'd never heard that level of panic, not even when I announced that I was an emissary from Heaven and summoned Flicker to prove it. I was already halfway to Honeysuckle Croft from Caltrop Pond, so I tried to run the rest of the way there.
I succeeded at a fast waddle.
By the time I got close enough to see her, she'd already calmed down, or, rather, calmed down enough to stop shrieking and start hyperventilating instead. Master Jek was standing in the yard, head bowed, shoulders slumped, hat drooping from his hands, the very picture of defeat.
What happened? I called, lumbering out of the grasses. What's going on with the rent?
Mistress Jek turned.
I'd seen that expression before – on the face of a mother fox when she returned to her den and discovered that a government minister had kidnapped all of her kits and skinned them for a fur coat. (They were very young kits, and it was a very small fur coat, as I saw when it appeared on my desk one day after lunch. But it was more than big enough to send a message, even if I didn't interpret it the way he meant. He would be my first test human for the Burning Pillar.)
Mistress Jek now wore the same expression of shock and horror and disbelief and death-pain as the mother fox had. "He…the Baron…he raised our rent…," she stuttered.
"By a third," finished Master Jek through gritted teeth. "From ten silvers to thirteen. I just got back from the castle. I went to pay rent for this quarter, and the Seneschal told me. We have a week to pay what we owe." He seemed less stunned, although he'd had the walk back from the castle to process it.
"We don't have anything to sell. At the market. We can't grow anything. It's the middle of winter," stammered Mistress Jek. She cast a despairing look at the barren vegetable patch.
Is there something you can make to sell? Something that doesn't require growing anything?
"I don't know – I can't think of anything – "
"Morning, everyone!" Bobo's bright voice rang out across the yard as the bamboo viper slithered towards us. Although her ignorant cheerfulness should have been obnoxious, it actually worked.
Forcing a smile, Mistress Jek said, as much to herself as the rest of us, "Well, no use standing around idle. We can think about it and talk over dinner."
Noticing the tension at last, Bobo swiveled her head between Mistress and Master Jek before cocking it at me. "What happened? Is Taila okay?"
Well, for now. For the rest of this week, anyway.
The Baron raised the rent, I explained. By three silvers. They have to pay it in one week.
Bobo emitted a high-pitched hiss that echoed Mistress Jek's.
Three silvers. Back when I ran the empire, I'd calculated costs in golds. Now, though – I hadn't seen so much as one silver coin since I reincarnated here. The only coins I'd seen anyone use were coppers.
Master Jek, did the baron raise the rent on everyone?
I expected the answer to be yes, in which case the Jeks could speak to their neighbors, select a committee of representatives, and go to the castle to negotiate a lower rent hike.
But Master Jek answered, in a tone that teetered between accusing and resigned, "Nope. Just us. It's for the 'housing improvements'."
Housing improvements? What housing improvements had they made recently? You mean…whitewashing the walls for New Year? I thought everyone did that.
While carousing through the countryside with the Dragon King of Caltrop Pond, I'd definitely seen many, many freshly-painted cottages.
"Nope. I mean the chicken coop, the pigsty, the beds, the table, and the chairs." Master Jek's tone tottered over edge and fell onto the "accusing" side.
Oh. Oh. I should have guessed that. I'd even been hiding in the grasses when that duck spirit came by to snoop. But he'd been so appalled when he saw Taila writing, and I'd been so worried that he would ban her from learning, that I'd forgotten that he'd complained about the coop and pigsty first. Something about not applying for permission before building them. It hadn't seemed like a big deal. I'd assumed it was the sort of hassle you could fix with a fine. Or, at worst, the baron might order that the Jeks tear down the structures, apply (and pay) for proper licenses, and then rebuild them. If he were spiteful, that was.
But a permanent thirty-three percent rent increase, starting this quarter? Who would do such a thing? In the middle of the winter when farmers couldn't even farm anything, no less?!
Well, I would have, I supposed, back in my Piri days. But that was because I was pushing the empire to revolt! Presumably this short-sighted baron did not want his castle surrounded by a mob of starving peasants!
Except…one family did not a mob make, did it?
The baron would only be in trouble if the Jeks were leaders of the community who could rally everyone to stand with them and oppose an injustice that affected them alone. Given what I'd seen of the Jeks' relationships with their neighbors, it seemed…unlikely. This baron was diabolical.
Well. We'd just have to come up with something else. Three silvers' worth of something else.
After I set Taila to work practicing addition and subtraction, I pondered the problem. What fundraising options were available to the Jeks? Borrowing from their neighbors was the obvious first step. Everyone else was also struggling to stretch their supplies until spring, but maybe if the Jeks borrowed a little bit from every household in the barony, it would be enough.
However, when I suggested that at noon over dinner, Master and Mistress Jek dropped their gazes. He simply shook his head, while she sighed, "It won't work, emissary. No one is…happy with us right now."
No one is happy? I started to ask before remembering Stripey's words: "Everybody thinks the Jeks have gone mad! No one wants anything to do with them!"
He'd also said: "We're all waiting to see what the Baron decides to do!"
And: "Nobody's gonna touch a family that the Baron might imprison, evict, or execute for being a threat to the peace!"
Was the Jeks' ostracization really so complete? Stripey had to be exaggerating: I remembered all the lesson-interrupting holiday visits to and from extended family and friends. Surely some of them would lend the Jeks a few coppers. We didn't need a large sum from any one person, just a small one from many people.
But when I pointed that out, I got the same discouraged, downcast gazes.
"We can try," promised Mistress Jek at length, although not as if she believed it would work.
Which it didn't.
For two days, they left Bobo and me in charge of the cottage while they trekked all over, begging for loans. But not even the sight of four tattered children who needed to be fed, housed, and clothed convinced the good people of Claymouth Barony to open their pocketbooks.
Mistress Jek's brother did rant about going up to the castle to "have a word with that upstart lordling," but she talked him out of it.
It was probably for the best.
Meanwhile, I borrowed Bobo's bamboo stand, for whose rent she had scraped up enough coppers and from which she probably wouldn't be evicted until the next Settling Day, so I could hold a private conversation.
Flicker! Flicker, I need to talk to you now! It's urgent!
No response.
Flicker! I'm serious! I really, really, really need to talk to you right now!
A good five minutes later, golden motes winked into existence among the bamboo leaves and coalesced into one irate clerk.
"What is it? I was literally in the middle of reincarnating a soul, which you know is a delicate and potentially hazardous operation. I cannot be interrupted by a barrage of messengers delivering notes ordering me to drop everything and go help you at once!"
In that case, he should be directing his ire at Aurelia, who was the one who'd panicked and sent aforementioned barrage of messengers to disrupt some hapless soul's reincarnation. But I didn't have time to quibble.
I need three silvers right now. Baron Claymouth raised the Jeks' rent.
His mouth opened in an O of indignation. "What do I look like, a bank clerk? Never mind, don't answer that. I don't carry coins, especially not Earth coins."
That didn't surprise me. Why would a star sprite clerk carry Earth coins on him? Can you get some? East Serican coins, to be precise?
Even though Flicker wasn't the sort to spite me and offend Aurelia by giving me currency from a different country on purpose, I wanted to be specific. Just in case.
He groaned and pressed a palm to his temple. "I don't even know where I'd get them. I'll have to ask around. Carefully. Because why in Heaven's name would I need East Serican coins?!"
I'd let him figure that one out. But you'll do it? You'll get the money?
"I'll try. I can't promise more than that."
How long will it take?
"How should I know?! Like I said, I don't know how to get them! I don't even know how to find out how to get them without setting off all sorts of alarms!"
We don't have forever, I warned. The Jeks are going to get evicted very soon.
"I know! I know! I said I'd try! But don't expect me to succeed! You should try raising the money yourself down here."
I planned to anyway, in case he failed. Okay.
So, two days gone, five days left to find three silvers. What had once been loose change now felt as unattainable as the imperial treasury.
At my suggestion, Master Jek went to the homes of the wealthiest shopkeepers in town and offered to sell them the chairs. Unfortunately, they reminded him that they already had standing contracts with the officially licensed carpenter, Master Gravitas, to purchase all their furniture from him. What they were too polite to say, but which Master Jek inferred from their sitting rooms, was that the Jeks' untrained carpentry attempts were too crude to fit in with the rest of their décor.
Next he tried the middling and poorer shopkeepers, who might tolerate clumsy but functional furniture. However, they already had all the chairs they needed and, right after paying rents, fees, and fines for the quarter, lacked the funds to buy more even if they wanted to.
At last, in desperation, Master Jek approached Master Gravitas, who bought two chairs out of kindness.
"He said Pepper loves sleeping on chairs, so he can never have too many," Master Jek reported that night. There was no hint of triumph in his voice.
I seized the opportunity to quiz Taila: If you start with six chairs and you sell two, how many chairs do you have left?
Before she could finish her mental math, Nailus burst out, "If he needs more chairs, we have four more!"
Mistress Jek swatted him for me. "Don't be silly. He was just being polite. If he needs chairs, he can make much better ones himself."
The next day, we inventoried everything in and around the cottage and divided the Jeks' possessions into "Can't live without," a category that included the plow and cooking pot; "Could survive without (but prefer not to)," which included their one set each of festival clothing; and "Don't need," which stayed stubbornly empty until Cailus put Taila's rag doll there.
She snatched it back with much wailing and crying, forcing the rest of us to waste precious time convincing her that the doll was such a treasure that none of us would dream of selling it.
At last, Mistress Jek put a reluctant hand to the neck of her tunic and pulled out a muddy green rock that dangled from a faded red cord. "I do have my jade pendant," she said. "It's been passed down in my family from mother to daughter for generations. I was going to give it to Taila when she grows up, but…."
Master Jek squeezed her shoulder. "I'll take it into town tomorrow."
Wait a minute. I couldn't let a woman give up her one piece of jewelry! Even if it weren't very good jewelry. Especially because it wasn't very good jewelry and wouldn't fetch a good price anyway.
Don't sell it yet, I urged. I spoke to the goddess' messenger.
"You did?" exclaimed Master Jek. "What did he say?"
That he'd try his best to find the coins but couldn't guarantee it, so we should try to do it ourselves. It's a challenge because Heaven does not keep a supply of Earth currency. But he's working on it. Let's give him a little longer.
With a sigh of guilty relief, Mistress Jek tucked the pendant back under her tunic.
But Flicker kept not showing up.
In the end, it was Bobo who saved us: Bobo and Stripey. Two days before the extra rent was due, it was so cold that Taila refused to get out of bed. I was waiting under the window, listening to Mistress Jek's struggles and tapping my forefoot, when Bobo slithered into the yard.
Stripey waddled alongside her.
"Hey, Rosie, Bobo told me about the rent," he greeted me. "I have a proposal."
A/N: Thanks to my awesome Patreon backers, BananaBobert, Blacklark57, Celia, Charlotte, Hookshyu, James, Lindsey, Michael, Pred Head, and Anonymous!
"He raised the rent by HOW MUCH?"
The shriek that rent the air on Settling Day could only have belonged to Mistress Jek, but I'd never heard that level of panic, not even when I announced that I was an emissary from Heaven and summoned Flicker to prove it. I was already halfway to Honeysuckle Croft from Caltrop Pond, so I tried to run the rest of the way there.
I succeeded at a fast waddle.
By the time I got close enough to see her, she'd already calmed down, or, rather, calmed down enough to stop shrieking and start hyperventilating instead. Master Jek was standing in the yard, head bowed, shoulders slumped, hat drooping from his hands, the very picture of defeat.
What happened? I called, lumbering out of the grasses. What's going on with the rent?
Mistress Jek turned.
I'd seen that expression before – on the face of a mother fox when she returned to her den and discovered that a government minister had kidnapped all of her kits and skinned them for a fur coat. (They were very young kits, and it was a very small fur coat, as I saw when it appeared on my desk one day after lunch. But it was more than big enough to send a message, even if I didn't interpret it the way he meant. He would be my first test human for the Burning Pillar.)
Mistress Jek now wore the same expression of shock and horror and disbelief and death-pain as the mother fox had. "He…the Baron…he raised our rent…," she stuttered.
"By a third," finished Master Jek through gritted teeth. "From ten silvers to thirteen. I just got back from the castle. I went to pay rent for this quarter, and the Seneschal told me. We have a week to pay what we owe." He seemed less stunned, although he'd had the walk back from the castle to process it.
"We don't have anything to sell. At the market. We can't grow anything. It's the middle of winter," stammered Mistress Jek. She cast a despairing look at the barren vegetable patch.
Is there something you can make to sell? Something that doesn't require growing anything?
"I don't know – I can't think of anything – "
"Morning, everyone!" Bobo's bright voice rang out across the yard as the bamboo viper slithered towards us. Although her ignorant cheerfulness should have been obnoxious, it actually worked.
Forcing a smile, Mistress Jek said, as much to herself as the rest of us, "Well, no use standing around idle. We can think about it and talk over dinner."
Noticing the tension at last, Bobo swiveled her head between Mistress and Master Jek before cocking it at me. "What happened? Is Taila okay?"
Well, for now. For the rest of this week, anyway.
The Baron raised the rent, I explained. By three silvers. They have to pay it in one week.
Bobo emitted a high-pitched hiss that echoed Mistress Jek's.
Three silvers. Back when I ran the empire, I'd calculated costs in golds. Now, though – I hadn't seen so much as one silver coin since I reincarnated here. The only coins I'd seen anyone use were coppers.
Master Jek, did the baron raise the rent on everyone?
I expected the answer to be yes, in which case the Jeks could speak to their neighbors, select a committee of representatives, and go to the castle to negotiate a lower rent hike.
But Master Jek answered, in a tone that teetered between accusing and resigned, "Nope. Just us. It's for the 'housing improvements'."
Housing improvements? What housing improvements had they made recently? You mean…whitewashing the walls for New Year? I thought everyone did that.
While carousing through the countryside with the Dragon King of Caltrop Pond, I'd definitely seen many, many freshly-painted cottages.
"Nope. I mean the chicken coop, the pigsty, the beds, the table, and the chairs." Master Jek's tone tottered over edge and fell onto the "accusing" side.
Oh. Oh. I should have guessed that. I'd even been hiding in the grasses when that duck spirit came by to snoop. But he'd been so appalled when he saw Taila writing, and I'd been so worried that he would ban her from learning, that I'd forgotten that he'd complained about the coop and pigsty first. Something about not applying for permission before building them. It hadn't seemed like a big deal. I'd assumed it was the sort of hassle you could fix with a fine. Or, at worst, the baron might order that the Jeks tear down the structures, apply (and pay) for proper licenses, and then rebuild them. If he were spiteful, that was.
But a permanent thirty-three percent rent increase, starting this quarter? Who would do such a thing? In the middle of the winter when farmers couldn't even farm anything, no less?!
Well, I would have, I supposed, back in my Piri days. But that was because I was pushing the empire to revolt! Presumably this short-sighted baron did not want his castle surrounded by a mob of starving peasants!
Except…one family did not a mob make, did it?
The baron would only be in trouble if the Jeks were leaders of the community who could rally everyone to stand with them and oppose an injustice that affected them alone. Given what I'd seen of the Jeks' relationships with their neighbors, it seemed…unlikely. This baron was diabolical.
Well. We'd just have to come up with something else. Three silvers' worth of something else.
After I set Taila to work practicing addition and subtraction, I pondered the problem. What fundraising options were available to the Jeks? Borrowing from their neighbors was the obvious first step. Everyone else was also struggling to stretch their supplies until spring, but maybe if the Jeks borrowed a little bit from every household in the barony, it would be enough.
However, when I suggested that at noon over dinner, Master and Mistress Jek dropped their gazes. He simply shook his head, while she sighed, "It won't work, emissary. No one is…happy with us right now."
No one is happy? I started to ask before remembering Stripey's words: "Everybody thinks the Jeks have gone mad! No one wants anything to do with them!"
He'd also said: "We're all waiting to see what the Baron decides to do!"
And: "Nobody's gonna touch a family that the Baron might imprison, evict, or execute for being a threat to the peace!"
Was the Jeks' ostracization really so complete? Stripey had to be exaggerating: I remembered all the lesson-interrupting holiday visits to and from extended family and friends. Surely some of them would lend the Jeks a few coppers. We didn't need a large sum from any one person, just a small one from many people.
But when I pointed that out, I got the same discouraged, downcast gazes.
"We can try," promised Mistress Jek at length, although not as if she believed it would work.
Which it didn't.
For two days, they left Bobo and me in charge of the cottage while they trekked all over, begging for loans. But not even the sight of four tattered children who needed to be fed, housed, and clothed convinced the good people of Claymouth Barony to open their pocketbooks.
Mistress Jek's brother did rant about going up to the castle to "have a word with that upstart lordling," but she talked him out of it.
It was probably for the best.
Meanwhile, I borrowed Bobo's bamboo stand, for whose rent she had scraped up enough coppers and from which she probably wouldn't be evicted until the next Settling Day, so I could hold a private conversation.
Flicker! Flicker, I need to talk to you now! It's urgent!
No response.
Flicker! I'm serious! I really, really, really need to talk to you right now!
A good five minutes later, golden motes winked into existence among the bamboo leaves and coalesced into one irate clerk.
"What is it? I was literally in the middle of reincarnating a soul, which you know is a delicate and potentially hazardous operation. I cannot be interrupted by a barrage of messengers delivering notes ordering me to drop everything and go help you at once!"
In that case, he should be directing his ire at Aurelia, who was the one who'd panicked and sent aforementioned barrage of messengers to disrupt some hapless soul's reincarnation. But I didn't have time to quibble.
I need three silvers right now. Baron Claymouth raised the Jeks' rent.
His mouth opened in an O of indignation. "What do I look like, a bank clerk? Never mind, don't answer that. I don't carry coins, especially not Earth coins."
That didn't surprise me. Why would a star sprite clerk carry Earth coins on him? Can you get some? East Serican coins, to be precise?
Even though Flicker wasn't the sort to spite me and offend Aurelia by giving me currency from a different country on purpose, I wanted to be specific. Just in case.
He groaned and pressed a palm to his temple. "I don't even know where I'd get them. I'll have to ask around. Carefully. Because why in Heaven's name would I need East Serican coins?!"
I'd let him figure that one out. But you'll do it? You'll get the money?
"I'll try. I can't promise more than that."
How long will it take?
"How should I know?! Like I said, I don't know how to get them! I don't even know how to find out how to get them without setting off all sorts of alarms!"
We don't have forever, I warned. The Jeks are going to get evicted very soon.
"I know! I know! I said I'd try! But don't expect me to succeed! You should try raising the money yourself down here."
I planned to anyway, in case he failed. Okay.
So, two days gone, five days left to find three silvers. What had once been loose change now felt as unattainable as the imperial treasury.
At my suggestion, Master Jek went to the homes of the wealthiest shopkeepers in town and offered to sell them the chairs. Unfortunately, they reminded him that they already had standing contracts with the officially licensed carpenter, Master Gravitas, to purchase all their furniture from him. What they were too polite to say, but which Master Jek inferred from their sitting rooms, was that the Jeks' untrained carpentry attempts were too crude to fit in with the rest of their décor.
Next he tried the middling and poorer shopkeepers, who might tolerate clumsy but functional furniture. However, they already had all the chairs they needed and, right after paying rents, fees, and fines for the quarter, lacked the funds to buy more even if they wanted to.
At last, in desperation, Master Jek approached Master Gravitas, who bought two chairs out of kindness.
"He said Pepper loves sleeping on chairs, so he can never have too many," Master Jek reported that night. There was no hint of triumph in his voice.
I seized the opportunity to quiz Taila: If you start with six chairs and you sell two, how many chairs do you have left?
Before she could finish her mental math, Nailus burst out, "If he needs more chairs, we have four more!"
Mistress Jek swatted him for me. "Don't be silly. He was just being polite. If he needs chairs, he can make much better ones himself."
The next day, we inventoried everything in and around the cottage and divided the Jeks' possessions into "Can't live without," a category that included the plow and cooking pot; "Could survive without (but prefer not to)," which included their one set each of festival clothing; and "Don't need," which stayed stubbornly empty until Cailus put Taila's rag doll there.
She snatched it back with much wailing and crying, forcing the rest of us to waste precious time convincing her that the doll was such a treasure that none of us would dream of selling it.
At last, Mistress Jek put a reluctant hand to the neck of her tunic and pulled out a muddy green rock that dangled from a faded red cord. "I do have my jade pendant," she said. "It's been passed down in my family from mother to daughter for generations. I was going to give it to Taila when she grows up, but…."
Master Jek squeezed her shoulder. "I'll take it into town tomorrow."
Wait a minute. I couldn't let a woman give up her one piece of jewelry! Even if it weren't very good jewelry. Especially because it wasn't very good jewelry and wouldn't fetch a good price anyway.
Don't sell it yet, I urged. I spoke to the goddess' messenger.
"You did?" exclaimed Master Jek. "What did he say?"
That he'd try his best to find the coins but couldn't guarantee it, so we should try to do it ourselves. It's a challenge because Heaven does not keep a supply of Earth currency. But he's working on it. Let's give him a little longer.
With a sigh of guilty relief, Mistress Jek tucked the pendant back under her tunic.
But Flicker kept not showing up.
In the end, it was Bobo who saved us: Bobo and Stripey. Two days before the extra rent was due, it was so cold that Taila refused to get out of bed. I was waiting under the window, listening to Mistress Jek's struggles and tapping my forefoot, when Bobo slithered into the yard.
Stripey waddled alongside her.
"Hey, Rosie, Bobo told me about the rent," he greeted me. "I have a proposal."
A/N: Thanks to my awesome Patreon backers, BananaBobert, Blacklark57, Celia, Charlotte, Hookshyu, James, Lindsey, Michael, Pred Head, and Anonymous!
Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
I blame the imminent crime on the baron's greed and the seneshal's spite.
Haha, don't worry, Piri won't let things get too bad for the sake of her little karma source!
Half Moon
In the end, there is no end.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I have to say, this was pretty gratifying to hear.
She wasn't completely amoral, even in the beginning. At the very least she had some species loyalty.
Piri actually has a fair amount of species loyalty. She just hasn't met another fox in a very long time now, so she has to make do with friends of other species.
Chapter 45: An Alternative to Usury
Chapter 45: An Alternative to Usury
In a flash, all of my annoyance at Taila's tardiness vanished. A proposal? What sort of proposal?
With Bobo beaming at his side, Stripey explained, "Unlike most people, we do have a stash of savings at the moment." (Translation: The duck demons had filled their coffers by robbing New Year's travelers, and unlike everyone else, they didn't have to spend it on rent, taxes, tolls, fees, or fines. Apart from the baron and the wealthiest townsfolk, they were the only people in the barony with spare cash right after Settling Day.) "We are willing to lend the Jeks the rent they owe in exchange for aid at a later date."
Owing aid to a band of bandits didn't sound like a healthy state. What sort of aid are we talking – I started to ask, but that was when Taila charged out of the cottage.
Half dressed.
Mistress Jek was really failing at the whole parenting thing this morning.
"Jek Taila!" she roared. "Get back here this instant! You're going to freeze to death!"
"It's a duck!" squealed Taila. "Hi, Mr. Duck!"
Stripey wisely waddled backwards before she could fling her arms around his neck. From a safe distance (i.e. greater than her arms' length), he replied, "Hello, Miss Jek."
She was so excited about the talking duck that she forgot all the etiquette I'd drilled into her. She squatted with her bare legs showing the same way she had the day she met me. Then she tipped her head ninety degrees to the side to examine his left side, and a hundred eighty degrees the other way to study his right side.
When she was older, maybe I should take her to the nearest city and apprentice her to a natural philosopher. She did seem well-suited for the study of animals. If she ever learned that they came in more than one gender, that was.
"Taila! Taila! Get back here right this – " The harried mother dashed out the door, flapping a padded jacket. She stopped short when she saw Stripey. "Taaaaaila? What did we say about treating guests with respeeect?"
"Oops! Sorry!" Still squatting, as if she couldn't bear to put so much as her height's worth of distance between herself and the duck, Taila rattled off, "Welcome-to-our-humble-abode-Mr.-Duck-'tis-a-pleasure-to-make-your-acquaintance!"
Stripey took another careful step back, nearly tripping over one of Bobo's coils. "It's a pleasure to meet you too, Miss Jek."
She leaned forward on her toes to follow him. "You're a spirit too, right? Like Bobo and Mr. Turtle? Nailus told me aaaallll about spirits…."
She could have expounded on the topic at length (maybe I should apprentice her to a mage – she certainly had the droning-lecture part mastered), but I intervened. Taila, you're late for class already. Write down the twos times tables, from two times one to two times twelve.
That should occupy her long enough for us to negotiate with Stripey.
"Aww, but I want to talk to Mr. Duck…," she whined.
"You can talk to him later," her mother said firmly. "Finish your math first."
"I wanna talk to him noooooow…." But Taila did retrieve her writing stick, which she stored under the honeysuckle bush so it wouldn't get burned for kindling, and started scrawling out multiplication problems.
"Won't you come in for some tea?" invited Mistress Jek.
"Ah, yes, thank you," replied Stripey, still in a slight daze. It was a common reaction for people meeting Taila for the first time. And the second. And the tenth. "Yes, I would appreciate a cup of tea."
He circled around the girl, careful to keep two of her arms' lengths between them.
While Bobo went off to start the chores, the rest of us moved the conversation indoors. Or rather, Mistress Jek and Stripey went inside and sat down for tea. I stayed in the doorway so I could keep half an eye on Taila and her times tables. Her answers were mostly correct.
After slurping half a cup of tea, Stripey laid out the duck demons' proposal. Upon hearing from Bobo about the baron's unreasonable rent increase and the Jeks' struggle to raise the funds, he explained, his "organization" had voted to lend them the money.
What do you want in exchange? I asked. You mentioned aid at a later date.
"What sort of aid?" asked Mistress Jek, hopeful but wary. Good.
The duck demon shrugged his wings. "Shelter, if we need it. Storage space, perhaps."
In short, you want a safe haven.
I was going to reject it on behalf of the Jeks, but Mistress Jek did it herself. "I'm not sure we can agree to that. We're in enough trouble as it is. If we add aiding bandits on top of everything else…. Well, we don't have a kinsman who works closely with the Baron."
In retrospect, I supposed that it shouldn't have surprised me that the locals had also figured out why the baron kept the duck demons around. The Claymouth humans were often smarter than they looked.
Stripey shrugged his wings again, as if he'd expected her answer. "In that case, we are also willing to accept repayment in installments with interest."
"How much interest?"
"Oh, let's say, ten percent?"
"Ten percent?!"
That's usury, I pointed out.
"No, that's a reasonable rate for the risk we'd be taking. Which is entirely unnecessary, let me remind you. We don't need to extend this loan."
"Ten percent…ten percent…," muttered Mistress Jek to herself, trying to calculate compound interest in her head.
Allow me to make a counterproposal, I said, the fuzzy outlines of an idea taking shape as I spoke.
She gave me a hopeful look, Stripey a suspicious one.
As you both know, I am familiar with the inner workings of Heaven. I cannot divulge the details, but I believe that the general concept of karma exists on Earth?
At least, it used to. I didn't see why it would have died out in the intervening centuries, either. It seemed like the more terrible your life was, the more you needed to cling to the notion that the ill other people did you would be punished. Somehow. Someday. Whether you got the satisfaction of seeing it or not.
Stripey nodded, confirming my guess. "It does. What does karma have to do with this?"
What indeed?
As you both also know, I was sent here from Heaven and, as such, have insider knowledge of how the system works.
Stripey caught the implications at once, just as you'd expect for a demon. "Aha. There's an official karma system. How does it work? How do you get good karma?"
I'm afraid that I cannot divulge the details – because, really, only the Accountants knew those – but the general idea of "Good karma for good deeds, bad karma for bad deeds" is correct. What you don't understand is just how important good karma is.
"Because good things happen to good people?" asked Mistress Jek dubiously. "That doesn't always happen."
Like I said, I can't go into detail. But you know how people get reincarnated after they die? Let's just say that having lots of good karma is important for that.
Thus far, I hadn't done anything except confirm the fuzzy notions of karma and reincarnation that humans and spirits already believed in, although my words did carry more weight than those of, say, Grandpapa or Old Mistress Yea from down the street.
You and your "organization," I informed Stripey, have been earning a lot of negative karma for your "activities."
"That's not exactly news," he retorted, but there was an edge in his voice. It was one thing to suspect that punishment was coming, and another to have an emissary from Heaven confirm that it was.
I'm glad you realize that. My proposal is this: In exchange for your lending the Jeks the three silvers they need without charging interest, I will tell you how to earn positive karma to cancel out at least part of your negative karma.
"How much of it? And what would we need to do?"
I ignored the first question, since I couldn't answer it. At least, not until I twisted Flicker's arm into looking up Stripey's file. Where was the clerk anyway?
I can't tell you what you need to do until you agree to lend the Jeks three silvers.
"Hmmm. Yes." Proving that he knew me well, he asked one final question: "What's to guarantee that the information you provide us will actually work?"
Because a clerk in the Bureau of Reincarnation told me it would.
Because I have personal experience with it. I have used this method to earn a significant quantity of positive karma in the past. I told you that I used to be a catfish in Black Sand Creek, remember? How do you think I earned enough karma to move on to turtle?
"Hmmm. Hmmm. That's true."
Have you ever seen a duck scrunch up its face to think? It's hilarious. While Stripey debated whether to take the deal, I fantasized about setting up a stage in the marketplace and charging people to watch him think. The joy it would bring into humans' lives would net both of us a windfall of positive karma.
"Hmmm. Okay. Yeah, okay." Straightening his neck, Stripey met my eyes. "It's a deal."
Don't you have to consult with the other duck demons first? Are you authorized to make decisions on their behalf? I double-checked. I didn't want the other bandits voting to reject the deal later, at least, not before we got the three silvers.
Stripey spluttered a laugh. "I am, in fact, authorized to make decisions on their behalf."
How so? Did your leader give you free rein to negotiate here?
His bill opened in a big grin. "I am the leader."
Whaaaat???
Wait, you're the leader of the bandits? Oh, but – but –
How had I missed that?! I scoured my memories for anything that hinted at it. I supposed that he did attend the Caltrop Pond parties fairly often, he had brought the extra-fancy brandy they'd robbed from a merchant that one time, and, most importantly, he was related to Seneschal Anasius up at the castle….
Well, good, I concluded. That means we won't have to worry about anyone vetoing the deal.
Mistress Jek's expression shrieked that there was nothing good about hosting the head of the local bandit gang in her home, especially not when everyone in the barony hated her family already. But she kept her mouth shut and let the magical animals talk.
"Okay. I have three silvers here." And Stripey opened the leather pouch at his side and tipped three large, blackened coins onto the table.
I trotted over, and Mistress Jek picked me up and set me on the table so I could see them. Unlike coppers, silvers didn't have holes in their centers, which made sense: Unless you were a duke or something, you'd never carry more than a few at a time (wouldn't even possess more than a few at a time), so you wouldn't need to string them together. One side of the coins had a blobby crowned head, the other a triangle with three stars over it. If the emperor's Twelve Symbols had survived into modern-day Serica, the triangle would be a mountain representing stability, and the three stars would symbolize happiness, prosperity, and longevity. All the coins were tarnished. Obviously, the bandits didn't bother polishing their silver.
Putting out a trembling hand, Mistress Jek picked one up with the tips of her fingers, as if it might break or evaporate.
With a smirk on his face, Stripey let us gawk at the silvers to our hearts' content before he prompted, "All right, Rosie. It's your turn. How do we earn good karma?"
Kill Lord Silurus. I gave him the same answer Flicker had given me.
Mistress Jek froze. Stripey burst into laughter.
"Ha, oh, ha," he gasped at last. "That was a good one! Gods, I haven't laughed so hard in – I don't know when!"
"What's ssso funny?" Bobo's head poked through the doorway. The rest of her followed, with a bucket of water suspended from her tail. She was already grinning in anticipation of a good joke.
As she slithered to the hearth and dumped the water into the cooking pot, Stripey explained, "We were talking about how the Jeks could repay us for the loan, and Rosie suggested we kill Lord Silurus for the good karma!" He burst out laughing again.
"Kill Lord Sssilurus? But that's – that's – " I thought she was going to say "impossible," but after some flailing, she settled on, "That's too dangerous! No! You can't do it! Don't do it!"
Wiping his eyes with a wingtip, Stripey calmed down enough to reassure her, "Of course not. It's a joke, Bobo. Don't take everything so seriously."
At his words, I felt a twinge of guilt. Bobo did take everything seriously, didn't she? It was why she'd believed me at once when I'd told her I was an emissary of the gods. And, more recently, when I'd promised to find a way to help her pay rent. Which, in my defense, I did plan to do eventually…. It just hadn't been very high on my priority list.
Well, now that the problem of the Jeks' rent was settled, I had time to think about hers.
"Oh, good," sighed Bobo. "I'm glad that was a joke." She forced a giggle that lacked conviction.
I felt another twinge of guilt as I corrected her, Actually, it wasn't.
A/N: Thanks to my awesome Patreon backers, BananaBobert, Blacklark57, Celia, Charlotte, Hookshyu, James, Lindsey, Michael, Pred Head, and Anonymous!
In a flash, all of my annoyance at Taila's tardiness vanished. A proposal? What sort of proposal?
With Bobo beaming at his side, Stripey explained, "Unlike most people, we do have a stash of savings at the moment." (Translation: The duck demons had filled their coffers by robbing New Year's travelers, and unlike everyone else, they didn't have to spend it on rent, taxes, tolls, fees, or fines. Apart from the baron and the wealthiest townsfolk, they were the only people in the barony with spare cash right after Settling Day.) "We are willing to lend the Jeks the rent they owe in exchange for aid at a later date."
Owing aid to a band of bandits didn't sound like a healthy state. What sort of aid are we talking – I started to ask, but that was when Taila charged out of the cottage.
Half dressed.
Mistress Jek was really failing at the whole parenting thing this morning.
"Jek Taila!" she roared. "Get back here this instant! You're going to freeze to death!"
"It's a duck!" squealed Taila. "Hi, Mr. Duck!"
Stripey wisely waddled backwards before she could fling her arms around his neck. From a safe distance (i.e. greater than her arms' length), he replied, "Hello, Miss Jek."
She was so excited about the talking duck that she forgot all the etiquette I'd drilled into her. She squatted with her bare legs showing the same way she had the day she met me. Then she tipped her head ninety degrees to the side to examine his left side, and a hundred eighty degrees the other way to study his right side.
When she was older, maybe I should take her to the nearest city and apprentice her to a natural philosopher. She did seem well-suited for the study of animals. If she ever learned that they came in more than one gender, that was.
"Taila! Taila! Get back here right this – " The harried mother dashed out the door, flapping a padded jacket. She stopped short when she saw Stripey. "Taaaaaila? What did we say about treating guests with respeeect?"
"Oops! Sorry!" Still squatting, as if she couldn't bear to put so much as her height's worth of distance between herself and the duck, Taila rattled off, "Welcome-to-our-humble-abode-Mr.-Duck-'tis-a-pleasure-to-make-your-acquaintance!"
Stripey took another careful step back, nearly tripping over one of Bobo's coils. "It's a pleasure to meet you too, Miss Jek."
She leaned forward on her toes to follow him. "You're a spirit too, right? Like Bobo and Mr. Turtle? Nailus told me aaaallll about spirits…."
She could have expounded on the topic at length (maybe I should apprentice her to a mage – she certainly had the droning-lecture part mastered), but I intervened. Taila, you're late for class already. Write down the twos times tables, from two times one to two times twelve.
That should occupy her long enough for us to negotiate with Stripey.
"Aww, but I want to talk to Mr. Duck…," she whined.
"You can talk to him later," her mother said firmly. "Finish your math first."
"I wanna talk to him noooooow…." But Taila did retrieve her writing stick, which she stored under the honeysuckle bush so it wouldn't get burned for kindling, and started scrawling out multiplication problems.
"Won't you come in for some tea?" invited Mistress Jek.
"Ah, yes, thank you," replied Stripey, still in a slight daze. It was a common reaction for people meeting Taila for the first time. And the second. And the tenth. "Yes, I would appreciate a cup of tea."
He circled around the girl, careful to keep two of her arms' lengths between them.
While Bobo went off to start the chores, the rest of us moved the conversation indoors. Or rather, Mistress Jek and Stripey went inside and sat down for tea. I stayed in the doorway so I could keep half an eye on Taila and her times tables. Her answers were mostly correct.
After slurping half a cup of tea, Stripey laid out the duck demons' proposal. Upon hearing from Bobo about the baron's unreasonable rent increase and the Jeks' struggle to raise the funds, he explained, his "organization" had voted to lend them the money.
What do you want in exchange? I asked. You mentioned aid at a later date.
"What sort of aid?" asked Mistress Jek, hopeful but wary. Good.
The duck demon shrugged his wings. "Shelter, if we need it. Storage space, perhaps."
In short, you want a safe haven.
I was going to reject it on behalf of the Jeks, but Mistress Jek did it herself. "I'm not sure we can agree to that. We're in enough trouble as it is. If we add aiding bandits on top of everything else…. Well, we don't have a kinsman who works closely with the Baron."
In retrospect, I supposed that it shouldn't have surprised me that the locals had also figured out why the baron kept the duck demons around. The Claymouth humans were often smarter than they looked.
Stripey shrugged his wings again, as if he'd expected her answer. "In that case, we are also willing to accept repayment in installments with interest."
"How much interest?"
"Oh, let's say, ten percent?"
"Ten percent?!"
That's usury, I pointed out.
"No, that's a reasonable rate for the risk we'd be taking. Which is entirely unnecessary, let me remind you. We don't need to extend this loan."
"Ten percent…ten percent…," muttered Mistress Jek to herself, trying to calculate compound interest in her head.
Allow me to make a counterproposal, I said, the fuzzy outlines of an idea taking shape as I spoke.
She gave me a hopeful look, Stripey a suspicious one.
As you both know, I am familiar with the inner workings of Heaven. I cannot divulge the details, but I believe that the general concept of karma exists on Earth?
At least, it used to. I didn't see why it would have died out in the intervening centuries, either. It seemed like the more terrible your life was, the more you needed to cling to the notion that the ill other people did you would be punished. Somehow. Someday. Whether you got the satisfaction of seeing it or not.
Stripey nodded, confirming my guess. "It does. What does karma have to do with this?"
What indeed?
As you both also know, I was sent here from Heaven and, as such, have insider knowledge of how the system works.
Stripey caught the implications at once, just as you'd expect for a demon. "Aha. There's an official karma system. How does it work? How do you get good karma?"
I'm afraid that I cannot divulge the details – because, really, only the Accountants knew those – but the general idea of "Good karma for good deeds, bad karma for bad deeds" is correct. What you don't understand is just how important good karma is.
"Because good things happen to good people?" asked Mistress Jek dubiously. "That doesn't always happen."
Like I said, I can't go into detail. But you know how people get reincarnated after they die? Let's just say that having lots of good karma is important for that.
Thus far, I hadn't done anything except confirm the fuzzy notions of karma and reincarnation that humans and spirits already believed in, although my words did carry more weight than those of, say, Grandpapa or Old Mistress Yea from down the street.
You and your "organization," I informed Stripey, have been earning a lot of negative karma for your "activities."
"That's not exactly news," he retorted, but there was an edge in his voice. It was one thing to suspect that punishment was coming, and another to have an emissary from Heaven confirm that it was.
I'm glad you realize that. My proposal is this: In exchange for your lending the Jeks the three silvers they need without charging interest, I will tell you how to earn positive karma to cancel out at least part of your negative karma.
"How much of it? And what would we need to do?"
I ignored the first question, since I couldn't answer it. At least, not until I twisted Flicker's arm into looking up Stripey's file. Where was the clerk anyway?
I can't tell you what you need to do until you agree to lend the Jeks three silvers.
"Hmmm. Yes." Proving that he knew me well, he asked one final question: "What's to guarantee that the information you provide us will actually work?"
Because a clerk in the Bureau of Reincarnation told me it would.
Because I have personal experience with it. I have used this method to earn a significant quantity of positive karma in the past. I told you that I used to be a catfish in Black Sand Creek, remember? How do you think I earned enough karma to move on to turtle?
"Hmmm. Hmmm. That's true."
Have you ever seen a duck scrunch up its face to think? It's hilarious. While Stripey debated whether to take the deal, I fantasized about setting up a stage in the marketplace and charging people to watch him think. The joy it would bring into humans' lives would net both of us a windfall of positive karma.
"Hmmm. Okay. Yeah, okay." Straightening his neck, Stripey met my eyes. "It's a deal."
Don't you have to consult with the other duck demons first? Are you authorized to make decisions on their behalf? I double-checked. I didn't want the other bandits voting to reject the deal later, at least, not before we got the three silvers.
Stripey spluttered a laugh. "I am, in fact, authorized to make decisions on their behalf."
How so? Did your leader give you free rein to negotiate here?
His bill opened in a big grin. "I am the leader."
Whaaaat???
Wait, you're the leader of the bandits? Oh, but – but –
How had I missed that?! I scoured my memories for anything that hinted at it. I supposed that he did attend the Caltrop Pond parties fairly often, he had brought the extra-fancy brandy they'd robbed from a merchant that one time, and, most importantly, he was related to Seneschal Anasius up at the castle….
Well, good, I concluded. That means we won't have to worry about anyone vetoing the deal.
Mistress Jek's expression shrieked that there was nothing good about hosting the head of the local bandit gang in her home, especially not when everyone in the barony hated her family already. But she kept her mouth shut and let the magical animals talk.
"Okay. I have three silvers here." And Stripey opened the leather pouch at his side and tipped three large, blackened coins onto the table.
I trotted over, and Mistress Jek picked me up and set me on the table so I could see them. Unlike coppers, silvers didn't have holes in their centers, which made sense: Unless you were a duke or something, you'd never carry more than a few at a time (wouldn't even possess more than a few at a time), so you wouldn't need to string them together. One side of the coins had a blobby crowned head, the other a triangle with three stars over it. If the emperor's Twelve Symbols had survived into modern-day Serica, the triangle would be a mountain representing stability, and the three stars would symbolize happiness, prosperity, and longevity. All the coins were tarnished. Obviously, the bandits didn't bother polishing their silver.
Putting out a trembling hand, Mistress Jek picked one up with the tips of her fingers, as if it might break or evaporate.
With a smirk on his face, Stripey let us gawk at the silvers to our hearts' content before he prompted, "All right, Rosie. It's your turn. How do we earn good karma?"
Kill Lord Silurus. I gave him the same answer Flicker had given me.
Mistress Jek froze. Stripey burst into laughter.
"Ha, oh, ha," he gasped at last. "That was a good one! Gods, I haven't laughed so hard in – I don't know when!"
"What's ssso funny?" Bobo's head poked through the doorway. The rest of her followed, with a bucket of water suspended from her tail. She was already grinning in anticipation of a good joke.
As she slithered to the hearth and dumped the water into the cooking pot, Stripey explained, "We were talking about how the Jeks could repay us for the loan, and Rosie suggested we kill Lord Silurus for the good karma!" He burst out laughing again.
"Kill Lord Sssilurus? But that's – that's – " I thought she was going to say "impossible," but after some flailing, she settled on, "That's too dangerous! No! You can't do it! Don't do it!"
Wiping his eyes with a wingtip, Stripey calmed down enough to reassure her, "Of course not. It's a joke, Bobo. Don't take everything so seriously."
At his words, I felt a twinge of guilt. Bobo did take everything seriously, didn't she? It was why she'd believed me at once when I'd told her I was an emissary of the gods. And, more recently, when I'd promised to find a way to help her pay rent. Which, in my defense, I did plan to do eventually…. It just hadn't been very high on my priority list.
Well, now that the problem of the Jeks' rent was settled, I had time to think about hers.
"Oh, good," sighed Bobo. "I'm glad that was a joke." She forced a giggle that lacked conviction.
I felt another twinge of guilt as I corrected her, Actually, it wasn't.
A/N: Thanks to my awesome Patreon backers, BananaBobert, Blacklark57, Celia, Charlotte, Hookshyu, James, Lindsey, Michael, Pred Head, and Anonymous!
Piri: "Heaven's karma system is completely balanced with no exploits. So we are going to use these underlooked features"
- Location
- PA
…So the bit about Talia becoming a natural philosopher made me imagine her as Chinese Serican Steve Irwin. It's QUITE the image, I must say.
Also nice reveal by Stripey, though Lord Silurus must have grown to be fairly potent over the years if nobody thinks killing him is anything close to viable.
I'm still thinking a Piri that decided to sit around for a few hundred years with a sweet spear sized to however big she was by then could take him though!
Also nice reveal by Stripey, though Lord Silurus must have grown to be fairly potent over the years if nobody thinks killing him is anything close to viable.
I'm still thinking a Piri that decided to sit around for a few hundred years with a sweet spear sized to however big she was by then could take him though!
She is! Ever so slowly!
Of course. I mean, what else would you do with underlooked features?
Haha, now that you mention it, I can see Taila as a Serican Steve Irwin too!
Yeah, Lord Silurus is pretty powerful, plus the spirits who live in the area are either weak or weak-willed.... Piri might be able to take him in a few hundred years, but she has other plans (ducks?) she wants to throw at him before then!
Piri and Aurelia in Porcelain
I'm so excited to share this photo of Piri and Aurelia as porcelain dolls! They were created by Terry and Teresa, a Canadian husband-and-wife team who specialize in creating porcelain fairies! I've known them since I was a little kid (I tell the story of how we met here), and since they're retiring soon, I asked them to make Piri and Aurelia for me. I love the piece that they created, and I have been keeping it on my desk to inspire me while I write.
View: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Xl8KysjxhwuK0Wk8edAEmDq1p1HfNIq6/view?usp=sharing
If you can't see the photo, it's also here.
View: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Xl8KysjxhwuK0Wk8edAEmDq1p1HfNIq6/view?usp=sharing
If you can't see the photo, it's also here.
Haha, at the moment I don't have any romantic partners in mind for Piri. She doesn't understand love or even friendship yet, really. And Aurelia detests her.
If you do, I'd love to read it!
Chapter 46: His Most Bored Majesty
Chapter 46: His Most Bored Majesty
And it wasn't. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like a gods-cursed good idea. After all that damage to human pride and human profit, killing the catfish demon might be only way the duck demons could make a dent in their negative karma.
After I'd spun an elaborate tale of how we would win over and unify all the powers-that-be in the vicinity of Black Sand Creek and cooperate in a joint operation against our common foe, even Stripey had to agree that it just miiiiight work. It didn't stop him from feeling cheated – although it did stop him from snatching the three silvers and storming out.
Bobo, though…. Bobo was another issue.
Oh, it wasn't that she blamed me for proposing an idea that might get her best friend killed. In fact, I wasn't sure that she believed the duck demon could be killed. She had too much faith in him for that. The problem was that now that he'd accepted the deal, she wanted to do everything within her power to make it work.
And since she herself had absolutely no idea where to start, she kept harassing me to come up with a plan.
I'd be teaching Taila about deponent verbs (you try coming up with a better explanation for why some verbs have passive endings but active meanings than, "I don't know! They just do! Now memorize them!"), and out of the corner of my eye, I'd glimpse scaly green coils twisting impatiently. As soon as I reached a break in the lesson, Bobo would pounce. "Rosssie! Ssso what's our plan? How're we going to do it?"
Or I'd be lumbering towards Caltrop Pond after work, and she'd slither out of her bamboo grove to intercept me with a cry of: "Didja come up with any ideas yet? No? That's okay! Come brainssstorm at my placcce. It's very quiet here. I'll help you think!"
Or we'd be bobbing and swaying on the dance floor, and out of nowhere, she'd thrust a flagon of ale at me and insist tipsily, "Here, Rossshie! Try ssshome o' this! It'll help – hic – you think! About you-know-what!"
By mutual agreement, we'd decided to keep the plot a secret until we had a concrete proposal to present to concrete allies. But I always knew what Bobo was referring to when she said "it" or "you-know-what." There was only one thing on her mind these days – and it wasn't the rent she didn't have for next Settling Day.
Left to my own devices, I'd have procrastinated on attacking Lord Silurus until Taila was older and better trained and safely apprenticed to someone in a profession that would take her far away from Black Sand Creek. Namely, until I'd extracted every possible point of karma from my deal with Aurelia and could end this life without regrets. But Bobo's constant nagging kept the catfish demon in my mind and, more to the point, at the forefront of Stripey's.
Technically, I'd upheld my end of the deal. I'd told him how to earn positive karma. I'd never promised to throw in a detailed roadmap.
But the duck demon wasn't going to let me off with just fulfilling the letter of the agreement. Not if I wanted to preserve his goodwill towards the Jeks and, more to the point, his willingness to cover future shortfalls in their finances.
(In case you were wondering, a shame-faced and empty-handed Flicker did show up the night before the three silvers were due. He apologized that he'd tried everything he could think of but could not gain access to the treasury without a whole chain of permissions and seal stamps. He was starting to raise so many questions about why a third-class clerk in the Bureau of Reincarnation needed East Serican currency that Aurelia had ordered him to stop.)
So anyway, here I was, juggling my teaching obligations, partying obligations (on the rare occasions that I was too tired and tried to beg off, Bobo was so crestfallen that it was just easier to go to Caltrop Pond), dancing obligations (yes, I had a regular partner and set for the Dawn Dance, and believe me, they'd be annoyed if I missed a night and they had to, Heaven forbid, replace me with someone who didn't know the choreography) – and now, on top of everything else, I had to strategize an elaborate military operation!
Would it surprise you to know that military strategy wasn't among my fortes? Oh, I could spew the appropriate jargon, and I had aplomb aplenty for convincing courtiers of my tactical brilliance, but I was no field marshal. Back in the Wilds, I'd once served a demon king who actually understood how to leverage my talents: Toss me into the mix to sow chaos and distraction, while the people who enjoyed subtlety and planning executed their subtle plans.
Chaos was what I excelled at – but now everyone looked at me as if they expected me to come up with a clever plan.
How did I get myself into such a mess? Why did I always get myself into such messes?
"Why the long face?" yelled a voice overhead. "Arntcha having fun?"
It was a very familiar voice. Goodness knew I heard it often enough, shouting things like: "Yes! Yes! That's the stuff!" and "Let's. Get. This Party. STAAAARTED!"
A corner of my mind wondered which guest the Dragon King of Caltrop Pond was harassing now, but I ignored it. As I maintained a perfunctory sway to the music, I continued to fret. How was I supposed to devise a clever plan for Stripey and the duck demons to kill Lord Silurus? Okay, fine, I had come up with one for myself when I was a catfish…but it had failed, hadn't it? Why had it failed?
Because I hadn't known that a demon's throat lining could be so tough, plus I'd lacked the physical strength and the type of weapon required to puncture it. So…as a first step…I should assign someone to gather more information about Lord Silurus and his strengths and weaknesses –
"Rosie! I'm talking to you!" yelled the voice, straight through the skin that covered my ear this time.
I jumped, or rather, bobbed. Right in my face was a shiny snout and a pair of bright amber eyes framed by an artfully disheveled mane.
I bent my forelegs and bowed at once. Your Majesty! I beg your forgiveness! I didn't realize you were addressing me.
The Dragon King of Caltrop Pond straightened and waved a dismissive three-clawed hand. "Naaaw, don't worry about it!" he called above the pounding drumbeat. "What's the matter? Why the long face?"
It's nothing, Your Majesty. I forced the corners of my mouth to curve up in a sweet turtle smile.
"Of course it's something! You're standing in the middle of the dance floor looking like someone just ate your last mooncake! C'mon! You're killing my vibe! Tell me what's wrong. Are you hungry? Are you thirsty? Is the music too loud?"
Wow, just how bored was he tonight? I'd never seen him show so much solicitude towards any of his guests before.
Huh. Come to think of it, how bored was he in general?
It was true that he filled his time with partying and sleeping off hangovers and occasionally attending banquets in the Black Sand Creek Water Court and, once a year, putting in an appearance at the Meeting of the Dragon Host up in Heaven. But none of that involved any real work, and none of that led to any real accomplishments, unless you counted such a mastery of the intricate figures of the Dawn Dance that he could execute them dead drunk.
Maybe he was bored of not having any real work to do. Maybe what he needed was a good, challenging puzzle to solve, something that would push him to his limits and provide him with a sense of pride and achievement.
Yes. A project like that would be good for him. A project like that was just what he needed. And luckily for him, I had just the right project in mind.
Not Operation: Tell the Duck Demons How to Kill Lord Silurus, of course. I needed to start him off small, test his abilities and attention span, let him develop confidence in his own judgement.
Actually, Your Majesty, there is something I've been worrying about. Could I beg an audience of you?
His ears and horns shot up in surprise. That probably wasn't a question he heard very often.
"An audience, huh? An audience. Yeah," he marveled. "Yeah!"
He arched his neck to make his seed pearl gleam, the way he had the first time I saw him at the Meeting of the Dragon Host, when he was trying to impress a clerk.
"Ahem. Yes, of course I will grant you an audience. How about – I mean, come here tomorrow afternoon when the shadows fall across the easternmost boulder by the pond. You shall have your audience then."
Tomorrow afternoon? But I had to teach in the afternoon – well, never mind. I could assign Taila some math drills and have Bobo supervise her.
I bowed again. Thank you, Your Majesty.
He returned a deep, gracious nod. Then, with a swoosh, he launched himself back across the dance floor to his throne.
There was definitely extra pride in the way he held himself.
"So, Rosie, on what matter of great import do you seek my aid?"
It was late the next afternoon, when the shadows of the trees fell all the way across the pond to touch the easternmost boulder. The Dragon King of Caltrop Pond had gotten up early for this audience, and dragged his courtiers out of bed for it too. Two lines of bleary-eyed rice paddy snake spirits floated on either side of the throne. It was a commendable effort.
I sank to all four knees in front of the throne. Your Majesty, I have been set an impossible task, and I would like to beg your assistance in discharging it.
"An impossible task," intoned the dragon in his faux-regal voice. "And what is this impossible task of which you speak?"
I'd already decided to tell him that I was on a secret mission for a goddess. He'd spent enough time at those dragon conferences to have firsthand experience of the treachery of Heavenly politics. If he had a rice grain's worth of common sense, he wouldn't betray or even blackmail me until he'd investigated all the other players involved and determined the best side to back. And since he only went up to Heaven once a year, that gave me at least a few years to work with.
As Your Majesty is aware, I am not a spirit but a mortal creature granted special dispensation by Heaven to keep my mind and memories when I reincarnate.
The lack of surprise among the dragon and his courtiers at the first part of the statement showed that I'd guessed right. They'd long since figured out that I was one weird turtle, but none of them were the sort to pry. And the dragon didn't inquire further about the second part of the statement either, even though I'd expected him to.
I was sent to the Claymouth Barony by a most compassionate goddess in her immeasurable mercy to ameliorate the living conditions of a chosen child, and to guide her education so that she may achieve her full potential. (The hungover rice paddy snakes were going glassy-eyed by the end of the sentence.) I, however, am but a young and inexperienced turtle, and such matters are beyond my ken. If Your Majesty in your infinite wisdom would share insights into how I might accomplish this impossible task, I would be eternally grateful.
"Yes, yes, of course." The dragon was also getting bored with his regal performance and my flowery language. "Just spit it out. What exactly is this impossible task?"
I need to keep one little girl alive long enough for her to grow up, get a good job, and move away from Black Sand Creek.
A/N: Thanks to my awesome Patreon backers, BananaBobert, Blacklark57, Celia, Charlotte, Hookshyu, James, Lindsey, Michael, Pred Head, and Anonymous!
And it wasn't. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like a gods-cursed good idea. After all that damage to human pride and human profit, killing the catfish demon might be only way the duck demons could make a dent in their negative karma.
After I'd spun an elaborate tale of how we would win over and unify all the powers-that-be in the vicinity of Black Sand Creek and cooperate in a joint operation against our common foe, even Stripey had to agree that it just miiiiight work. It didn't stop him from feeling cheated – although it did stop him from snatching the three silvers and storming out.
Bobo, though…. Bobo was another issue.
Oh, it wasn't that she blamed me for proposing an idea that might get her best friend killed. In fact, I wasn't sure that she believed the duck demon could be killed. She had too much faith in him for that. The problem was that now that he'd accepted the deal, she wanted to do everything within her power to make it work.
And since she herself had absolutely no idea where to start, she kept harassing me to come up with a plan.
I'd be teaching Taila about deponent verbs (you try coming up with a better explanation for why some verbs have passive endings but active meanings than, "I don't know! They just do! Now memorize them!"), and out of the corner of my eye, I'd glimpse scaly green coils twisting impatiently. As soon as I reached a break in the lesson, Bobo would pounce. "Rosssie! Ssso what's our plan? How're we going to do it?"
Or I'd be lumbering towards Caltrop Pond after work, and she'd slither out of her bamboo grove to intercept me with a cry of: "Didja come up with any ideas yet? No? That's okay! Come brainssstorm at my placcce. It's very quiet here. I'll help you think!"
Or we'd be bobbing and swaying on the dance floor, and out of nowhere, she'd thrust a flagon of ale at me and insist tipsily, "Here, Rossshie! Try ssshome o' this! It'll help – hic – you think! About you-know-what!"
By mutual agreement, we'd decided to keep the plot a secret until we had a concrete proposal to present to concrete allies. But I always knew what Bobo was referring to when she said "it" or "you-know-what." There was only one thing on her mind these days – and it wasn't the rent she didn't have for next Settling Day.
Left to my own devices, I'd have procrastinated on attacking Lord Silurus until Taila was older and better trained and safely apprenticed to someone in a profession that would take her far away from Black Sand Creek. Namely, until I'd extracted every possible point of karma from my deal with Aurelia and could end this life without regrets. But Bobo's constant nagging kept the catfish demon in my mind and, more to the point, at the forefront of Stripey's.
Technically, I'd upheld my end of the deal. I'd told him how to earn positive karma. I'd never promised to throw in a detailed roadmap.
But the duck demon wasn't going to let me off with just fulfilling the letter of the agreement. Not if I wanted to preserve his goodwill towards the Jeks and, more to the point, his willingness to cover future shortfalls in their finances.
(In case you were wondering, a shame-faced and empty-handed Flicker did show up the night before the three silvers were due. He apologized that he'd tried everything he could think of but could not gain access to the treasury without a whole chain of permissions and seal stamps. He was starting to raise so many questions about why a third-class clerk in the Bureau of Reincarnation needed East Serican currency that Aurelia had ordered him to stop.)
So anyway, here I was, juggling my teaching obligations, partying obligations (on the rare occasions that I was too tired and tried to beg off, Bobo was so crestfallen that it was just easier to go to Caltrop Pond), dancing obligations (yes, I had a regular partner and set for the Dawn Dance, and believe me, they'd be annoyed if I missed a night and they had to, Heaven forbid, replace me with someone who didn't know the choreography) – and now, on top of everything else, I had to strategize an elaborate military operation!
Would it surprise you to know that military strategy wasn't among my fortes? Oh, I could spew the appropriate jargon, and I had aplomb aplenty for convincing courtiers of my tactical brilliance, but I was no field marshal. Back in the Wilds, I'd once served a demon king who actually understood how to leverage my talents: Toss me into the mix to sow chaos and distraction, while the people who enjoyed subtlety and planning executed their subtle plans.
Chaos was what I excelled at – but now everyone looked at me as if they expected me to come up with a clever plan.
How did I get myself into such a mess? Why did I always get myself into such messes?
"Why the long face?" yelled a voice overhead. "Arntcha having fun?"
It was a very familiar voice. Goodness knew I heard it often enough, shouting things like: "Yes! Yes! That's the stuff!" and "Let's. Get. This Party. STAAAARTED!"
A corner of my mind wondered which guest the Dragon King of Caltrop Pond was harassing now, but I ignored it. As I maintained a perfunctory sway to the music, I continued to fret. How was I supposed to devise a clever plan for Stripey and the duck demons to kill Lord Silurus? Okay, fine, I had come up with one for myself when I was a catfish…but it had failed, hadn't it? Why had it failed?
Because I hadn't known that a demon's throat lining could be so tough, plus I'd lacked the physical strength and the type of weapon required to puncture it. So…as a first step…I should assign someone to gather more information about Lord Silurus and his strengths and weaknesses –
"Rosie! I'm talking to you!" yelled the voice, straight through the skin that covered my ear this time.
I jumped, or rather, bobbed. Right in my face was a shiny snout and a pair of bright amber eyes framed by an artfully disheveled mane.
I bent my forelegs and bowed at once. Your Majesty! I beg your forgiveness! I didn't realize you were addressing me.
The Dragon King of Caltrop Pond straightened and waved a dismissive three-clawed hand. "Naaaw, don't worry about it!" he called above the pounding drumbeat. "What's the matter? Why the long face?"
It's nothing, Your Majesty. I forced the corners of my mouth to curve up in a sweet turtle smile.
"Of course it's something! You're standing in the middle of the dance floor looking like someone just ate your last mooncake! C'mon! You're killing my vibe! Tell me what's wrong. Are you hungry? Are you thirsty? Is the music too loud?"
Wow, just how bored was he tonight? I'd never seen him show so much solicitude towards any of his guests before.
Huh. Come to think of it, how bored was he in general?
It was true that he filled his time with partying and sleeping off hangovers and occasionally attending banquets in the Black Sand Creek Water Court and, once a year, putting in an appearance at the Meeting of the Dragon Host up in Heaven. But none of that involved any real work, and none of that led to any real accomplishments, unless you counted such a mastery of the intricate figures of the Dawn Dance that he could execute them dead drunk.
Maybe he was bored of not having any real work to do. Maybe what he needed was a good, challenging puzzle to solve, something that would push him to his limits and provide him with a sense of pride and achievement.
Yes. A project like that would be good for him. A project like that was just what he needed. And luckily for him, I had just the right project in mind.
Not Operation: Tell the Duck Demons How to Kill Lord Silurus, of course. I needed to start him off small, test his abilities and attention span, let him develop confidence in his own judgement.
Actually, Your Majesty, there is something I've been worrying about. Could I beg an audience of you?
His ears and horns shot up in surprise. That probably wasn't a question he heard very often.
"An audience, huh? An audience. Yeah," he marveled. "Yeah!"
He arched his neck to make his seed pearl gleam, the way he had the first time I saw him at the Meeting of the Dragon Host, when he was trying to impress a clerk.
"Ahem. Yes, of course I will grant you an audience. How about – I mean, come here tomorrow afternoon when the shadows fall across the easternmost boulder by the pond. You shall have your audience then."
Tomorrow afternoon? But I had to teach in the afternoon – well, never mind. I could assign Taila some math drills and have Bobo supervise her.
I bowed again. Thank you, Your Majesty.
He returned a deep, gracious nod. Then, with a swoosh, he launched himself back across the dance floor to his throne.
There was definitely extra pride in the way he held himself.
"So, Rosie, on what matter of great import do you seek my aid?"
It was late the next afternoon, when the shadows of the trees fell all the way across the pond to touch the easternmost boulder. The Dragon King of Caltrop Pond had gotten up early for this audience, and dragged his courtiers out of bed for it too. Two lines of bleary-eyed rice paddy snake spirits floated on either side of the throne. It was a commendable effort.
I sank to all four knees in front of the throne. Your Majesty, I have been set an impossible task, and I would like to beg your assistance in discharging it.
"An impossible task," intoned the dragon in his faux-regal voice. "And what is this impossible task of which you speak?"
I'd already decided to tell him that I was on a secret mission for a goddess. He'd spent enough time at those dragon conferences to have firsthand experience of the treachery of Heavenly politics. If he had a rice grain's worth of common sense, he wouldn't betray or even blackmail me until he'd investigated all the other players involved and determined the best side to back. And since he only went up to Heaven once a year, that gave me at least a few years to work with.
As Your Majesty is aware, I am not a spirit but a mortal creature granted special dispensation by Heaven to keep my mind and memories when I reincarnate.
The lack of surprise among the dragon and his courtiers at the first part of the statement showed that I'd guessed right. They'd long since figured out that I was one weird turtle, but none of them were the sort to pry. And the dragon didn't inquire further about the second part of the statement either, even though I'd expected him to.
I was sent to the Claymouth Barony by a most compassionate goddess in her immeasurable mercy to ameliorate the living conditions of a chosen child, and to guide her education so that she may achieve her full potential. (The hungover rice paddy snakes were going glassy-eyed by the end of the sentence.) I, however, am but a young and inexperienced turtle, and such matters are beyond my ken. If Your Majesty in your infinite wisdom would share insights into how I might accomplish this impossible task, I would be eternally grateful.
"Yes, yes, of course." The dragon was also getting bored with his regal performance and my flowery language. "Just spit it out. What exactly is this impossible task?"
I need to keep one little girl alive long enough for her to grow up, get a good job, and move away from Black Sand Creek.
A/N: Thanks to my awesome Patreon backers, BananaBobert, Blacklark57, Celia, Charlotte, Hookshyu, James, Lindsey, Michael, Pred Head, and Anonymous!
Chapter 47: Afternoon in the Caltrop Pond Water Court
Chapter 47: Afternoon in the Caltrop Pond Water Court
"Come again?!"
The Dragon King of Caltrop Pond glanced at the courtiers to his right, who nodded back, and at the ones to his left, who shrugged their long forms side-to-side. Yes, their body language confirmed, you heard that right.
He cocked his head at me, requesting an explanation.
I couldn't blame him. If you weren't privy to all the convoluted details, it did sound preposterous.
I know it seems – exaggerated? Melodramatic? Insultingly farfetched? – but this is no ordinary child. Her soul is – intelligent and lively and mischievous – incredibly unlucky, and her incarnations have died young life after life.
The dragon's eyes were popping out of his skull. "Rosie, what did you do to get assigned this kind of job?!"
Too much to tell him everything before the party, that was for sure.
It's a long story. Regardless, a compassionate goddess has taken an interest in this soul and tasked me with shepherding it to achieve its full potential.
"Huh. A goddess, huh?" He blinked, running through his mental list of goddesses who were both compassionate and fond of small children. With a roll of his eyes, he dismissed the vagaries of the Heavenly court. "Whew. Wow. Tough luck, Rosie. Kids are the worst. All those…tantrums." He shuddered.
Yes, indeed. All those tantrums. I shuddered too.
"Anyway, what'd you want my help with? Please don't tell me it's babysitting. You wouldn't catch me DEAD babysitting. I am not a kid person."
Yeah, well, it wasn't like I was a huge fan of them either. Sometimes you just had to grin, grit your teeth, and babysit them anyway.
Oh, no, don't worry, I have the childcare end covered. But her family has fallen on hard times, and I was wondering if you could help there.
At the mention of "hard times," the dragon shot up. "What sort of help? Caltrop Pond isn't a wealthy fief. If you're looking for financial or natural resources, Black Sand Creek has far greater – "
I didn't mean actual coin, I reassured him, even though I had been hoping that he'd open his treasury. He could have been a backup lender for the next Settling Day, in case Stripey got mad at me again and flounced off. I was thinking more along the lines of recruiting and interviewing tutors in advanced subjects, using your connections to open up apprenticeship opportunities, that sort of thing.
Now that he knew he wasn't getting saddled with screaming children or requests for money, the dragon grew generous. He lounged back against his throne and mused, "Oh, hmm, that's a good idea. I'll have to think about the apprenticeship thing, but finding tutors should be easy. How old is the kid?" As an afterthought, he followed up with, "What's her name, anyway?"
She's four years old. At least, she had been when I reincarnated. She was probably closer to five now, although I'd never considering learning her birthday until right this moment. I made a mental note to ask Mistress Jek the next time I remembered. Her name is Jek Taila.
The name's effect on the dragon king and his courtiers was instantaneous. Both lines of snakes went stiff as flagpoles.
"Jek Taila?" exclaimed the dragon. "You're mixed up with the Jeks?! Oh, but you're friends with Bobo, so of course you are." He clicked his tongue and shook his head. "Oof. Tough luck, Rosie."
I agreed with him wholeheartedly – but I suspected for different reasons. Why do you say that?
"Well, aren't the Jeks super, super weird? I've heard the stories. They're so – " And he waggled his hands in a gesture that didn't convey any actual information.
Do you mean that the Jeks have always been unpopular? Or is this a more recent development?
Their ostracization now wasn't all my fault, was it?
No. It couldn't be all my fault. Flicker had said so himself: Mistress Jek's family, the Loms, had always had "a slightly adversarial relationship" with their neighbors because they claimed to be descended from emperors. You couldn't blame the neighbors, really. No one liked people who put on airs and acted self-important.
Oh, wait. Hmmm….
Blessedly, before I had to follow that train of thought any further, the dragon answered, "Well, to be fair, in any social group, there's always going to be the one weirdo, right?"
The courtiers snickered, indicating that they had one of their own.
"So in any fief, there's always going to be the one family that just doesn't fit in. In the Claymouth Barony, that's Mistress Jek's family. The Loms. Have you met them yet?" At my headshake, he went on, "Lucky you. The first time they meet anybody, they go on and on about how their great-great-great-great-whatever-grandfathers were emperors. It's like they have to make sure everybody knows how important their ancestors were. And they insist on sticking to these archaic naming conventions, so their kids all have super weird names…."
Archaic naming conventions?
I tried to think what those might be. How had Sericans named children before they started using names that ended in "-us" for the boys and "-a" for the girls?
"Yeah. You've seen it with the Jek kids, haven't you? Ailus, Cailus, Nailus, Maila, Taila – the poor things! Who gives kids names like that?! It's just begging for them to get bullied!"
I decided not to comment on how bizarre human names that didn't end with "-us" or "-a" sounded to me.
"Anyhow, people were always going to look at Mistress Jek funny because she's a Lom. But now – now the Honeysuckle Croft branch of the Jeks has gone nuts! They make the Loms look like nothing! Whoo boy!"
If all of his information got filtered through drunken party gossip, no wonder he felt that way. Have you met any of them, though? Have you talked to them in person? They're actually pretty nice.
"Well…no," he admitted. "I don't leave the Water Court much, uh, during the day when humans are awake. I have a lot of paperwork to deal with."
Turtles don't have eyebrows to raise, but I opened one eye a lot bigger than the other.
"Anyhow! I'm happy to help! Let's get that poor little Jek girl out of that crazy house before she turns into a weirdo too! She's, what, you said four years old? That's young enough. We can still save her!"
Uh…. We obviously didn't see eye-to-eye on the reasons that Taila needed saving. But sure. Whatever convinced him to help.
"So, tutors and apprenticeships, you said. Let me think about it and ask around for you."
It doesn't have to be related to her education and career, I said hastily. I didn't want him restricting his own creativity. Anything to improve her living conditions, now or in the future, would be good.
"Sure, I'll think about it." All of a sudden, he noticed that the mouth of the tunnel leading to the pond had grown dark. "Oh, hey, we gotta get ready for the party! Okay, this audience is concluded. See you later, Rosie!"
And just like that, I'd secured a dragon king as an ally for Taila.
A very small, very insignificant dragon king – but a dragon king nonetheless. That had to counterbalance some of the damage I'd done to the Jeks, didn't it?
A real project! A real project! An actual, real project that would have an actual, real impact! How exciting!
For days, Den (short for His Majesty Densissimus Imber the Dragon King of Caltrop Pond, although only the stuffy spirits in Black Sand Creek and the star sprite clerks in Heaven called him that) could think of nothing else. It even superseded his idle chitchat with Oryza, Sativus, and Paddy, the oldest of the rice paddy snake spirits and hence the closest to beginning the thousand-year process of transforming into dragons, about what their future dragon names would be!
You didn't get to choose, of course. Heaven awarded you a formal name and title when you were enfeoffed. But dragon kings' names were often drawn from poetry, usually related to water, and always in Classical Serican. Den's name, for example, came from a four-book poem on Earthly agriculture. Specifically, from the section that described a massive storm washing away humanity's hard work and stressed the importance of turning to the Jade Emperor for salvation from flood and famine.
For lack of anything better to do, Den and his friends often recited water-related poems to one another and speculated on which phrases would make the best names. It was a surprisingly effective way to relax and drop off to sleep after a night of partying, or to while away a long afternoon of tedious bureaucratic busywork.
Now Ory passed him the daily weather report that he had to submit to the Master of Rain. She'd already filled out the standardized form for him. After skimming its contents – rainfall, mist, and fog amounts all within tolerances of what was decreed at the Meeting of the Dragon Host, blah blah blah – Den approved it with a sloppy stamp and tossed it onto his "out" pile.
While he waited for Sati to finish preparing a census form that enumerated all the plants and animals and spirits in Caltrop Pond, he stretched out his back. "So! What d'you think is the most useful kind of tutor for a four-year-old human?"
He'd been posing the same question a few times a day for the past few weeks now, but hey – it was novel, and it beat asking, "What d'you think is the best weather-themed poem?" the way he had been for the past few decades.
Sati's mouth moved as he tallied up the new caltrop plants that had grown since the last census. He filled out the number and slid the document across the desk to Den. "Mmm-MMM-mmm," he shrugged, the wordless syllables rising and falling with the same intonation as, "I DUN-no."
"Rosie said she's been teaching the girl basic math, reading, writing, and etiquette, right?" put in Paddy, who'd finished her work already and was sprawled across a giant floor cushion with her coils drooping off its sides.
"Right," confirmed Den.
"So we should find a tutor for something that's not math, reading, writing, or etiquette," she concluded.
"Not helpful, Paddy. There are a lot of other subjects for humans to learn," commented Ory. She stretched too, arching all the way over her chairback. She flipped around, slid off, and slithered to a floor cushion next to Paddy's.
"Yeah, like natural philosophy and literature and magecraft and history and philosophy and cookery…." Sati droned on for a while in that vein. The items on his list never changed, Den had observed, although the order sometimes did.
"But which one should we start with first?" he asked, getting them back on track.
"Well, she's a peasant, right?" pointed out Ory. "We should start with cookery."
"Isn't her ma teaching her that already?" objected Paddy.
Ory gave a brisk shake of her head. "No way a peasant knows fine cooking. If we want her to become a chef for a noble when she grows up, she's gonna need to know how to cook fancier things than her ma's rice porridge."
"No, no, we need to think bigger," Sati reminded them. He finished his paperwork for the day and passed it to Den, who glanced over it before stamping it too. "Just because she's a peasant doesn't mean she has to become a servant. Rosie said that the goddess wants to improve the girl's life, right?"
Ory argued back, "Yeah, but castle chef is a big step up from peasant farmer."
"Sati just wants her to become a musician so she can perform at our parties," Paddy drawled.
"I heard her older sister was good at the flute," Sati defended himself.
Lately, he'd been talking to the other partyers about the Jek family, learning everything he could about them.
"Yeah, but people always say that sort of thing about little kids. 'Oh, he's so talented at this' and 'Oh, she's a genius at that.' And then they grow up to be nothing special at all," groused Ory, who had several dozen nieces and nephews who'd turned out to be disappointments (i.e. died before they lived long enough to awaken).
"Well, okay," summarized Den. "So we know that we shouldn't look for a tutor in math, reading, writing, etiquette, or cookery. That narrows it down a bit. Good job, everyone! Let's keep thinking."
A/N: Thanks to my awesome Patreon backers, BananaBobert, Blacklark57, Celia, Charlotte, Hookshyu, James, Lindsey, Michael, Pred Head, and Anonymous!
"Come again?!"
The Dragon King of Caltrop Pond glanced at the courtiers to his right, who nodded back, and at the ones to his left, who shrugged their long forms side-to-side. Yes, their body language confirmed, you heard that right.
He cocked his head at me, requesting an explanation.
I couldn't blame him. If you weren't privy to all the convoluted details, it did sound preposterous.
I know it seems – exaggerated? Melodramatic? Insultingly farfetched? – but this is no ordinary child. Her soul is – intelligent and lively and mischievous – incredibly unlucky, and her incarnations have died young life after life.
The dragon's eyes were popping out of his skull. "Rosie, what did you do to get assigned this kind of job?!"
Too much to tell him everything before the party, that was for sure.
It's a long story. Regardless, a compassionate goddess has taken an interest in this soul and tasked me with shepherding it to achieve its full potential.
"Huh. A goddess, huh?" He blinked, running through his mental list of goddesses who were both compassionate and fond of small children. With a roll of his eyes, he dismissed the vagaries of the Heavenly court. "Whew. Wow. Tough luck, Rosie. Kids are the worst. All those…tantrums." He shuddered.
Yes, indeed. All those tantrums. I shuddered too.
"Anyway, what'd you want my help with? Please don't tell me it's babysitting. You wouldn't catch me DEAD babysitting. I am not a kid person."
Yeah, well, it wasn't like I was a huge fan of them either. Sometimes you just had to grin, grit your teeth, and babysit them anyway.
Oh, no, don't worry, I have the childcare end covered. But her family has fallen on hard times, and I was wondering if you could help there.
At the mention of "hard times," the dragon shot up. "What sort of help? Caltrop Pond isn't a wealthy fief. If you're looking for financial or natural resources, Black Sand Creek has far greater – "
I didn't mean actual coin, I reassured him, even though I had been hoping that he'd open his treasury. He could have been a backup lender for the next Settling Day, in case Stripey got mad at me again and flounced off. I was thinking more along the lines of recruiting and interviewing tutors in advanced subjects, using your connections to open up apprenticeship opportunities, that sort of thing.
Now that he knew he wasn't getting saddled with screaming children or requests for money, the dragon grew generous. He lounged back against his throne and mused, "Oh, hmm, that's a good idea. I'll have to think about the apprenticeship thing, but finding tutors should be easy. How old is the kid?" As an afterthought, he followed up with, "What's her name, anyway?"
She's four years old. At least, she had been when I reincarnated. She was probably closer to five now, although I'd never considering learning her birthday until right this moment. I made a mental note to ask Mistress Jek the next time I remembered. Her name is Jek Taila.
The name's effect on the dragon king and his courtiers was instantaneous. Both lines of snakes went stiff as flagpoles.
"Jek Taila?" exclaimed the dragon. "You're mixed up with the Jeks?! Oh, but you're friends with Bobo, so of course you are." He clicked his tongue and shook his head. "Oof. Tough luck, Rosie."
I agreed with him wholeheartedly – but I suspected for different reasons. Why do you say that?
"Well, aren't the Jeks super, super weird? I've heard the stories. They're so – " And he waggled his hands in a gesture that didn't convey any actual information.
Do you mean that the Jeks have always been unpopular? Or is this a more recent development?
Their ostracization now wasn't all my fault, was it?
No. It couldn't be all my fault. Flicker had said so himself: Mistress Jek's family, the Loms, had always had "a slightly adversarial relationship" with their neighbors because they claimed to be descended from emperors. You couldn't blame the neighbors, really. No one liked people who put on airs and acted self-important.
Oh, wait. Hmmm….
Blessedly, before I had to follow that train of thought any further, the dragon answered, "Well, to be fair, in any social group, there's always going to be the one weirdo, right?"
The courtiers snickered, indicating that they had one of their own.
"So in any fief, there's always going to be the one family that just doesn't fit in. In the Claymouth Barony, that's Mistress Jek's family. The Loms. Have you met them yet?" At my headshake, he went on, "Lucky you. The first time they meet anybody, they go on and on about how their great-great-great-great-whatever-grandfathers were emperors. It's like they have to make sure everybody knows how important their ancestors were. And they insist on sticking to these archaic naming conventions, so their kids all have super weird names…."
Archaic naming conventions?
I tried to think what those might be. How had Sericans named children before they started using names that ended in "-us" for the boys and "-a" for the girls?
"Yeah. You've seen it with the Jek kids, haven't you? Ailus, Cailus, Nailus, Maila, Taila – the poor things! Who gives kids names like that?! It's just begging for them to get bullied!"
I decided not to comment on how bizarre human names that didn't end with "-us" or "-a" sounded to me.
"Anyhow, people were always going to look at Mistress Jek funny because she's a Lom. But now – now the Honeysuckle Croft branch of the Jeks has gone nuts! They make the Loms look like nothing! Whoo boy!"
If all of his information got filtered through drunken party gossip, no wonder he felt that way. Have you met any of them, though? Have you talked to them in person? They're actually pretty nice.
"Well…no," he admitted. "I don't leave the Water Court much, uh, during the day when humans are awake. I have a lot of paperwork to deal with."
Turtles don't have eyebrows to raise, but I opened one eye a lot bigger than the other.
"Anyhow! I'm happy to help! Let's get that poor little Jek girl out of that crazy house before she turns into a weirdo too! She's, what, you said four years old? That's young enough. We can still save her!"
Uh…. We obviously didn't see eye-to-eye on the reasons that Taila needed saving. But sure. Whatever convinced him to help.
"So, tutors and apprenticeships, you said. Let me think about it and ask around for you."
It doesn't have to be related to her education and career, I said hastily. I didn't want him restricting his own creativity. Anything to improve her living conditions, now or in the future, would be good.
"Sure, I'll think about it." All of a sudden, he noticed that the mouth of the tunnel leading to the pond had grown dark. "Oh, hey, we gotta get ready for the party! Okay, this audience is concluded. See you later, Rosie!"
And just like that, I'd secured a dragon king as an ally for Taila.
A very small, very insignificant dragon king – but a dragon king nonetheless. That had to counterbalance some of the damage I'd done to the Jeks, didn't it?
A real project! A real project! An actual, real project that would have an actual, real impact! How exciting!
For days, Den (short for His Majesty Densissimus Imber the Dragon King of Caltrop Pond, although only the stuffy spirits in Black Sand Creek and the star sprite clerks in Heaven called him that) could think of nothing else. It even superseded his idle chitchat with Oryza, Sativus, and Paddy, the oldest of the rice paddy snake spirits and hence the closest to beginning the thousand-year process of transforming into dragons, about what their future dragon names would be!
You didn't get to choose, of course. Heaven awarded you a formal name and title when you were enfeoffed. But dragon kings' names were often drawn from poetry, usually related to water, and always in Classical Serican. Den's name, for example, came from a four-book poem on Earthly agriculture. Specifically, from the section that described a massive storm washing away humanity's hard work and stressed the importance of turning to the Jade Emperor for salvation from flood and famine.
For lack of anything better to do, Den and his friends often recited water-related poems to one another and speculated on which phrases would make the best names. It was a surprisingly effective way to relax and drop off to sleep after a night of partying, or to while away a long afternoon of tedious bureaucratic busywork.
Now Ory passed him the daily weather report that he had to submit to the Master of Rain. She'd already filled out the standardized form for him. After skimming its contents – rainfall, mist, and fog amounts all within tolerances of what was decreed at the Meeting of the Dragon Host, blah blah blah – Den approved it with a sloppy stamp and tossed it onto his "out" pile.
While he waited for Sati to finish preparing a census form that enumerated all the plants and animals and spirits in Caltrop Pond, he stretched out his back. "So! What d'you think is the most useful kind of tutor for a four-year-old human?"
He'd been posing the same question a few times a day for the past few weeks now, but hey – it was novel, and it beat asking, "What d'you think is the best weather-themed poem?" the way he had been for the past few decades.
Sati's mouth moved as he tallied up the new caltrop plants that had grown since the last census. He filled out the number and slid the document across the desk to Den. "Mmm-MMM-mmm," he shrugged, the wordless syllables rising and falling with the same intonation as, "I DUN-no."
"Rosie said she's been teaching the girl basic math, reading, writing, and etiquette, right?" put in Paddy, who'd finished her work already and was sprawled across a giant floor cushion with her coils drooping off its sides.
"Right," confirmed Den.
"So we should find a tutor for something that's not math, reading, writing, or etiquette," she concluded.
"Not helpful, Paddy. There are a lot of other subjects for humans to learn," commented Ory. She stretched too, arching all the way over her chairback. She flipped around, slid off, and slithered to a floor cushion next to Paddy's.
"Yeah, like natural philosophy and literature and magecraft and history and philosophy and cookery…." Sati droned on for a while in that vein. The items on his list never changed, Den had observed, although the order sometimes did.
"But which one should we start with first?" he asked, getting them back on track.
"Well, she's a peasant, right?" pointed out Ory. "We should start with cookery."
"Isn't her ma teaching her that already?" objected Paddy.
Ory gave a brisk shake of her head. "No way a peasant knows fine cooking. If we want her to become a chef for a noble when she grows up, she's gonna need to know how to cook fancier things than her ma's rice porridge."
"No, no, we need to think bigger," Sati reminded them. He finished his paperwork for the day and passed it to Den, who glanced over it before stamping it too. "Just because she's a peasant doesn't mean she has to become a servant. Rosie said that the goddess wants to improve the girl's life, right?"
Ory argued back, "Yeah, but castle chef is a big step up from peasant farmer."
"Sati just wants her to become a musician so she can perform at our parties," Paddy drawled.
"I heard her older sister was good at the flute," Sati defended himself.
Lately, he'd been talking to the other partyers about the Jek family, learning everything he could about them.
"Yeah, but people always say that sort of thing about little kids. 'Oh, he's so talented at this' and 'Oh, she's a genius at that.' And then they grow up to be nothing special at all," groused Ory, who had several dozen nieces and nephews who'd turned out to be disappointments (i.e. died before they lived long enough to awaken).
"Well, okay," summarized Den. "So we know that we shouldn't look for a tutor in math, reading, writing, etiquette, or cookery. That narrows it down a bit. Good job, everyone! Let's keep thinking."
A/N: Thanks to my awesome Patreon backers, BananaBobert, Blacklark57, Celia, Charlotte, Hookshyu, James, Lindsey, Michael, Pred Head, and Anonymous!
- Location
- PA
Okay now that sounds like it'll make waves…
*frowns* that bit about snakes turning into dragons reminds me of a video I saw where a snake had grown a mossy coat and the critter looked just bizarre, like a fluffy tail moving on its's own is the best way I could put it. I don't recall where I found it though…
*frowns* that bit about snakes turning into dragons reminds me of a video I saw where a snake had grown a mossy coat and the critter looked just bizarre, like a fluffy tail moving on its's own is the best way I could put it. I don't recall where I found it though…
That sounds adorable! Let me know if you come across it again!
Yeah, magecraft is too advanced for a 4-yr-old, but it would make a much better career than peasant farmer. It has social prestige and pays much better.
Chapter 48: Two Dragon Kings
Chapter 48: Two Dragon Kings
You'd think that if peasants were going to starve to death, they'd do it in the middle of winter when nothing could grow, right? I mean, didn't that make the most sense? But no – as it turned out, the most dangerous time of year was actually early spring, when their stores of turnips and yams were running out, but nothing in their fields or vegetable patches had grown enough to pick yet.
And this spring, with their neighbors unwilling to lend them so much as a spare onion, the Jeks were slowly but surely starving. The boys' rowdy games vanished. The parents dragged themselves from chore to chore and collapsed into dull-eyed silence in between. Taila faded from a miniature whirlwind into a withered heap of rags. If I tried to coax her into sitting up and practicing her handwriting, she'd just stare at me blankly.
And all this when they had livestock right in front of them, ready for eating! The pig – fine, they'd invested significant resources into raising it, and I could understand why they didn't want to butcher it. But –
You have chickens! You have chickens right there! I stabbed a foreleg at the coop. Can't you just eat one hen and buy another one to make up for it later?!
In a listless voice, Mistress Jek mumbled something about needing the eggs to sell.
Okay, if you can't eat the hens, then eat some of the eggs! I urged. They lay them every day. You can go back to selling the eggs later, when you're not all starving to death!
In an equally lethargic voice, Master Jek muttered something about needing to save up for rent.
You're not going to need to pay rent if you all starve to death first!
Seeing my frustration, Mistress Jek marshalled enough strength to force a wobbly smile. "Don't worry, emissary. We'll get through this. We do every year."
And so, as the pig continued to loll about in its pigsty, the hens continued to lay eggs that Mistress Jek trudged to town to sell every morning, and the landscape grew lush around them, the Jeks continued to starve. It was the absolute most infuriating thing I'd seen.
In a moment of madness, I started marching towards the castle so I could threaten that greedy baron with Flicker, but sanity prevailed before I got too far down Persimmon Tree Lane.
Instead, I turned around and stomped off to Caltrop Pond. I'd already given that lazy dragon a full moon to "think about" how to ameliorate Taila's living conditions. It was time for him to deliver.
Den was drowsing in that pleasant, peaceful state just before waking, lingering at the tail end of his favorite dream. The one in which he was the guest of honor at a special banquet in Heaven, seated to the right of the Dragon Commander himself, as a reward for extraordinary services rendered. Sweeping his gaze across the hall, he basked in the awed, admiring, envious stares of the other dragon kings, all of whom were older and wiser and more powerful than he, yet none of whom had had the ingenuity and grit to – well, the dream never specified what he had done, only that it had been extraordinary.
Now a star sprite attendant was floating up to him, bearing the casket that contained his reward. But instead of presenting it to him as she was supposed to do, she shot out a hand, pinched his ear between her fingers, and started shaking him.
Den shot up with a yelp.
He found himself on his bed in his bedchamber, surrounded by his rice paddy snake friends, who were all snoring away on neighboring caltrop rosettes. The Dragon Commander, the banquet hall, the special award – they had all been a dream.
But the sharp pain in his left ear – that was real.
"Ow!"
Turning around did nothing to fix it, although the motion did set his head pounding. He twitched his ear as far forward as he could and rotated his eyeballs to the side, trying to figure out what was wrong with it.
What was wrong with his left ear was that a small oracle-shell turtle had her jaws clamped on it and was paddling with her legs to yank on it.
"Rosie! Ow! Let go! What in the name of all the Stars are you doing?!"
He tugged at her with his hand, careful not to crush her shell.
At last, she released his ear, swallowed a mouthful of his blood, and snarled, I'm waking you up. What does it look like I'm doing?
"Yes, but – " Den's head was too muzzy for him to lecture her on protocol. "If you wanted another audience, all you had to do was ask me tonight!"
Rosie snorted. Wait until tonight? Why? I've given you a full moon to devise methods that will improve Jek Taila's living conditions, and what have you accomplished in that time?
"Uhhh…." One palm pressed to his throbbing temple and the other to his throbbing ear, Den mentally cursed his friends for continuing their sweet slumbers instead of protecting him from this crazy turtle. What good were courtiers who slept through an attack on their own liege lord?! "We've been discussing the situation every day."
And? What conclusions have you drawn from these daily discussions?
"Uhhh…." That Ory wanted Taila to become a chef, that Sati wanted her to become a musician, and that Paddy thought they needed to think bigger but wasn't sure what "bigger" meant in the context of peasant farmers? "We've been working on narrowing down the options for subjects in which to hire tutors."
Complicated phrasing failed to impress Rosie. And?
"Well, what do you think of sending her to the Green Frog for training? Or apprenticing her to the chef at the castle? Will either of those options please the goddess?"
Rosie lunged. He thought she was going to bite him again, but she swerved at the last minute and kicked his arm instead. While you've been wasting time fantasizing about entertainment and delicacies, Taila is starving to death. If you want to please the goddess, then start by getting her some food.
Den's heartrate spiked. "Starving to death? She's starving to death? Oh, oh, but, oh. Right. Right. It is early spring. Hmmm. Hmmm. What do humans eat? What kind of food can I give her?"
Unlike spirits, humans couldn't draw on the essence of the nourishment itself, Den knew. They required physical sustenance – specific types of it, too. What did he have available? Goldfish-sized fish that could fit in Caltrop Pond, and delicate fairy shrimp that were practically all shell.
Those were a start, he supposed, although he'd just submitted the census form to Heaven. It was going to be really awkward if population numbers plummeted on the next census.
"Okay. Okay. How about this? I'll go talk to the Dragon King of Black Sand Creek. He has plenty of fish and other edible animals. I'm sure he can spare some."
To his relief, Rosie didn't kick or bite him again. That is acceptable. But you'd better do it fast! Or the girl's going to starve to death and the goddess is going to punish all of us!
"Okay, okay, I'll go today! I'll go today!"
It wasn't until after the crazy turtle had swum out of his bedchamber that Den realized, Wait, why would the goddess punish me? The only person who'll get into trouble if Taila dies is Rosie, for failing her mission. The goddess doesn't even know I promised to help, right?
But he decided to go talk to King Yulus anyway. After all, it wasn't like he had anything better to do.
Den always told himself that he didn't mind being the lowliest dragon king on Earth. After all, he was the youngest, and hence the smallest and weakest. It made sense for him to be assigned a tiny, insignificant fief until he proved his worth. Plus governing a pond that no one cared about meant that as long as he submitted his paperwork on time, he could do as he pleased. In other words, he could throw parties for his friends every night and sleep half the day, and it wouldn't hurt his career prospects because he had no rivals to tattle on him. It was a good, carefree life. He enjoyed it.
It was just that, occasionally, when he saw the palaces of Heaven or the courts of his more powerful colleagues, he felt a stirring of – well, not jealousy, precisely. More like dissatisfaction. Ambition, perhaps? Sometimes, he wanted to do more with his life.
This was one of those occasions. Black Sand Creek was orders of magnitude larger than Caltrop Pond and bustled with spirits and unawakened creatures. King Yulus' resplendent Water Court inspired awe from the moment you glimpsed its elegant front gate and the calligraphy sign that proclaimed "Black Sand Creek Water Court" for all to see.
Escorted by the Black Sand Creek Water Court's dignified crab seneschal and a pair of proud shrimp guards, Den, Ory, Sati, and Paddy swam down the near-infinite corridor to the audience chamber.
It made Den sigh with envy. No, this level of gravitas wasn't something he could pull off at Caltrop Pond. His entrance tunnel was simply too short. A formal procession wouldn't be so much stately as laughable.
Not to mention, his head crab served as the cook on his cook's days off.
"His Majesty Densissimus Imber, the Dragon King of Caltrop Pond," intoned the seneschal, his voice rolling through the audience chamber and silencing the courtiers.
As much as Den loved his friends, he had to confess none of them possessed the grandeur of Prime Minister Nagi, the water snake spirit, or the authority of Captains Carpa and Carpio, the carp spirits who commanded the Water Court's guard force.
As for King Yulus himself, he was everything a dragon strove to be. His back and sides were covered with handsome black scales, his mane shone like silk, and he kept the pearl under his chin polished to gleaming. Den had never seen a single food or booze stain on it. But most important of all, King Yulus had four claws on each hand and foot. That number alone put him ranks and ranks above Den.
Den bowed, proud of himself for getting the degree precisely right. Three steps behind him, Ory, Sati, and Paddy coiled on the floor and bowed too.
King Yulus inclined his head, graciously accepting their obeisance. "Be welcome to my court, Densissimus Imber. To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?"
To his right, the imperious Prime Minister stared hard at Den and his friends. The two Captains stayed stiff and stone-faced, ready to take them down at the first hint of trouble.
Straightening, Den felt a thrill run through him as he announced, "I would like to request Your Majesty's aid in fulfilling a mission from Heaven."
The courtiers of Black Sand Creek perked up in the most satisfying manner, although some of them exchanged glances that asked, Why would Heaven assign a mission to him? Why not to us? Why is this the first we're hearing of it?
With a single wave of his hand, King Yulus quelled them.
Den went on, "A compassionate goddess has taken interest in a human child and wishes to improve her life. Alas, the child lives in poverty and is starving to death." He hated this next part, but it had to be said: "As Your Majesty is doubtless aware, Caltrop Pond does not possess much in the way of resources and, as such, cannot provide sufficient sustenance. It is my hope that in your endless benevolence, you might see fit to honor both myself and my court by assisting us in this matter."
Den already knew King Yulus would agree. The Dragon King of Black Sand Creek had a generous heart, and his largesse surely extended not only to his own vassals but also to a starving child on the banks of his river.
However, before he could reply, his Prime Minister, who was made of sterner stuff, interrupted. "Your Majesty, we are honored by your request, but before we discuss it further, allow me to clarify one point. Was this mission assigned through the official auspices of a Heavenly bureau, or by a goddess acting on her own?"
It was an important question. Den mentally smacked himself for not asking Rosie. This was yet another reason King Yulus and his court ranked so high above him: political acumen.
"I am not certain," he admitted.
With an unsurprised nod, Prime Minister Nagi addressed King Yulus. "Your Majesty, I suggest that before we proceed any further, we ascertain the provenance of this mission." Unspoken was her warning not to risk getting caught in a battle of wills between gods, or even between a goddess and the Heavenly administration itself.
King Yulus opened his mouth. He was about to reject the request, Den could tell.
In desperation, he dropped the regal act. "Wait!" he blurted out. "Wait, just hear me out! It's the Jek girl! Taila. She's only four. She's very bright. She can already read and write in Classical Serican, and do addition and subtraction, and she's memorized her times tables up to twelve. She has so much potential! How can we let her starve to death just because her parents offended their neighbors so much that no one will help them out? Whatever the adults did, it's not the child's fault! The child is not to blame!"
Prime Minister Nagi hissed in disapproval, but King Yulus was leaning forward, his expression moved.
Remembering another piece of gossip he'd heard about the Jeks, Den rushed on before the Prime Minister could speak. "And that family has suffered enough tragedy! Just before Taila was born, her older sister was eaten by Lord Silurus right in this very river! Right on your doorstep!"
King Yulus and Prime Minister Nagi winced in unison. Den had heard that they'd witnessed the murder.
"How can we let her parents lose another child? How can we sit back and watch Taila starve to death when we have the food she needs? It would be unconscionable! Unworthy of dragon kings!"
"It would also be unwise to interfere with the vassal of another lord," pointed out the Prime Minister, recovering herself. "The Jeks live in the Claymouth Barony, do they not? Hence she falls under the authority of Baron Claymouth, and if he has chosen not to save her, it is not for us to contravene his wishes."
"That may be true, but like I said, it's not the child's fault that her parents fell afoul of the Baron! Let him punish her parents! If anyone asks, we can specify that the food is meant for the child and the child alone!"
King Yulus was nodding along. His Prime Minister eyeballed him.
For a final, clinching argument, Den reminded them, "And it won't be for long anyway. It's just a stopgap measure, to get her through the first part of spring. If we're discreet, no one will ever find out."
The Prime Minister wavered, opened and shut her mouth a few times, and, in the end, looked to her king.
The Dragon King of Black Sand Creek stared off into the distance for a moment. An expression that Den couldn't name flashed over his face.
Then his four-clawed hands clenched around the armrests of his throne, and he lifted his chin and proclaimed, "We will provide food to Jek Taila and her family to sustain them until they can produce their own food. Fiat. Let it be done."
Under his chin, his pearl blazed pure white.
A/N: Thanks to my awesome Patreon backers, BananaBobert, Blacklark57, Celia, Charlotte, Hookshyu, James, Lindsey, Michael, Pred Head, and Anonymous!
You'd think that if peasants were going to starve to death, they'd do it in the middle of winter when nothing could grow, right? I mean, didn't that make the most sense? But no – as it turned out, the most dangerous time of year was actually early spring, when their stores of turnips and yams were running out, but nothing in their fields or vegetable patches had grown enough to pick yet.
And this spring, with their neighbors unwilling to lend them so much as a spare onion, the Jeks were slowly but surely starving. The boys' rowdy games vanished. The parents dragged themselves from chore to chore and collapsed into dull-eyed silence in between. Taila faded from a miniature whirlwind into a withered heap of rags. If I tried to coax her into sitting up and practicing her handwriting, she'd just stare at me blankly.
And all this when they had livestock right in front of them, ready for eating! The pig – fine, they'd invested significant resources into raising it, and I could understand why they didn't want to butcher it. But –
You have chickens! You have chickens right there! I stabbed a foreleg at the coop. Can't you just eat one hen and buy another one to make up for it later?!
In a listless voice, Mistress Jek mumbled something about needing the eggs to sell.
Okay, if you can't eat the hens, then eat some of the eggs! I urged. They lay them every day. You can go back to selling the eggs later, when you're not all starving to death!
In an equally lethargic voice, Master Jek muttered something about needing to save up for rent.
You're not going to need to pay rent if you all starve to death first!
Seeing my frustration, Mistress Jek marshalled enough strength to force a wobbly smile. "Don't worry, emissary. We'll get through this. We do every year."
And so, as the pig continued to loll about in its pigsty, the hens continued to lay eggs that Mistress Jek trudged to town to sell every morning, and the landscape grew lush around them, the Jeks continued to starve. It was the absolute most infuriating thing I'd seen.
In a moment of madness, I started marching towards the castle so I could threaten that greedy baron with Flicker, but sanity prevailed before I got too far down Persimmon Tree Lane.
Instead, I turned around and stomped off to Caltrop Pond. I'd already given that lazy dragon a full moon to "think about" how to ameliorate Taila's living conditions. It was time for him to deliver.
Den was drowsing in that pleasant, peaceful state just before waking, lingering at the tail end of his favorite dream. The one in which he was the guest of honor at a special banquet in Heaven, seated to the right of the Dragon Commander himself, as a reward for extraordinary services rendered. Sweeping his gaze across the hall, he basked in the awed, admiring, envious stares of the other dragon kings, all of whom were older and wiser and more powerful than he, yet none of whom had had the ingenuity and grit to – well, the dream never specified what he had done, only that it had been extraordinary.
Now a star sprite attendant was floating up to him, bearing the casket that contained his reward. But instead of presenting it to him as she was supposed to do, she shot out a hand, pinched his ear between her fingers, and started shaking him.
Den shot up with a yelp.
He found himself on his bed in his bedchamber, surrounded by his rice paddy snake friends, who were all snoring away on neighboring caltrop rosettes. The Dragon Commander, the banquet hall, the special award – they had all been a dream.
But the sharp pain in his left ear – that was real.
"Ow!"
Turning around did nothing to fix it, although the motion did set his head pounding. He twitched his ear as far forward as he could and rotated his eyeballs to the side, trying to figure out what was wrong with it.
What was wrong with his left ear was that a small oracle-shell turtle had her jaws clamped on it and was paddling with her legs to yank on it.
"Rosie! Ow! Let go! What in the name of all the Stars are you doing?!"
He tugged at her with his hand, careful not to crush her shell.
At last, she released his ear, swallowed a mouthful of his blood, and snarled, I'm waking you up. What does it look like I'm doing?
"Yes, but – " Den's head was too muzzy for him to lecture her on protocol. "If you wanted another audience, all you had to do was ask me tonight!"
Rosie snorted. Wait until tonight? Why? I've given you a full moon to devise methods that will improve Jek Taila's living conditions, and what have you accomplished in that time?
"Uhhh…." One palm pressed to his throbbing temple and the other to his throbbing ear, Den mentally cursed his friends for continuing their sweet slumbers instead of protecting him from this crazy turtle. What good were courtiers who slept through an attack on their own liege lord?! "We've been discussing the situation every day."
And? What conclusions have you drawn from these daily discussions?
"Uhhh…." That Ory wanted Taila to become a chef, that Sati wanted her to become a musician, and that Paddy thought they needed to think bigger but wasn't sure what "bigger" meant in the context of peasant farmers? "We've been working on narrowing down the options for subjects in which to hire tutors."
Complicated phrasing failed to impress Rosie. And?
"Well, what do you think of sending her to the Green Frog for training? Or apprenticing her to the chef at the castle? Will either of those options please the goddess?"
Rosie lunged. He thought she was going to bite him again, but she swerved at the last minute and kicked his arm instead. While you've been wasting time fantasizing about entertainment and delicacies, Taila is starving to death. If you want to please the goddess, then start by getting her some food.
Den's heartrate spiked. "Starving to death? She's starving to death? Oh, oh, but, oh. Right. Right. It is early spring. Hmmm. Hmmm. What do humans eat? What kind of food can I give her?"
Unlike spirits, humans couldn't draw on the essence of the nourishment itself, Den knew. They required physical sustenance – specific types of it, too. What did he have available? Goldfish-sized fish that could fit in Caltrop Pond, and delicate fairy shrimp that were practically all shell.
Those were a start, he supposed, although he'd just submitted the census form to Heaven. It was going to be really awkward if population numbers plummeted on the next census.
"Okay. Okay. How about this? I'll go talk to the Dragon King of Black Sand Creek. He has plenty of fish and other edible animals. I'm sure he can spare some."
To his relief, Rosie didn't kick or bite him again. That is acceptable. But you'd better do it fast! Or the girl's going to starve to death and the goddess is going to punish all of us!
"Okay, okay, I'll go today! I'll go today!"
It wasn't until after the crazy turtle had swum out of his bedchamber that Den realized, Wait, why would the goddess punish me? The only person who'll get into trouble if Taila dies is Rosie, for failing her mission. The goddess doesn't even know I promised to help, right?
But he decided to go talk to King Yulus anyway. After all, it wasn't like he had anything better to do.
Den always told himself that he didn't mind being the lowliest dragon king on Earth. After all, he was the youngest, and hence the smallest and weakest. It made sense for him to be assigned a tiny, insignificant fief until he proved his worth. Plus governing a pond that no one cared about meant that as long as he submitted his paperwork on time, he could do as he pleased. In other words, he could throw parties for his friends every night and sleep half the day, and it wouldn't hurt his career prospects because he had no rivals to tattle on him. It was a good, carefree life. He enjoyed it.
It was just that, occasionally, when he saw the palaces of Heaven or the courts of his more powerful colleagues, he felt a stirring of – well, not jealousy, precisely. More like dissatisfaction. Ambition, perhaps? Sometimes, he wanted to do more with his life.
This was one of those occasions. Black Sand Creek was orders of magnitude larger than Caltrop Pond and bustled with spirits and unawakened creatures. King Yulus' resplendent Water Court inspired awe from the moment you glimpsed its elegant front gate and the calligraphy sign that proclaimed "Black Sand Creek Water Court" for all to see.
Escorted by the Black Sand Creek Water Court's dignified crab seneschal and a pair of proud shrimp guards, Den, Ory, Sati, and Paddy swam down the near-infinite corridor to the audience chamber.
It made Den sigh with envy. No, this level of gravitas wasn't something he could pull off at Caltrop Pond. His entrance tunnel was simply too short. A formal procession wouldn't be so much stately as laughable.
Not to mention, his head crab served as the cook on his cook's days off.
"His Majesty Densissimus Imber, the Dragon King of Caltrop Pond," intoned the seneschal, his voice rolling through the audience chamber and silencing the courtiers.
As much as Den loved his friends, he had to confess none of them possessed the grandeur of Prime Minister Nagi, the water snake spirit, or the authority of Captains Carpa and Carpio, the carp spirits who commanded the Water Court's guard force.
As for King Yulus himself, he was everything a dragon strove to be. His back and sides were covered with handsome black scales, his mane shone like silk, and he kept the pearl under his chin polished to gleaming. Den had never seen a single food or booze stain on it. But most important of all, King Yulus had four claws on each hand and foot. That number alone put him ranks and ranks above Den.
Den bowed, proud of himself for getting the degree precisely right. Three steps behind him, Ory, Sati, and Paddy coiled on the floor and bowed too.
King Yulus inclined his head, graciously accepting their obeisance. "Be welcome to my court, Densissimus Imber. To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?"
To his right, the imperious Prime Minister stared hard at Den and his friends. The two Captains stayed stiff and stone-faced, ready to take them down at the first hint of trouble.
Straightening, Den felt a thrill run through him as he announced, "I would like to request Your Majesty's aid in fulfilling a mission from Heaven."
The courtiers of Black Sand Creek perked up in the most satisfying manner, although some of them exchanged glances that asked, Why would Heaven assign a mission to him? Why not to us? Why is this the first we're hearing of it?
With a single wave of his hand, King Yulus quelled them.
Den went on, "A compassionate goddess has taken interest in a human child and wishes to improve her life. Alas, the child lives in poverty and is starving to death." He hated this next part, but it had to be said: "As Your Majesty is doubtless aware, Caltrop Pond does not possess much in the way of resources and, as such, cannot provide sufficient sustenance. It is my hope that in your endless benevolence, you might see fit to honor both myself and my court by assisting us in this matter."
Den already knew King Yulus would agree. The Dragon King of Black Sand Creek had a generous heart, and his largesse surely extended not only to his own vassals but also to a starving child on the banks of his river.
However, before he could reply, his Prime Minister, who was made of sterner stuff, interrupted. "Your Majesty, we are honored by your request, but before we discuss it further, allow me to clarify one point. Was this mission assigned through the official auspices of a Heavenly bureau, or by a goddess acting on her own?"
It was an important question. Den mentally smacked himself for not asking Rosie. This was yet another reason King Yulus and his court ranked so high above him: political acumen.
"I am not certain," he admitted.
With an unsurprised nod, Prime Minister Nagi addressed King Yulus. "Your Majesty, I suggest that before we proceed any further, we ascertain the provenance of this mission." Unspoken was her warning not to risk getting caught in a battle of wills between gods, or even between a goddess and the Heavenly administration itself.
King Yulus opened his mouth. He was about to reject the request, Den could tell.
In desperation, he dropped the regal act. "Wait!" he blurted out. "Wait, just hear me out! It's the Jek girl! Taila. She's only four. She's very bright. She can already read and write in Classical Serican, and do addition and subtraction, and she's memorized her times tables up to twelve. She has so much potential! How can we let her starve to death just because her parents offended their neighbors so much that no one will help them out? Whatever the adults did, it's not the child's fault! The child is not to blame!"
Prime Minister Nagi hissed in disapproval, but King Yulus was leaning forward, his expression moved.
Remembering another piece of gossip he'd heard about the Jeks, Den rushed on before the Prime Minister could speak. "And that family has suffered enough tragedy! Just before Taila was born, her older sister was eaten by Lord Silurus right in this very river! Right on your doorstep!"
King Yulus and Prime Minister Nagi winced in unison. Den had heard that they'd witnessed the murder.
"How can we let her parents lose another child? How can we sit back and watch Taila starve to death when we have the food she needs? It would be unconscionable! Unworthy of dragon kings!"
"It would also be unwise to interfere with the vassal of another lord," pointed out the Prime Minister, recovering herself. "The Jeks live in the Claymouth Barony, do they not? Hence she falls under the authority of Baron Claymouth, and if he has chosen not to save her, it is not for us to contravene his wishes."
"That may be true, but like I said, it's not the child's fault that her parents fell afoul of the Baron! Let him punish her parents! If anyone asks, we can specify that the food is meant for the child and the child alone!"
King Yulus was nodding along. His Prime Minister eyeballed him.
For a final, clinching argument, Den reminded them, "And it won't be for long anyway. It's just a stopgap measure, to get her through the first part of spring. If we're discreet, no one will ever find out."
The Prime Minister wavered, opened and shut her mouth a few times, and, in the end, looked to her king.
The Dragon King of Black Sand Creek stared off into the distance for a moment. An expression that Den couldn't name flashed over his face.
Then his four-clawed hands clenched around the armrests of his throne, and he lifted his chin and proclaimed, "We will provide food to Jek Taila and her family to sustain them until they can produce their own food. Fiat. Let it be done."
Under his chin, his pearl blazed pure white.
A/N: Thanks to my awesome Patreon backers, BananaBobert, Blacklark57, Celia, Charlotte, Hookshyu, James, Lindsey, Michael, Pred Head, and Anonymous!