Yep! Flicker has bet everything on siding with Piri!
The True Confessions of a Nine-Tailed Fox
- Thread starter arianedartagnan
- Start date
Yep! Flicker has bet everything on siding with Piri!
Chapter 194: How Does a Normal Rat Act?
New
Chapter 194: How Does a Normal Rat Act?
After so many times being dunked in the Tea of Forgetfulness, I'd forgotten how much it hurt to be reincarnated without the painkiller. I started to scream, then clamped down on it.
No, no, can't scream! Have to pretend everything is normal! Everything is totally normal in this office!
The net of Flicker's magic was ripping me to pieces, shredding me into tiny bits so it could reshape me.
No screaming. No screaming! Nothing to see or hear here!
Gritting my nonexistent teeth, I told myself that this wasn't as bad as being peeled to the core by the Goddess of Life. This wasn't nearly as bad as being peeled to the core by the Goddess of Life. I'd lost a whole year after that, whereas as soon as Flicker was done here, I'd be ready for a fresh start in a new body.
This will end. This will end. This too will end.
And, finally, hazily, I registered that it had ended. I was whole once more, and shaped like a rat. My glowing, black nose twitched.
"Please, please, please act like a normal rat, Piri," was the last thing I heard before everything went dark again.
On Earth:
I will not get fleas. I will not get fleas.
That was the mantra I chanted to myself from the moment I regained awareness inside my rat mother's belly.
I will not be born with fleas, I will not start this life with fleas, therefore I will not get fleas.
All I had to do was make sure that I didn't go anywhere I might come into contact with fleas, right? Surely that couldn't be so hard. Sure, the Jeks sometimes got flea bites, but that was because they didn't change the rushes on their floor often enough. Lodia and her family hadn't gotten flea bites – at least, I'd never noticed any of them scratching desperately at red bumps on their skin. Anthea occasionally shimmied in a way that suggested an unbearable, unscratchable itch – but that was her fault for keeping a tail with thick fur where fleas could hide.
Fur, where fleas could hide. Uh-oh….
And indeed, within days of being born, before my fur had even finished growing out, I felt an itch on my side. A flea! No! I had to get away from this nest. I tried to leap up and run away, but all I managed was a sort of squirm that rubbed against the soft, warm bodies of my siblings and probably picked up more fleas from them. Grimly, I wiggled until I was out of the nest. Cold air hit me. I started to shiver uncontrollably.
Cold! It was too cold! I was going to freeze to death!
I was turning back when I realized something: I hadn't heard any human voices. That meant that if I froze to death here and now, I wouldn't have a chance to spread the Black Death to any humans! That had to be better than living long enough to give them the plague. I huddled on the edge of the nest to wait.
Oooh, it was taking so long to freeze to death! Why was it taking so long?
Eventually, the cold stopped bothering me. I stopped shivering and started to drift off. This isn't so bad, I thought blurrily. Not a bad way to go at all.
"Please, please, please act like a normal rat!"
The voice pierced the fog that was filling my brain. Ah, Flicker was here. Nice of him to come check on me.
Good to see you too, I tried to say, but my mouth opened on a nearly soundless whimper.
"You promised to act like a normal rat. You swore it!"
Go away, I thought at him. I'm freezing to death peacefully here. So I can keep my fleas away from the humans….
"That's not how a normal rat acts! You swore!"
Go away, Flicker!
I blinked and blinked until I got my eyes open so I could glare at Flicker – but I didn't see him anywhere. How rude! To come down just long enough to wake me up and then vanish without so much as saying hi –
Wait. Flicker wouldn't come down, wake me up, and vanish again without a word. That wasn't him. At the very least, he'd stay to harangue me some more about breaking my promise –
My promise. My oath.
I'd sworn to him to act like a normal rat so no one – absolutely no one – would be able to tell the difference between me and any unawakened rat. Unawakened baby rats didn't leave the nest to freeze to death at the first flea bite.
Uh oh.
But the risk of getting more fleas, some of which might carry the Black Death!
…But the risk of a god – of Cassius – seeing me do something abnormal.
But the risk of getting more negative karma and dropping down a Tier!
…But the risk of getting Flicker caught and punished by Cassius. What would Cassius do to him?
Flicker had defied a direct command from his own Assistant Director for my sake. He trusted me to protect him from exposure. I had promised to protect him from exposure. I had sworn it. I couldn't break that oath right from the start, could I?
Heaving an inward sigh, I gathered up all my strength and started to wiggle back towards the heap of my siblings. It was so hard! I was so weak and floppy! I dragged myself along on my belly in fits and starts. It would be so easy to collapse here, to let the cold finish me off. But I couldn't.
I promised. I swore. I can't do this to Flicker.
At last, my icy nose bumped up against a soft, warm body. My sibling recoiled from the sudden cold. I pressed up against it while it squirmed deeper into the heap of baby rats. They wiggled and surrounded me, and I felt the feeling return to my feet and tail.
Well, maybe it won't be so bad, I consoled myself as I drifted off to sleep. After all, I hadn't heard any human voices or felt the vibrations of any human footsteps. All I had to do once I grew up and left the nest was stay away from humans. Surely that wouldn't be so suspicious.
Scurry scurry scurry.
Stop and sniff. Food smell?
No food smell. Keep scurrying.
Or…should that be scampering? How did one scamper, anyway? Was I too directed? Not directed enough? Should I add some zigzagging darts? And how fast should I be running? How had I moved when I was a mindless normal rat anyway?!
I jogged a few more paces, hid by an overturned cooking pot, and surveyed the latest dark, dusty, dirty, abandoned hut I was exploring. So far, the whole village was like this – just empty hut after empty hut.
Where did all the spirits go? I wanted to ask someone, anyone. Even if the humans had all died from the Black Death, the disease should have left the spirits untouched. Why had they moved away too?
I scanned the hut one last time and satisfied myself that there were no helpless, starving human babies for whose deaths I could be blamed. Although, I thought gloomily as I trotted out the door, there wasn't much I could do even if I did find a helpless, starving human baby. I had nothing to feed it. Worse, despite obsessively grooming my fur and crushing fleas, I just kept getting more! What were they doing, using my body as a nursery or something?! Which would net me more negative karma: leaving a human baby to starve to death when there was nothing I could do, or watching over it uselessly and potentially giving it the Black Death into the bargain? On the whole, I thought that starvation would be a more comfortable end than the Black Death. But who knew how the Accountants weighed such things?
Since I hadn't found a human baby so far, though, these questions were academic.
Scurry scamper scurry jog through the overgrown garden (could you call it a garden, or was it just undeveloped land?) to the next hut.
Aha, a hole in the wall! Maybe I'd find a nest of fellow rats I could observe to learn more about proper rat behavior! Sure enough, when I wiggled through the cracked mud daub, I heard squeaking. I followed it until I nearly stumbled onto a nest. A full-grown female rat lay on the straw, nursing her pups. As soon as she spotted me, she bared her teeth in a fierce hiss.
A chance to practice communicating like a rat! I mimicked the position of her mouth and hissed back. It didn't sound quite right, so I tried again.
She leaped up, shedding babies, and hunched herself up over them, opening her mouth in an even more ferocious hiss. Seriously, those were the longest, yellowest, ugliest front teeth I'd ever seen.
I found that I was leaning back, recoiling from those hideous teeth.
She stopped hissing and squeaked instead. Huh. What was that supposed to mean?
I squeaked back. No, too high-pitched. I tried again, lowering the tone.
She went back to hissing.
Sigh, it didn't look like I was going to learn many more sounds from this rat. I practiced squeaking a few more times until I was sure I had it down. Then I sauntered off so I could find a rat with a greater range of communication skills.
I nearly ran smack into a massive black paw.
I skittered back. A rat scream tore from my throat, purely on instinct. My body was trembling, muscles all aquiver with the need to run run run!
Why? What could trigger such a reaction in a normal rat?
I took deep breaths and forced my heartrate to slow, then examined the paw. Ah, it belonged to a cat. With my eyes, I followed the paw up the cat's black foreleg to a black chest with a white diamond on it, and into a mouthful of pointy teeth.
At that point, rat-brain took over. Another scream ripped out of my throat, and then my legs were bounding across the ground, carrying me back towards that hole in the wall.
Wait! I ordered my body. Stop running!
The ground vibrated behind me under the force of massive paws. Rat-brain pumped my legs faster.
Stop! Stop! I command you to stop!
Because that wasn't any cat! I knew that cat! That was Boot, of the North Serican cat spies, Floridiana's old coworker! If I could just talk to her – if I could keep her from killing me long enough to talk to her – if I could tell her how the Black Death was transmitted and have her spread the word –
A shadow fell over me. A paw smacked me across the garden. Sharp claws pierced my side. I just barely managed to turn my Owww! into a rat-like scream.
I got my feet under me and hesitated. What to do now? Run for the hole? Stand my ground and talk to Boot? How could I do that without giving away to any watching gods that Flicker had reincarnated me with my mind?
Teeth closed over my back, lifted me off the ground, and shook me until my teeth rattled. I clenched them so I wouldn't yell, Boot, it's me! Stop it!
The jaws opened. I fell to the ground with a crunch. Ow ow ow. I rolled back onto my belly and dragged myself away from the cat, trying to buy myself time to think.
What do? What to do? Protect Flicker from Cassius? Protect myself from Cassius? Save the lives of humans I'd never met and would probably never meet, and whose survival might or might not earn me any positive karma, depending on whether I got credit for their survival?
I dithered too long. Teeth closed over me again. There was a ripping pain as one of them punctured my neck, and then blood was spurting out.
Ugh, back to the archives. At least I can ask Flicker for feedback on my acting, was my last thought.
A/N: Thanks to my awesome Patreon backers, Autocharth, BananaBobert, Celia, Charlotte, Ed, Elddir Mot, Flaringhorizon, Fuzzycakes, Ike, Kimani, Lindsey, Michael, TheLunaticCo, and Anonymous!
After so many times being dunked in the Tea of Forgetfulness, I'd forgotten how much it hurt to be reincarnated without the painkiller. I started to scream, then clamped down on it.
No, no, can't scream! Have to pretend everything is normal! Everything is totally normal in this office!
The net of Flicker's magic was ripping me to pieces, shredding me into tiny bits so it could reshape me.
No screaming. No screaming! Nothing to see or hear here!
Gritting my nonexistent teeth, I told myself that this wasn't as bad as being peeled to the core by the Goddess of Life. This wasn't nearly as bad as being peeled to the core by the Goddess of Life. I'd lost a whole year after that, whereas as soon as Flicker was done here, I'd be ready for a fresh start in a new body.
This will end. This will end. This too will end.
And, finally, hazily, I registered that it had ended. I was whole once more, and shaped like a rat. My glowing, black nose twitched.
"Please, please, please act like a normal rat, Piri," was the last thing I heard before everything went dark again.
On Earth:
I will not get fleas. I will not get fleas.
That was the mantra I chanted to myself from the moment I regained awareness inside my rat mother's belly.
I will not be born with fleas, I will not start this life with fleas, therefore I will not get fleas.
All I had to do was make sure that I didn't go anywhere I might come into contact with fleas, right? Surely that couldn't be so hard. Sure, the Jeks sometimes got flea bites, but that was because they didn't change the rushes on their floor often enough. Lodia and her family hadn't gotten flea bites – at least, I'd never noticed any of them scratching desperately at red bumps on their skin. Anthea occasionally shimmied in a way that suggested an unbearable, unscratchable itch – but that was her fault for keeping a tail with thick fur where fleas could hide.
Fur, where fleas could hide. Uh-oh….
And indeed, within days of being born, before my fur had even finished growing out, I felt an itch on my side. A flea! No! I had to get away from this nest. I tried to leap up and run away, but all I managed was a sort of squirm that rubbed against the soft, warm bodies of my siblings and probably picked up more fleas from them. Grimly, I wiggled until I was out of the nest. Cold air hit me. I started to shiver uncontrollably.
Cold! It was too cold! I was going to freeze to death!
I was turning back when I realized something: I hadn't heard any human voices. That meant that if I froze to death here and now, I wouldn't have a chance to spread the Black Death to any humans! That had to be better than living long enough to give them the plague. I huddled on the edge of the nest to wait.
Oooh, it was taking so long to freeze to death! Why was it taking so long?
Eventually, the cold stopped bothering me. I stopped shivering and started to drift off. This isn't so bad, I thought blurrily. Not a bad way to go at all.
"Please, please, please act like a normal rat!"
The voice pierced the fog that was filling my brain. Ah, Flicker was here. Nice of him to come check on me.
Good to see you too, I tried to say, but my mouth opened on a nearly soundless whimper.
"You promised to act like a normal rat. You swore it!"
Go away, I thought at him. I'm freezing to death peacefully here. So I can keep my fleas away from the humans….
"That's not how a normal rat acts! You swore!"
Go away, Flicker!
I blinked and blinked until I got my eyes open so I could glare at Flicker – but I didn't see him anywhere. How rude! To come down just long enough to wake me up and then vanish without so much as saying hi –
Wait. Flicker wouldn't come down, wake me up, and vanish again without a word. That wasn't him. At the very least, he'd stay to harangue me some more about breaking my promise –
My promise. My oath.
I'd sworn to him to act like a normal rat so no one – absolutely no one – would be able to tell the difference between me and any unawakened rat. Unawakened baby rats didn't leave the nest to freeze to death at the first flea bite.
Uh oh.
But the risk of getting more fleas, some of which might carry the Black Death!
…But the risk of a god – of Cassius – seeing me do something abnormal.
But the risk of getting more negative karma and dropping down a Tier!
…But the risk of getting Flicker caught and punished by Cassius. What would Cassius do to him?
Flicker had defied a direct command from his own Assistant Director for my sake. He trusted me to protect him from exposure. I had promised to protect him from exposure. I had sworn it. I couldn't break that oath right from the start, could I?
Heaving an inward sigh, I gathered up all my strength and started to wiggle back towards the heap of my siblings. It was so hard! I was so weak and floppy! I dragged myself along on my belly in fits and starts. It would be so easy to collapse here, to let the cold finish me off. But I couldn't.
I promised. I swore. I can't do this to Flicker.
At last, my icy nose bumped up against a soft, warm body. My sibling recoiled from the sudden cold. I pressed up against it while it squirmed deeper into the heap of baby rats. They wiggled and surrounded me, and I felt the feeling return to my feet and tail.
Well, maybe it won't be so bad, I consoled myself as I drifted off to sleep. After all, I hadn't heard any human voices or felt the vibrations of any human footsteps. All I had to do once I grew up and left the nest was stay away from humans. Surely that wouldn't be so suspicious.
Scurry scurry scurry.
Stop and sniff. Food smell?
No food smell. Keep scurrying.
Or…should that be scampering? How did one scamper, anyway? Was I too directed? Not directed enough? Should I add some zigzagging darts? And how fast should I be running? How had I moved when I was a mindless normal rat anyway?!
I jogged a few more paces, hid by an overturned cooking pot, and surveyed the latest dark, dusty, dirty, abandoned hut I was exploring. So far, the whole village was like this – just empty hut after empty hut.
Where did all the spirits go? I wanted to ask someone, anyone. Even if the humans had all died from the Black Death, the disease should have left the spirits untouched. Why had they moved away too?
I scanned the hut one last time and satisfied myself that there were no helpless, starving human babies for whose deaths I could be blamed. Although, I thought gloomily as I trotted out the door, there wasn't much I could do even if I did find a helpless, starving human baby. I had nothing to feed it. Worse, despite obsessively grooming my fur and crushing fleas, I just kept getting more! What were they doing, using my body as a nursery or something?! Which would net me more negative karma: leaving a human baby to starve to death when there was nothing I could do, or watching over it uselessly and potentially giving it the Black Death into the bargain? On the whole, I thought that starvation would be a more comfortable end than the Black Death. But who knew how the Accountants weighed such things?
Since I hadn't found a human baby so far, though, these questions were academic.
Scurry scamper scurry jog through the overgrown garden (could you call it a garden, or was it just undeveloped land?) to the next hut.
Aha, a hole in the wall! Maybe I'd find a nest of fellow rats I could observe to learn more about proper rat behavior! Sure enough, when I wiggled through the cracked mud daub, I heard squeaking. I followed it until I nearly stumbled onto a nest. A full-grown female rat lay on the straw, nursing her pups. As soon as she spotted me, she bared her teeth in a fierce hiss.
A chance to practice communicating like a rat! I mimicked the position of her mouth and hissed back. It didn't sound quite right, so I tried again.
She leaped up, shedding babies, and hunched herself up over them, opening her mouth in an even more ferocious hiss. Seriously, those were the longest, yellowest, ugliest front teeth I'd ever seen.
I found that I was leaning back, recoiling from those hideous teeth.
She stopped hissing and squeaked instead. Huh. What was that supposed to mean?
I squeaked back. No, too high-pitched. I tried again, lowering the tone.
She went back to hissing.
Sigh, it didn't look like I was going to learn many more sounds from this rat. I practiced squeaking a few more times until I was sure I had it down. Then I sauntered off so I could find a rat with a greater range of communication skills.
I nearly ran smack into a massive black paw.
I skittered back. A rat scream tore from my throat, purely on instinct. My body was trembling, muscles all aquiver with the need to run run run!
Why? What could trigger such a reaction in a normal rat?
I took deep breaths and forced my heartrate to slow, then examined the paw. Ah, it belonged to a cat. With my eyes, I followed the paw up the cat's black foreleg to a black chest with a white diamond on it, and into a mouthful of pointy teeth.
At that point, rat-brain took over. Another scream ripped out of my throat, and then my legs were bounding across the ground, carrying me back towards that hole in the wall.
Wait! I ordered my body. Stop running!
The ground vibrated behind me under the force of massive paws. Rat-brain pumped my legs faster.
Stop! Stop! I command you to stop!
Because that wasn't any cat! I knew that cat! That was Boot, of the North Serican cat spies, Floridiana's old coworker! If I could just talk to her – if I could keep her from killing me long enough to talk to her – if I could tell her how the Black Death was transmitted and have her spread the word –
A shadow fell over me. A paw smacked me across the garden. Sharp claws pierced my side. I just barely managed to turn my Owww! into a rat-like scream.
I got my feet under me and hesitated. What to do now? Run for the hole? Stand my ground and talk to Boot? How could I do that without giving away to any watching gods that Flicker had reincarnated me with my mind?
Teeth closed over my back, lifted me off the ground, and shook me until my teeth rattled. I clenched them so I wouldn't yell, Boot, it's me! Stop it!
The jaws opened. I fell to the ground with a crunch. Ow ow ow. I rolled back onto my belly and dragged myself away from the cat, trying to buy myself time to think.
What do? What to do? Protect Flicker from Cassius? Protect myself from Cassius? Save the lives of humans I'd never met and would probably never meet, and whose survival might or might not earn me any positive karma, depending on whether I got credit for their survival?
I dithered too long. Teeth closed over me again. There was a ripping pain as one of them punctured my neck, and then blood was spurting out.
Ugh, back to the archives. At least I can ask Flicker for feedback on my acting, was my last thought.
A/N: Thanks to my awesome Patreon backers, Autocharth, BananaBobert, Celia, Charlotte, Ed, Elddir Mot, Flaringhorizon, Fuzzycakes, Ike, Kimani, Lindsey, Michael, TheLunaticCo, and Anonymous!
- Location
- Probably at sea
I feel like I say this every other chapter, but is this the first case of Piri acting against her enlightened self-interest for the sake of someone else?
Like, she's no stranger by now to sacrificing her life for someone else, but usually she can at least go, 'well I'll get a buttload of karma for this'. Likewise, she's come round to the idea that she does in fact care about other people and wants them to do well, but never quite had that come into conflict with her ultimate goals so clearly before.
Here, she's putting what she values most - her karma, her progress towards becoming a fox again - on the line, explicitly hurting her goals in almost the most direct way possible for the sake of someone else. Incredible growth.
Piri thinks so too...and so does Flicker.
Yay! I've been trying to edge her towards self-sacrifice as actual sacrifice, rather than as a way to earn a bunch of positive karma. I'm glad you think the pace of the growth worked!
Yep! Pretending to be a real rat is hard! And now she knows she can access the cat spy network again.
Chapter 195: What Would Bobo Do?
New
Chapter 195: What Would Bobo Do?
Flicker knew he was in trouble when Glitter summoned him to her office. Work hours had officially ended for the day, but that just meant the halls were still crammed with not only clerks but also the cleaning staff. He circled around a grizzled imp with a bristling beard who looked more inclined to beat a hanging scroll to pieces than to dust it.
That's going to be me, Flicker thought gloomily. Demoted to the cleaning staff. If I get lucky and Glitter doesn't rip me apart instead.
He tapped softly on her office door. The Superintendent of Reincarnation always shut it precisely when working hours ended. No one knew why, given that she then proceeded to stay later than anyone else.
"Enter," her voice commanded.
Taking a deep breath, Flicker turned the knob. To his surprise, she wasn't sitting behind her desk like the un-tenured director of the bureau. She was planted in front of her bookcase, hands clasped behind her back.
"Shut the door and come over here," she ordered without turning around.
Flicker eased the door into its frame with as little noise as possible and crept across the floor. He tried to guess what titles she was staring at, as if they might give some indication as to her mood and his fate. Glitter had a surprisingly large collection of classic poetry and natural philosophy texts, but the books before her were all on the law.
Oh dear.
"What does Law R.2 say?" She shot the question at him, still without looking at him.
The "R" indicated that it related to reincarnation. The "2" indicated that it was the second law in that section of the legal code, meaning that it was extremely important.
She knows.
Shoulders sagging, Flicker recited, "Law R.2 states that Souls shall be dipped in the Tea of Forgetfulness before Reincarnation, so that they may go on to their next Lives without the Baggage and Encumbrances of their previous Memories."
What should he do now? Confess at once and throw himself on her mercy? Pull a Piri and brazen it out until he hit an immovable, impenetrable barrier?
Before he could decide, Glitter spoke again. "And what do the Rules and Regulations of this Bureau have to say about clerks who break the law?"
Flicker's spine drooped under the weight of his shoulders. "They state that punishment is to be according to the magnitude of the offense and at the discretion of their superior."
No punishments were specified for various offenses, but that was mostly to give the higher-ups greater latitude in punishing wrongdoing.
"Yes. Now let us suppose that there is a clerk who willfully breaks not only the decree of his Assistant Director but also the law itself. What do you imagine an appropriate punishment would be?"
Execution was the word that leaped to mind. If Dragon Kings could be decapitated for summoning spontaneous rainfall that wasn't on the Roll of Authorized Annual Precipitation, then how else could you possibly punish a clerk who defied his Assistant Director and broke the law of Heaven?
I can't die! I won't die! There has to be some way to not die. Think: What would Piri do? How would she wiggle out of this situation?
Glitter tapped a forefinger on the spine of The Laws of Heaven. She wasn't going to wait forever. He had to speak, before she decreed a punishment and it was too late. His mouth was so dry that only a croak emerged.
He licked his lips, gulped, and tried again. "Perhaps…perhaps the appropriate punishment would depend on…on the motivation of the clerk. Perhaps extenuating circumstances could be…taken into account."
It was as good as an admission of guilt. But it was also simultaneously a plea for leniency. Was it good enough to save him?
An eternity passed while Glitter considered. "What extenuating circumstances could justify the breaking of Heaven's law?"
This might actually work! He might actually escape with his skin in one piece and his starlight fully contained inside it!
"Hypothetically, there might be a clerk who is part of Fate's greater design. His breaking the law might be predestined, in order to further that plan." Piri would throw in a sweetener for Glitter here, wouldn't she? What did Glitter personally want? "His actions might contribute towards the reunification of the Serican Empire – " no, why would Glitter care about political structures on Earth? – "leading to greater prosperity both on Earth and in Heaven."
As Superintendent, she oversaw the finances of the Bureau. She had to care about the amount of offerings they received, didn't she?
Her face didn't so much as twitch. No, a trickle-down benefit from greater financial stability making her job easier wasn't enough to motivate her. Think! What did Glitter want? What did Glitter care about?
Work. He had only ever seen her care about work, and about the smooth functioning of the Bureau of Reincarnation. How could his and Piri's actions make the Bureau function more smoothly? How could the Bureau be made to function more smoothly?
By placing someone competent in charge of day-to-day affairs. Someone – like Glitter.
"Hypothetically, if a Bureau were on more sound financial footing, perhaps its employees would have the leeway to implement changes…even personnel changes…to improve its functioning…."
Flicker held his breath. If he had guessed wrong, if she went to the Assistant Director with this, if the Assistant Director were listening in on this conversation even now….
Glitter's chin dipped, just a tad, accepting his justification for why that hypothetical clerk might not deserve execution.
"Very good. You may go."
Flicker released his breath in such a long sigh that some of his starlight flowed out too. He inhaled it back in while bowing deeply.
"And Flicker, consider the situation where that hypothetical clerk and the hypothetical soul whose reincarnation he oversees exercised a little more discretion? So that their transgression of the law does not come to the attention of his superiors?"
"Thank you, Superintendent. I will think on that hypothetical."
"Do so. Now go."
Flicker fled as fast as he could without tripping over his hem.
In Flicker's office:
Let's just say that Flicker did not have positive feedback for my acting.
"Piri! What was that?!" he hissed as soon as his office door shut behind me. "You promised to act like a normal rat!"
I did act like a normal rat! I scurried around and looked for food. I even got into an argument with another rat over her nest. At least, that was the way I'd decided to frame my interaction with the mother rat who taught me how to hiss.
"You call that acting like a normal rat?! Maybe a rat with a parasite in its brain that drove it crazy!" He paused. "Hmm."
What do you mean, "Hmm"? Are you suggesting that I'm that parasite?!
The corners of Flicker's lips pulled down. "No. I'm saying that you were not acting like a 'normal rat' – " he made air quotes – "by any interpretation of the word. Either word," he specified before I asked.
Hmph. I settled into a grumpy pancake on his desk. You know, Flicker, it's really not that easy to fake being a mindless animal. So if you have any advice on how to improve my acting skills, I'm all ears.
Just to emphasize my point, I raised round knobs that were vaguely reminiscent of rat ears all over my surface.
Flicker shuddered. "Stop that. I don't believe I can give any acting advice to a former nine-tailed fox demon. Aren't there any skills from any of your previous lives that you can draw on? Preferably before you get us both caught?"
He was right. He was an honest, obedient, law-abiding (well, formerly law-abiding) little clerk. I was the one with the experience in deception.
Flicker shuffled my curriculum vitae without actually reading it. "Just so you know, I got called into Glitter's office. She figured it out."
She did?! What did she say? What did she do? She didn't punish you, did she?
Flicker opened his mouth, seemed to change his mind, and shut it. "No, no, nothing like that. I, um, might have sort of implied that we'll improve the functioning of the Bureau, so she's going to expect that at some point in the future, but…."
Oh, was that it? I'd assumed we were going to do that eventually anyway. Any workplace that overworked and underpaid and failed to recognize and promote someone like Flicker was sorely in need of improvement.
That's fine. We'll take care of that. But just to double-check: You are reincarnating me with my mind, right?
For some reason, he sighed. "Yes, yes, I am. Just try to act more like a normal rat?"
I'll try harder. Promise. Cross my heart and hope to die.
"Uh…." Somehow, that extravagant promise did not reassure Flicker. "Maybe try less hard than that…?"
An oil lamp wick leaped to life in my mind. Yes! That's it! You're exactly right! I'll try less hard!
Even though he was the one who'd just suggested it, he regarded me dubiously. "Uh…are you sure that's the right attitude to take?"
Yes! I've been trying so hard that I'm not listening to my rat instincts! I need to try less hard, let go, and let them come to the forefront of my mind.
Flicker cocked his head to a side, considered it, then seemed to give up. "Well, so long as you know what you're doing."
Yep! I've gotten the hang of it now. Reincarnate me!
With insulting trepidation, he did.
On Earth:
Okay, maybe letting go with my Piri-mind and going with the flow of my rat-brain wasn't so easy. Because, crucially, it required letting go. Normal rats didn't trot into a room and scan it for dead, dying, or sick humans. Normal rats didn't inventory the contents of kitchens or storerooms before nibbling on the stalest bread or the oldest, most bug-ridden rice that was already crumbling into powder. Normal rats didn't scrutinize every cat they came across for signs that it was a spy colleague of Boot's.
Normal rats also didn't fret about how their friends were doing, and all the ways in which they could be getting injured or sick or in trouble with local authorities or gods. How was Stripey's mortal crane body faring as it aged? How was Lodia holding up under the pressure of setting policies for an entire Temple network? Were Floridiana and Dusty still with the others, or had they gone home to Claymouth? And if so, had Den returned with them? How would the others fare without the protection of a dragon king, albeit a minor one? What fresh schemes had that five-tailed foxling devised without me there to foil them?
And was I causing trouble for Flicker up in Heaven? If I slept under this bush instead of inside that hollow, was that too un-rat-like? If I scuttled to the right instead of to the left, would that arouse suspicion? Was Cassius accusing Flicker at this very moment?
The only person I didn't worry about was Bobo. She was so resilient that she could survive anything with her bubbly good cheer.
Yes. That was it. I needed to be more like Bobo. So what would Bobo do, if she were reincarnated in a rat's body with her mind but needed to pretend to be a normal rat?
Bobo wouldn't plan. She wouldn't scheme. She would let life take her where it would, and react to situations as they arose.
Ugh, that felt so wrong! Just let go of all my plans and schemes and let what happened, happen? Without trying to control or direct events?
I'll try it for a day, I told myself. Just one day. And if it turns out to be a complete waste of time, well, losing one day isn't so bad.
Thus resolved, I picked a direction at random and scampered through tall grasses until I heard the creak of wagon wheels and the clip-clopping of mule hooves. Was it too directed for a rat to go investigate? No, it was probably all right. It wasn't for any specific purpose. I was just curious. And I'd decide what to do after I saw what lay that way, instead of planning out all avenues of attack now.
Letting rat-brain take over my legs, I scurried from tuft of grass to stand of wildflowers until I came to the edge of a dirt track. Deep ruts indicated that it was well traveled. Go right or go left? Before I could stop myself, I checked the position of the sun. It was still early morning. If another wagon came by, I could follow it, because it would probably be heading towards a larger population center, whatever that meant in this part of Serica.
Wait, no. Too much thinking!
I squeezed my eyes shut and leaped over a rock. I landed slightly to its left. All right. Left it was. I started trotting that way, and my random choice paid off, because the empty fields and stands of trees turned into farms and then vegetable patches and then buildings in the distance that had to be a town.
Another road joined the one I was following, and before I could stop myself, I darted across the intersection to read the signs. "Roseberry Topping" read one of them, accompanied by an arrow. The name sounded familiar. Floridiana must have mentioned it at some point.
Well, might as well go visit her old haunt. I could tell her how it was doing the next time I saw her.
A/N: Thanks to my awesome Patreon backers, Autocharth, BananaBobert, Celia, Charlotte, Ed, Elddir Mot, Flaringhorizon, Fuzzycakes, Ike, Kimani, Lindsey, Michael, TheLunaticCo, and Anonymous!
Flicker knew he was in trouble when Glitter summoned him to her office. Work hours had officially ended for the day, but that just meant the halls were still crammed with not only clerks but also the cleaning staff. He circled around a grizzled imp with a bristling beard who looked more inclined to beat a hanging scroll to pieces than to dust it.
That's going to be me, Flicker thought gloomily. Demoted to the cleaning staff. If I get lucky and Glitter doesn't rip me apart instead.
He tapped softly on her office door. The Superintendent of Reincarnation always shut it precisely when working hours ended. No one knew why, given that she then proceeded to stay later than anyone else.
"Enter," her voice commanded.
Taking a deep breath, Flicker turned the knob. To his surprise, she wasn't sitting behind her desk like the un-tenured director of the bureau. She was planted in front of her bookcase, hands clasped behind her back.
"Shut the door and come over here," she ordered without turning around.
Flicker eased the door into its frame with as little noise as possible and crept across the floor. He tried to guess what titles she was staring at, as if they might give some indication as to her mood and his fate. Glitter had a surprisingly large collection of classic poetry and natural philosophy texts, but the books before her were all on the law.
Oh dear.
"What does Law R.2 say?" She shot the question at him, still without looking at him.
The "R" indicated that it related to reincarnation. The "2" indicated that it was the second law in that section of the legal code, meaning that it was extremely important.
She knows.
Shoulders sagging, Flicker recited, "Law R.2 states that Souls shall be dipped in the Tea of Forgetfulness before Reincarnation, so that they may go on to their next Lives without the Baggage and Encumbrances of their previous Memories."
What should he do now? Confess at once and throw himself on her mercy? Pull a Piri and brazen it out until he hit an immovable, impenetrable barrier?
Before he could decide, Glitter spoke again. "And what do the Rules and Regulations of this Bureau have to say about clerks who break the law?"
Flicker's spine drooped under the weight of his shoulders. "They state that punishment is to be according to the magnitude of the offense and at the discretion of their superior."
No punishments were specified for various offenses, but that was mostly to give the higher-ups greater latitude in punishing wrongdoing.
"Yes. Now let us suppose that there is a clerk who willfully breaks not only the decree of his Assistant Director but also the law itself. What do you imagine an appropriate punishment would be?"
Execution was the word that leaped to mind. If Dragon Kings could be decapitated for summoning spontaneous rainfall that wasn't on the Roll of Authorized Annual Precipitation, then how else could you possibly punish a clerk who defied his Assistant Director and broke the law of Heaven?
I can't die! I won't die! There has to be some way to not die. Think: What would Piri do? How would she wiggle out of this situation?
Glitter tapped a forefinger on the spine of The Laws of Heaven. She wasn't going to wait forever. He had to speak, before she decreed a punishment and it was too late. His mouth was so dry that only a croak emerged.
He licked his lips, gulped, and tried again. "Perhaps…perhaps the appropriate punishment would depend on…on the motivation of the clerk. Perhaps extenuating circumstances could be…taken into account."
It was as good as an admission of guilt. But it was also simultaneously a plea for leniency. Was it good enough to save him?
An eternity passed while Glitter considered. "What extenuating circumstances could justify the breaking of Heaven's law?"
This might actually work! He might actually escape with his skin in one piece and his starlight fully contained inside it!
"Hypothetically, there might be a clerk who is part of Fate's greater design. His breaking the law might be predestined, in order to further that plan." Piri would throw in a sweetener for Glitter here, wouldn't she? What did Glitter personally want? "His actions might contribute towards the reunification of the Serican Empire – " no, why would Glitter care about political structures on Earth? – "leading to greater prosperity both on Earth and in Heaven."
As Superintendent, she oversaw the finances of the Bureau. She had to care about the amount of offerings they received, didn't she?
Her face didn't so much as twitch. No, a trickle-down benefit from greater financial stability making her job easier wasn't enough to motivate her. Think! What did Glitter want? What did Glitter care about?
Work. He had only ever seen her care about work, and about the smooth functioning of the Bureau of Reincarnation. How could his and Piri's actions make the Bureau function more smoothly? How could the Bureau be made to function more smoothly?
By placing someone competent in charge of day-to-day affairs. Someone – like Glitter.
"Hypothetically, if a Bureau were on more sound financial footing, perhaps its employees would have the leeway to implement changes…even personnel changes…to improve its functioning…."
Flicker held his breath. If he had guessed wrong, if she went to the Assistant Director with this, if the Assistant Director were listening in on this conversation even now….
Glitter's chin dipped, just a tad, accepting his justification for why that hypothetical clerk might not deserve execution.
"Very good. You may go."
Flicker released his breath in such a long sigh that some of his starlight flowed out too. He inhaled it back in while bowing deeply.
"And Flicker, consider the situation where that hypothetical clerk and the hypothetical soul whose reincarnation he oversees exercised a little more discretion? So that their transgression of the law does not come to the attention of his superiors?"
"Thank you, Superintendent. I will think on that hypothetical."
"Do so. Now go."
Flicker fled as fast as he could without tripping over his hem.
In Flicker's office:
Let's just say that Flicker did not have positive feedback for my acting.
"Piri! What was that?!" he hissed as soon as his office door shut behind me. "You promised to act like a normal rat!"
I did act like a normal rat! I scurried around and looked for food. I even got into an argument with another rat over her nest. At least, that was the way I'd decided to frame my interaction with the mother rat who taught me how to hiss.
"You call that acting like a normal rat?! Maybe a rat with a parasite in its brain that drove it crazy!" He paused. "Hmm."
What do you mean, "Hmm"? Are you suggesting that I'm that parasite?!
The corners of Flicker's lips pulled down. "No. I'm saying that you were not acting like a 'normal rat' – " he made air quotes – "by any interpretation of the word. Either word," he specified before I asked.
Hmph. I settled into a grumpy pancake on his desk. You know, Flicker, it's really not that easy to fake being a mindless animal. So if you have any advice on how to improve my acting skills, I'm all ears.
Just to emphasize my point, I raised round knobs that were vaguely reminiscent of rat ears all over my surface.
Flicker shuddered. "Stop that. I don't believe I can give any acting advice to a former nine-tailed fox demon. Aren't there any skills from any of your previous lives that you can draw on? Preferably before you get us both caught?"
He was right. He was an honest, obedient, law-abiding (well, formerly law-abiding) little clerk. I was the one with the experience in deception.
Flicker shuffled my curriculum vitae without actually reading it. "Just so you know, I got called into Glitter's office. She figured it out."
She did?! What did she say? What did she do? She didn't punish you, did she?
Flicker opened his mouth, seemed to change his mind, and shut it. "No, no, nothing like that. I, um, might have sort of implied that we'll improve the functioning of the Bureau, so she's going to expect that at some point in the future, but…."
Oh, was that it? I'd assumed we were going to do that eventually anyway. Any workplace that overworked and underpaid and failed to recognize and promote someone like Flicker was sorely in need of improvement.
That's fine. We'll take care of that. But just to double-check: You are reincarnating me with my mind, right?
For some reason, he sighed. "Yes, yes, I am. Just try to act more like a normal rat?"
I'll try harder. Promise. Cross my heart and hope to die.
"Uh…." Somehow, that extravagant promise did not reassure Flicker. "Maybe try less hard than that…?"
An oil lamp wick leaped to life in my mind. Yes! That's it! You're exactly right! I'll try less hard!
Even though he was the one who'd just suggested it, he regarded me dubiously. "Uh…are you sure that's the right attitude to take?"
Yes! I've been trying so hard that I'm not listening to my rat instincts! I need to try less hard, let go, and let them come to the forefront of my mind.
Flicker cocked his head to a side, considered it, then seemed to give up. "Well, so long as you know what you're doing."
Yep! I've gotten the hang of it now. Reincarnate me!
With insulting trepidation, he did.
On Earth:
Okay, maybe letting go with my Piri-mind and going with the flow of my rat-brain wasn't so easy. Because, crucially, it required letting go. Normal rats didn't trot into a room and scan it for dead, dying, or sick humans. Normal rats didn't inventory the contents of kitchens or storerooms before nibbling on the stalest bread or the oldest, most bug-ridden rice that was already crumbling into powder. Normal rats didn't scrutinize every cat they came across for signs that it was a spy colleague of Boot's.
Normal rats also didn't fret about how their friends were doing, and all the ways in which they could be getting injured or sick or in trouble with local authorities or gods. How was Stripey's mortal crane body faring as it aged? How was Lodia holding up under the pressure of setting policies for an entire Temple network? Were Floridiana and Dusty still with the others, or had they gone home to Claymouth? And if so, had Den returned with them? How would the others fare without the protection of a dragon king, albeit a minor one? What fresh schemes had that five-tailed foxling devised without me there to foil them?
And was I causing trouble for Flicker up in Heaven? If I slept under this bush instead of inside that hollow, was that too un-rat-like? If I scuttled to the right instead of to the left, would that arouse suspicion? Was Cassius accusing Flicker at this very moment?
The only person I didn't worry about was Bobo. She was so resilient that she could survive anything with her bubbly good cheer.
Yes. That was it. I needed to be more like Bobo. So what would Bobo do, if she were reincarnated in a rat's body with her mind but needed to pretend to be a normal rat?
Bobo wouldn't plan. She wouldn't scheme. She would let life take her where it would, and react to situations as they arose.
Ugh, that felt so wrong! Just let go of all my plans and schemes and let what happened, happen? Without trying to control or direct events?
I'll try it for a day, I told myself. Just one day. And if it turns out to be a complete waste of time, well, losing one day isn't so bad.
Thus resolved, I picked a direction at random and scampered through tall grasses until I heard the creak of wagon wheels and the clip-clopping of mule hooves. Was it too directed for a rat to go investigate? No, it was probably all right. It wasn't for any specific purpose. I was just curious. And I'd decide what to do after I saw what lay that way, instead of planning out all avenues of attack now.
Letting rat-brain take over my legs, I scurried from tuft of grass to stand of wildflowers until I came to the edge of a dirt track. Deep ruts indicated that it was well traveled. Go right or go left? Before I could stop myself, I checked the position of the sun. It was still early morning. If another wagon came by, I could follow it, because it would probably be heading towards a larger population center, whatever that meant in this part of Serica.
Wait, no. Too much thinking!
I squeezed my eyes shut and leaped over a rock. I landed slightly to its left. All right. Left it was. I started trotting that way, and my random choice paid off, because the empty fields and stands of trees turned into farms and then vegetable patches and then buildings in the distance that had to be a town.
Another road joined the one I was following, and before I could stop myself, I darted across the intersection to read the signs. "Roseberry Topping" read one of them, accompanied by an arrow. The name sounded familiar. Floridiana must have mentioned it at some point.
Well, might as well go visit her old haunt. I could tell her how it was doing the next time I saw her.
A/N: Thanks to my awesome Patreon backers, Autocharth, BananaBobert, Celia, Charlotte, Ed, Elddir Mot, Flaringhorizon, Fuzzycakes, Ike, Kimani, Lindsey, Michael, TheLunaticCo, and Anonymous!
- Location
- Probably at sea
Oh no Piri's corruption has officially reached Heaven
That said, well done Flicker! He's come so far!
Heheh. Although this does raise an interesting question - if the soul isn't strictly necessary to act according to instinct (that is, if an animal can get by on 'autopilot' without conscious input from the soul), what is it for? 'Higher thought', would be the obvious answer, and of course even rats are actually quite intelligent even without a demon fox in their head, although in that case I'm not sure what worms and beetles need souls for.
Is it just because Heaven has a surplus of souls and needs somewhere to put them?
A question for philosophers, I suppose!
Haha, yep, Piri's reach has extended all the way into Heaven! It's been fun to think about and write Flicker's evolution from a prissy, by-the-books clerk into...whatever he's become.
I like your idea that Heaven has a surplus of souls and needs bodies to stick them in while they work their way up towards that coveted "human" reincarnation!
Chapter 196: A Fine Cat-and-Mouse Show
New
Chapter 196: A Fine Cat-and-Mouse Show
Am I back in Claymouth? was my first thought when I entered Roseberry Topping.
Just like Claymouth, the town had lost its Imperial-style architecture over the centuries. I saw no colorful pillars, no upturned tile roofs, no arcades over walkways to shelter shoppers from the rain. Instead, the houses were beige or cream, and crisscrossed with wooden beams gone ebony with age. Some had thatched roofs, some wooden shingles. No two buildings looked the same, which was probably a good thing, because if the literacy rate here were anything like that in Claymouth before I arrived, then it was essentially zero. That the shop signs had pictures instead of words bore out that assumption.
Vibrations in the ground. Creaking wood.
I dashed inside a crumbling wall and peeked back out. A cart rumbled past, its wheels clattering over the dirt road where I had just been standing. A black cat with a tuft of white fur on its chest perched on the seat next to the human driver, surveying their surroundings. Boot! It was Boot! She was in Roseberry Topping!
The cat spy's yellow eyes passed over me, then snapped back. She sank into a crouch and wiggled her rump. Rat-brain sent me ducking further into the wall.
Wait, no! This was my chance! I sprang out of the wall and chased the cart, making sure to maintain my rat act.
Dart to the right, dart to the left, sniff an apple core, nibble a stale crumb…aaaaaand scamper after the cart before it vanishes around a corner!
As I followed Boot through the narrow, crooked lanes, the most amazing smell of fresh bread filled the air. Rat-brain wanted a better sniff, so I sat back on my hind legs, raised my nose high, and twitched it. Mmmm. Steamed dough, and spices, and meat. Pork? Yes, that was definitely pork. Pork buns!
Rat-brain and I sprinted after the cart, running as fast as our legs could carry us. At last, it creaked to a stop outside a bakery where grey tabby lolled on the front stoop, sunning itself upside down. The cart driver stretched his back, while Boot leaped down gracefully and flowed up the steps. She jumped over the tabby, which batted at her casually, and landed in front of the bakery door. There, she unleashed a plaintive squeak.
Nothing happened.
She squeaked more piteously.
Still nothing.
She stood up on her hind legs, braced her front paws against the door, and slid back down. I could hear her claws scrape against the wood. No wonder the paint was peeling.
On her third dying squeak, the door flew inwards. A human girl about the same age as Lodia scooped Boot up and squeezed the cat against her floury apron. "Boot! Boot-baby! You're home! We were so worried about you!"
Boot squirmed and squeaked again in protest.
"All right, all right," laughed the girl. She bent over and let Boot jump to the floor. Flour-streaked black fur disappeared into the bakery. "Coming in?" the girl asked the tabby, which slow-blinked at her but didn't budge. "Let me know when you want in!" With another laugh, she shut the door.
So this was Boot's home. Did that mean this bakery was the headquarters of the North Serican cat spies? The apprentice hadn't given any indication of knowing that Boot was more than a mortal pet…but then again, a spy wouldn't, would she?
I darted across the alley. A broad chest covered with mottled brown, black, and orange fur loomed over me. Rat-brain sent me flying up the wall, right as the tortoiseshell cat leaped. Her paw missed me by one inch. I flung myself through an open window and landed on the floor.
Ow!
No time to check if I'd broken anything, because someone screamed overhead, and boots started clomping around. "A rat! A rat!"
"Where?"
"There! It just ran under that table!"
A broom smacked into me, sending me flying. I struck the side of a bookcase. Ow! I half-crawled, half-ran under it. The broom chased me, and I ran back and forth, dodging its bamboo bristles.
At last, the broom withdrew. "Cursed cats. What's the point of the colony if they can't rid this lane of rats?"
The colony. Not "the cats," but "the colony." Aha. This had to be the cat spies' headquarters. Ha! And after Boot went to such lengths to conceal its location and the identity of her spymaster from us, she was the one who led me straight to its door! My lips peeled back from my long front teeth in a smirk.
It didn't last long. Cat spy headquarters implied a large number of, well, cats. How was I supposed to talk to Boot without getting killed by one of her colleagues? I recalled that life when I was tortured to death by a group of cat spirits. Had it been in this very bakery? I had no desire to repeat that experience, not least because I'd die and have to start all over, and there was no guarantee I could find my way back to Roseberry Topping.
This was the best chance I'd get for talking to Boot. I'd just have to be clever about it.
Boot didn't emerge again until well after lunch. I knew, because I surveilled the building from the roof of the mage supply shop next door. Not only was the passage of time marked by the angle of the chimney's shadow, but also by the aromas that drifted from the bakery. At first, I mostly smelled bread like the kind I'd eaten in Claymouth. My mouth watered at the memory of those loaves: big and oblong and slightly wonky, but with a delightfully crunchy crust and tender crumb. There was also some sort of sweet, tangy, spicy scent that I didn't recognize. As the morning wore on and the shadows shrank, the smells shifted towards savory – steamed meat buns and sausage rolls and baked buns topped with pork floss.
In the meantime, a whole cast of cats rotated through the front stoop lounging spot. Some were obviously young spirits trying too hard to act casual, while others were indistinguishable from mortal cats. This lounging had to be part of their spy training.
I was about ready to attempt a flying leap onto the bakery roof so I could sneak into the kitchen to steal a bite – er, to find Boot – when the cat herself sauntered out the back door. She strolled into a corner and started pawing at the dirt, preparing to relieve herself. There were no other cats or humans around. Perfect!
I scampered down the wall as fast as I could, bounded the last foot to the packed earth, and whisked behind a barrel. I peeked back out. Boot had paused her pawing and was staring my way with those lantern-like yellow eyes. I ducked back behind the barrel.
Here came the tricky part. I might not have an audience here on Earth, but I could very well have one up in Heaven. This encounter had to appear accidental, because what rat would run right up to a cat?
I peered around the barrel and twitched my whiskers. Boot had abandoned her latrine-digging and sunk into a crouch. Her long tail swished from side to side. Since she hadn't begun to advance towards me yet, rat-brain suggested that I stay put in hopes that she hadn't seen me. Perfect.
Boot lifted one front paw and set it down silently. That was followed by another noiseless step forward, and another. How long would a normal rat hold still until it panicked and made a break for it?
Another step forward. And another.
Close enough. I squeaked and raced for the bakery's back door.
Boot sprang. Her long black form arced through the air and landed right in front of me. I dodged sideways, barely escaping a cage of claws. I remembered those claws! For a split second, I froze, locked in place by the memory of pain.
Her paw swiped at me again.
Wait! Boot, it's me! I hissed as loudly as I dared.
Her paw jerked sideways, and she came down heavily on it, so off balance that she nearly fell flat on her face. "What – ? Who – ?" Like me, she was playing the role of a mortal animal, and she kept her voice low.
I scurried away a few steps, pretending to try to escape. I must commend you on your acting skills, Boot. Had I not known your true identity, I might have taken you for a normal cat.
She prowled towards me and sank into a hunting crouch once more. "How do you know my name? You're not a spirit. Tell me who and what you are."
How could she have forgotten the voice of the turtle who'd directed the show in Honeysuckle Croft? Her spy skills obviously lagged behind her acting skills. I am the one you met in the home of the little girl while accompanying the mage.
"The little girl…the mage….the turtle! You're – " she caught herself – "the one who was the turtle?!"
Shh! Yes. That was I.
"But what are you doing here? And why are you a rat now?"
We'd stayed still for too long. Keep pretending to hunt me. They might be watching.
A paw swiped at me, missing me by a whisker's length.
I squeaked and ran a few steps. Has the Black Death reached this town yet?
"No. No cases that I know of yet."
The baker apprentice's laugh tinkled out through the kitchen window, and Boot's eyes darted that way. Her tail swished anxiously.
Good. I meant it. I'd seen enough abandoned, plague-ravaged villages to last not only this lifetime, but every one hereafter. I know how it spreads.
"You do?! How?! Tell me now!"
Shh! I told you to act normal!
Boot's eyes narrowed. "No one's in earshot. I checked. I'd know."
Not anyone on Earth, silly. I rolled my eyes Heavenward. In exchange for this knowledge, I need your help with something –
The egotistical creature bristled at being called "silly." Before I realized what she was planning, she pounced and picked me up in her teeth.
Hey!
I squeaked and squirmed furiously, but she didn't let go. Nor did her fangs puncture my skin.
All right, all right, you made your point, I said with as much dignity as a rat dangling from a cat's jaws could muster. Now put me down.
"Nrgf," she said, which I inferred from the way she didn't let go meant that she wanted me to keep talking while I swung from her mouth.
Well, we were certainly putting on a good show for anyone spectators in Heaven. I had no doubt that if Aurelia were watching, she was enjoying the scene immensely. Cassius had probably shut his office door so he could roll around on the floor laughing without damaging that stern, authoritative image he liked to project. Flicker, on the other hand, was probably tearing his hair out.
Flicker.
I squeaked and flailed again for extra verisimilitude. It's a closely-guarded secret that carries great personal risk – not only for me, but for Flicker too – if they find out that the knowledge is spreading on Earth…. Boot's teeth closed a little harder around my neck, but since I wasn't bleeding yet, I kept going. All I want in exchange is for you to reunite me with my friends. I'm sure it's trivial for your…network to locate them.
Boot shook me.
So impatient. I tsked. Do we have a deal?
"Mmmrgh-hrrgh!"
It's the fleas. They carry the Black Death. If we can eradicate all the fleas….
The jaws opened. I fell to the ground with a thump.
"The fleas," gasped Boot. "The fleas carry the Black Death? All along, it's been the fleas?"
I shook myself, mouth curling with distaste at the cat spit on my fur. Yep. I've kept up my end of the bargain. Now use your network to find my friends.
A/N: Thanks to my awesome Patreon backers, Autocharth, BananaBobert, Celia, Charlotte, Ed, Elddir Mot, Flaringhorizon, Fuzzycakes, Ike, Kimani, Lindsey, Michael, TheLunaticCo, and Anonymous!
Am I back in Claymouth? was my first thought when I entered Roseberry Topping.
Just like Claymouth, the town had lost its Imperial-style architecture over the centuries. I saw no colorful pillars, no upturned tile roofs, no arcades over walkways to shelter shoppers from the rain. Instead, the houses were beige or cream, and crisscrossed with wooden beams gone ebony with age. Some had thatched roofs, some wooden shingles. No two buildings looked the same, which was probably a good thing, because if the literacy rate here were anything like that in Claymouth before I arrived, then it was essentially zero. That the shop signs had pictures instead of words bore out that assumption.
Vibrations in the ground. Creaking wood.
I dashed inside a crumbling wall and peeked back out. A cart rumbled past, its wheels clattering over the dirt road where I had just been standing. A black cat with a tuft of white fur on its chest perched on the seat next to the human driver, surveying their surroundings. Boot! It was Boot! She was in Roseberry Topping!
The cat spy's yellow eyes passed over me, then snapped back. She sank into a crouch and wiggled her rump. Rat-brain sent me ducking further into the wall.
Wait, no! This was my chance! I sprang out of the wall and chased the cart, making sure to maintain my rat act.
Dart to the right, dart to the left, sniff an apple core, nibble a stale crumb…aaaaaand scamper after the cart before it vanishes around a corner!
As I followed Boot through the narrow, crooked lanes, the most amazing smell of fresh bread filled the air. Rat-brain wanted a better sniff, so I sat back on my hind legs, raised my nose high, and twitched it. Mmmm. Steamed dough, and spices, and meat. Pork? Yes, that was definitely pork. Pork buns!
Rat-brain and I sprinted after the cart, running as fast as our legs could carry us. At last, it creaked to a stop outside a bakery where grey tabby lolled on the front stoop, sunning itself upside down. The cart driver stretched his back, while Boot leaped down gracefully and flowed up the steps. She jumped over the tabby, which batted at her casually, and landed in front of the bakery door. There, she unleashed a plaintive squeak.
Nothing happened.
She squeaked more piteously.
Still nothing.
She stood up on her hind legs, braced her front paws against the door, and slid back down. I could hear her claws scrape against the wood. No wonder the paint was peeling.
On her third dying squeak, the door flew inwards. A human girl about the same age as Lodia scooped Boot up and squeezed the cat against her floury apron. "Boot! Boot-baby! You're home! We were so worried about you!"
Boot squirmed and squeaked again in protest.
"All right, all right," laughed the girl. She bent over and let Boot jump to the floor. Flour-streaked black fur disappeared into the bakery. "Coming in?" the girl asked the tabby, which slow-blinked at her but didn't budge. "Let me know when you want in!" With another laugh, she shut the door.
So this was Boot's home. Did that mean this bakery was the headquarters of the North Serican cat spies? The apprentice hadn't given any indication of knowing that Boot was more than a mortal pet…but then again, a spy wouldn't, would she?
I darted across the alley. A broad chest covered with mottled brown, black, and orange fur loomed over me. Rat-brain sent me flying up the wall, right as the tortoiseshell cat leaped. Her paw missed me by one inch. I flung myself through an open window and landed on the floor.
Ow!
No time to check if I'd broken anything, because someone screamed overhead, and boots started clomping around. "A rat! A rat!"
"Where?"
"There! It just ran under that table!"
A broom smacked into me, sending me flying. I struck the side of a bookcase. Ow! I half-crawled, half-ran under it. The broom chased me, and I ran back and forth, dodging its bamboo bristles.
At last, the broom withdrew. "Cursed cats. What's the point of the colony if they can't rid this lane of rats?"
The colony. Not "the cats," but "the colony." Aha. This had to be the cat spies' headquarters. Ha! And after Boot went to such lengths to conceal its location and the identity of her spymaster from us, she was the one who led me straight to its door! My lips peeled back from my long front teeth in a smirk.
It didn't last long. Cat spy headquarters implied a large number of, well, cats. How was I supposed to talk to Boot without getting killed by one of her colleagues? I recalled that life when I was tortured to death by a group of cat spirits. Had it been in this very bakery? I had no desire to repeat that experience, not least because I'd die and have to start all over, and there was no guarantee I could find my way back to Roseberry Topping.
This was the best chance I'd get for talking to Boot. I'd just have to be clever about it.
Boot didn't emerge again until well after lunch. I knew, because I surveilled the building from the roof of the mage supply shop next door. Not only was the passage of time marked by the angle of the chimney's shadow, but also by the aromas that drifted from the bakery. At first, I mostly smelled bread like the kind I'd eaten in Claymouth. My mouth watered at the memory of those loaves: big and oblong and slightly wonky, but with a delightfully crunchy crust and tender crumb. There was also some sort of sweet, tangy, spicy scent that I didn't recognize. As the morning wore on and the shadows shrank, the smells shifted towards savory – steamed meat buns and sausage rolls and baked buns topped with pork floss.
In the meantime, a whole cast of cats rotated through the front stoop lounging spot. Some were obviously young spirits trying too hard to act casual, while others were indistinguishable from mortal cats. This lounging had to be part of their spy training.
I was about ready to attempt a flying leap onto the bakery roof so I could sneak into the kitchen to steal a bite – er, to find Boot – when the cat herself sauntered out the back door. She strolled into a corner and started pawing at the dirt, preparing to relieve herself. There were no other cats or humans around. Perfect!
I scampered down the wall as fast as I could, bounded the last foot to the packed earth, and whisked behind a barrel. I peeked back out. Boot had paused her pawing and was staring my way with those lantern-like yellow eyes. I ducked back behind the barrel.
Here came the tricky part. I might not have an audience here on Earth, but I could very well have one up in Heaven. This encounter had to appear accidental, because what rat would run right up to a cat?
I peered around the barrel and twitched my whiskers. Boot had abandoned her latrine-digging and sunk into a crouch. Her long tail swished from side to side. Since she hadn't begun to advance towards me yet, rat-brain suggested that I stay put in hopes that she hadn't seen me. Perfect.
Boot lifted one front paw and set it down silently. That was followed by another noiseless step forward, and another. How long would a normal rat hold still until it panicked and made a break for it?
Another step forward. And another.
Close enough. I squeaked and raced for the bakery's back door.
Boot sprang. Her long black form arced through the air and landed right in front of me. I dodged sideways, barely escaping a cage of claws. I remembered those claws! For a split second, I froze, locked in place by the memory of pain.
Her paw swiped at me again.
Wait! Boot, it's me! I hissed as loudly as I dared.
Her paw jerked sideways, and she came down heavily on it, so off balance that she nearly fell flat on her face. "What – ? Who – ?" Like me, she was playing the role of a mortal animal, and she kept her voice low.
I scurried away a few steps, pretending to try to escape. I must commend you on your acting skills, Boot. Had I not known your true identity, I might have taken you for a normal cat.
She prowled towards me and sank into a hunting crouch once more. "How do you know my name? You're not a spirit. Tell me who and what you are."
How could she have forgotten the voice of the turtle who'd directed the show in Honeysuckle Croft? Her spy skills obviously lagged behind her acting skills. I am the one you met in the home of the little girl while accompanying the mage.
"The little girl…the mage….the turtle! You're – " she caught herself – "the one who was the turtle?!"
Shh! Yes. That was I.
"But what are you doing here? And why are you a rat now?"
We'd stayed still for too long. Keep pretending to hunt me. They might be watching.
A paw swiped at me, missing me by a whisker's length.
I squeaked and ran a few steps. Has the Black Death reached this town yet?
"No. No cases that I know of yet."
The baker apprentice's laugh tinkled out through the kitchen window, and Boot's eyes darted that way. Her tail swished anxiously.
Good. I meant it. I'd seen enough abandoned, plague-ravaged villages to last not only this lifetime, but every one hereafter. I know how it spreads.
"You do?! How?! Tell me now!"
Shh! I told you to act normal!
Boot's eyes narrowed. "No one's in earshot. I checked. I'd know."
Not anyone on Earth, silly. I rolled my eyes Heavenward. In exchange for this knowledge, I need your help with something –
The egotistical creature bristled at being called "silly." Before I realized what she was planning, she pounced and picked me up in her teeth.
Hey!
I squeaked and squirmed furiously, but she didn't let go. Nor did her fangs puncture my skin.
All right, all right, you made your point, I said with as much dignity as a rat dangling from a cat's jaws could muster. Now put me down.
"Nrgf," she said, which I inferred from the way she didn't let go meant that she wanted me to keep talking while I swung from her mouth.
Well, we were certainly putting on a good show for anyone spectators in Heaven. I had no doubt that if Aurelia were watching, she was enjoying the scene immensely. Cassius had probably shut his office door so he could roll around on the floor laughing without damaging that stern, authoritative image he liked to project. Flicker, on the other hand, was probably tearing his hair out.
Flicker.
I squeaked and flailed again for extra verisimilitude. It's a closely-guarded secret that carries great personal risk – not only for me, but for Flicker too – if they find out that the knowledge is spreading on Earth…. Boot's teeth closed a little harder around my neck, but since I wasn't bleeding yet, I kept going. All I want in exchange is for you to reunite me with my friends. I'm sure it's trivial for your…network to locate them.
Boot shook me.
So impatient. I tsked. Do we have a deal?
"Mmmrgh-hrrgh!"
It's the fleas. They carry the Black Death. If we can eradicate all the fleas….
The jaws opened. I fell to the ground with a thump.
"The fleas," gasped Boot. "The fleas carry the Black Death? All along, it's been the fleas?"
I shook myself, mouth curling with distaste at the cat spit on my fur. Yep. I've kept up my end of the bargain. Now use your network to find my friends.
A/N: Thanks to my awesome Patreon backers, Autocharth, BananaBobert, Celia, Charlotte, Ed, Elddir Mot, Flaringhorizon, Fuzzycakes, Ike, Kimani, Lindsey, Michael, TheLunaticCo, and Anonymous!
It was! She has good karma to look forward to!
Haha, and the cat had a lot of fun pretending to hunt her too!
Meowgician
Top tier catboy
It occurs to me that she really wasn't supposed to tell anyone about how the plague spreads, let alone be able to do so in the first place. And Flicker has very consistently been able to tell Piri precisely why she had gained or lost karma, presumably because the celestial accountants saw it and included it in their report.
So I expect that Boots will be getting a lot of positive karma for discovering how the plague is transmitted, and Piri, as the one who inspired his discovery, will also get quite a lot of it too. And if the records of that particular point in time get a little smudged, and it's no longer clear who said what, well, these things happen. Quills break, sometimes even right when you're using them if you're particularly unlucky, and it's not like it obscured any important information, given there was only one party capable of speech present.
Yep! And conveniently, the Accountants are among the people disgruntled with how things are done in Heaven, and no one knows quite how they assign karma anyway, so....
Chapter 197: How to Deter Divine Eavesdroppers
New
Chapter 197: How to Deter Divine Eavesdroppers
The cat spies were nearly as competent as I had hoped, meaning that they were already tracking the whereabouts of a group that was in the process of transforming the political and religious landscape of Serica.
Boot "let me escape" into the foundation of the bakery while she went inside and reported our bargain to her spymistress. She bounded back out, chased by the apprentice with a broom, with a sausage roll clamped between her teeth. She dropped the roll in the dirt to render it irretrievable for the human, and tore it apart messily so I could dart in and snatch pieces to eat too.
Best cat ever. (No, I didn't tell her that.)
As the two of us shared a meal, Boot whispered, "Northwest of here. Foothills of Jade Mountains. In a village called Blackberry Glen."
I poked my head out of a hole under the steps, sniffed, twitched my whiskers, and pretended to watch her warily. She pretended to ignore me.
"They apparently had the Black Death – "
They WHAAAAAT?! I shrieked before I caught myself and turned it into a panicked: Squeak squeak squeak!
Maybe that covered my mistake if any gods were watching.
Boot lifted a paw and washed her face. "Calm down."
How can I calm down when you just told me that my friends caught the Black Death?! I hissed back. That's a death sentence. It's literally there in the name.
Her answer, however, made no sense: "They're all alive. And well."
I dropped the crumb in my front paws. How?
"That's what we'd like to know too. You've told us how it spreads. When you meet them, find out how it's cured."
You forget yourself, I told her frostily. I'm not one of your informants.
"I know you're not. But don't you want to spread the cure, so we can save more lives?"
How very altruistic of you, I said sarcastically, buying myself time to search the conversations I'd had with Boot or while she was in the general vicinity. Did she know that you earned positive karma for helping humans?
No, she couldn't, I concluded. She'd left Claymouth long before I let that information slip. Unless it had spread all the way into a different kingdom, in which case I might be in serious trouble….
Her answer nearly stopped my heart. "Altruistic? Not at all. Every time the Black Death strikes, it devastates society. Food shortages, trade disruptions, general drops in the quality of life, and all that. I like having access to freshly baked cinnamon rolls every morning, thank you very much."
Oh, thank goodness her concern was rooted in self-interest. Limp with relief, I agreed, That does make sense – wait. What's a "cinnamon roll"?
"You don't know what a cinnamon roll is?" Her yellow eyes opened so wide that you could have plucked them out and hung them up for the Lantern Festival.
How in the world would I know what crazy uses you modern Sericans have concocted for cinnamon?
"Does that mean you don't know what cream cheese frosting is either?"
Of course I do, I lied with the greatest dignity. What barbarian hasn't heard of "cream cheese frosting"?
"Hang on one sec!" Boot bounded back up the steps and started clawing the door and yowling.
The apprentice flung it open. "Boot! Bad girl! No clawing the door!" She made a half-hearted attempt to grab the cat, but Boot flashed by her into the kitchen. The clatter of pots and steamer baskets ensued. Another yowl, and a streak of black fur came flying out the back door and up the nearest heap of barrels. A sturdy, middle-aged human woman in a floury apron shook her fist from the doorway.
"Bad kitty! No dinner for you tonight!"
The door slammed shut. Boot leaped down from the barrel, holding a goopy blob in her mouth. Her nose, cheeks, and even whiskers were smeared with some kind of thick, whitish paste. The aroma of cinnamon mingled with a scent that was sweet and sour at the same time.
She dropped the goopy blob in the dirt in front of my hole. "This is a cinnamon bun."
Okay…?
It was cylindrical and the dough showed a swirl on the top, like a plain steamed bun stood on its end. Most of the whitish paste was sticking to Boot's fur, but some of it still clung to the roll.
Boot looked at me expectantly before she realized that I couldn't just come out and start gnawing on the thing, not if we didn't want every passerby or spy to know that I wasn't an ordinary rat. She sank her teeth into the roll and started her messy eating routine again. I sprang forward, seized a piece, and crammed it into my mouth. A rich, creamy, sweet tanginess hit me first, followed by the spiciness of cinnamon, all locked together by the gooey, barely-baked bread dough.
Okay, maybe modern-day Sericans had concocted a few neat tricks.
"Well?" demanded Boot.
'S not bad, I mumbled through a mouthful.
"Not bad," she mimicked. "Guess I'll just eat the rest myself then."
She stretched a paw towards the scattering of pieces next to my hole. I flew out and snatched one before she could hook her claw into it, and she smirked.
"Knew it."
With all the dignity of a rat whose face was covered in cream cheese frosting, I said, Now that we have sampled the products of this bakery, shall we get back to business? How do you intend to reunite me with my friends?
It took a bit more haggling, a few more trips in and out of the bakery, a steamed pork-and-green-onion bun, and a baked coconut-and-raisin bun, but we eventually finalized the details. By the time we were ready to set out, the back door of the bakery was significantly worse for the wear.
Is the clawing a critical part of your cover as spy? I asked from my hiding spot inside a basket of rosemary and lavender sprigs.
Boot's pink tongue flicked out to lick her paw. "Not at all. It's just fun."
That was about what I expected.
The cat spies had an unlimited supply of down-on-their-luck peddlers (and yes, I did include traveling mages in that category, even if Floridiana would scream) who served as informants and transportation. Boot and I hitched a ride out of Roseberry Topping with a wiry human man who sold herbs and herbal essential oils door-to-door.
"Rosemary and lavender," he declared, patting his wares when he picked us up from the bakery just after dawn. "Keeps the fleas away!"
I scampered up a wheel and over the side of the wagon. Boot wiggled her rump and bounded into the wagon bed after me as if she were chasing me. The man grinned, clucked to his donkey, and drove off. Any watching gods probably weren't suspicious of us.
Does he know? I whispered to Boot. About you-know-what?
Boot sprawled out on her back as if she intended to meld with the wooden slats. "Yep. He'll spread the word."
What?! I told you we can't do that! It'll tip off Heaven! Then we'll all be in trouble!
The man clucked to his donkey. "Good girl, there's a good girl. Beautiful day, innit? Easy does it, nothing to worry about, everyone hates fleas, just another beautiful morning on the road, huh, old girl?"
The donkey flicked her black-tipped ears.
"Everyone hates fleas"? Was that directed at us?
So you're going to push flea remedies door-to-door?
"O, bright is the mornin', bright is the sun!" he sang. (Or, rather, croaked. He didn't have much of a singing voice.) "The rosemary's a-growin', the lavender's a-bloom. The ladies are all dancin', 'cos the fleas are leavin' town."
I was impressed by his spycraft. If any gods had been eavesdropping on us up until this point, they were certainly clapping their hands over their ears and turning their attention elsewhere now.
The first peddler took us as far as the next market town. When he stopped his wagon in front of a house with a tidy herb garden, Boot leaped out and trotted off. I gave her a couple minutes and scurried after her.
She led me into the open-air market, then took her time meandering from stall to stall. We passed humans and spirits who were hawking spoon cabbages and green onions and strawberries and woven baskets and little sachets of lavender. It all reminded me so much of Claymouth: I'd promised Taila a red-bean sticky-rice dumpling if she studied hard, and we'd set off into town to get one at entirely the wrong time of year.
" – Here! Hey! Hey! Psst! Over here!" Boot's voice broke through my nostalgia.
I stopped and blinked. The cat spy was pricking her ears at me from inside a basket next to the communal bakehouse. A robin spirit was removing fresh rolls from the oven using a long-handled wooden peel. She tipped them one by one into a second basket. A bamboo carrying pole was propped against the wall nearby. An awful, shrill cacophony rattled out of her throat. It took me a minute to interpret that as "bursting into joyous song."
"The sun sets but will rise just the same tomorrow morning, the flowers fade but will bloom just the same next year."
Another wave of nostalgia struck me when I recognized the words: It was the same children's song that Floridiana and Dusty had suggested as the tune for the Kitchen God hymn, but that Lodia hadn't known because it was a northern song.
Soon. I'd see them all again soon.
I scrambled into the basket next to Boot. The robin spirit tucked a piece of checked red-and-white cotton over us. I bumped its edge with my head until I could peek out. The robin covered the other rolls with checked cloth, secured the baskets to the ends of the carrying pole, and balanced it on her shoulder. The world swung. I gagged.
"You'll never survive as a spy with a stomach like that," Boot observed. The strips of light that fell through the woven basket turned her into a tabby.
I bared my too-long, too-yellow front teeth at her, knowing the spirit could see them. You'd need a stronger stomach than a god's to survive that singing.
She preened. "I know. Isn't it convenient that most people are such awful singers?"
Apparently the cat spies had devised this method for keeping divine eavesdroppers at bay. It was effective, I had to admit. I just wished I didn't have to hear it too.
The basket continued to swing back and forth as the robin took her rolls into the countryside to sell farmstead to farmstead, and I continued to retch. Her "singing" shifted from the children's song about the sunrise to "Ro-ro-ro-ro-rooooooolls! Fresh rooo-oooolls! Get yer fresh roooooooo-olls!"
I didn't mind at all when she finally sang, "Last stoo-op!" and Boot whispered, "Get ready."
When the robin set down the baskets "fer a quick rest," we tumbled out and sprinted into an overgrown field. There, we hid among the wildflowers until a cart rattled by. This one was loaded with bottles of milk, drawn by a dog spirit who looked scarcely large enough to pull the cart. He had no problem with our (mostly Boot's) added weight, though.
He pulled us to the next town, where we switched to a stag spirit who peddled ribbons. In addition to the packs he slung across his back, he tied samples of his wares to his magnificent antlers, along with little bells that jingled when he moved.
And so it was that Boot and I passed from peddler to peddler as we crossed the width of North Serica.
Our final ride was another herb salesman. He left us along with an entire basket of rosemary and lavender on the outskirts of a town. It was much larger than I'd expected for any population center so close to the Wilds, bustling with people and mortal animals, and all aflutter with colorful pennants strung back and forth across the main street.
"Blackberry Glen, O Blackberry Glen. Ah'll jist be off then," the peddler sang off-key, and then he tramped off down the road.
I barely registered his departure. This was it. This was Blackberry Glen. I'd made it. After so many years and so many lives, I was about to see Stripey and Bobo and Floridiana and Dusty and Lodia and all the rest of them again. I sat up on my haunches and sniffed the air, even though I didn't know how my friends would smell to a rat.
Where are they? Where are they?
Boot scanned the street. "This way."
She trotted straight towards the center of town.
A/N: Thanks to my awesome Patreon backers, Autocharth, BananaBobert, Celia, Charlotte, Ed, Elddir Mot, Flaringhorizon, Fuzzycakes, Ike, Kimani, Lindsey, Michael, TheLunaticCo, and Anonymous!
The cat spies were nearly as competent as I had hoped, meaning that they were already tracking the whereabouts of a group that was in the process of transforming the political and religious landscape of Serica.
Boot "let me escape" into the foundation of the bakery while she went inside and reported our bargain to her spymistress. She bounded back out, chased by the apprentice with a broom, with a sausage roll clamped between her teeth. She dropped the roll in the dirt to render it irretrievable for the human, and tore it apart messily so I could dart in and snatch pieces to eat too.
Best cat ever. (No, I didn't tell her that.)
As the two of us shared a meal, Boot whispered, "Northwest of here. Foothills of Jade Mountains. In a village called Blackberry Glen."
I poked my head out of a hole under the steps, sniffed, twitched my whiskers, and pretended to watch her warily. She pretended to ignore me.
"They apparently had the Black Death – "
They WHAAAAAT?! I shrieked before I caught myself and turned it into a panicked: Squeak squeak squeak!
Maybe that covered my mistake if any gods were watching.
Boot lifted a paw and washed her face. "Calm down."
How can I calm down when you just told me that my friends caught the Black Death?! I hissed back. That's a death sentence. It's literally there in the name.
Her answer, however, made no sense: "They're all alive. And well."
I dropped the crumb in my front paws. How?
"That's what we'd like to know too. You've told us how it spreads. When you meet them, find out how it's cured."
You forget yourself, I told her frostily. I'm not one of your informants.
"I know you're not. But don't you want to spread the cure, so we can save more lives?"
How very altruistic of you, I said sarcastically, buying myself time to search the conversations I'd had with Boot or while she was in the general vicinity. Did she know that you earned positive karma for helping humans?
No, she couldn't, I concluded. She'd left Claymouth long before I let that information slip. Unless it had spread all the way into a different kingdom, in which case I might be in serious trouble….
Her answer nearly stopped my heart. "Altruistic? Not at all. Every time the Black Death strikes, it devastates society. Food shortages, trade disruptions, general drops in the quality of life, and all that. I like having access to freshly baked cinnamon rolls every morning, thank you very much."
Oh, thank goodness her concern was rooted in self-interest. Limp with relief, I agreed, That does make sense – wait. What's a "cinnamon roll"?
"You don't know what a cinnamon roll is?" Her yellow eyes opened so wide that you could have plucked them out and hung them up for the Lantern Festival.
How in the world would I know what crazy uses you modern Sericans have concocted for cinnamon?
"Does that mean you don't know what cream cheese frosting is either?"
Of course I do, I lied with the greatest dignity. What barbarian hasn't heard of "cream cheese frosting"?
"Hang on one sec!" Boot bounded back up the steps and started clawing the door and yowling.
The apprentice flung it open. "Boot! Bad girl! No clawing the door!" She made a half-hearted attempt to grab the cat, but Boot flashed by her into the kitchen. The clatter of pots and steamer baskets ensued. Another yowl, and a streak of black fur came flying out the back door and up the nearest heap of barrels. A sturdy, middle-aged human woman in a floury apron shook her fist from the doorway.
"Bad kitty! No dinner for you tonight!"
The door slammed shut. Boot leaped down from the barrel, holding a goopy blob in her mouth. Her nose, cheeks, and even whiskers were smeared with some kind of thick, whitish paste. The aroma of cinnamon mingled with a scent that was sweet and sour at the same time.
She dropped the goopy blob in the dirt in front of my hole. "This is a cinnamon bun."
Okay…?
It was cylindrical and the dough showed a swirl on the top, like a plain steamed bun stood on its end. Most of the whitish paste was sticking to Boot's fur, but some of it still clung to the roll.
Boot looked at me expectantly before she realized that I couldn't just come out and start gnawing on the thing, not if we didn't want every passerby or spy to know that I wasn't an ordinary rat. She sank her teeth into the roll and started her messy eating routine again. I sprang forward, seized a piece, and crammed it into my mouth. A rich, creamy, sweet tanginess hit me first, followed by the spiciness of cinnamon, all locked together by the gooey, barely-baked bread dough.
Okay, maybe modern-day Sericans had concocted a few neat tricks.
"Well?" demanded Boot.
'S not bad, I mumbled through a mouthful.
"Not bad," she mimicked. "Guess I'll just eat the rest myself then."
She stretched a paw towards the scattering of pieces next to my hole. I flew out and snatched one before she could hook her claw into it, and she smirked.
"Knew it."
With all the dignity of a rat whose face was covered in cream cheese frosting, I said, Now that we have sampled the products of this bakery, shall we get back to business? How do you intend to reunite me with my friends?
It took a bit more haggling, a few more trips in and out of the bakery, a steamed pork-and-green-onion bun, and a baked coconut-and-raisin bun, but we eventually finalized the details. By the time we were ready to set out, the back door of the bakery was significantly worse for the wear.
Is the clawing a critical part of your cover as spy? I asked from my hiding spot inside a basket of rosemary and lavender sprigs.
Boot's pink tongue flicked out to lick her paw. "Not at all. It's just fun."
That was about what I expected.
The cat spies had an unlimited supply of down-on-their-luck peddlers (and yes, I did include traveling mages in that category, even if Floridiana would scream) who served as informants and transportation. Boot and I hitched a ride out of Roseberry Topping with a wiry human man who sold herbs and herbal essential oils door-to-door.
"Rosemary and lavender," he declared, patting his wares when he picked us up from the bakery just after dawn. "Keeps the fleas away!"
I scampered up a wheel and over the side of the wagon. Boot wiggled her rump and bounded into the wagon bed after me as if she were chasing me. The man grinned, clucked to his donkey, and drove off. Any watching gods probably weren't suspicious of us.
Does he know? I whispered to Boot. About you-know-what?
Boot sprawled out on her back as if she intended to meld with the wooden slats. "Yep. He'll spread the word."
What?! I told you we can't do that! It'll tip off Heaven! Then we'll all be in trouble!
The man clucked to his donkey. "Good girl, there's a good girl. Beautiful day, innit? Easy does it, nothing to worry about, everyone hates fleas, just another beautiful morning on the road, huh, old girl?"
The donkey flicked her black-tipped ears.
"Everyone hates fleas"? Was that directed at us?
So you're going to push flea remedies door-to-door?
"O, bright is the mornin', bright is the sun!" he sang. (Or, rather, croaked. He didn't have much of a singing voice.) "The rosemary's a-growin', the lavender's a-bloom. The ladies are all dancin', 'cos the fleas are leavin' town."
I was impressed by his spycraft. If any gods had been eavesdropping on us up until this point, they were certainly clapping their hands over their ears and turning their attention elsewhere now.
The first peddler took us as far as the next market town. When he stopped his wagon in front of a house with a tidy herb garden, Boot leaped out and trotted off. I gave her a couple minutes and scurried after her.
She led me into the open-air market, then took her time meandering from stall to stall. We passed humans and spirits who were hawking spoon cabbages and green onions and strawberries and woven baskets and little sachets of lavender. It all reminded me so much of Claymouth: I'd promised Taila a red-bean sticky-rice dumpling if she studied hard, and we'd set off into town to get one at entirely the wrong time of year.
" – Here! Hey! Hey! Psst! Over here!" Boot's voice broke through my nostalgia.
I stopped and blinked. The cat spy was pricking her ears at me from inside a basket next to the communal bakehouse. A robin spirit was removing fresh rolls from the oven using a long-handled wooden peel. She tipped them one by one into a second basket. A bamboo carrying pole was propped against the wall nearby. An awful, shrill cacophony rattled out of her throat. It took me a minute to interpret that as "bursting into joyous song."
"The sun sets but will rise just the same tomorrow morning, the flowers fade but will bloom just the same next year."
Another wave of nostalgia struck me when I recognized the words: It was the same children's song that Floridiana and Dusty had suggested as the tune for the Kitchen God hymn, but that Lodia hadn't known because it was a northern song.
Soon. I'd see them all again soon.
I scrambled into the basket next to Boot. The robin spirit tucked a piece of checked red-and-white cotton over us. I bumped its edge with my head until I could peek out. The robin covered the other rolls with checked cloth, secured the baskets to the ends of the carrying pole, and balanced it on her shoulder. The world swung. I gagged.
"You'll never survive as a spy with a stomach like that," Boot observed. The strips of light that fell through the woven basket turned her into a tabby.
I bared my too-long, too-yellow front teeth at her, knowing the spirit could see them. You'd need a stronger stomach than a god's to survive that singing.
She preened. "I know. Isn't it convenient that most people are such awful singers?"
Apparently the cat spies had devised this method for keeping divine eavesdroppers at bay. It was effective, I had to admit. I just wished I didn't have to hear it too.
The basket continued to swing back and forth as the robin took her rolls into the countryside to sell farmstead to farmstead, and I continued to retch. Her "singing" shifted from the children's song about the sunrise to "Ro-ro-ro-ro-rooooooolls! Fresh rooo-oooolls! Get yer fresh roooooooo-olls!"
I didn't mind at all when she finally sang, "Last stoo-op!" and Boot whispered, "Get ready."
When the robin set down the baskets "fer a quick rest," we tumbled out and sprinted into an overgrown field. There, we hid among the wildflowers until a cart rattled by. This one was loaded with bottles of milk, drawn by a dog spirit who looked scarcely large enough to pull the cart. He had no problem with our (mostly Boot's) added weight, though.
He pulled us to the next town, where we switched to a stag spirit who peddled ribbons. In addition to the packs he slung across his back, he tied samples of his wares to his magnificent antlers, along with little bells that jingled when he moved.
And so it was that Boot and I passed from peddler to peddler as we crossed the width of North Serica.
Our final ride was another herb salesman. He left us along with an entire basket of rosemary and lavender on the outskirts of a town. It was much larger than I'd expected for any population center so close to the Wilds, bustling with people and mortal animals, and all aflutter with colorful pennants strung back and forth across the main street.
"Blackberry Glen, O Blackberry Glen. Ah'll jist be off then," the peddler sang off-key, and then he tramped off down the road.
I barely registered his departure. This was it. This was Blackberry Glen. I'd made it. After so many years and so many lives, I was about to see Stripey and Bobo and Floridiana and Dusty and Lodia and all the rest of them again. I sat up on my haunches and sniffed the air, even though I didn't know how my friends would smell to a rat.
Where are they? Where are they?
Boot scanned the street. "This way."
She trotted straight towards the center of town.
A/N: Thanks to my awesome Patreon backers, Autocharth, BananaBobert, Celia, Charlotte, Ed, Elddir Mot, Flaringhorizon, Fuzzycakes, Ike, Kimani, Lindsey, Michael, TheLunaticCo, and Anonymous!
- Location
- Probably at sea
I'll be honest, while I absolutely love cinnamon buns, I was introduced to them without the cream cheese frosting and now I find its inclusion a bit over the top and even a little sickly. When I make them at home (or rather, when I used to make them at home - haven't done it in years) I would always leave it off.
Very like a cat to have enlightened self-interest as a motive for altruism, as well. Not that I disagree!
Very like a cat to have enlightened self-interest as a motive for altruism, as well. Not that I disagree!