The True Confessions of a Nine-Tailed Fox

A mob. A mob. A mob outside her gates in Goldhill. What was this – the City of Dawn Song all over again?

No, this was a nightmare. This had to be a nightmare.

Anthea was padding towards the door that led to the kitchens and her patron god’s altar. Two feet from it, she turned on her heel and padded back the other way. Turn and pace. Turn and pace. She wasn’t nearly calm enough to call upon the Kitchen God – assuming he even answered.

At the far end of the hallway, her retinue quivered in a clump of silk and dangly hair ornaments. They’d have paced right after her, like a line of ducklings, if she’d let them.

She hadn’t let them.

“Oh, my lady, whatever will we do?” quavered one lady-in-waiting. “Whatever will become of us?”

A chorus of teary questions, all variations on the same theme, echoed hers. They weren’t helping to calm Anthea down.

It was all too much like the City of Dawn Song, five hundred and twelve years ago.

Anthea hadn’t been in the palace on the day the Empire fell.

She’d long since been driven out by Piri, banished to a shabby mansion insultingly close to the West Market. (Her previous, opulent estate right off Imperial Way, a gift from Empress Aurelia, had been confiscated and awarded to one of the fox demon’s sycophants.) If you were the optimistic sort – or the twisted sort – you might call Anthea’s disgrace a blessing in disguise, because it meant that she’d been holed up indoors when Cassius burned down his palace around himself and the city went mad.

It had been nighttime. She’d heard an odd, dull roar outside, and she’d pattered upstairs to peek out a window. Through the lattice, she’d seen firelight from torches: some raised in fists, some clutched in beaks. All manner of humans and spirits were crammed into the boulevard that ran past her gates, just like on a festival day after a parade. They were even shouting something about Cassius.

Except these weren’t the usual happy shouts of “Long live the Son of Heaven!”

“Down with the false emperor!” shrieked a voice, so cracked and mad with rage that she couldn’t tell whether it belonged to a man or a woman.

“Down with the false emperor!” those around the person roared, in a ragged chorus that spread in a wave throughout the mob.

Up ahead at the intersection, a Golden Bird Guard patrol of eight golden pheasant spirits stood their ground. With their bright yellow crests, vermillion breasts, and long, speckled tails, they made for an impressive sight. Their captain opened his beak wide and bellowed, “Citizens! Cease this madness! Go home!”

All of the guards leveled their spears.

For a moment, confronted with authority and the habit of obedience to it, the front edge of the mob wavered. Stillness rippled back down the boulevard. Anthea realized that she’d forgotten to breathe, and she sucked in a short, shaky breath.

“Go home, citizens!” the captain repeated. “Treason will not be tolerated!”

For a heartbeat, Anthea thought it had worked. Some people at the front stepped back.

Then the same cracked voice from before shrieked, “Down with the false emperor!”

Others nearby took up the shout, “Down with the false emperor! Down with the false emperor!”

The captain’s beak moved again, but the roar drowned him out.

The mob rippled again. Then, in the space of a blink, it was surging forward, screaming and howling. Most of the Golden Bird Guards pumped their wings and shot up into the air above the bird spirits, but two weren’t fast enough. The mob engulfed them and knocked them to the ground – not even on purpose, from what Anthea could tell – and then their golden crests were vanishing beneath the crush of bodies.

The remaining Golden Bird Guards circled overhead. Anthea thought they might dive down and attack the mob to disperse it, but then the captain signaled, and they wheeled and flew towards the palace, trying to reach it before the mob.

Down below, the fringes of the mob were slowing before the mansions that lined the boulevard. For no reason that she could discern, they started to pound on the wooden gates, and to leap or fly over the garden walls.

Aristocratic residences weren’t built as fortresses. The undulating creamy walls topped with blue-grey tiles that surrounded their gardens were more for aesthetics than defense. And their guards were more to deter burglary than any more serious crime.

Through her window, Anthea screamed after the Golden Bird Guards, “Come back! Come back! You can’t just leave us like this!”

They paid no attention.

Anthea’s guards aimed their bows at the mob, but there were too many to stop. A hawk spirit dodged an arrow and unbarred her gates from the inside.

Inside the mansion, a couple rooms over, Anthea heard furniture crash. A maid raced down the hallway, arms wrapped around a fine bronze vessel, necklaces tumbling out of her pockets.

“Stop! Thief!” Anthea screeched.

A footman tackled the maid, but then porcelain shattered downstairs.

Tossing a command at the footman to hold the maid, Anthea brushed past them and ran down the main staircase. Halfway down, she jerked to a stop so fast that she had to clutch the banister to steady herself.

The mob hadn’t broken through the front door yet, but her home was already destroyed. Her steward and chef were shouting at maids and footmen who were looting her treasures. Right before her eyes, her steward tussled with a maid over a piece of jade that had been sculpted to resemble a leaping fish. A second maid came up behind him and bashed him over the head with a bronze brazier. Incense dust and stubby ends of used incense sticks flew everywhere. He dropped to the plush carpet, blood pooling around his head.

“No….” Anthea’s voice came out as a whimper. “No….”

Then the front doors burst open, and the mob poured in. Wailing, her staff fled, scattering treasures as they went.

“There she is!” shouted someone, and she felt the mob’s attention turn on her.

“She was at court!”

“She served the false emperor!”

“Get her! Punish her! In the name of Heaven!”

And the mob rushed at her.

For a split second, Anthea couldn’t move. Then she stumbled back up the stairs, tripping over her own embroidered slippers, half sobbing, half moaning as she kicked them off. Not fast enough! She wasn’t fast enough on two legs!

Between one stride and the next, she transformed into a raccoon dog and scampered away, pumping her four legs as hard as she could. The mob chased her down the hallways, hunting her like the nobles did game in the Imperial Preserve.

She searched frantically for the door to the servants’ passages. There! It stood ajar – something that was never allowed under normal circumstances, but now it was her salvation, because she ducked into the dark stairwell a moment before the mob rounded the corner. The rioters thundered on down the hall while she bounded down the stairs, taking them four at a time, running and running until she thought her heart would burst.

At last she reached the kitchen, with its altar to the Kitchen God. Leaping over the fruits on the offering table, she cowered at the image’s golden feet and prayed harder than she ever had in her life. “Please save me, please save me, please save me. Heavenly Lord, please hear my prayer. Save me save me save me!”

The kitchen door crashed open. “There it is!” someone yelled. “Get the statue! It’s solid gold!”

“Save me! Please!” Anthea shrieked.

Just as grasping hands and claws ripped her off the altar, golden light blazed.

Blinded, the looters dropped her and reeled back, covering their eyes. Anthea curled into a ball under the table and wound her tail over her head.

“HOW DARE YOU LAY YOUR HANDS ON MY ANNIE!” thundered the divine voice. “DIE, AND REINCARNATE AS WORMS!”

The golden light scythed out, and her attackers’ cries cut off. Dull thumps followed. When Anthea opened her eyes and uncurled herself, she was surrounded by dead looters, all wearing identical expressions of shock.

“Are you all right, Annie?” asked the Kitchen God in a more normal tone. He bent down and picked her up, under the forelegs like a raccoon dog pup, and held her up to examine her.

Although she was trembling too hard to speak, she was physically unharmed.

“Good. I will take you far, far away from here. You will not want to be anywhere near the palace tonight.”

“W-w-w-why?” she managed to quaver.

“Because tonight, the dynasty ends.”

And then, borne on clouds and mist, he had carried her away from her ruined mansion, away from the City of Dawn Song, all the way south across the Snowy Mountains, where he had left her in a provincial town, in the shade of an ancient lychee tree.

And that was how Anthea had ended up living in South Serica.

“Oh, please, my lady, what do we do?” pleaded a teary voice.

Anthea blinked. She was in Goldhill, not the City of Dawn Song, and it was five hundred and twelve years after the Empire fell. Five hundred and twelve years after a certain nine-tailed fox demon had caused the Empire to fall.

In a flash, Anthea’s despair and panic changed to anger. This was all Piri’s fault. If Piri hadn’t ended Cassius’ dynasty in such a bloody, melodramatic manner, the empire wouldn’t have collapsed along with it. Sure, they’d be living under a different dynasty, but it would still be the Empire, with all the continuity and comfort afforded by stable institutions and stolid career bureaucrats.

But no, Piri had had to go over-the-top dramatic. She’d had to burn everything to the ground. And now the Empire was shattered into so many tiny, warring pieces, with no safety to be found anywhere, not even in the capital of the kingdom where her own patron god had brought her.

“I’ve had enough of this!” Anthea’s voice came out as such a ferocious snarl that her retinue jumped and squeaked.

Then they were falling to their knees to plead for the great lady’s forgiveness for interrupting her thoughts.

“Not you. Get up,” she snapped.

She had no time for melodrama right now. She had a kingdom to save.

And she knew exactly whom she was going to delegate to save it.

After putting down our first priestly revolt, I pondered Jullia’s military and political disaster. If Katu’s rants back in Lychee Grove were any indication, it had been a long time in the making. Doomed quests and lost wars were romantic enough in ballads, but you didn’t want to be the people suffering through them.

The humans suffering through them, in particular.

I had to put an end to this one – but how? I didn’t even really know what was going on in the west, and now Katu, my source of political intelligence, was trapped in Anthea’s mansion, separated from me by an angry mob.

Back and forth across the room I flew, thinking and thinking but coming up with no solutions.

“Piri!”

Yet again, Anthea’s voice brayed my true name for all in the mansion to hear. (Well, that was probably all right. I trusted most of them, and the others could be bribed with rice.) Trust her to show up, though, when the member of her household I wanted was her poet!

I executed a graceful swoop and turn. Anthea, I believe I have indicated to you on multiple occasions that it is not wise for you use my true name –

I cut off at the sight of her. She was in human form, but just barely. Triangular ears stabbed out through disheveled hair, patches of fur sprouted on her face, and her striped tail dragged behind her. She clenched her fists to hide how furry and stubby her fingers were, and she bared pointy teeth up at me.

“It’s Piri I need right now. Not this devout, kind-hearted ‘Pip’ sham you’ve been putting on.”

Oh my, little Anthea. After so many centuries, have you finally realized that you need me? That you simply cannot navigate court politics on your own? My tone dripped condescension.

“No,” she snapped back. “I am fed up with living in this mess that you made, and then died and left us to clean up. Well, guess what? It’s been five hundred and twelve years, and it’s still a mess, and now you’re back. So, congratulations – you’re going to clean up your own mess this time!”