The True Confessions of a Nine-Tailed Fox

Dusty’s big, long nose jerked up, and his ears flinched back. “We’re going out?” he asked, in a tone that maybe he thought sounded neutral.

Well, yes – I began before I took another look at the baby horse spirit.

His sides were streaked with sweat. His matted, tangled mane straggled down his neck. Even that long, proud tail of his, which he normally kept swishing into people’s eyes, drooped to the paving stones.

Right. He had fought off the rioters for a while before I invited them in for tea and snacks, hadn’t he? And he was a baby spirit. Those did tend to tire more easily.

I had a vague memory of Anthea falling asleep all over the place when she first came to Cassius’ palace. You’d be strolling down a covered gallery, glance into the gardens – and there she’d be, curled up on a bench next to the peonies, sound asleep. Or you’d enter a sitting room, sweep towards your favorite carved rosewood chair – and there she’d be, sprawled across the cushion belly up, snoring away. The magnificence of the City of Dawn Song had overwhelmed her at first.

Plus I’d swept her along in my wake, as the newest member of my retinue, and she’d lacked the stamina to keep up. (Not any more, though. Now she was over five hundred years old. She could keep up with the body of a mortal sparrow – if not with my mind.)

Never mind, Dusty. Stay here and help Bobo and Floridiana, I told the baby horse spirit. Recalling that the serow was listening, I tacked on an affectionate-sounding, Dear. You’ve already done your part. Stay here and rest, dear.

The horse sagged with such relief that I thought his knees might buckle. But he stayed on his hooves and scanned the courtyard for Floridiana.

At the moment, the mage was admonishing the youngest priests to circulate with their trays and offer refreshments to the guests– instead of stopping in the middle of the crowd to cram cakes into their own mouths.

At least the erstwhile rioters didn’t seem to think anything was amiss with my – er, the Temple’s – staff’s manners. If anything, they seemed to find the mini-priests cute.

Well, this was the Temple to the Kitchen God. Maybe people thought the priests here should eat a lot. Hmmm. This had possibilities for recruitment….

Future recruitment. Right now, I needed to retrieve my Head Priest.

I zipped into the Temple, calling, Anthea! Anthea! Where are you?

Anthea, with her own semi-honed instinct for showmanship, had transformed fully into human shape and was kneeling on a cushion (stolen from my sitting room) before the Kitchen God image in the Main Hall. She was holding her hands together at chest height, a stick of lit incense in her fingertips, and bowing her head over it in an attitude of prayer.

Her carriage, I had to confess, was much more graceful than Floridiana’s. Perhaps I should get her to give lessons to the priests. They were (sort of) her priests too, after all.

I landed on the offering table, next to the bronze brazier filled with grey dust and burned-out ends of incense sticks. (Actually, only the top layer was incense dust. The rest was dirt from the garden. We hadn’t burned enough sticks to fill a whole brazier yet: Incense was expensive.)

Anthea, Anthea.

My voice was soft and gentle. It wasn’t wise to disrespect the Kitchen God’s protégée in front of his own image.

The raccoon dog’s human-style ears twitched in a very inhuman way. “What do you want now, Piri?”

Oh, so much. So, so much.

You will be pleased to hear that my plan worked. The rioters have been neutralized and converted into guests who are even now taking in the splendors of the Temple to the Kitchen God.

She hadn’t believed I could do it, hence why she was holed up indoors.

I anticipate return visitors from among them, who will make offerings to thank the Kitchen God for protecting them on this perilous day. We have a captive audience for a sermon, and this is the perfect opportunity for our Head Priest to practice his public speaking. However, for that to happen, we need our Head Priest to be here.

I thought that was enough of a hint, but Anthea didn’t budge from my cushion. Typical. “And you need me for what? To write a note to my steward to let you in?”

No, I need you to accompany me to get Katu. I’m stuck in a mortal sparrow’s body, remember? I need an escort to get through this mob.

Her lips peeled back from her teeth, also in a very inhuman manner. “What do I look like? A Queen’s Household Guard?”

You’re not nearly handsome enough to qualify for the post, dear.

A small snarl escaped her at that. “Get a more qualified spirit to take you then. I’m sure you can find someone handsome enough.”

Well, I already had one escort, the serow spirit, but I’d wanted an extra bodyguard. Still, if Anthea didn’t want to go, I didn’t have time to waste on arguing. I had another use for her anyway.

All right, I will, I said, so agreeably that her eyebrows shot up. But I need someone to hold down the fort here, so to speak. Play gracious hostess to all those potential offering-dedicators in the courtyard.

Recognizing my wisdom, she was already rising from my cushion. Her knees had squashed it and left big dents, I noted, but I sighed and let it go.

As Anthea swept and I flew towards the front doors, I gave her a stream of instructions: Make them feel welcome. Make them feel at home. Talk about the mercy of the Kitchen God.

“I know.”

Do you?

She stopped dead in the middle of the hallway, forcing a priest to swerve around her, and bared her teeth at me. Their tips had gone pointy again. “Yes, dear. I learned from the best, didn’t I?”

If she meant to insult me, it didn’t work.

Just so long as you know it. And I petted her on the head.

I was pretty sure she’d have snapped at me (with her teeth, not her vocal cords) if there hadn’t been other people around.

“Oh, Pip! You’re here! Is Lady Anthea safe?”

Lodia pattered up to me as soon as Anthea’s steward cracked open the front door. During the commotion we’d made when the serow scaled the walls, I’d already seen Lodia’s pale face peek out the lattice of a second-floor window, so I’d been expecting her to meet me.

Yep, she’s fine. She’s at the Temple. She has instructions for you, I told the steward, who was trying to shut the door on the serow’s nose. Miss – huh, I’d never asked the serow for her name, had I? – my friend there has the letter.

The steward (another camphor tree spirit) let the serow in, and she offered him the slightly wet, folded sheet of paper in her mouth. While he read it and confirmed that his mistress did indeed want him to send her pet poet out into the mob, I asked Lodia, Where’s Katu? Are his robes ready?

“Katu’s…out back. He’s, um, busy. The robes, uh, they’re, well….”

Show me.

Leaving the steward to entertain the serow, I rode Lodia’s shoulder to her chambers. It looked like a typhoon had swept through a seamstress’ workshop. Large pieces of partially embroidered silk lay across every flat surface. I recognized some of the thicker silks and bold, geometric designs as future priest robes. The fine gauze with the delicate chrysanthemum blossoms was probably destined for Anthea’s autumn wardrobe. The key point was that not a single piece looked done.

Why are you working on so many things at the same time? I asked, hunting for anything that might be a component of Katu’s High Priest robes.

“Oh…. I, um, I just – I get tired – I mean, my brain gets tired of working on the same thing for too long, so I switch between projects….”

At last, under a piece of silk destined for a child-priest’s sleeve, I found a basted-together robe that resembled the design for the High Priest’s costume that I’d approved eons ago. It had the crimson base and the bold, black panels on the sides that I remembered, and I recognized some of the stylized fruits and grains that were embroidered on the sky-blue cuffs in red, white, black, green, and gold thread – but that was it.

Every square inch of the front of the robes had been covered with scenes depicting life on Earth, from the river that flowed along the hem, to the rice paddies and farmers and water buffalo above it, to the orchards of lychees and other fruit above them, to the houses and open-air markets with shoppers and laborers and street performers that filled the cloth from ankle to waist. Above the waist, she’d embroidered serene gods and goddesses drifting on clouds. The Jade Emperor on His throne took up the whole right side of the chest, but Kitchen God was nearly as big, on the left side over the heart.

Lodia’s art reminded me so much of the carved ceiling in the Bureau of Reincarnation, in the audience chamber where I’d been awarded my right to keep my mind. I’d mentioned it once at most in Lodia’s hearing, but she’d remembered it. And she’d embroidered her own version of it. I perched on the back of a chair and stared at it for a long, long time.

It’s beautiful, I said at last. How long did it take you?

Embarrassed by the praise, she squirmed. “Mmm, I don’t really know. I didn’t time myself. I just sort of did a bit every day….”

Why didn’t you show it to me earlier?

She’d never reported that Katu’s robes were complete, or made any attempt to deliver them.

“Oh, it’s not done yet.”

Are you serious?!

I scanned the fabric again. I didn’t see anywhere she could fit more embroidery. But she very carefully turned the robes over to show me the back, where she’d begun an equally intricate scene that depicted the Kitchen God’s origins.

The tale I’d heard was an ignominious affair: A human man abandoned his wife for a lover, went blind, got abandoned in turn, and turned to begging to survive. He happened to beg at the house of his ex-wife without realizing it one day. Generous woman that she was, she served him a fine meal anyway, after which Heaven restored his vision so he could see his benefactor’s face. Overcome by shame, he flung himself into the hearth and burned himself to death. After that, his overly devoted ex-wife set up an altar to memorialize him above her hearth, and eventually Heaven took pity on him and deified him as the Kitchen God.

(Don’t ask me why.)

I opened my beak to tell Lodia that the Kitchen God might not want that sordid tale spread around – and then I shut it.

Because her embroidery told a very different story. It wasn’t complete, because she was jumping from scene to scene, but what she’d sketched out was a tragic love story. In the South Serican version of the tale, the bad-tempered future Kitchen God cast out his wife in a fit of rage. She remarried but still loved her first husband, who, meanwhile, turned to begging and searched everywhere for her until he came to her new home. While he was eating the meal she served him, her new husband came home. To preserve her happiness, the first husband flung himself into the hearth and burned himself to death in an act of self-sacrifice. However, his heartbroken ex-wife leapt into the flames after him and burned herself to death too, whereupon the heartbroken new husband leapt into the flames after her and burned himself to death too. And then the Jade Emperor in His Infinite Mercy deified all three of them.

Huh. Star-crossed love and a triple suicide. I guessed it was better than the tale I’d heard?

I didn’t know which version of the Kitchen God’s origins was true – I didn’t plan to ask the god myself, and I doubted I could convince Anthea to do it either – but in the end, it didn’t matter.

What mattered was that worshippers felt a connection to the god who had once been a fallible human himself and hence understood human failings (or so they believed), and that they felt moved to dedicate offerings to him.

This could work.

Armed with Floridiana’s official text, Katu’s song cycle and dramatic sermons, and Lodia’s genius for artistic celebration of the Kitchen God (oh, and Anthea’s money too), I could make this work.

It was a shame that the embroidered tale wasn’t close to complete. The rioters weren’t going to wait a month for Lodia the perfectionist to deem it adequate.

I considered it for a moment, then came to a decision.

All right. I know the robes aren’t done yet, but can you baste a cape or something to hide the back? Because we need Katu to play High Priest right NOW.