The True Confessions of a Nine-Tailed Fox

Matriarch? Of the Temple to the Kitchen God?

Even if I didn’t have the foggiest idea what that raccoon dog was up to, the gullible crowd in the courtyard had no doubt it was the next Big New Amazing Thing. At Anthea’s announcement, they went wild, clapping and screaming and chanting Lodia’s new title.

“Matri-ARCH! Matri-ARCH! Matri-ARCH!”

I raised both wings like eyebrows at Katu. As Lodia’s closest friend, he must have known about this farce beforehand and failed to warn me.

Except that he looked as bewildered as I felt.

“What is the ‘Matriarch of the Temple,’ Pip?” he asked. “Is that another leadership position?”

Based on Anthea’s phrasing, it had to be. Personally, I thought that it was nonsensical in the extreme to call a woman who’d never borne a child a “matriarch,” but this was Anthea, so what could you expect?

At the top of the steps, Anthea beamed at the crowd and hissed something at Lodia. The girl lifted a reluctant hand and waved it once. She seemed to fear a vulture demon (or an angry sparrow) would swoop down and bite it off.

The crowd didn’t care. They screamed even more loudly and started picking up armfuls of shredded firecracker wrappers and flinging them into the air to rain down like plum blossom petals. Surely some noble lady would take offense at having burnt bits of paper land on her coiffure, I thought, but no one objected.

All right. This farce had gone on long enough. Flying around behind Katu, I used my forehead to bump him between the shoulder blades and push him forward.

Time for your speech, High Priest.

I thus propelled him onto the steps next to Lodia. She practically leaped backwards to let him take center stage, forcing Anthea to step back as well. It was that, or drag the girl forward again, which wouldn’t have been a good look.

“Loddie? What’s going on?” Katu whispered as he passed her.

She made a small, helpless gesture with her hands. “I don’t know. Her Ladyship told me to come out here with her so she could make an announcement and then – oh, Pip! There you are! Oh, thank goodness!”

I could have killed Anthea for sending Lodia into this panic. Yes, here I am, Lodia. Katu, give your speech. I’ll sort things out here.

He raised his arms in that now-familiar gesture and, surrounded by a cloud of glittering butterflies, began to expound upon the glory of the Divine Intercessor. I’d heard variants of this speech so many times that I didn’t bother listening.

Inside, I snapped at Anthea.

She actually obeyed, instead of staying outside just to spite me. That meekness said scrolls about how guilty she felt over the mess she’d made.

Perching on Lodia’s shoulder, I fixed Anthea with my fiercest glare. All right. I have been patient long enough. Explain yourself.

Her mouth pushed out in a pout. “You’re planning to set up a whole network of Temples all over Serica, aren’t you? Someone needs to oversee them. I thought Lodia would be the ideal candidate.”

You thought Lodia –

I cut myself off before I could shred the girl’s self-confidence, stuff the shreds into a firecracker, and blow them up.

Did you consult with her beforehand whether she wanted the appointment? I asked instead.

Under my claws, Lodia tensed.

Anthea’s chin jutted out defiantly. She knew she was in the wrong. “Aren’t you the one who’s always trying to push her forward, to reach for more, to dream of more? What – are you trying to curb her ambitions now?”

Her ambitions – or yours? You want control over the Temple, don’t you? You don’t think you can control Katu well enough, so you’re setting up a rival leader. That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?

At the words “rival leader,” Lodia choked out something so soft that even Anthea looked at her uncomprehendingly.

I forced my voice lower, into a more soothing register. We didn’t quite catch that, Lodia. You don’t need to be afraid to tell me what you really want. Tell me, and I’ll make it happen.

My mind was already racing for ways to retract such a public announcement, made at such a historic event. People’s memories were short, though. All I needed to do was engineer a different, equally historic event, and the second would erase awareness of the first. But what sort of situation should I engineer –

Lodia hunched her shoulders, making me flap my wings to catch my balance. Under the circumstances, I opted not to reprove her.

Just barely loud enough to be audible, she whispered, “…don’t want…rivals…rather work with him.”

What?

While I blinked and tried to parse those phrases in any way other than the obvious – which was that she intended to accept the position that Anthea had forced on her – the raccoon dog brayed with laughter. “There you go! You asked her what she wants! Well, she’s told us what she wants! She wants to be the head of all the Temples to the Kitchen God in Serica!”

That did seem to be the implication of “rather work with him,” but –

Lodia? Is that correct? You want to be the head of all of the Temples in Serica?

I flew around to the front so I could see her face. But she didn’t look intimidated by her employer, or overwhelmed by a role for which she was utterly unsuited.

Her chin dipped and rose.

Was that a nod?

“Of course it was a nod!” Anthea said triumphantly.

It doesn’t count if you throw her into something and dizzy her with options and don’t give her a chance to think them through.

Ignoring Anthea’s “Hmph! As if you don’t do the same thing!” I hovered in front of Lodia’s nose and checked again.

Was that really a “yes,” Lodia? Is this really what you want? You don’t need to be afraid to tell me what you really want.

Anthea stepped forward. “Now who’s trying to lead her to the desired response?”

Lodia’s shoulders hunched again, then straightened. Her chin came up. She met my eyes. “Thank you, Pip, truly, for your concern. I – yes – I would like to work with Katu at the Temple. I would like to be the Matriarch.”

Well. After all the fuss I’d made about helping her achieve what she really, truly wanted, I couldn’t tell her “no” now, could I?

“You should have told her ‘no’,” Floridiana informed me. “What were you thinking? That girl is going to be caught between you and Lady Anthea and she is going to get smashed into – into meat paste in your power games!”

I know, I know, I get the point.

“You obviously don’t, because you let it happen!”

Well, what was I supposed to say? I was convinced she didn’t want it and it was all Anthea’s doing! And then she comes out and says she wants to be the “Matriarch”!

I hopped in an agitated circle on Floridiana’s desk, soon to become just a spare desk after the mage left. The thought didn’t improve my mood.

Matriarch. Could Anthea have come up with a more ridiculous title for a teenage girl?

“I like it! It sssounds fancy,” Bobo offered.

It does have a certain ring to it, Stripey agreed, not helpfully at all. What would you call the position of the head of all the Temples?

“The Glorious Commander of the Temples to the Kitchen God, Guardian of Commonfolk,” put in – who else? – the self-proclaimed Valiant Prince of the Victorious Whirlwind, Vanquisher of Invaders.

“Dusty,” Floridiana warned.

“I like it,” said Steelfang from the doorway.

Who invited the demon? I was muttering to Stripey when the wolf padded all the way into the room, followed by Pallus the manul and the foxling.

A peanut gallery. Just what I needed.

“You’re supposed to be circulating through the crowd, spreading praises of the Kitchen God,” Floridiana reminded them. “What are you doing here?”

Pallus sat down and swept his tail around his paws. “They insisted on petting me. It is unbecoming of my dignity.” He blinked his big, amber eyes. “Prince Pouff enjoys it. I left him to satisfy their adoration.”

Indeed, through the window drifted a high-pitched cry of, “Kitty!” The happy purr that followed rattled the lattice.

“Pouff,” warned Pallus without raising his voice.

The volume of the purr dropped. The window lattice settled back into place.

And you? I demanded of the foxling. What brings you here? If she planned to tell me that she ran away from a bunch of humans because they wanted to pet her tails –

“It’s too hot. If I’d stayed out there any longer, I might have begun to sweat.” She pouted in a cringe-inducing facsimile of what she must have seen in some painting of me. From her tone, you’d have thought that sweating was the most abhorrent bodily process available to living creatures.

But that I could actually almost empathize with, if I strained myself. The lowlands were significantly warmer than the Jade Mountains. I, too, recalled needing to adjust to the clime of the City of Dawn Song, and that lay far to the north. Its heat was nothing compared to the humid, late-summer boil of Goldhill.

Not that I was going to tell her that, of course.

Do you really believe that you are the first demon to come down from the Jade Mountain Wilds and discover that it’s hotter than you expected?

My scathing question made all of her five tails perk up. “Did Lady Piri…?” She couldn’t quite bring herself to apply the word “sweat” to her idol.

Well, neither, for that matter, could I.

Any major life change will require an adjustment period, Sphaera. You must learn to accept that reality.

Stripey’s eyes rolled so hard that they could have been children’s marbles, but the foxling bobbled her head, grateful for any advice that I saw fit to divulge.

“Of course. Yes, yes, I see. It was foolish of me to expect otherwise.” She scanned the workroom until her gaze settled on Floridiana. “Mage, I require the Four Treasures of the Study.”

The mage stared right back with no obvious intent to move any time in the near future.

“What are the Four Treasssures of the Ssstudy?” Bobo whispered.

Paper, brush, inkstone, inkstick, Stripey whispered back. I was about to ask how he knew when he slanted a mischievous glance my way. We robbed a shipment intended for Baron Claymouth once. Fetched a pretty copper too, when we sold it to the Water Court of Black Sand Creek.

You dared sell stolen goods to a Dragon King? I asked in astonishment before I realized that of course the duck demon bandits did. They’d even robbed Yulus’ pearl farm. What was the sale of illicit merchandise compared to that? Did he know?

Nah. I’ll bet Prime Minister Nagi guessed, though.

Yeah, she probably did.

Well, it wasn’t my problem if the water snake spirit wanted to accrue negative karma from sponsoring the plundering and pillaging of human merchants.

“Mage,” repeated the foxling more loudly. “I require – ”

The Four Treasures of the Study are just that – treasures, I informed her. For what purpose are you requesting to use the Temple’s supplies?

At the reprimand, all five tails drooped to the floor. “Oh. Oh. I just wanted to record the Lady Piri’s Words of Wisdom. For posterity, I mean. Not because I will ever forget them. They are engraved in my mind!”

In that case. I nodded at Floridiana, who heaved a gusty sigh and pushed the writing supplies across her desk.

While the foxling wrote down the words supposedly engraved in her mind so she wouldn’t forget them later on, I returned to our original discussion. I repeated the same question Lodia’s family had once asked of her: So what are we going to do about Lodia?

Stripey shrugged his wings, nearly clipping Steelfang in the head. The wolf glared but didn’t dare snap at the bird. Why do we need to do anything with her? Why can’t we just let her find her own path?

But she doesn’t know her own path!

She seems to be doing a good job of figuring it out.

“You’ve only just met her. You don’t know her,” Floridiana backed me up. “She’s shy and naïve. She’s going to get smashed between Pip here and Lady Anthea.”

Well, it’s going to take both of them to smash her between them, and Pip doesn’t want to smash her at all. So I’d say it’s looking good for Lodia.

“The only thing I can sssee is telling her that ssshe can’t be Matriarch,” Bobo said slowly. “But ssshe wants to be. Ssso wouldn’t it be worssse to tell her ssshe can’t?”

That’s what I’ve been trying to tell Floridiana this whole time!

The mage threw up her arms and waved them. “Fine! Do whatever you want! I’m not going to be around to see it anyway!”

Privately, I thought it was less a matter of what I wanted and what Lodia had decided she wanted. When I’d crowed that we should let her embroider her way to a greater role, this had not been what I’d envisioned.

A discussion like this had also not been how I’d envisioned spending the Festival to the Kitchen God that I’d spent so long organizing. By the time we exited the study, the food was nearly all gone, the offering tables’ legs were cracking under the weight of all the gifts, and it was nearly time for the fireworks display.

As I perched on the upturned edge of the roof next to Stripey and Bobo and watched the fireworks explode overhead, I allowed myself to forget my plans. For a while, just a little while, I allowed myself to enjoy the moment with my friends.