The True Confessions of a Nine-Tailed Fox

Floridiana was not, shall we say, impressed when I finally trudged back into our room at the inn she'd selected.

"What is that smell? What is that muck? What did you get yourself into this time? I thought you were going to meet the prince, not traipse through all the dung heaps of Norcap!"

I drew myself up with as much dignity as a rat encrusted with manure could summon. Dried bits cracked and showered off me.

"Not on my books!" She whisked them out of harm's way.

Just to be clear, I did not traipse through all the dung heaps of Norcap. I fell into ONE. After an explosion threw me out of the palace. And Lady Fate chose to save my life, I added, grudgingly.

The goddess of Fate could have tweaked my trajectory so I fell into a basket of rose petals, or a pile of fine wool, or even a tub of leafy greens, but no, it had to be a pile of dung.

"Lady Fate saved your life?" Den's eye knobs shot up so far that they practically thudded into his horns.

"No no no, back up further. The palace exploded?" demanded Floridiana. "Piri, I thought we agreed that we weren't going to assassinate Eldon's way to the throne!"

It wasn't me! Why did you assume it was me? Why do you always assume everything is my fault?!

At least she had the grace to look away and fiddle with a book cover.

Be that as it may, the explosions maaaaay have been –

"Explosions? Plural?" cried Floridiana and Den in unison.

I cleared my throat. Yes. Were you aware that the palace guards react with extreme prejudice towards spirits? Or anyone they so much as suspect of being a spirit? Seriously! That mage didn't even bother to check if I were a spirit! He just started blowing up the wall! What kind of sloppy spellwork is that?!

They gaped at me, just as flabbergasted as I had been by the guard mage's very-nearly-Fate-defying incompetence. Then they traded a long look. Den nodded. Floridiana heaved a gusty sigh.

"So it was your fault the palace exploded," she concluded.

What??? I literally just told you – oh, you know what? Never mind. Do we have a bucket where I can take a bath? I scanned the shabby room and spotted an ancient wooden bucket in a corner.

"None that I want contaminated with manure," she retorted. "That's for fetching water from the well. Den, if you would, please?"

Den's ears flattened, but he reluctantly approached me with the (blessedly still empty) chamberpot. "Stand on the edge here. I'll wash you off."

I teetered on the rim, trying not to imagine falling in – although, honestly, it couldn't have been any dirtier than that dung heap. Den raised his four-clawed hands over me to – wait! Four claws? Hadn't he had only three on each hand when we first met?

Hey! Den! Did you grow a new –

A downpour blasted me. It left no fur un-drenched and nearly knocked me into the chamberpot after all, but I dropped to my belly, wrapped all four legs around the rim, and hung on. At last, the watery assault ceased. I let myself skid down the outside of the chamberpot with squeaking noises until I hit the floor. There I lay in a soggy heap.

"Here. Dry yourself off with this," said Den's voice right before a tent of off-white cotton fell over me, scented with lavender and rosemary.

Gratefully, I squirmed out from under the handkerchief, shook myself off, and rolled around on it until I was only slightly damp. The embroidered "F" in the corner suggested Lodia's handiwork, which reminded me of my lost cloak, which made me angry all over again. What was wrong with the East Serican royal family anyway?

Thanks. I appreciate that, I told Den, proud of myself for not venting my irritation at Eldon's household on my friends.

"Yup. Anytime. And I do mean any time you smell like that."

My gratitude evaporated. Like I said, that was Lady Fate's cruel joke.

"Oh? I thought you said that was her saving your life."

The twinkle in his eye told me that he, too, was having a laugh at my expense. I bared my long, yellow front teeth at him.

Sitting cross-legged on the narrow bed, Floridiana noted, "Boot did mention that the royal family is pretty twitchy around spirits. I didn't think 'twitchy' meant 'spell-happy' though."

I supposed that was the closest thing to an apology I'd get from her for sending me in blind like that. It's silly. If they'd had a proper guard force, not just ordinary humans, they could have stopped me from getting into the castle. They'd have caught me long before I ever got close to Eldon. I even talked to him.

Floridiana's head jerked up. "You did?"

Yep. I climbed onto our trunk and settled down on its lid.

"What's he like?" Den asked. "Is he anything like he used to be?"

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I had to consider how to describe Marcius' reincarnation. Well, he's a lot friendlier, for one.

Marcius had always been scowling whenever I'd spotted him, although maybe that had been because he'd seen me too.

He's better behaved than Taila. I think.

At least, the toddler prince hadn't been throwing a tantrum, although to be fair, no one had been trying to stop him from doing something he wanted. On the contrary, his nurse had actively encouraged him to defoliate those poor peony shrubs.

"That's not saying much," Floridiana remarked, in a voice that could have dried my fur. "Very few children are as spoiled as Taila."

Den nodded so vigorously that he started a breeze.

"What else did you learn about Prince Eldon?" Floridiana pressed.

What else had I learned about him? His diction needs work.

"He's a toddler!" Den defended him at the same time that Floridiana said, "Next."

He was pretty excited about meeting a talking mouse. Maybe because he'd never seen a spirit before.

I expected another curt "Next," but a slow smile spread across Floridiana's face. "Aha. I know how to get us an audience with the king."

Thump thump thump. Each thud of the herald's staff on the flagstones reverberated through my skull. "Mage Floridiana of the Temple to All Heaven!"

Here we go, I murmured from within my perch on her shoulder.

"Hush!" she hissed out of the corner of her mouth.

I hushed. It would ruin our plan if I revealed my amazing unawakened talking and thinking abilities before the appropriately dramatic moment. Instead, I stared curiously around the throne room that had replaced the one I'd known. Paint must have gotten a lot more expensive in the centuries since Cassius burned down his palace, because the new throne room had a monochromatic color scheme – all grey stone walls and grey stone floors and a vaulted ceiling that shaded into dark grey at its apex. Woven tapestries and embroidered standards added pops of color on the walls, but their colors faded in the dim lighting.

If this were the quality of spelled lamps that modern East Serican royal mages could produce, I was not impressed. We'd had brighter lanterns five hundred years ago.

And whose fault is that? nagged a voice in my head that somehow managed to sound like Floridiana, Stripey, Flicker, and Aurelia all at the same time.

Ugh, I know, I know, I thought back. But at some point, people are going to have to stop blaming me for everything and take responsibility for their own failures.

I assessed the courtiers – all human – who'd replaced the mix of humans and spirits I'd known. Laughing and scheming and backstabbing and front-stabbing their way to power, my courtiers had sparkled with life and passion, neither of which I could detect in their modern-day counterparts. These people stood along the walls as woodenly as the images in a Temple.

Also, what was wrong with their footgear? All of them, men and women alike, were wearing leather shoes with long, pointy tips that were so long and so pointy that some of the men had to tie them to their knees with gold chains! No wonder they couldn't run the kingdom right! They were too busy tripping over their own feet to think about proper governance.

At least the king had on a pair of sensible boots. I got a good view of their rounded toes as Floridiana stopped before the throne and bowed deeply.

"You may rise, Mage Floridiana," came a male voice that surprised me with its musicality. Given the dull-faced courtiers we'd passed, I'd been expecting a raspy, barely-intelligible grunt.

Floridiana straightened and waited for permission to speak.

We'd had a fierce debate over that back at the inn. I'd argued that the representative of the gods (or of the temple to all the gods, which was essentially the same) should not defer to a mere petty king. Floridiana had contended that offending him from the start would not dispose him to look favorably on the Temple we were trying to spread into what was, after all, his kingdom. I'd retorted that it wasn't going to be his kingdom for long anyway, since we were planning to absorb it into his son's empire. We needed to establish our authority from the start. Floridiana had snapped that while it might feel satisfying to condescend to a king in the moment, the bite of the headsman's axe was going to feel a lot sharper. I'd shrilled that she didn't need to educate me on the methods and sensations of execution.

Aaaaand at that point, Den had stepped in to cast the tiebreaker vote.

I still thought that he and Floridiana were too eager to appease a nonentity, but I'd grudgingly agreed to try their way first. Hey, it might work.

Or not.

Floridiana drew a breath, preparing to greet King Philip and launch into the speech she'd prepared on the Glory of the Gods and the Miracle of the Talking Unawakened Rat, a token that the Temple to All Heaven wished to present to Crown Prince Eldon. But the king didn't give her a chance.

"Be welcome to our kingdom, mage," he proclaimed. "We hope you will find your stay here pleasant and peaceful."

Floridiana tensed again, expecting permission to speak now, but I recognized the dismissal – and the warning. Pleasant and peaceful, was it? I'd give him pleasant and peaceful!

A man in red and gold livery stepped forward, ready to shuffle us into obscurity. All right. Enough of this farce of humility. Time to take matters into my own paws. With a commanding squeak, I rose to my hind legs, flourished my silk cape, and swept an elegant bow.

A collective gasp from all the courtiers present. The king's face went as grey and stony as his palace.

"Guards!" shouted a courtier who wore a glittering gold chain across his beefy chest. "Who let a spirit into the palace? Guards!"

Booted feet thumped through the throne room as the royal guards converged on us. At their head was my old friend, Sir Mage of the Twitchy Seal.

"Wait!" Floridiana plucked me off her shoulder and raised me in both palms like an offering to Heaven. "This is not a spirit! Check for yourselves! This is an ordinary, unawakened rat!" She pivoted, making her skirt and my cape flare dramatically, and came to a stop facing Sir Mage.

"Well? What are you waiting for?" bellowed the man with the gold chain.

"We were examined thoroughly at the gate!" Floridiana pitched her voice to carry throughout the throne room. "Would the estimable guards at the gate have allowed a spirit to pass? Let the mages among you see for yourselves that this is an ordinary rat!"

"Silence – " began the man with the gold chain, but Sir Mage overrode him. With a curt "Hold!" to the guards, he stamped his forehead and commanded, "See." Under the glowing vermillion seal, his eyes scrutinized every last fur on my body. I returned his gaze calmly, knowing that he wouldn't find the slightest hint of spirit-ness about me.

"It's unnatural!" snapped the man with the gold chain. "That's no natural rat!"

"Nor is it a spirit," stated Sir Mage. "Your Majesty, I can verify that this is an unawakened rat."

The king sat back, deliberately relaxing and signaling the courtier to stand down. "Prime Minister, we thank you for your diligent concern for our person."

My modern-day counterpart choked back whatever he wanted to say and glowered at Floridiana. "Mage! Why do you insult His Majesty by bringing a trained rat into his august presence? Is this a dastardly plot to bait us into believing that it is a spirit?"

How did that make any sense?

"With all due respect, Prime Minister," Floridiana replied, "why would I do such a thing? I – "

"Tales of your 'Temple to All Heaven' have spread east. Tales of how you consort with spirits." He spat the word. "If this is your dastardly plot to pollute the palace with such corruption – "

Consort? Pollute? Corrupt?!

Human! I bellowed. You go too far!