The True Confessions of a Nine-Tailed Fox

Chapter 3: Bee

My next stints in White Tier were all as bees. Honey bees, to be precise. I devoted my lives to making honey for human beekeepers and pollinating orchards for human farmers, earning the final karma that I needed to move up. After one long, full life as a queen, I was balled and killed by my workers to make way for my successor, and when I woke, my drawer was glowing with bluish-green light.

I'd done it. I'd made it to Green Tier. And it only taken two hundred years to get here.

Even the clerk celebrated my achievement to the extent of droning, "Congratulations on your advancement to Green Tier. Starting with your next life, you will be reincarnated as various types of sea creatures, reptiles, and amphibians."

To be honest, none of those options sounded particularly appealing, but hey, frog was better than worm...right? So what am I going to be this time?

He gave me a prissy look, reminding me of all the times he'd told me that protocol prohibited him from divulging such details beforehand. "It is not customary – " But before he could finish the formula, the door banged open and a man – no, a god now – strode in.

Scrambling out of his chair, the clerk dropped to the floor and prostrated himself. I buzzed, rotating slowly as I considered whether and how Heavenly etiquette applied to squishy balls of light.

"My lord. Forgive me. I was not aware that we had an appointment." Despite the clerk's posture, his tone conveyed definite disapproval, warning Heaven's newest appointee that even gods were expected to follow proper bureaucratic procedure and schedule meetings in advance.

"We don't have an appointment."

Cassius brushed past me to take the room's lone chair. Leaving the clerk groveling at his feet, he rifled through the tidy stacks of documents on the desk, then tossed the papers aside. A couple whooshed onto the floor.

"We happened to be inspecting this subdivision and heard it was Piri's turn for reincarnation, so of course we had to come see her."

He leveled a smile at me across the desk, that warm, broad smile I remembered so well. It was the one he always faked when he opened palace banquets. Including the one where he poisoned four dukes. (Which hadn't even been my idea, although I'd been plotting to remove them anyway.)

"Of course, my lord," murmured the clerk, his forehead still pressed to the floor. It might have been my imagination, but I thought he was gritting his teeth.

Cassius ignored him. "Piri, you remember us, right? Here and now, in this place?"

Seriously – did he really think there was more than one correct answer? Of course I do, Imperial Majesty, I chimed, sounding like the peal of bells on New Year's Eve. How could I possibly forget you? In any time or place?

Ugh. A terrible line. Stale. Trite. Just another uninspired variant on all the terrible, stale, trite lines I'd used on him in the past. He chuckled, as he always had, to warn, I know what you're doing. You can't fool me, Piri.

But his eyes, as they always had, betrayed his pleasure. He'd always been too easy to handle.

"We could never forget you either, Piri. In any time or place." His hands clenched on the armrests until the wood creaked (the clerk winced), and his voice went hard. "Including the throne room as it went up in flames around us."

Flames he'd ordered himself, set by the last manservant still loyal to him, as the dukes and their army surrounded the great hall. (I hadn't been there, of course. I'd fled as soon as they closed in on the palace, knowing that my job was done.)