The True Confessions of a Nine-Tailed Fox

Chapter 36: Taila's Reward

After that fiasco of a jaunt, I assumed that Taila would forget about her reward – but oh no, she had a longer memory than that. Never underestimate the tenacity of a four-year-old who's been promised dessert.

As soon as the cats herded her back into Honeysuckle Croft's yard, rubbed against her legs, and trotted off, and even before they were out of sight, she reached into her pocket again. This time, I let her wrap her fingers around my shell and pull me out. Although I was expecting teary eyes and a blubbery expression, that was not what I saw.

On the girl's plain features, indignation warred with outrage. "Mr. Turtle! You PROMISED!"

Had Cassia Quarta also remembered all my promises? I'd made some pretty extravagant ones back in the day – paving the slums with gold, roofing the houses with jade, throwing her a birthday party where we invited every single child in the empire, forbidding the study of Serican grammar, issuing an edict banning the existence of older brothers.... If the princess had remembered my promises, she hadn't held me to them.

Or maybe she'd tried to but couldn't find me, and her nannies and governesses had prevailed upon her to give up. I wasn't an easy person to track down when I didn't want to be found, and making myself available to Cassius' children wasn't a top priority.

Hadn't been a top priority.

"You SAID, Mr. Turtle! You SAID I could have a red-bean sticky rice dumpling!"

I cursed whoever invented the things. Their soul had better be rotting away inside a tapeworm.

"I want my red-bean sticky rice dumpling!"

I sighed, craned my neck over her shoulder, and made sure that the cats were out of earshot before I soothed, It looks like they're out of season. Be a good girl and wait for the Dragon Boat Festival, all right? You'll get it then. Now put me down and go see if your mother needs assistance. We're done with classes for the day.

I thought that would be the end of that, but –

"Noooo! I want my red-bean sticky rice dumpling!!!"

Her screaming brought her mother pelting around the corner. The woman's eyes were wild, her hands and apron caked with mud, and her hair sticking out in all directions. "Taila! Taila! Where've you been! We've been searchin' everywhere!"

Among humans, panic is contagious. Which is sometimes a useful fact.

Just not right now.

Because Taila's reaction to to her mother's fear was to burst into tears and wail incoherently about red-bean sticky rice dumplings and cats while her mother berated her for vanishing and "scarin' the living' daylights outta us!"

Under cover of all the screaming and crying, I tried to slip away – but no such luck. Spotting me at the edge of the yard, Mistress Jek threw herself to the ground and prostrated herself.

"Emissary! Thank you so so so much for bringing Taila back safely! Where did this bad girl go?"

Oh, curses. I wasn't going to get to soak in Caltrop Pond any time soon, and I was exhausted. I should probably have ordered Taila to let her mother know where we were going, shouldn't I? It might have saved me a lot of hassle.

Still, maybe I could tell Mistress Jek about the dessert – or lack thereof – and let her deal with it. Since Taila behaved so well in class, I promised her a reward. We went into town to procure it.

"A reward?" Mistress Jek looked shocked, which puzzled me until she clarified, "Y'mean, like on them Wanted posters?"

"Those Wanted posters," not "them," I corrected automatically. And yes. In a manner of speaking. I told her she could have a red-bean sticky rice dumpling, since she appears to have a sweet tooth.