The True Confessions of a Nine-Tailed Fox

Chapter 44: Settling Day

"He raised the rent by HOW MUCH?"

The shriek that rent the air on Settling Day could only have belonged to Mistress Jek, but I'd never heard that level of panic, not even when I announced that I was an emissary from Heaven and summoned Flicker to prove it. I was already halfway to Honeysuckle Croft from Caltrop Pond, so I tried to run the rest of the way there.

I succeeded at a fast waddle.

By the time I got close enough to see her, she'd already calmed down, or, rather, calmed down enough to stop shrieking and start hyperventilating instead. Master Jek was standing in the yard, head bowed, shoulders slumped, hat drooping from his hands, the very picture of defeat.

What happened? I called, lumbering out of the grasses. What's going on with the rent?

Mistress Jek turned.

I'd seen that expression before – on the face of a mother fox when she returned to her den and discovered that a government minister had kidnapped all of her kits and skinned them for a fur coat. (They were very young kits, and it was a very small fur coat, as I saw when it appeared on my desk one day after lunch. But it was more than big enough to send a message, even if I didn't interpret it the way he meant. He would be my first test human for the Burning Pillar.)

Mistress Jek now wore the same expression of shock and horror and disbelief and death-pain as the mother fox had. "He...the Baron...he raised our rent...," she stuttered.

"By a third," finished Master Jek through gritted teeth. "From ten silvers to thirteen. I just got back from the castle. I went to pay rent for this quarter, and the Seneschal told me. We have a week to pay what we owe." He seemed less stunned, although he'd had the walk back from the castle to process it.

"We don't have anything to sell. At the market. We can't grow anything. It's the middle of winter," stammered Mistress Jek. She cast a despairing look at the barren vegetable patch.

Is there something you can make to sell? Something that doesn't require growing anything?

"I don't know – I can't think of anything – "

"Morning, everyone!" Bobo's bright voice rang out across the yard as the bamboo viper slithered towards us. Although her ignorant cheerfulness should have been obnoxious, it actually worked.

Forcing a smile, Mistress Jek said, as much to herself as the rest of us, "Well, no use standing around idle. We can think about it and talk over dinner."

Noticing the tension at last, Bobo swiveled her head between Mistress and Master Jek before cocking it at me. "What happened? Is Taila okay?"

Well, for now. For the rest of this week, anyway.

The Baron raised the rent, I explained. By three silvers. They have to pay it in one week.

Bobo emitted a high-pitched hiss that echoed Mistress Jek's.

Three silvers. Back when I ran the empire, I'd calculated costs in golds. Now, though – I hadn't seen so much as one silver coin since I reincarnated here. The only coins I'd seen anyone use were coppers.

Master Jek, did the baron raise the rent on everyone?

I expected the answer to be yes, in which case the Jeks could speak to their neighbors, select a committee of representatives, and go to the castle to negotiate a lower rent hike.