The True Confessions of a Nine-Tailed Fox

Chapter 91: Testing This Whole Honesty Thing

"Urp! Mage Koh!"

"Grandmother?!"

"Mistress, these children are raising an unholy ruckus over that sparrow. If it's so much trouble, I will cook it and be done with it."

Cook me.... No, cooking me would be bad.... I struggled to open my eyesh, to fly away, but the room shpun in dizzying streaks of color. I was drunk. Drunk from eating too much fermented rice cake. I'd feel...I'd feel...what was the word? Outraged. I'd feel outraged if I weren't so nauseated instead. Marinating myself for the cookpot wouldn't be the dumbest way to die, but I didn't want to. Not when I was finally getting shomewhere in Lychee Grove.

I fought to clear my head and focus on the shituation. Situation.

Missa's voice spoke again, closer this time. "Lodia, let me have a look at her."

The hands closed around me more tightly. "But Grandmother!"

"Lodia. I will not ask again."

"Erm, Mage Koh," Katu tried, "it's really, really better if you just let it be – "

By concentrating hard and pushing away the dizziness, I resolved an image of the young man inserting himself between me and the mage. That was brave of him. I wouldn't stand between a mage and, well, anyone.

"Len Katulus."

Two words were all Missa needed to say. Katu moved aside, Lodia's fingers unfolded, and I squinted up at the mage. She already had a crimson seal stamp between her eyes.

That was bad.

I spread my wings halfway, and flapped, and fell over.

"Shhh," soothed Missa. Her cool hands lifted me out of Lodia's palms and raised me to eye level. "Shhh, Pip. This isn't going to hurt, I promise."

Yeah, I knew. If she wrung my neck fast enough, I wouldn't feel it at all. I wouldn't even know until forty-nine days later, when I woke up inside an archival box.

The last time she'd examined me with magically-enhanced vision, she'd thought that I was a normal sparrow, and she was performing a basic medical scan. I couldn't tell what she was doing this time, but it had to be more. After what felt like an eternity, she returned me to Lodia.

Whew. No neck wringing. Not yet, anyway.

Then she asked, "Why do you say she's a spirit?"

Scuffing sounds came from around where Katu's foot should be. I was just grateful that Lodia was holding still. If she jostled me, I was going to throw up all over her hands.

The cook was the one who answered. "Because I heard her laughing, didn't I? Just rolling around on a rice cake that I made – " I didn't have to open my eyes to sense her disgust – "laughing her head off. I heard her talking too, from the stairs. If that's not a spirit, what is?"

"Except," said Missa's calm voice, "it isn't."

Lodia squeaked. Katu flinched. And the cook said, "Then all the more reason to kill it. It's an abomination unto Heaven."

An abomination? Me? She was the abomination, for wanting to murder innocent creatures just because they enjoyed her food! Shouldn't she be flattered that anyone would enjoy her food so much? Given that she cooked for a living?

It was the last time I was going to eat a white sugar rice cake. Those things were cursed.

However, I did have the presence of mind to stay silent. If all Missa had gotten from her scan was that I had the body of a normal bird, and if Lodia and Katu held out and pretended that I was one, then I could still get away with it. Surely no one would trust the word of a servant over that of her social superiors.