The True Confessions of a Nine-Tailed Fox

Chapter 102: Why Does No One Trust Me?

" – So many! Do you think Her Majesty ordered it? Because if so – "

"She must have ordered it. That's her uncle camped in the forest – "

"But that doesn't necessarily mean that she ordered him to do it. It is Black Crag, after all – "

Tense voices spilled out the lattice windows of Ancemus' study, reaching the ears of not only me and the sparrows, but also a flock of butterfly spirits who were fluttering their wings on nearby lotus blossoms. Supposedly they had just been "passing by on an urgent task," but if anyone were actually waiting for them, they had a long wait ahead. Those butterflies weren't going anywhere.

The Earl of Black Crag? Is he known for being impulsive? I whispered to my new entourage. We'd claimed a nice camelia bush right under a window.

The sparrows bobbed their heads, and the butterflies twitched their antennae.

"Oh yes. Very impulsive."

"He's very young. Even for a human."

"He's not that young. Even for a human. He must be in his forties by now. His father died young in the War, so he inherited young."

A bright blue butterfly fanned her wings open and shut slowly. "Oh, really? It feels like just yesterday."

"Nah, thou'rt just getting old, Granny," said the butterfly next to her – and then dodged a wing-smack.

Seriously, these spirits were every bit as bad as those human gran'pas and grannies who lounged about in front of the wine shop, the ones Katu liked to argue with. They had the attention spans of, well, butterflies.

But why would the Earl of Black Crag want to attack us?

At the question, all the servants exchanged glances, either unwilling to spell it out, or unsure of how to explain it. In the end, it was the boldest of the sparrows who answered.

"Well, I've only heard talk...but it sounds like he thinks the nobility is too independent. He wants to – to centralize power. Like how it was back in the Empire."

At the mention of the Empire and centralization of power, my ears metaphorically perked up. I, too, had been appalled that Lychee Grove minted its own coins. What self-respecting monarch allowed their nobles to mint their own coins? Next thing you knew, you'd need currency conversions just crossing from one fief to another – and how was the royal treasury supposed to assess taxes anyway? It wasn't like you could take the nobles' word for how much their currency was worth!

I must have said some of that out loud, because the sparrow answered matter-of-factly, "Oh no, we don't use coins for that. We pay taxes in rice."

Rice?! You use a rice standard?

"What's wrong with that? Everybody plants rice."

But – but – I sputtered, unable to articulate why a rice standard was such a terrible idea. (Stripey could have expounded upon the topic in detail – but Stripey wasn't here.) Don't you plant different kinds of rice across the kingdom or something? Doesn't the quality vary from crop to crop? How do you even convert between different kinds of rice? And isn't it a pain to lug around when you're shopping?

All of them looked blank.

"That's why we have coins...," one of the other sparrows ventured.

So you use your own coins in your own fief, and then when you go to a different fief, you take rice to spend?