The True Confessions of a Nine-Tailed Fox

Chapter 121: In Which I Am Insulted by Being Put on a Budget

For my extravagant follies? For MY extravagant follies? And on whose behalf had I launched this extensive, expensive project in the first place?!

Clenching my beak, I let Anthea rant until she exhausted herself. Then, while her shoulders heaved in the most unbecoming manner, I said coldly, Ungrateful child. You do realize that everything I have done has been to save YOUR furry neck, don't you?

"My. Furry. NECK?"

For a moment, I thought Anthea was going to fling the inkstone at me, and I ducked behind the stack of books. If that inkstone struck, it would crush my sparrow body.

As I peeked back out, some modicum of sanity returned to Anthea. She gripped the sides of her skirts, crumpling the fine silk beyond salvation, and she breathed in and out, in and out.

Taking advantage of her silence, I went on, Why do you think I've been working my wingtips TO THE BONE to establish this Kitchen God Temple? It was YOUR patron god who demanded that you increase the amount of offerings he receives, remember? It was YOU who had no idea how to accomplish that, remember? It was YOU who came begging me for help, remember?

Anthea's teeth were clenched as tightly as my beak had been. "What I remember is that 'twas YOU who came begging me to rescue your friends. 'Twas YOU who was so desperate that you were willing to swear an official oath to secure MY assistance."

Maybe that was true, but I trilled a light, bird's song of a laugh. Oh, no, no, dear Anthea, you mistake me. I never beg for anything. And are you not profiting handsomely off the oath we both swore?

Deliberately, I made her sound like the lowest merchant. I also omitted the part where I was amassing a mountain's worth of positive karma for myself and my friends from the project.

"Profiting?" she asked, incredulously.

Yes, profiting. You, I believe, thought only in terms of convincing Jullia to increase the amount of offerings that she personally makes to the Kitchen God. How disappointingly small in scope, although I suppose that is only to be expected. I, on the other hand, am building you an entire system that will stretch all over Serica, that exists solely for the purpose of dedicating offerings to the Kitchen God. When I am done, for as long as you live, every time he receives an offering from one of those temples, he will think of you.

(He wouldn't. He was a god. Divine memory was short, and divine gratitude short-lived.)

However, Anthea understood my logic and accepted the reality that I'd always had more vision than she. "Fine. I'll give you that. But you came up with the idea already. I don't need you to bankrupt me under the guise of implementing it."

That accusation came as a genuine surprise. My dear Anthea, you cannot possibly believe that I think about you so often as that.

"Ugh! Fine! So maybe you're not deliberately sabotaging me! But you are still on track to bankrupt me, on purpose or not. And let me assure you, that's not in your best interest either."

No, unfortunately, it was not. As much as I'd have liked to fling her words back into her bared teeth, I didn't have another funding source lined up. I could find one, of course, given enough time. It would be a challenge, since I'd have to work through and puppeteer my friends, but I was confident I could do it. It would just be gods-cursed inconvenient.

Especially now, when Floridiana and Dusty were in the middle of recruiting slum humans who would need to be fed and clothed and whatever else Camphorus Unus would need to do to make them presentable.