The children were, indeed, in the river.
Or, to be more precise, jumping up and down on a path of dry riverbed and waving at the fish in the water that towered on either side. Some of the fish waved awkwardly back.
"What in the names of all the gods?" Floridiana grumbled.
Dusty prodded her hair with his nose. "Don't you mean 'in the name of the Divine Intercessor?"
"Piri's not around. I can say whatever I please." For all her tartness, she did feel a slight twinge.
She squashed it and approached the river. The parted waters reminded her of the first time she'd come here, when the farmers of the Claymouth Barony had hired her to bargain with the Dragon King of Black Sand Creek for rain. A dry strip of riverbed had appeared then too, leading straight from the riverbank to the gates of the Water Court.
This current path, however, didn't pass anywhere near the Water Court. It meandered along the center of the river before it curved back to the riverbank. There, a familiar figure stood with her arms crossed while she waited for the children to finish their educational tour of the river.
Floridiana broke into a trot, then a jog, and finally, abandoning any attempts at dignity, an outright run. "Vanny! Vanny! I'm back!"
Jek Lom Vannia, her first friend and confidante here, assistant at the school, and, not incidentally, mother to Taila and her brothers, spun. "Flori!"
The two crashed into each other in a big bear hug, laughing and crying and interrupting each other with questions until Dusty whuffled at Vanny's hair and asked, "Is the Water Court of Black Sand Creek running the school now?"
Vanny stepped back and wiped her eyes with a sleeve. Clean, new cotton, Floridiana noted automatically. It was a definite improvement from the stained rags that the Jeks had once worn, but a jarringly far cry from the fine linen and embroidered silks she'd grown accustomed to seeing in Goldhill.
By the Kitchen God, Piri was rubbing off on her!
To distract herself from that thought, Floridiana repeated Dusty's question. "Did King Yulus or Prime Minister Nagi take over the school in my absence?"
Her chest constricted. She felt a sense of – she wasn't sure what it was. Hope? Apprehension? ...Hurt?
Because if they didn't need her here....
"Nope," Vanny replied in her blunt way, and Floridiana sighed. With relief that she and Dusty hadn't wasted an arduous journey, of course. Then her friend added, "King Den did."
"Den took over the school?"
Try as she might, Floridiana could not imagine her other friend and confidant playing headmaster. How would he even get the students to obey him? He was a dragon, true, and possessed control over water and weather that human mages would never attain, but he just wasn't very imposing. Floridiana tried to picture the little dragon bellowing at a class of unruly children to "Settle down!" – and failed.
"Yup," confirmed Vanny, but she then had to qualify it with, "Well, sort of. King Den has been kind enough to organize field trips for the students to see more of the world."
"To see more of the world?" Floridiana parroted in disbelief. "Where has he been taking them?"
"Nowhere so far as that! He just wants them to see that there's more than just their farms or the village shops. So last time, he talked to the Baron's second son and convinced him to let Seneschal Anasius take the students on a tour of the castle."
YOU ARE READING
The True Confessions of a Nine-Tailed Fox
FantasyAfter Piri the nine-tailed fox follows an order from Heaven to destroy a dynasty, she finds herself on trial in Heaven for that very act. Executed by the gods for the "crime," she is cast into the cycle of reincarnation, starting at the very bottom...
