The True Confessions of a Nine-Tailed Fox

Chapter 160: A Three-Legged, One-Tailed, Two-Winged Combat

Sing a song?! But she had to know that sparrows weren't songbirds, right? Everyone knew that sparrows weren't songbirds, even a joro spider demon – oh. Right. Silly me.

There was no earthly reason that the song needed to pass through my mortal sparrow throat. It wasn't as if my speaking "voice" did. It was just that it had been so long since I had sung anything. When had the last time been? In Cassius' court, to be sure. But on what occasion?

Aurelia's birthday. Her final birthday.

Unbeknownst to her – or, most likely, beknownst to her, if not to most of the court – I'd already gathered the backing I needed to eliminate her. Cassius had long since tired of her nagging, her staunch ally Marcius was dead, and anyone in her family who might have saved her had been executed or exiled to southern Serica. The empress was isolated, a lonely rock in a sea of my people, and she'd known it. Perhaps that was why she'd "invited" me to perform a song and dance in her honor at her birthday celebration – one final, futile flail in her last days on the throne.

She'd meant it as a humiliation – the Prime Minister of the Serican Empire, singing and dancing in public like a common songstress? Oh, the shame! Oh, the disgrace! Oh, the reminder to all with eyes to see and ears to hear of what (she thought) I truly was!

Instead, I'd embraced the role. She wanted a public spectacle? She got a public spectacle. I'd imported peasants from the most remote corners of the Empire and commanded them to sing their harvest songs and dance their harvest dances, barefoot and out of tune and jingling with bells, right in the middle of the throne room. After them, I'd ordered townsfolk from all the major cities to perform their dragon and lion dances and wail out songs from their local operas that sounded off-key and uncanny and raised goosebumps on every human and the hackles on every furred spirit present. Some of the tree spirits had even started losing leaves. After the townsfolk had come the opera and dance troupes of the capital, with their trained voices and polished choreography and long, swooshing silken sleeves.

Finally, after they had flourished out their conclusion, it had been my turn.

I had descended from on high like a goddess, poised on a simple children's swing, clad in blinding white silk, seemingly born on a cloud of nightingale spirits and plum blossoms in every shade of red and pink. While the nightingales trilled to cover the winch's creak, the swing had lowered me until my eyes were level with Aurelia's, which, since she was seated on the throne and I was standing on the swing, meant I was still lower than she was and technically was adhering to court protocol. The way her hands tensed in her lap told me that she knew otherwise, though.

Never taking my eyes off hers, I had begun to swing back and forth, the motion blowing the fine silk like snow flurries around me. The collective inhalation from all present (minus Aurelia) had been as gratifying as it had been expected.

The nightingales had fallen silent, and as all the courtiers and performers held their breaths, I had sung a simple children's song about riding into the snow on a donkey to pick plum blossoms. Like all children's songs, it was a short one. It hadn't taken long to sing at all. I had repeated it once, still holding Aurelia's gaze, and then the swing had raised me back up in a cloud of nightingale wings and plum blossom petals while all eyes followed my ascent.

I hadn't heard a single exhaled breath in the throne room until I had vanished from view. And even then, no one had cheered or applauded as they had after the earlier performances. It was as if I had invited them into a fantasy wonderland and they feared that speaking would shatter it.

When I had first appeared above her, Aurelia's eyes had narrowed on my white silk. She had known as well as I did that white, in addition to evoking the hue of fresh snow, was Serica's funerary color.