The True Confessions of a Nine-Tailed Fox

Chapter 178: There Cannot Be Two Suns in the Sky

She's going to kill me, Sphaera thought. Lady Piri is going to kill me. No, worse – she's going to disown me. And then – and then –

That was where her imagination always failed her. She couldn't imagine what innovative torment Lady Piri would devise to punish a five-tailed fox to whom she had entrusted the great task of reunifying the Serican Empire, to whom she had sent one of her own loyal servants – and who had let that servant die. And not just die from disease or accident or in battle against a demon, but die at the hands of the extension of Heaven on Earth!

The Water Court of the Western Sea had seized the sparrow's body and refused to return it for burial. So when Lady Piri sent her guards to demand answers, Sphaera couldn't even take them to see a grand funerary monument or summon witnesses to describe the lavish funeral.

I am dead, she wailed to herself. So, so, so dead!

"Did you hear that?" Steelfang's question broke into her thoughts. Next to her, the great wolf lifted his head and inhaled deeply.

Sphaera let her human-shaped ears transform back into fox ears, but prick them as she might, she didn't hear anything unusual. The wind rattled the long, stiff leaves of the screwpines. The waves crashed on the rocks. Irate gulls squawked. She sniffed, like Steelfang, but didn't shift her nose into a fox's. Too jarring on a human face.

"I don't hear or smell anything – "

"Show yourself!" Steelfang barked. His hackles bristled with hairs gone pointy as needles, and his lips pulled back from gleaming steel teeth.

Although Sphaera could have sworn that coconut palm trunks were too narrow to hide anyone, an old man hobbled out from behind one. The tip of his cane skidded over the ground, and his left foot twisted grotesquely sideways. His right shoulder was higher than the left, and tufts of white hair showcased the old-age spots that speckled his scalp. Repulsed, Sphaera took a step back.

Steelfang inserted himself between her and the hideous old man. "Identify yourself! How dare you accost the Empress of Serica without permission?"

The old man stopped his forward lurch and leaned on his cane. He even smelled bad, like an apothecary shop full of rancid herbs. "Beg pardon, valiant protector, gracious majesty." The words were courteous enough, but something gave Sphaera the impression that they were all in lower case. "I am the humble Hermit on the Hill." This time, the capitalization was unmistakable.

"There is no hermit on that hill," Steelfang growled. "You don't think the villagers would have told us if there were? What are you playing at, beggar?"

The old man's eyes flashed. For an instant, so brief that Sphaera thought she might have imagined it, a golden presence seemed to press down on her. Then it was gone as if it had never been.

Mildly, the old man remarked, "Keeping to oneself and not interacting with one's neighbors is the hallmark of a hermit."

"Yes, well, whoever you are," Sphaera broke in, "what is your business with us? State it, or be off."

She hoped her dismissive attitude would prick his pride into unveiling that golden power again, but his control didn't slip. Or perhaps there had never been any power for him to control in the first place. Perhaps she had imagined it.

"Gracious majesty, I have come only to offer you some words of wisdom, distilled from my years of solitary meditation."

Did he feel like a human who'd survived a hundred years and transformed into a spirit, or, as they liked to style themselves, an immortal? It had been a while since Sphaera had eaten the last one, so she wasn't sure. Immortals had a tendency to barricade themselves in their caves, which was how they survived the vicissitudes of human and spirit politics long enough to awaken. Then they either stayed barricaded or were recruited into the Heavenly Bureaucracy. Either way, you didn't see them wandering around on Earth very often.