“See that?” Kuro’s fingers dug into Ren’s wrist as he dragged him onto the grassy embankment. “See the total lack of storehouses? That is the Riverbank Settlement.”

The edge of the Capital was behind them, safe from the Dragon God’s occasional temper tantrums because of the steep bank. The Undesirables weren’t so lucky. The Shogun had banned them from living in the Capital. He, like Ren and other humans with rank, believed that the presence of Undesirables tainted them. Profaned their surroundings. To even look at an Undesirable could make them impure. So the Undesirables built rows of one-room shacks along the river and prayed that the Dragon God resisted creating a typhoon for one more day.

The Capital had once extended across the river, all the way to where the forest crept up. But that was in the old days, long before Ren had been born, and even before the Shogun seized power. Before the demons congregated in the surrounding forests and mountains, hunting for tasty little morsels, whether human or spirit. Now only half-burnt timbers and huge claw marks interrupted a mile of meadow.

Kuro continued, “So now you can totter off — what are you doing?”

Ren ran down the slope. Kuro stared as he slipped between two row houses onto the makeshift path.

Kuro slapped a hand over his eyes, gripping tight as he moved his hand away, as if that would remove any responsibility for Ren’s actions.

Perhaps a little tour would be good for Ren. He’d see how miserably the Undesirables lived and not find a single demon and then give up—

The fur on the back of Kuro’s neck stiffened. Except neutral spirits hid under and between shelters, since it was the only place in the Capital that didn’t have barrier gates at night. That’s where Kuro hid from the samurai.

“No one will come until sunset,” Kuro said to himself.

Unless chased by the samurai.

“They’d be stupid to linger here.”

Too often, spirits had no choice.

“As if Ren could confront a neutral spirit without getting beaten up.”

Even human boys could hurl stones. Stones broke bones. And telling the the samurai would end up with more broken bodies than that.

He glanced behind him at the city. Grilled meats would be lying out on food stalls just waiting for a clever fox to take them. If he left at that moment, none of the other spirits would know Kuro had led the pseudo-samurai to their hiding places. Kuro cringed and slid down the slope.

The settlement didn’t improve with proximity. Kuro covered his nose against the pungent odour of human scat. The breeze over the purified river helped, and in a few hours, he’d hardly notice at all, but every night he stalked into the settlement, the odour assaulted him afresh.

“Ren!” he called.

Ren strode between two of the nicer rowhouses, built on stilts to avoid the smaller floods, to the spirits’ delight. They cosied up under the floorboards, happy to have a proper den even if it was made of mud deep enough to bury a fox kit. Ren hopped onto the plank serving as a veranda and then actually poked his head inside.

On the other side of the row houses, amid piles of laundry, two women jerked up their shorn heads. Each had a rectangular scrap sewn onto their undyed yukata.

“Were you raised in a kennel?” Kuro demanded, marching up to him. “Don’t go poking into people’s houses.”

Ren’s brow crinkled. “People actually live here?”

Kuro ground his teeth together. “What’s so bad about it? They have a roof over their head, and planks to lift them off the mud. They have a cooking pot!”

Meanwhile, Kuro would pray he reached one of the good dens first, his stomach moaning while humans boiled millet. If he was less lucky, he’d huddle against one of the shacks at best, or get attacked by stray dogs at worst.

“But it’s so… There’s no tatami.” Ren entered — entered! — head bobbing as he searched the room. “Or is this a workshop? I’ve never been in one. But where are the tools?”

Kuro raised a brow. Spoiled. The perfect word to describe him. “Tatami are expensive.”

“Then where do they sleep?”

“Right there.” Kuro pointed around the hearth cut into the plank floor. Lucky for Ren he hadn’t stumbled into the shacks first, or he’d have had a stroke.

“But…” Ren turned around.

Kuro grabbed Ren’s collar and dragged him out and down the path. Ren even let him, trailing behind like he’d allowed his words to trail off. The first wise thing he’d done since they’d met.

A voice like a pickled plum called out from a veranda, “Ah, Kuro. Good afternoon!”

Kuro’s shoulders scrunched.

A spirit disguised as a pile of wrinkles and grey hair lifted a chipped teacup in greeting, ignoring as usual the way Kuro gagged.

Kuro released Ren and whirled on him. “What are you doing, Nurarihyon?”

The shrunken spirit chuckled. “Greeting an old friend.”

“In public?” Kuro already had the samurai retainers dogging him. He didn’t need any more trouble.

“Is that any way to treat an old man?”

“It’s the perfect way to treat an old thing who insists on dragging me into this spats with the samurai.”

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“Now, now.” Nurarihyon waved his hand.

Kuro rolled his eyes. Nurarihyon insisted the gesture was meant to placate him, but he always looked as if he was dismissing him.

Ren stopped next to Kuro, his smile once again plastered across his face. Was that a real smile, or was that his attempt at cunning? “Good afternoon, sir—”

Ren broke off and jumped in between Kuro and Nurarihyon, hands splayed at his side as if rallying for a fight. He’d apparently just noticed that while Nurarihyon otherwise looked like a stodgy old human, his skull extended behind him two feet longer than any human’s.

Kuro smacked his forehead. This was exactly what he’d wanted to avoid. “Ren.”

“Stay back,” Ren told Kuro, almost as if…

Kuro’s jaw dropped. As if Ren was protecting him, a spirit. From another spirit. He clutched his hands to his chest.

“Who’s your friend?” Nurarihyon asked, unconcerned that a human was threatening him.

Kuro shook off the stupid warmth in his chest. “He’s not a demon, Ren. He’s just a sad, decrepit spirit.”

Ren glanced at Kuro, but didn’t move out of the way.

Nurarihyon chuckled into his cup. “All one needs in life is a roof over one’s head and a cup full of tea.”

“A sad, decrepit spirit,” Kuro repeated. “Preying on the poor because he’s too much a coward to test his skills against a worthy opponent.”

“The nail that sticks out shall be hammered down.”

“But I’ll always pop back up.” Kuro thumped his chest with his hand. “Until I beat that hammer down.”

“Are you a fox or a tanuki now?”

Kuro groaned.

“Prey on the weak?” Ren asked, glancing between Kuro and the old spirit.

He was still on that? “He squats in human homes.”

Ren crinkled his brow. “This isn’t his?”

Only familiars had homes in the Capital, and none of them had to slum it in the Riverbank Settlement. “That’s his power. When he squats, humans always think the house is his, no matter how illogical it is, and when the owners return—”

“He eats them?” Ren asked.

“Worse!” Kuro threw up his hands. “They find out this mooch drank all their tea.”

“Then he eats them?”

Kuro sneered at the old spirit. “If only.”

“Humans are too tough for me.” Nurarihyon smiled, revealing gums and gaps where his teeth may have once been. If the spirit had ever been young, and not popped into existence a wizened old man.

“So the humans, still alive and completely intact, run to the samurai, where they mysteriously can’t remember what Nurarihyon looks like. But their neighbours always remember the fox he kept dragging into his business.”

“You do like to kick up a fuss over nothing,” Nurarihyon said.

“Over nothing?” Kuro raised his fists, ready to bludgeon the old spirit into submission. “I end up getting chased all over the Capital.”

“The exercise does you good. A much more appropriate pursuit than this godhood business.”

Kuro crossed his arms and looked away. His ambition was none of the spirit’s concern. Nurarihyon had lectured him too many times already. He thought Kuro was a red fox, shy of his true form. Spirits were spirits, familiars were familiars, and unless a fox’s coat turned white, they were squarely spirits. Too ordinary for any god to make their familiar.

But Kuro didn’t want to be a familiar. He didn’t want to spend the next millennium kowtowing to some deity — he was going to be that god. Then Nurarihyon would pay.

But Kuro couldn’t let things go. He tugged on Ren’s sleeve. “And you,” he said. “If you’re planning on hunting demons, then you should learn one thing before you go beating up innocent spirits: only demons eat humans. If they don’t eat humans, then they’re not a demon. Understand?”

“Demon hunting?” Nurarihyon waved his hand, but this time at Ren. “Why would a nice human like you want to involve yourself with demons?”

Kuro grinned, stepping around Ren to lean in with a fake-whisper. “He thinks Undesirables are sneaking demons across the barrier.”

The wisps of his brow disappeared into his hairline.

Grinding the words out like tea leaves on mortar, Ren said, “I admit I may have been missing some information.”

“Some?” Kuro laughed. “Some? How about everything?”

Ren braced Kuro before he bent over again. “But there must be some connection. My informant doesn’t get things wrong.”

“Oh sure, if by connection, you mean they’re hiding from the demons. But by that definition, you should interrogate everyone in town.”

Nurarihyon hacked into his fist. “You may be right.”

“Of course I’m right.” Kuro rolled his eyes.

“Not you,” he said. “Your human friend.”

“He’s not my—”

“What do you mean?” Ren stepped forward and when Nurarihyon gestured for him to sit, he knelt next to the old man. He didn’t even cough from the assault of decay and old man dust, but then maybe the settlement covered the stench.

“I don’t have friends,” Kuro insisted. “Especially human friends.” Friends meant weakness. A loophole to be exploited to take advantage of Kuro. If the friends didn’t turn on him first.

Neither acknowledged him. He might as well have ranted at the river, but at least the Dragon God would soak him to shut him up.

“Everyday, I spot at least a dozen humans attempting to swim across the river, or float on lumber. Some of them even make it across.”

Kuro shuddered. The Dragon God controlled the river, and he’d let humans and spirits swim across the river to reach safety. But the Shogun had taken issue with that. He’d closed the bridges and gates. Peasants should stay on their farms, he’d said. The Shogun ordered archers to kill anyone crossing the river.

Nurarihyon continued, “They’d rather die in the river than remain on their farms. Once they’re here, they’d rather die than leave the city again. The only humans who ever leave are the samurai, heavily armed to face the Night Parade in the forests and mountains.”

“So?” Kuro asked. The samurai hated the blight of the Riverbank Settlement, but since they refused to profane themselves, they couldn’t do anything to the Undesirables.

“I thought foxes were supposed to be clever.”

Kuro narrowed his eyes. He was clever, more clever than any fox alive.

Nurarihyon patted the jamb.

But Ren answered first. “Then where did the owners of this house go?”

Nurarihyon grinned at Ren. “Exactly. I only take a house when it’s left unoccupied. And these owners won’t be back.”

Kuro leaned against the pillar. That was true. Nurarihyon didn’t trick humans into letting him in, or eat them to claim their house. Undesirables kept pouring into the city, and while many ended up as bloody corpses swept down the river, others made it across. But the settlement hadn’t expanded. Not in years.

Inside the rowhouse, the pot remained on the hook, blankets piled against the wall, as if the owners had stepped out. But what Undesirable abandoned all their worldly possessions — abandoned such a luxurious house?

Kuro clenched his hands shut. Nurarihyon and Ren kept talking, as if Ren would care about a bunch of rankless humans disappearing. And Kuro stayed, as if he cared too.

“Whatever,” he said. “Demons probably sneak across the river at night and snack on them.”

“The barriers never used to waver so much,” Nurarihyon said. “But you’re too young to remember that. Those were good years, when Emperor Akajiro ascended.”

Ren clenched his hands on his knees. “The Sun Prince will save them.”

Kuro’s jaw dropped and his lips slip up as hilarity bubbled up his throat. “The prince? You think—”

A scrap of fish hit Ren’s cheek. It slid down, leaving a moist trail, and flopped onto his shoulder. His eyes widened, his nostrils flaring, as even a human’s dull sense of smell would be overwhelmed by week-old fish.

I whirled back to the washerwomen.

They held a basket between them, picking up slices and throwing them at them. “Begone, demons!”

“Leave us be!” We’re not demons, he wanted to scream, as if that would do any good. They pelted him in the forehead and chest.

“Ladies.” Ren held up his hands.

Kuro stiffened. The fish covered up the approaching scent, but logic filled in the rest. If Undesirables wasted precious food, it must be for only one reason.

Two stray dogs loped onto the street, staring up and whining at the women for a treat.

Kuro yipped, bouncing on his feet as his entire body sharpened. Ren stared, brow knit in his usual confusion.

The women pointed at Kuro and Ren. “Go get them. Go get them, boys.”

The dogs turned their heads, following the gesture. Then they smelled the fish. They smelled Kuro. They growled.

“Run!” Kuro dashed up the riverbank, praying he was at least faster than Ren.