They didn’t need to walk far for Ren’s final lesson. The crumbling plaster walls were only three blocks south of the Dragon God’s shrine, and Kuro could already see them from the river.

But the walls weren’t enough. Ren deserved the full effect, even if it meant trekking to the samurai-infested Merchant Road.

Kuro swept his eyes over the human passersby for double swords and top knots, even as the scent of cooked meat stirred his stomach. For all Kuro knew, the two retainers could still be chasing shadows around the merchants’ quarter. But only a dead fox didn’t keep an eye peeled, especially when approaching Merchant Road, the busiest and most prestigious shops in the Capital. Samurai wouldn’t stoop to shopping anywhere else.

Ren bounced behind Kuro, as enthusiastic as a fox kit promised inari-zushi. And just like an inexperienced kit, Ren stared at a collapsed roof with claw marks slicing through the terracotta shingles, and the long line for the rice shop next door. A merchant man, judging by his kimono, growled at the shop owner, “You’re out of rice? How can you be out?”

“Rice shipments have stopped.” The shop owner raised his hands in a useless attempt to placate him. “And His Excellency, the First Lord Shogun, has chosen to fix prices.”

“I wonder why.” Both merchants glared at the samurai-rank lady behind them in line.

“Shh!” The shop owner’s wife leaned over to her husband. “You wouldn’t want to be exiled like Minagawa.”

Kuro rolled his eyes and, gripping Ren’s elbow, pulled him around the corner.

Ren stumbled. His pulse pounded in his throat. “Why are we here?”

Kuro swept out his arm, gesturing to the front gates of the Imperial Palace. For one thousand years, the Imperial Palace was the jewel of the Empire. The bulwarks towered over the surrounding shops, with the gilded main gates rising even higher.

Or rather, the palace had been the crown jewel, before the Shogun had wrested control of the government forty years before.

Since then, the plaster had cracked and the cypress thatching had rotted. Three of the gold fittings topping the gates had been pilfered. And at the foot of the gates knelt the most infamous beggars in the Empire: the Imperial family.

After forty years of near-destitution, the dowager empress and the two princesses had still not realised they begged in the mud. Piled under layers of silk and doused with perfume, they bowed their heads with a placid smile as if they attended a poetry recital.

The begging bowls they held up were worth more than the incomes of the passing samurai. The samurai, merchants and artisans averted their eyes in case the Imperial family noticed them. As if nobles would lower themselves to actually look at mere commoners.

Two low-ranked samurai guarded them, when they weren’t too busy yawning or eyeing the passing women.

Kuro raised his arm an inch higher. “The Sun Prince isn’t going to reward you. He’s as poor as you claim to be. The Shogun made sure of that.”

“The Sun Prince—”

“—is locked away in his compound, playing prince as if he still matters,” Kuro finished.

“He matters.”

Poor, deluded Ren. Kuro had long since been cured of such ignorance. “The Imperial family hasn’t mattered since the Shogun claimed the government and cut off the Imperial family’s purse-strings. They have to beg in the streets if they want to eat.”

Ren pretended to study the naked stone where the plaster had crumbled.

“They wouldn’t turn their noses up at perfectly good fish just because it was a week off. Well, maybe that snob of a prince would. He’s not the one begging in the streets. If he was, he’d have sold off some of those precious silks—”

“They’re Imperial treasures,” Ren said.

So Ren did know something. “Fancy words like that don’t mean much when you’re starving.”

“The Shogun will increase the Imperial family’s budget as soon as the rice famine ends.”

Kuro bit his knuckles to keep from laughing. “Next you’ll say the Shogun plans to enthrone the Sun Prince.”

“He is,” he insisted.

“It’s been three years since the last emperor died.”

“Three years of famine,” Ren said.

“And three years of no emperor to challenge the Shogun’s power.”

Ren pressed his lips together.

“If you’re going to live here, then you need to catch up on the gossip,” Kuro said. “Even we lowly spirits have heard.”

“Then you heard wrong.”

“What, you mean the entire city is wrong?” Kuro shrugged, then withdrew the last mochi cake from his robes. He should keep it for himself. He had the fish for the next day, but despite what Kuro had said, he’d rather leave them in the ground if he could. The mochi went down with a lot less gagging.

Yet, Kuro found himself darting past the dowager empress’ lowered eyes, to approach the two princesses.

For decades, the dowager empress had only conceived daughters. Most of them were sequestered by the Shogun in one abbey or another throughout the Empire, leaving the two youngest in the household. No matter what Ren thought, the Shogun must have been delighted as girl after girl was announced. Only a direct male heir could ascend to the throne.

Then, after everyone assumed the empress barren in her old age, she gave birth to Sun Prince. A gift from their ancestress deity, the Sun Goddess, or so the rumours went. But the Shogun would still win in the end. The prince would never be able to afford the enthronement ceremony himself, not if the Shogun had anything to say about it, and so the line of emperors died with his father.

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He dropped the mochi in the princess’ bowl. She didn’t move. Her outer and inner kimono were folded the same way, like on a corpse. Creepy.

“You’re welcome,” Kuro said.

The princess blinked slowly. No wonder the humans ignored them. Who wanted to give up their precious food to a living corpse who couldn’t bother to even thank him?

Sneaking past the dowager empress, he returned to Ren’s side.

Ren’s eyes had softened, the brown glowing from sunlight. “You’re actually very kind to humans.”

“No, I’m not.” Kuro punched him in the shoulder. “Take it back!”

He rubbed his shoulder. “For a fox.”

Kuro flipped a look over his shoulder. “I suppose it’s a mercy for the commoners that the prince doesn’t come out to beg. I know I always count it a good day when my eyes don’t boil in my head just for glancing at the Sun Prince.”

Ren stared at the fence again.

“Because the Imperial family is descended from the Sun Goddess.”

He still didn’t acknowledge him.

Kuro prodded him. “You’re not going to claim the prince must be helping the demons because he’s only half-human?”

He jerked.

“Because he is. Half-human, I mean.”

Ren turned back, tilting his head to the side and meeting Kuro’s eyes. “I think you like me.”

“What would give you that impression?”

“You haven’t left.”

“Only because I wanted to make sure I destroyed all your hopes and dreams.”

Ren snorted. “Like Nurarihyon stomps on yours?”

Kuro drew back, brow pinched. “That’s not fair.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Mine are actually possible.”

“So are mine.” He winked.

What was that wink supposed to mean? He wasn’t joking. Kuro folded his arms. Wait, wink? He pushed Ren up against the bulwark. Ren blushed as Kuro leaned close. “Say, Ren.”

He tensed, lips pursed.

“You wouldn’t happen to be a foreigner, now, would you?”

He coughed. “A foreigner?”

“Sneaking into the Capital from across the sea, hiding under the Shogun’s nose.” More interesting than a merchant’s son. “A foreign lordling who’s inept father lost his entire fortune to gambling, and now your only hope is to sneak into the Capital to smuggle goods out. And that is why you care about the Undesirables.”

Ren burst out laughing. Kuro couldn’t help grinning in response. The human looked so much more vibrant, more alive. Okay, so maybe Kuro had been feeling a teensy bit guilty about breaking Ren’s soul. But only a little bit.

“I’ve caught on to your nefarious scheme,” he added.

He wiped his eyes. “I don’t know where to start.”

“So I’m right.” That explained how Ren seemed to know less than any human toddler, despite being four times as tall. But on the other hand, the samurai would pursue a foreigner as hard as any demon. Kuro stepped back.

Ren pointed to his nose. “Do I look like a foreigner?”

“You look like you don’t belong.”

“You never saw any likeness? Any sketches?”

“Who would have? The Shogun closed the borders forty years ago.” Kuro had still had his juvenile fur coat then.

“I’ve read about them,” Ren said.

Kuro narrowed his eyes. So he could read.

“Foreigners have yellow hair and walk on the balls of their feet.”

He screwed his eyes shut and tried to imagine. “They’re dog demons!” Whole lands of dog demons beyond the borders. No wonder the Shogun had closed the borders.

“Perhaps,” Ren said, sounding more amused than alarmed. But humans were stupid about dogs. When they should have been putting them all down, they raised them to hunt after demons. “I’d like to go there, one day.”

“Why?” Kuro demanded. “There’s dog demons.”

Ren smiled wider. “And see the empire. The bamboo forests. The frozen northern island. The jungles in the south.”

A grin spread across Kuro’s cheeks. “I can show you something better than bamboo.”

His eyes brightened, and leaned closer to Kuro. “What is it?”

“Come with me.”

“You won’t tell me?”

“It’s a secret.”

Any spirit in their right mind would have hesitated. A strange fox offering to take him someplace special, but refused to tell him what it was. And he would have been right to hesitate. But Ren nodded, a bounce to his step as Kuro led him down a side street. Ren would regret following him, so the least Kuro could do was not rub his broken ideals in his face again by forcing him past the Imperial family.

Half-regret, as Kuro had never met a human male in his life who regretted spending a night in the pleasure district. The only thing he’d regret would be drinking too much that he gave up his purse to Kuro and passed out before the ladies fawning over him could take him to a private room.

Ren would probably even want to thank Kuro for distracting him from his mission of getting eaten by demons. What was one small purse compared to that? One small purse he could probably refill as soon as he returned to his family home.

Still, his feet dragged on the ground as they turned onto Merchant Road. And then things deteriorated from there.

Kuro yanked Ren into the shelter of a pungent pickle stand.

“Kuro—”

“Quiet.” He stared through the crowds of humans to two familiar human heads.

Swords sheathed but still a threat, they stormed toward Kuro. Kuro ducked behind Ren’s shoulders. They hadn’t seen Ren crouching on top of the storehouse.

“You!” Mister Caterpillar snapped.

Damn it. Just when Kuro’s fortunes had been looking up. He tensed, readying to abandon Ren and his purse to save his hide, when a female voice answered. “E-excuse—”

“Don’t play dumb, fox.”

Kuro peeked over Ren’s shoulder in time to see the retainer grab the collar of a girl. Or young woman. Hard to tell. She wore the kimono of a Shogun’s servant. Had the heat of the chase fried the retainers’ brains?

“I-I—” The woman waved her hands in front of her when words failed.

“Impersonating a servant of the Shogun,” Mister Squash said. “That’s an extra charge. You’re under arrest.”

“B-but—” The woman didn’t even seem to be able to speak more than a single word.

Why would they think this girl, out of the hordes of humans around, was Kuro? Any idiot could smell the girl’s fear and humanity spiking the air, even through the perfume of cooking miso and grilled meats. “But she’s human.”

Ren glanced back at him, looking faintly surprised. “You looked like her, when you were a woman.”

“I did?”

“You don’t know?”

As if Kuro had the funds to buy a mirror. Transformation was half-instinct, and half his tail popping out at inappropriate times.

Mister Caterpillar threw the girl to the ground and stomped on her back. The surrounding humans all drew away, watching around corners of their kimono sleeves, whispering to each other.

Mister Squat drew his sword, pointing the tip next to her cheek. “Break your transformation.”

The woman raised her head to glimpse the sword, and squeaked.

“But she can’t,” Kuro whispered. He tightened his fingers on Ren’s shoulder.

“What are they doing?” Ren asked.

The moment was not the best time for another lesson of very obvious things. “They’ll arrest her and take her to the closest precinct. They’ll ask her to reveal her fox form.”

“So she’ll tell them she’s not a fox.”

“Even if she could manage to utter two words, which she hasn’t so far, they wouldn’t believe her. They’ll torture her until either she does or she dies.”

Ren hissed in a breath. Even he didn’t need Kuro to explain that a human wouldn’t survive such torture. “That’s barbaric.”

“That’s life,” Kuro hissed. “Life under your precious Shogun.”

Mister Squash yanked her hands behind her back. With a human arrest, they’d have summoned their commoner employees to do the physical work of taking her in. But with a fox, a samurai would get a special reward and commendation. They’d polish their reputation with the blood of that girl.

“P-please, I’m not—” the girl managed to squeak.

“You should have chosen a better disguise,” Mister Squash said. “Parading around with the same face you tried to trick us with is pathetic.”

Kuro squeezed his eyes shut. This was all his fault. He hadn’t known his housewife disguise looked like anyone. But now she was going to be tortured in Kuro’s place. If Kuro revealed himself, though, he’d be trapped. The surrounding crowd was too thick for Kuro to run through. He’d be the one tortured.

But if he didn’t—

Kuro’s hands lost his grip on Ren’s shoulders as Ren stepped forward. Ren shrugged off the cotton-wrapped instrument from his shoulder and ripped off the cloth. Kuro’s eyes bulged. That was no instrument.

“Unhand her.” Ren held the lacquered sheath in two hands and drew the sword. He had a sword. A sword, where just anyone could see it.

Was Ren insane?