“I’m sorry? Excuse me? Um, if you’re busy, I can come back later…,” squeaked a voice from the doorway. Lodia hovered there, torn between coming all the way into the room and fleeing.

Now that I thought about it, she’d been trying to get our attention for a while now – she’d just gotten drowned out by my newly-appointed High Priest’s theatrics.

Aforementioned High Priest recognized her voice at once – now that he could hear it. “Loddie! Thou hast come!” He spun around, flinging out his arms like a horizontal pinwheel.

I was going to have fix his carriage before I could exhibit him in public, wasn’t I?

It was going to be like my Honeysuckle Croft etiquette class all over again. Only this time, the audience would be more discerning and more appreciative of proper etiquette. Plus I’d adapt it to the times, so no one would accuse Katu of being possessed by a fox demon.

Hey, I could learn from past experiences. When I wanted to.

My costume designer was still lingering in the doorway, clutching a codex to her chest. “Hi Katu. Um, Pip, I sketched out some ideas…for the priests’ robes,” she specified, as if I would have forgotten, “but…you look busy, so I’ll just come back later….” And she started backing away.

No, no, no, now is fine. Bring it over and let’s have a look.

Before she could run away from having her work critiqued, I landed on her shoulder to lend her moral support. Floridiana cleared off a patch of space on her desk, and Lodia reluctantly set down the codex. Now that I got a closer look, it was made entirely from paper. The sheets inside were the same, thin rice paper that I’d seen in Lychee Grove, which Rohanus had said was so expensive that its use was restricted to official and religious purposes. The cover was a thicker, textured paper. I ran a wing over it, considering whether the craftsmen had left the texture because they lacked the technical expertise to press it flat, or whether it were meant to be an artistic statement. Since they’d also incorporated pink pressed-and-dried flower petals into the paper itself, I guessed it was the latter.

If the use of paper constituted ostentatious consumption in South Serica, then obviously I had to collect Katu’s poems into a paper codex. I could put on display in the main hall of the Temple.

“If I might…Pip?” Lodia hadn’t dared lay so much as a finger on the book while I was inspecting it.

Yes, go ahead. I hopped back.

Bobo, Floridiana, Katu, and even Dusty, who’d wandered in after Lodia (from the garden, to judge by the leaves he was chomping on) clustered around us. Lodia turned the cover with trembling hands.

The first page was coated with sketches of Anthea. Her head, from different angles. Her full body, in different poses. Her hands, dripping with rings and bracelets and bangles. The next few pages had sketches of gowns and patterns, with notes on the shades of silk and embroidery stitches.

Anthea must have been taking Lodia’s talent – or maybe just her own wardrobe – very seriously indeed, if her Junior Wardrobe Mistress got a whole paper notebook of her own in which to jot down design ideas. Once again, I congratulated myself on how well Lodia’s career was going.

If only the direction in which it was going weren’t towards beautifying Anthea.

Look at the difference I’ve made in this young human’s life, I consoled myself. Think of all the positive karma I’m earning.

It helped. A little. I still thought Lodia’s talent was wasted on the raccoon dog.

Ah, well. Necessary sacrifices.

The others were emitting the appropriate oohs and aahs over the sketches, which had the happy effect of steadying the girl’s nerves – but the unhappy effect of causing her to turn the pages more and more slowly.

These aren’t priest robes, are they? I asked on purpose to speed her up.

“Oh! Sorry! No, they aren’t, those are here….”

Lodia hastily skipped the next several pages – seriously, how many new outfits did Anthea need when she only had one body to hang them on? – until she finally came to a two-page spread of sketches for temple robes.

They were much less inspired than her designs for Anthea. From the overall design, Lodia had based them off paintings of Imperial court scenes. However, the paintings themselves must not have contained much detail, because the robes were disappointingly plain. They had the standard v-neck formed by crossing one side of the robe over the other and tying it in place with a cord or sash. The hem came down a little past knee length, over a pair of baggy trousers. She’d left the main part of the robe blank to indicate a solid color, and shaded in a band at the neckline to indicate a different solid color. The design for the Head Priest was only marginally better, with a floor-length hem and some sort of two-layered cape worn over the robe. Her sketches for the embroidery were boring geometric patterns copied straight out of historical paintings.

There was no spark in these designs. No life.

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From the carefully neutral expressions on everyone else’s faces and the way no one spoke, they agreed with me. And from the tears that began to well up in Lodia’s eyes, she could tell.

She could do better. I knew she could do better. She had already demonstrated that in the first section of her sketchbook, in her designs for Anthea. She just needed to carry that flair over to her designs for the priest robes.

But how to convey that to her without shredding her non-existent self-confidence and then setting the non-existent shreds on actually-existent fire?

While I pondered that conundrum, Floridiana took matters into her own hands. “I can see the effect you were going for, Lodia. You were trying to capture the dignity and solemnity of the Imperial court, weren’t you?”

The girl bobbed her head, grateful that someone understood her artistic intent. “Yes, yes, that’s what I was going for. I thought – because this is a temple – that the priests should look dignified and solemn, and I thought, what do people associate with dignity and solemnity? And it’s the Imperial court, so I thought, maybe the robes should look like that….”

I did approve of the sentiment. It was just that copying Cassius’ courtiers’ dress wholecloth (haha) and bringing it into the modern day didn’t feel right. I could picture these stodgy designs on Marcius and his mage scholars, but I could not imagine them on Katu.

Or rather, I could not imagine them looking good on Katu.

Everything about his personality and bearing was wrong. He’d look like a bad actor in a period costume that didn’t fit right.

No, as much as it pained me to admit, modern-day Sericans needed modern-day designs.

It’s a good idea, I said, filling my voice with as much encouragement as I could. Depending on whom we select as our priests, I can see these looking good on them. But actually, what we decided just before you walked in, was that Katu will be the Head Priest.

“Katu?!”

The love-poet-turned-Head-Priest puffed out his chest. “The one and only.”

So, you see, your design would look great on someone older – five hundred years older – but perhaps not on Katu.

In a flash, Lodia’s face cleared. “Oh, oh, yes, of course it wouldn’t.”

Tilting her head back, she ran an assessing gaze over Katu, viewing him not as a potential lover or even a childhood friend, but as the subject of her work. From the wry twist of his lips, he’d noticed that too.

“I see…. I see…. If it’s Katu, this design won’t work at all, it has to be completely different…. May I borrow your writing supplies?” she asked Floridiana abruptly.

“Yes, of course.” Floridiana gestured for Lodia to take her chair.

“Katu, please stand there.”

Showing much more confidence than we were used to seeing out of her, Lodia picked up Floridiana’s brush, dipped it into the inkstone, and started to sketch him.

Her new designs, with him as her muse, were much fresher and more original. They still weren’t quite up to my standards, but this time she was the one who said so. She left the Temple, lost in thought.

After seeing her concentrated efforts, Katu could only buckle down and get to work composing love poems to the Kitchen God.

It was a most productive day indeed.

----------------------------------------

Over the next week, Lodia and I went through dozens of rounds of revisions, followed by several rounds in which she sewed mockups of the priest robes using coarse, undyed cotton that we tested out on my household staff. The fit of the robes gave me the most headaches, because the tighter, streamlined shape that worked so well on young humans looked terrible on old humans. Either I was going to have to order robes first and then find priests who would look good in them, or I was going to have to find all my priests first and then have their robes made bespoke.

It was a true conundrum.

“Why can’t we ussse ssspirits as priesssts?” Bobo suggested. “Then they can change their body ssshapes to fit the robes.”

That would indeed have been the ideal solution. It was with true regret that I shook my head. Unfortunately, they have to be human.

“Why?” asked Dusty, perplexed. “I thought the Kitchen God isn’t just a god of humans. Doesn’t he watch over spirits too?”

Well, if we wanted to be accurate, the Kitchen God didn’t watch over anyone at all, because he was constantly trekking around scrounging up offerings on Earth.

“I don’t get it. Hey, Floridiana.” Dusty snuffled at the mage’s hair, leaving streaks of drool in it.

The mage didn’t answer either. She’d been in Honeysuckle Croft when those rock macaque ex-soldiers let slip that Heaven rewarded spirits for doing good for humans, so she knew why my priests had to be humans.

Bobo had also been there and should have known too, except that the bamboo viper was too naïve to have drawn the only possible conclusion: that I was maximizing all of our karma earnings by employing humans in such a capacity that they could maximize their karma earnings by presenting offerings directly to a god.

It was a bit convoluted.

Never mind that, Dusty. For various reasons that are too complicated to go into, the priests all have to be human.

“Oh. Okay.” Losing interest, the horse ambled back out into the garden to graze some more.

Baby spirits had such short attention spans. Still, in this case, it was to my advantage, so I didn’t complain about it. Much. And only inside my own head. I’d let the gardeners do the audible complaining to Floridiana.

Anyway, we still haven’t solved our problem. Do we make the robes to fit the humans, or do we find the humans to fit the robes?

Now that Floridiana had received a fresh reminder of how Temple work benefited her karma total too, she showed renewed interest in helping me. “How many priests are we planning to hire?”

A lot.

“Yes, but how many is ‘a lot’? Are we talking five? Ten? Twenty?”

“Twenty priesssts?!” Twenty priests?! Bobo and I yelped at the same time.

“That’s ssso many!” That’s not nearly enough! we yelped, again at the same time.

While Bobo stopped to blink at me, I went on, That’s AT LEAST an order of magnitude fewer than we need!

Floridiana’s eyes bulged out of their sockets. “An order of magnitude? Are you talking a hundred priests?”

More! We’ll definitely need more! We’re going to set up a Temple to the Kitchen God all over Serica, remember? That means we need a temple in every city and town, down to the last rural hamlet. And every temple is going to need a Head Priest and at least two or three regular priests serving under them.

(Because how could you call yourself a Head Priest if you weren’t the head of anyone?)

We need a map. Bobo, can you ask Camphorus Unus for a map of Serica, please?

“Yep!”

Before Bobo could go search for the steward, Floridiana put out a hand to block her. (It was purely symbolic. The snake could easily have slithered under it.) “Wait. All of Serica? I thought we were setting up a temple here in Goldhill. And then, if it’s successful, slowly expand to the next big city. When did we start talking about all of Serica?”

Sigh. The woman had no vision. It was why she’d stayed a traveling mage for so long, until I found her and turned her into the headmistress of an academy.

The Kitchen God is worshipped all over Serica, isn’t he? I reminded her patiently. Of course he needs a Serica-wide Temple.