The morning of the battle dawned clear and bright, with an endless, cloudless blue sky stretching above the capital. The sunlight blazed off the gold disks on the belt around Katu’s waist, and glinted off the gold thread in the embroidery all over his robes. The butterfly spirits who fluttered about his head and shoulders seemed to glow.

Once again, the High Priest of the Kitchen God stood atop a platform that raised him on high and brought him closer to Heaven and the Divine Intercessor as whose Voice he served. (Well, mostly so the terrified residents of the capital could get a good view of him.)

Just as we had during the Battle of Black Sand Creek, Stripey and I flew overhead, monitoring the situation from above. Most of Goldhill had poured into the streets, squeezing themselves in shoulder to shoulder, to await the arrival of the demon army, and to see whether they would be saved or devoured.

I found the silence eerie. The spectators at the Battle of Lychee Grove hadn’t been this quiet. I almost wished some hawkers would start shoving their way through the crowd to selling fresh steamed buns or something, even if any disturbance risked a stampede or another riot.

Unwilling or, more accurately, unable to do anything that might signal less than complete confidence in the outcome, Jullia had opted to await the outcome in her throne room, with Anthea by her side. Having failed one empress, the raccoon dog seemed determined not to fail this queen. Such was her resolve that she’d even let us buy all the gold leaf we wanted to adorn Katu’s platform.

All we’re missing is a giant catfish, Stripey commented, startling me out of admiring the effect.

You can joke about that?!

Certainly no one who’d witnessed his death could, and I’d have expected it to be even more traumatic for the one who was crushed to death between Lord Silurus’ steel teeth. That was no joke of an end: I could personally attest to that.

But Stripey only shrugged his wings, less dramatically than usual since he was using them to fly. Sure, why not?

But he killed you! He ate you!

It happens. He was faster, or I wasn’t fast enough. It is what it is.

Maybe, a former bandit was more forgiving or blasé about death, but that certainly wasn’t how I saw it. I thought it was completely unacceptable that anyone had killed one of my friends, and I took great pleasure in picturing Lord Silurus reincarnating life after life as a tapeworm. He would never rise again. If I ever took over Heaven, I’d make sure of it.

In the meantime, I had to make sure that today’s miracle proceeded as planned.

There they come! Stripey pointed a wing to the west.

A dark cloud of flying demons blocked out the sun. In their shadow, their landbound comrades swept over the rice paddies like a tidal wave.

Time to tell the others! Folding my wings, I dove down at the platform, calling, They’re coming! They’re coming!

My friends – and it really was only my friends who were out here, braving the demon horde along with me – erupted into action. Lodia bustled around Katu, fussing over the hang of his robes one last time. The butterflies beat their wings, raising a breeze that swirled his cape and gave our audience a good view of the Kitchen God’s origin story embroidered on the back of his robes.

“Dusty!” Floridiana called as she flicked open her dish of seal paste and prepared her seal. “Are you ready?”

“I am not Dusty, but The Valiant Prince of the Victorious Whirlwind, Vanquisher of Invaders!”

“Hear, hear,” intoned the bear spirits who stood shoulder to shoulder behind him.

“Don’t encourage him,” Floridiana chided them. “How am I going to get him to go back to pulling my wagon?”

With their spirit hearing, they must have heard that, but they ignored her.

The serow spirit, Miss Caprina, lifted one front hoof to paw anxiously at the earth, but Bobo draped a soothing coil over her shoulders. “It’ll be okay. Rosssie – I mean Pip – knows what ssshe’s doing. You’ll sssee.”

Although Bobo was great for morale, she really wasn’t a fighter, and I’d have preferred for her to stay in the palace with Anthea and Jullia. However, the bamboo viper had flat-out refused to be left behind while her friends fought (and hopefully didn’t die) this time.

My steward, Camphorus Unus, approached me with a stately tread, as if he were advancing towards the front door of the Temple to admit welcome guests. The tree spirit had opted to join us for reasons he didn’t feel a need to share, which was all right. I didn’t need his life story – just his competence.

“The star sprite desires me to inform you that he is prepared,” he stated.

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Underneath the platform, hidden by the tapestries that I’d commandeered from the palace, Flicker awaited his literal moment to shine.

And somewhere in the distance, in the midst of that churning mass of fur and scales and hooves and feathers, the foxling awaited her moment to, well, not shine.

All my pieces were in place.

All that was left to do was play them.

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Not more further now. Between the heads of her litter bearers, Sphaera could see a stage in an empty field, with a human man in glittering robes upon it. He stood poised, like a poet about to declaim an epic. That must be the “High Priest” that Lady Piri’s representative had told her about.

Sphaera glanced around, checking on her fellow demons. Up ahead, the yak had his horns raised high and proud. A dark shadow passed over her – the vulture gliding by on silent wings. The peacock shook out his mesmerizing tail, and the manul started a rumbling purr that vibrated the earth. Trotting past the litter, the wolf met her eyes and bared his jagged steel fangs in a big grin.

Sphaera smiled back sweetly. “Let’s make this good.”

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“The demons are here, Your Majesty!” reported a palace messenger, looking shaky. “They’re all around the city and – and over it too.”

Anthea saw Jullie’s fingers tighten on the armrests of her throne, but the Queen remained as calm as if she’d just been told that dinner was running a few minutes late. (Well, Jullie tended to stay calm about minor delays to her meals. If it were Piri, on the other hand….)

“I’ll go take a look outside, shall I?” Anthea suggested.

“Yes! Go!” snapped the Earl of Black Crag before Jullie could answer.

Unlike his niece, he was flexing his fingers, gripping and releasing the hilt of his sword, on the verge of leaping off the dais and charging out of the city to challenge the demon leaders to single combat. As if battles still worked that way! The man was more of an anachronism than Piri herself.

Anthea waited for Jullie to incline her head before she moved. Unlike the Earl, she respected the Queen’s authority. With royal permission, she pattered out of the throne room and into a hallway. There, she peered out a latticed window, heart pounding, half expecting to come face-to-face with a demon.

What she saw was so much worse. Even though it had been a bright, clear morning when she arrived at the palace, now it was as dark as dusk. A mass of wings and claws roiled in overhead for as far as she could see, covering the sky. Occasional rays of sunlight lanced through gaps between wings and bodies and struck the ground in ever-shifting spots. One ray nearly blinded her, and she yelped and jumped back.

Distant battle cries drifted to her ears, too far away for even a spirit to make out the words. A thump in the courtyard. Anthea did shriek then. But unlike on normal days, no servants rushed to her aid. Most of them were cowering in their quarters, too terrified to perform their duties.

For a long moment, Anthea stayed frozen, trembling from the tips of her ears to the end of her tail. Mad thoughts tumbled through her head. The demons broke through. Piri’s plan failed. Piri betrayed her. Piri was helping the demons take over the capital right now, and Anthea and Jullie were trapped inside the palace with no way out. They were going to burn to death, just like poor Cassius.

A second thud, this time above her head, on the roof. A clatter of roof tiles, and then a feathery body, wet with blood, fell past the window to crash into the peony bed.

A body! A dead body! Right in front of her!

All of the sudden, the world was a whole lot bigger. Silk pooled around her. Anthea blinked and realized that she was on all fours, in full raccoon dog form. When had that happened?

A scraping noise, right on the other side of the wall. She could hear it. The demon who’d fallen off the roof wasn’t dead. It was dragging itself up along the wall. It was going to grab the windowsill. It was going to haul itself up, snap the latticework with one bite, and lunge at her –

“Tell the Queen…,” croaked a voice.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaah!” Anthea’s scream echoed down the empty hallway.

“Tell the Queen…tell…her….”

Wait. That wasn’t a demon. A demon wouldn’t say that. Or…would it?

Steeling herself, Anthea unballed herself and carefully, carefully stood up on her hind legs until her eyes cleared the windowsill.

A wingtip clung weakly to the other side of the sill, on the other side of the unbroken lattice. Even as she watched, it lost its grip and vanished. She raised her head higher until she could peer down at the broken, bloody form of one of the palace guards.

“Tell…Queen…,” he rasped. “Tell…her….”

“Tell her what?” Anthea called down. “Tell the Queen what?”

But the bird’s eyes were glassy. It wasn’t even clear that he registered her presence. “Tell….”

And then he gave a long sigh and stopped moving.

“Tell her what?! What’s going on?! You can’t just die on me! Die after you tell me!” Anthea shrieked at his body.

She stared wildly around the dark courtyard, making out the familiar shapes of trees, shrubs, benches, bridges – demon! Her heart nearly leaped out of her chest, but no, it was just a newly-planted iron palm, its spiky fronds waving in the breeze.

More forms were dropping from the sky, all over the city, landing on the roofs and the spectators. Cries rose from the streets. They were going to riot, any moment now.

The plan had failed. The capital would fall. The capital was falling. She had trusted Piri – why had she trusted Piri? When would she ever learn not to trust Piri? And now Anthea had failed yet another ruler.

“No. This is not the City of Dawn Song.”

Somehow, saying the words out loud brought her back to herself. She didn’t have to stand by and watch another ruler die. Even if Jullie lost her crown today, she didn’t need to lose her life.

Because this time – this time, Anthea would do something.

Sucking in a long, shaky breath, she focused her mind and transformed back into human shape. It was hard and took longer than usual, and finally, when she thought she was done, she noticed patches of fur on her arms. Grimly, she forced them to vanish under her skin. The ears and tail she left. They were fine. This was good enough.

Seizing her skirts in both fists and crushing the silk, she broke into a run.

“Jullie! Jullie! We have to leave! Now!”

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It’s coming along beautifully, I observed, puffing up my chest and poking Stripey with one wing and Bobo with the other. Just look at that!

Land demons howled. The ground quaked. Cracks ripped themselves open in the earth and grated shut. Over our heads, the flying demons massed in the sky to cover it like a thunderstorm. The glint of the gold disks and thread on Katu’s robes and the glitter of the butterflies’ wings petered out. Behind us, wails rose as the residents of the city watched their doom approach. All the earth lay in shadow and despair, and all that stood between the people and utter destruction was the Temple to the Kitchen God.

It was perfect.

Ah, how I loved it when things went according to my plan!