Sing a song?! But she had to know that sparrows weren’t songbirds, right? Everyone knew that sparrows weren’t songbirds, even a joro spider demon – oh. Right. Silly me.

There was no earthly reason that the song needed to pass through my mortal sparrow throat. It wasn’t as if my speaking “voice” did. It was just that it had been so long since I had sung anything. When had the last time been? In Cassius’ court, to be sure. But on what occasion?

Aurelia’s birthday. Her final birthday.

Unbeknownst to her – or, most likely, beknownst to her, if not to most of the court – I’d already gathered the backing I needed to eliminate her. Cassius had long since tired of her nagging, her staunch ally Marcius was dead, and anyone in her family who might have saved her had been executed or exiled to southern Serica. The empress was isolated, a lonely rock in a sea of my people, and she’d known it. Perhaps that was why she’d “invited” me to perform a song and dance in her honor at her birthday celebration – one final, futile flail in her last days on the throne.

She’d meant it as a humiliation – the Prime Minister of the Serican Empire, singing and dancing in public like a common songstress? Oh, the shame! Oh, the disgrace! Oh, the reminder to all with eyes to see and ears to hear of what (she thought) I truly was!

Instead, I’d embraced the role. She wanted a public spectacle? She got a public spectacle. I’d imported peasants from the most remote corners of the Empire and commanded them to sing their harvest songs and dance their harvest dances, barefoot and out of tune and jingling with bells, right in the middle of the throne room. After them, I’d ordered townsfolk from all the major cities to perform their dragon and lion dances and wail out songs from their local operas that sounded off-key and uncanny and raised goosebumps on every human and the hackles on every furred spirit present. Some of the tree spirits had even started losing leaves. After the townsfolk had come the opera and dance troupes of the capital, with their trained voices and polished choreography and long, swooshing silken sleeves.

Finally, after they had flourished out their conclusion, it had been my turn.

I had descended from on high like a goddess, poised on a simple children’s swing, clad in blinding white silk, seemingly born on a cloud of nightingale spirits and plum blossoms in every shade of red and pink. While the nightingales trilled to cover the winch’s creak, the swing had lowered me until my eyes were level with Aurelia’s, which, since she was seated on the throne and I was standing on the swing, meant I was still lower than she was and technically was adhering to court protocol. The way her hands tensed in her lap told me that she knew otherwise, though.

Never taking my eyes off hers, I had begun to swing back and forth, the motion blowing the fine silk like snow flurries around me. The collective inhalation from all present (minus Aurelia) had been as gratifying as it had been expected.

The nightingales had fallen silent, and as all the courtiers and performers held their breaths, I had sung a simple children’s song about riding into the snow on a donkey to pick plum blossoms. Like all children’s songs, it was a short one. It hadn’t taken long to sing at all. I had repeated it once, still holding Aurelia’s gaze, and then the swing had raised me back up in a cloud of nightingale wings and plum blossom petals while all eyes followed my ascent.

I hadn’t heard a single exhaled breath in the throne room until I had vanished from view. And even then, no one had cheered or applauded as they had after the earlier performances. It was as if I had invited them into a fantasy wonderland and they feared that speaking would shatter it.

When I had first appeared above her, Aurelia’s eyes had narrowed on my white silk. She had known as well as I did that white, in addition to evoking the hue of fresh snow, was Serica’s funerary color.

It had been a very good birthday celebration performance, if I did say so myself.

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

“Sing! If you don’t start singing, I’m going to attack.”

The joro spider’s screech yanked me back to the present. I wasn’t in the throne room of the palace in the City of Dawn Song, clad in fine silks and fêted by the court. There was no silk here – at least none that came from silkworms – no birds but a single black-necked crane, and certainly no plum blossoms this time of year.

I didn’t need elaborate staging, though, to captivate an audience. My voice would more than suffice. And what more appropriate song than the one I’d sung just before I took down an empress?

One Ear’s back roiled under my claws, reminiscent of the gentle rise and fall of the swing beneath my slippered feet. I raised my wings as if I were holding onto the ribbons of the swing, and I opened my beak.

The snow has passed, the sky is clear,

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Plum blossom fragrance everywhere,

I ride my donkey across the bridge,

The bells chime ding-ding-dong.

Chime ding-dong, chime ding-dong

Chime ding-dong, chime ding-dong!

Beautiful blossoms in a vase,

With me while I read and play,

Oh what fun we have together!

As I said, it was a short song, but as soon as I finished the first round, singing it the way you would any innocent children’s song, I started over. The second time through, I altered the intonation to make it saucy, in a way Cassius would have appreciated.

Maybe he did appreciate it. Maybe he was looking down at us from Heaven right now.

The thought nearly made me shudder, so the third time through the song, I lowered my voice into a gravelly register. The words came out like a threat delivered from one warlord to another in an age of civil war. “I’ll be plotting your demise while this spray of flowers watches,” they warned.

Just like last time, my audience was captivated. The spiders tapped their feet in time to the music. Some swayed back and forth, and a couple even hummed along while their chieftain surveyed them with her eight beady eyes. Her face didn’t change expression – I didn’t think spider faces could change expression – but it didn’t need to. I could read her thoughts just fine.

The fourth time, I made the song lighthearted and mischievous. I conjured up the image of schoolchildren skipping class to ride off on their donkeys, snapping off sprigs of plum blossoms from their neighbors’ garden, and later staring vacantly at the vase instead of their textbooks.

The fourth time was the final time. Four was unlucky, the number that sounded like “death” in all dialects of Serican. It was appropriate. It was symbolic. It was also the largest number of ways I could concoct to make the song sound different.

In retrospect, maybe I should have picked a longer song. Practicality over poetry, and all that.

Well, too late now. I could only hope that I’d bought enough time for One Ear, Bobo, and Stripey to coordinate their three-legged, one-tailed, two-winged combat style. Holding the last note for as long as I could – which was theoretically indefinitely since I didn’t need actual breath to sing – I glanced at the three of them.

Stripey curved his wingtip into a thumbs-up sign.

“All ssset!” Bobo assured me.

“We got this,” rumbled One Ear.

I let the note trail off. In the heartbeat of silence that followed, I swept a bow to the assembled spiders. They pounded their feet in wild applause, and I bowed over and over.

“Enough!” snapped the chieftain, and their long, spindly legs froze. (Not literally.) Raising her body, she aimed her spinnerets at us and shot out a rope of silk.

“Left!” shouted One Ear.

She crouched and pushed off with her front legs at the same time that Bobo coiled and sprang sideways. Stripey flapped his wings, and all of us traveled sideways. The rope of silk flew over Stripey’s head and stuck to a tree trunk. With a growl, the chieftain released it.

Not bad! I praised the others.

“Told you we got this,” replied One Ear. “Rotate to face her!”

This time, she kept her front paws planted on the grass. Behind her, Bobo slithered and Stripey flew left, rotating the wolf’s body until her nose was pointed at the spider.

Hey, this is pretty good! You figured all of this out just now?

“Yep yep! Told you we’re all ssset!”

The spider chieftain also turned to face us. She lowered her head and opened her jaws wide, straight at One Ear’s snout.

Fire! I shrieked.

“Back!” shouted One Ear.

She sprang with her front legs while Bobo yanked on her hind legs and Stripey backwinged. This time, they weren’t quite as coordinated. One Ear pushed off with more force than Bobo pulled, sending the front half of the wolf flying back faster than her back half was moving. Her furry back slammed into me, traveling vertically, and then kept moving until it turned upside down. One Ear was going to land on me and crush me!

Heeeeeeelp!

Bobo! Pull! Now! Stripey yelled.

A violent jerk, and then One Ear’s back was arcing back the other way. She crashed onto the grass on her belly. The impact knocked the breath out of both of us.

“Sssorry! Sssorry sssorry sssorry! Are you okay?”

I moaned.

“On your feet, challenger!” bellowed the chieftain, and the watching spiders pounded their feet in a rhythm that shook the ground and rattled the leaves on the trees.

Wheezing, One Ear pushed herself back onto her front paws while Bobo gingerly raised her hind legs once more.

Are you okay? I asked the wolf. Anything broken?

Her head swung around. One golden eye glared at me sidelong. “Don’t insult me.”

Well, excuse me for showing any concern. So long as you can fight.

“Of course I can fight. Forward leap!”

This time, it was all Bobo. She coiled up on her tail and shot us forward while Stripey folded his wings and tucked himself against One Ear’s side to streamline our combined shape as much as possible. We sailed through the air.

One Ear’s jaws closed around the chieftain’s foreleg with a snap. The spider bellowed and tried to shake us off, but the wolf’s jaws were locked tight. She then punched us with her other feet, which didn’t faze One Ear, but Stripey grunted.

Let go before she breaks his ribs! I ordered.

One Ear opened her jaws, and we landed on the grass on two paws and one tail.

“Ssstripey! Are you okay?” cried Bobo.

Yeah. His voice came out as a rasp. Yeah, I’m fine.

“That was ssso mean!” she shouted past us. “Why would any ssspirit hurt a mortal animal?”

“A mortal ani– ” The spider chieftain took a closer look at Stripey and reared back. I imagined her eyes popping clean off her head from the shock. “He’s not – but he talks – what is he? What is she? What are both of them?!”

Thunderstruck murmurs ran around the ring of spectators as they finally took a good look at Stripey and me. What very observant and competent demons they were.

“If you kill them, you’ll never know,” snarled One Ear. “Forward leap!”

Bobo shot through the air, propelling the three of us in front of her. This time, we were aimed straight for the spider’s chest. She bent her eight legs in an attempt to duck, but Stripey had seen that coming. He beat his wings and corrected our course, pushing us down.

One Ear’s jaws closed on the spider’s waist.