She’s going to kill me, Sphaera thought. Lady Piri is going to kill me. No, worse – she’s going to disown me. And then – and then –
That was where her imagination always failed her. She couldn’t imagine what innovative torment Lady Piri would devise to punish a five-tailed fox to whom she had entrusted the great task of reunifying the Serican Empire, to whom she had sent one of her own loyal servants – and who had let that servant die. And not just die from disease or accident or in battle against a demon, but die at the hands of the extension of Heaven on Earth!
The Water Court of the Western Sea had seized the sparrow’s body and refused to return it for burial. So when Lady Piri sent her guards to demand answers, Sphaera couldn’t even take them to see a grand funerary monument or summon witnesses to describe the lavish funeral.
I am dead, she wailed to herself. So, so, so dead!
“Did you hear that?” Steelfang’s question broke into her thoughts. Next to her, the great wolf lifted his head and inhaled deeply.
Sphaera let her human-shaped ears transform back into fox ears, but prick them as she might, she didn’t hear anything unusual. The wind rattled the long, stiff leaves of the screwpines. The waves crashed on the rocks. Irate gulls squawked. She sniffed, like Steelfang, but didn’t shift her nose into a fox’s. Too jarring on a human face.
“I don’t hear or smell anything – ”
“Show yourself!” Steelfang barked. His hackles bristled with hairs gone pointy as needles, and his lips pulled back from gleaming steel teeth.
Although Sphaera could have sworn that coconut palm trunks were too narrow to hide anyone, an old man hobbled out from behind one. The tip of his cane skidded over the ground, and his left foot twisted grotesquely sideways. His right shoulder was higher than the left, and tufts of white hair showcased the old-age spots that speckled his scalp. Repulsed, Sphaera took a step back.
Steelfang inserted himself between her and the hideous old man. “Identify yourself! How dare you accost the Empress of Serica without permission?”
The old man stopped his forward lurch and leaned on his cane. He even smelled bad, like an apothecary shop full of rancid herbs. “Beg pardon, valiant protector, gracious majesty.” The words were courteous enough, but something gave Sphaera the impression that they were all in lower case. “I am the humble Hermit on the Hill.” This time, the capitalization was unmistakable.
“There is no hermit on that hill,” Steelfang growled. “You don’t think the villagers would have told us if there were? What are you playing at, beggar?”
The old man’s eyes flashed. For an instant, so brief that Sphaera thought she might have imagined it, a golden presence seemed to press down on her. Then it was gone as if it had never been.
Mildly, the old man remarked, “Keeping to oneself and not interacting with one’s neighbors is the hallmark of a hermit.”
“Yes, well, whoever you are,” Sphaera broke in, “what is your business with us? State it, or be off.”
She hoped her dismissive attitude would prick his pride into unveiling that golden power again, but his control didn’t slip. Or perhaps there had never been any power for him to control in the first place. Perhaps she had imagined it.
“Gracious majesty, I have come only to offer you some words of wisdom, distilled from my years of solitary meditation.”
Did he feel like a human who’d survived a hundred years and transformed into a spirit, or, as they liked to style themselves, an immortal? It had been a while since Sphaera had eaten the last one, so she wasn’t sure. Immortals had a tendency to barricade themselves in their caves, which was how they survived the vicissitudes of human and spirit politics long enough to awaken. Then they either stayed barricaded or were recruited into the Heavenly Bureaucracy. Either way, you didn’t see them wandering around on Earth very often.
She wondered how this one tasted.
“Don’t dawdle,” snapped Steelfang. “If you have something to say, say it.”
“Very well then.” The old man couldn’t straighten his back, but he tilted his chin up until he resembled a tortoise spirit that was still adjusting to human form. “Sphaera Algarum, why have you remained blind to the threat before your very eyes? Just as there cannot be two suns in the sky, there cannot be two supreme powers on Earth.”
“Has someone else proclaimed herself empress?” Serica was so very large, and Flying Fish Village so very isolated. It could very well have happened without any of them knowing it.
“She has in all but name. No, rather, she has proclaimed herself the true mistress of all Serica.” Sphaera knew where the old man was going even before he concluded, “For she has arrogated to herself the right to proclaim emperors and empresses.”
Koh Lodia. That ridiculously-titled “Matriarch” of the Temple to the Kitchen God. Whom Lady Piri kept around as one of the many powers she could play off against one another, Sphaera herself included. It rankled. It shouldn’t, but it did.
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“You know nothing, old man,” she snapped. “She is part of the Great Plan.”
“Do I know nothing? Piri would never have allowed the threat to flourish as you have.”
“Do you know Lady Piri?” Sphaera asked before she could stop herself. “Do you serve her too? Was she the one who sent you to warn me?”
“Yes.”
“She does not blame me for her servant’s death, then?” It was a test—she wasn’t quite so gullible as to believe every old man who hobbled up, claiming to serve her idol.
“The sparrow served its purpose.”
He knew about the sparrow. He really did come from Lady Piri, then. Relief made all five of Sphaera’s tails flop to the ground. With an effort, she raised them and fanned them out behind her.
He added, with a twist of his lips, “It was getting too uppity anyway,” and Sphaera absolutely agreed. Who was a sparrow to order around a fox?
“Greatness lies before you, Sphaera Algarum, if you would but stretch out your hand to grasp it. Eliminate those who would stand in your path. And always remember: There cannot be two suns in the sky.”
With that, Lady Piri’s emissary hobbled back around the coconut palm and vanished.
“There cannot be two suns in the sky,” Sphaera repeated to herself. “There cannot be two suns in the sky.”
“Do you really believe he serves Lady Piri?” Steelfang asked.
“He knew about the sparrow.”
“The secret might have spread. The villagers certainly knew she wasn’t an ordinary bird.”
“They don’t have any mages among them. There’s no way they could have told the difference between a spirit and a — whatever she was.”
“But the hostages could tell. They might have talked.”
“What are you saying? That the hermit was a fraud? A particularly powerful mage masquerading as an immortal?”
Steelfang shook his head. “He was definitely something. I don’t know if he were a spirit, but he wasn’t mortal.”
“I wouldn’t expect a servant of Lady Piri to be.”
But Sphaera was thinking. Steelfang was a canny old wolf, and one of the few members of her retinue who weren’t in love with her. It was why she kept him by her side. She trusted him to stay clear eyed and keen nosed when the others were tripping over their own paws to fawn on her.
“Well,” she said at last, “even if he were a fraud, he only confirmed what I already knew. Koh Lodia needs to go.”
What would Lady Piri do? How would Lady Piri assassinate an inconvenient rival?
With art and elegance, obviously, but Sphaera didn’t have a palatial setting to work with. All she had were screwpines, coconut palms, shacks in pits in the ground, and a group of villagers who had grown unfortunately fond of the girl. Lodia had wormed her way into their good graces by helping with the mending and weaving and designing of new patterns for their cloth. She was even teaching a class on advanced embroidery stitches better suited to silk than whatever coarse fibers they spun here.
Well, she had been teaching an advanced embroidery class. Since losing her spectacles in the ocean, the girl had been as blind as a mortal bat, minus the mortal bat’s echolocation abilities. That had to be an exploitable weakness. Sphaera stored it in her mind and watched for an appropriate setting in which to exploit it.
When Steelfang returned from a stroll with that handsome young villager, Cornelius, one day and mentioned the spectacular view from some bluffs overlooking the ocean, she had her setting. All it took was questioning Steelfang about his date in One Ear’s hearing. The younger wolf, who’d bonded with Lady Piri’s snake and crane servants after their fight against the joro spider demon, trotted right off to describe the view to the snake. With much oohing and aahing and lisping, the snake suggested a picnic to the crane, the mage, and the horse. The mage consulted the mini dragon on whether the bluffs were high enough to avoid triggering another Water Court attack. He and the mage took their own romantic stroll to “investigate” the location, after which the mini dragon approved it for a picnic.
A picnic in the winter. What a ridiculous idea. Sphaera was careful to voice vociferous opposition to such an unfashionably unseasonable activity and to be seen yielding with only the greatest reluctance to the snake’s entreaties.
After that, a whisper to her rosefinch handmaidens, a whisper from them to their hostages, and everything was set.
There cannot be two suns in the sky.
----------------------------------------
The day of the picnic dawned cloudy and grey, much to Sphaera’s apparent distress. She allowed herself to be “coaxed” into her litter and carried out to the bluffs. She even deigned to nibble on some dried flying fish while observing the others. Koh Lodia was walking gingerly, head down and eyes squinted to make sure she didn’t trip over any loose stones or tufts of weeds.
Sphaera casually fanned her tails, a signal to the hostages. The young demons raced each other along the bluffs, shouting and play-fighting.
“Wowee! Look at that!” bellowed the joro spider. He dangled his head and front two pairs of legs over the edge of the cliff.
“Outta the way! Let me see!” The wild boar shouldered the spider aside even though there was plenty of space and stuck his own head over the edge. “Woah!”
“I wanna see too! I wanna see too!” The gopher squirmed between the wild boar’s front hooves.
As intended, their clamor drew the whole picnic party’s attention.
“What are you all staring at?” demanded the horse. He skidded to a halt next to them. “Whoa!”
Naturally, the mage rushed over with her sketchbook next. “That’s so beautiful!”
“Careful!” warned the mini dragon, positioning himself behind her so he could grab her if she fell.
The snake and crane joined them next to admire what Sphaera had been informed was an impressive view of blue-grey waves crashing on the hoodoo stones below. Finally, unable to suppress her curiosity, Lodia crept to the cliff edge and squinted down. She didn’t say anything, which could have meant that she couldn’t see clearly enough to contribute to the discussion, or that she was simply too shy to offer her own opinion. This timid mouse thought she could be the second sun in the sky?
Sphaera yawned. “What’s all the fuss?” she asked her handmaidens.
That was her second signal to the hostages. Right on cue, the wild boar squealed, “I’m going cliff diving!” and made as if to leap off the edge.
The gopher squeaked and scrambled sideways, fouling up the wild boar’s legs so they tumbled into the joro spider. Down they all went, yelling and waving their many, varied legs. The boar’s hoof snagged on Lodia’s skirt and yanked. She stumbled forward and tripped over the spider, who screamed with convincing panic, “Don’t squash me!” While she was flailing her arms, trying to catch her balance, a well-timed jerk of the wild boar’s head sent his snout crashing into the backs of her knees.
“Oh no!” shouted the gopher. He pretended to grab for her foot, miss, and rip off her slipper instead.
Over the edge tumbled Koh Lodia. Her scream drifted back up as she hurtled towards the rocks below. Since everyone else was busy clustering around the edge of the cliff and yelling, Sphaera didn’t bother to hide her smirk.