Flicker obviously did not want to leave me alone with Aurelia.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to tear out her heart, braise it, stick it on a skewer, and munch it while strolling through a market, I informed him at the same time that Aurelia said, “Have no fear, Flicker. I have no intention of doing any untoward to a soul in your care.”

Neither my snark nor her gentle smile seemed to reassure him. He eyed both of us as he stood, smoothed his robes, and walked down to the lake, casting many a wary glance over his shoulder.

What does he think we’re going to do? I asked, half-amused and half-exasperated. Get into a physical fight in the middle of a garden? Your pointy nails against my blobby appendages?

With an effort, I stretched out a piece of myself and waved.

“My starlight against your soul glow?” she suggested.

Silver light against black. What would that look like? Besides a crushing defeat for me, I meant. No way could a Black-Tier soul stand up to a star goddess.

“That was not a challenge to a duel, Piri,” she warned, and the moment we’d shared was gone.

I would never have mistaken it as such, I replied with as much dignity as a floppy dome on a garden bench could muster. But you wished to speak to me, my lady? Perhaps it would be best to do so before his absence is noted?

The muscles under Aurelia’s jaw worked. “Must you turn everything into a threat against those I love, Piri?”

I was scanning the garden, searching for a higher perch that would bring me to eye level with her. Inferring her facial expressions from the underside of her chin and the side of her jaw was not conducive to controlling this conversation. That was why it took several moments for her question to register.

A threat?

I wracked my memory. If I’d had eyelids, I’d have blinked multiple times in rapid succession to show how perplexed I was. When did I threaten her loved ones? (Recently, I meant.)

“Yes, a threat. You just threatened to expose Flicker, did you not?”

A tilt of her head indicated the clerk by the water’s edge. His back was angled squarely at us, demonstrating just how hard he absolutely was not eavesdropping. It might have been more convincing if he hadn’t been holding so still, as if the faintest rustle of fabric might cover our voices.

Oh, Flicker. You still have so much to learn.

I beg your pardon, my lady. I do not believe I threatened him. It was certainly not my intention to do so.

“Good. So long as we are understood on that point.”

If I’d had arms, I’d have flung them up in frustration. This was why I’d always hated interacting with Aurelia. No matter what I did, she jumped to the worst possible conclusion. Compliment Cassia Prima’s gown? I was making a veiled insult. Smile at Cassius Secundus? I was trying to seduce not only the father, but also the son. Take Cassia Quarta to the top of my pagoda so we could enjoy the view over the roofs of the capital? I was corrupting her, or plotting to push her over the railing, or planning to devour her as a mid-afternoon snack.

Sometimes – not always, I’d be the first to admit, but sometimes – a compliment was just a compliment. A smile was just a smile. And a tea party on top of a pagoda was just a way to entertain both myself and a rambunctious fox kit of a child.

I have no intention of harming Flicker, I told Aurelia, suddenly very tired. The raw ache of my barely-healed soul pulsed, and all I wanted to do was end this conversation and return to my box for a good, long rest. It’s up to you whether you believe me, but if you keep us out too long, you’re going to be the one who gets him in trouble.

Her sleeves rippled. She’d just balled her hands into fists. “Why must you throw everything I say back in my face?”

Why must you?

I was tempted to list all the occasions on which she’d done just that, but in the interest of a peaceful, speedy exit, I refrained. I sighed at the same time she did.

Shall we start this conversation over?

I imagined her shutting her eyes before opening them with resolve. The same resolve with which she’d faced her execution.

“Yes. I think we’d better, hadn’t we?”

Yes.

Look at us, agreeing on something.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t for the life of me think of a second subject we might discuss safely. Flicker wanted us to commiserate over our treatment at Cassius’ hands, but that would dredge up too many memories of our time on Earth. Flicker himself might have been a reasonable topic, but Aurelia had already made it clear that she’d interpret anything I said as an attack.

Think, Piri! What did you talk to her about in the palace in Dawn Song?

Fashion, but mostly as a way to subtly insult her appearance. Aurelia hadn’t become Empress because of her flawless features, and after bearing so many children, her figure had been, well, best not to think about it.

What else had we talked about?

The gardens and the palace grounds, but mostly as a way to demonstrate my superior taste and to hint at upcoming renovations. In my defense, the palace had been laid out in a boring, grid-like pattern. I’d brought the verve and sparkle of the Wilds.

All right. That meant complimenting the Garden of Eternal Spring was also out. What else had we talked about?

Stolen novel; please report.

Aurelia had attempted to ensnare me on affairs of state, and I’d made a game of slipping out of her grasp. I’d insinuated that an empress shouldn’t presume upon the Prime Minister, that she shouldn’t worry her not-so-pretty-little-soon-to-be-uncrowned head about it, because I had matters well in paw. Which I would still argue I did – just not in the way she meant or Lady Fate intended.

Ah, well.

The moon is very bright tonight, isn’t it? I asked at last.

Surely that was a second thing we could agree on. Surely she wouldn’t interpret that as a snide comment on the garden, or a reference to the drunken poet who’d drowned while trying to embrace the moon’s reflection, or a threat to push Flicker into the lake....

“It is indeed,” she replied, taking the remark in the neutral spirit in which it was meant.

Whew. That worked. Now what could I follow it up with?

I met a young lady on Earth who would love to embroider this scene. I could picture Lodia instead of Aurelia next to me on this bench. She’d be squinting through her lenses and frowning in concentration as she memorized all the details that might be useful later. You should take a look at her work sometime. Anthea wears it nearly exclusively now.

Inwardly, I winced at the mention of a courtier we’d both known, one who’d been firmly in Aurelia’s camp, no less.

Aurelia, however, answered in a determinedly idle tone, “Ah yes, dear Anthea. I haven’t checked on her in a while. How is she doing?”

That question was a lot more fraught coming from her than from anyone else in Heaven or on Earth. I thought carefully about how to answer. She’s doing well, for the most part. She is the close confidante of Queen Jullia of South Serica. That was touching too close on the role Anthea had played in Cassius and Aurelia’s court, so I backed away. She’s been most generous in championing the Temple to the Kitchen God.

If Flicker hadn’t already told her about it, I’d eat my whole file.

“Yes, I had heard about that.” Aurelia’s tone gave away nothing about what she thought of it. “It’s been the talk of Heaven.”

Well, I’d been lamenting my lack of information on Heavenly politics, hadn’t I? Here I went.

I’m flattered that the gods have taken note of our feeble efforts to better serve them.

She picked up on the plural, as I’d counted on her to. “Them? Is it not a temple dedicated solely to the Kitchen God?”

I tilted from side to side, letting my domed top shimmer in the moonlight. It is for now. But I’ve been receiving indications that other gods might be interested. The altar is wide enough for more than one.

“Which gods?” Her wary neutrality vanished, and at her sharp tone, I released a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. Now I was back on familiar ground.

The ones I know of right now are the Goddess of Life – and the Star of Heavenly Joy.

She recoiled as if I’d flown up and slapped myself across her cheek.

But I imagine there are more.

“Yes. Yes. There would be.”

Are there any of whom I should be aware? Our goal for the Temple is not to side with any god in particular but to serve Heaven as a whole.

Aurelia looked straight at me for the first time. For all that the underside of her jaw had been hard to read, her face wasn’t much better. “Why? Forgive me for my bluntness, but you’ve never struck me as the devout servitor-of-the-gods type. Not even when you were serving Lady Fate.”

Allied with Lady Fate, I corrected mentally, but out loud I answered, I’m not going to pretend I am. We’re past such pretenses, you and I. But I’m currently allied with people who are devout servitors, and this appears to be the most mutually beneficial path forward.

“Path forward to what? What’s your endgame, Piri? Why do all this when you could enjoy life as a pampered pet?”

Why do all this? I repeated incredulously. Because I look like this! Forgetting, I made to raise my wings before I recalled that I wasn’t a sparrow anymore. Or a rat. Although those lives were so short that I didn’t think they counted. I am a FOX. I refuse to be anything other than a fox. And if I have to turn all of Earth into an altar to Heaven to reincarnate as a fox again, then Kitchen God help me, I will!

Somehow, that declaration failed to smooth the crease in her brow. “But why? I know your curriculum vitae – ”

Privacy regulations, anyone? I muttered, but she ignored that.

“ – and your very first incarnation on Earth wasn’t as a fox. You were an – ”

Don’t tell me! I don’t want to know! Some things should be kept mysterious, shrouded by the mists of time and myth and legend and plain old mortal forgetfulness!

“ – an ant,” she finished, not without relish. “After your soul was birthed from a piece of five-colored jade – as all souls are, in case you were wondering – you were incarnated in White Tier as an ant. A worker ant. Not the queen of the anthill.”

Noooooo! I flattened myself across the bench in an attempt to smear my hearing. Don’t tell me! I don’t want to know!

“It took you many lives and many centuries to advance up the Tiers, until you reincarnated as a fox that happened to survive long enough to awaken, and then happened to survive long enough to sprout an extra eight tails.”

She made my glossy, silky, fluffy tails sound like napa cabbages. “Sprout” indeed!

“So you see, Piri, there’s nothing inherently ‘fox’ in your soul. You might have awakened as anything. In fact, I believe you nearly awakened as a mouse-deer once.”

A what???

“A mouse-deer. A diminutive, deer-like creature native to South Serica. They are quite ‘cute’.”

The word “cute” didn’t roll off her tongue. I doubted Aurelia had ever applied it to anything or anyone, including her own offspring. Then again, her older children had been pompous mini-adults, and Cassia Quarta had been a muddy ball of chaos so, no, “cute” did not apply.

“So I must wonder, why are you so obsessed with a form that you took once by chance?”

Chance, or fate? I retorted, to buy myself time to think.

Why did I identify so strongly as a fox? I couldn’t remember my earliest lives, the ones before my first awakening, but I believed her when she said that I’d only been born as a fox once. I’d lived many more lives as a catfish or a sparrow, or even as a rat.

Was it that I’d lived longest as a fox? For over a thousand years? Surely a thousand years was long enough to solidify the core of your being, no matter what experiences you had afterwards.

Was it that I’d delighted in my form as a fox, that once I’d developed the ability to transform into a human, I’d experimented with and tweaked my appearance until I achieved the sublime?

Or was it that I’d been robbed of that form, robbed of choice in my form, by the whims of Heaven? I hadn’t been the only fox demon in the Wilds. Lady Fate could have picked any of the others, and she might have gotten the result she wanted, with Marcius deposing Cassius and taking the throne. I might be ruling the Jade Mountains in my nine-tailed resplendence even now. It all came down to chance, and it wasn’t fair. Fairness had never entered into Heaven’s equation.

Yes. That was why. I was a fox because I chose to be a fox, and no one, not even the Jade Emperor himself, could take that from me.

“ – not so powerful as she pretends,” Aurelia was saying, and my non-existent ears perked up.

I beg your pardon, I was contemplating the answer to your earlier question and missed what you just said.

“I said, between you and me, I don’t think Lady Fate is quite as powerful as she pretends. When it comes to divining the future, anyway. Although, when it comes to sheer political might....”

I’ve always wondered, does she create fate, or read it?

“She leaves it mysterious, but I’d guess mostly the latter. She may have some ability to twist fate, but she certainly doesn’t control it. Hence my earlier use of the word ‘chance’.”

I had picked up on that, but I’d been too busy pondering the nature of my fox-ness to pursue it.

“I’ve answered your question, Piri, so now answer mine: Why are you so attached to reincarnating as a fox?”

I thought of explaining my thought processes, but we weren’t that close, and I neither felt like sharing them nor believed that she’d be interested. In the end, there was really one answer anyway: Because I feel like I’m a fox, and I’m stubborn.