“He raised the rent by HOW MUCH?”

The shriek that rent the air on Settling Day could only have belonged to Mistress Jek, but I’d never heard that level of panic, not even when I announced that I was an emissary from Heaven and summoned Flicker to prove it. I was already halfway to Honeysuckle Croft from Caltrop Pond, so I tried to run the rest of the way there.

I succeeded at a fast waddle.

By the time I got close enough to see her, she’d already calmed down, or, rather, calmed down enough to stop shrieking and start hyperventilating instead. Master Jek was standing in the yard, head bowed, shoulders slumped, hat drooping from his hands, the very picture of defeat.

What happened? I called, lumbering out of the grasses. What’s going on with the rent?

Mistress Jek turned.

I’d seen that expression before – on the face of a mother fox when she returned to her den and discovered that a government minister had kidnapped all of her kits and skinned them for a fur coat. (They were very young kits, and it was a very small fur coat, as I saw when it appeared on my desk one day after lunch. But it was more than big enough to send a message, even if I didn’t interpret it the way he meant. He would be my first test human for the Burning Pillar.)

Mistress Jek now wore the same expression of shock and horror and disbelief and death-pain as the mother fox had. “He…the Baron…he raised our rent…,” she stuttered.

“By a third,” finished Master Jek through gritted teeth. “From ten silvers to thirteen. I just got back from the castle. I went to pay rent for this quarter, and the Seneschal told me. We have a week to pay what we owe.” He seemed less stunned, although he’d had the walk back from the castle to process it.

“We don’t have anything to sell. At the market. We can’t grow anything. It’s the middle of winter,” stammered Mistress Jek. She cast a despairing look at the barren vegetable patch.

Is there something you can make to sell? Something that doesn’t require growing anything?

“I don’t know – I can’t think of anything – ”

“Morning, everyone!” Bobo’s bright voice rang out across the yard as the bamboo viper slithered towards us. Although her ignorant cheerfulness should have been obnoxious, it actually worked.

Forcing a smile, Mistress Jek said, as much to herself as the rest of us, “Well, no use standing around idle. We can think about it and talk over dinner.”

Noticing the tension at last, Bobo swiveled her head between Mistress and Master Jek before cocking it at me. “What happened? Is Taila okay?”

Well, for now. For the rest of this week, anyway.

The Baron raised the rent, I explained. By three silvers. They have to pay it in one week.

Bobo emitted a high-pitched hiss that echoed Mistress Jek’s.

Three silvers. Back when I ran the empire, I’d calculated costs in golds. Now, though – I hadn’t seen so much as one silver coin since I reincarnated here. The only coins I’d seen anyone use were coppers.

Master Jek, did the baron raise the rent on everyone?

I expected the answer to be yes, in which case the Jeks could speak to their neighbors, select a committee of representatives, and go to the castle to negotiate a lower rent hike.

But Master Jek answered, in a tone that teetered between accusing and resigned, “Nope. Just us. It’s for the ‘housing improvements’.”

Housing improvements? What housing improvements had they made recently? You mean…whitewashing the walls for New Year? I thought everyone did that.

While carousing through the countryside with the Dragon King of Caltrop Pond, I’d definitely seen many, many freshly-painted cottages.

“Nope. I mean the chicken coop, the pigsty, the beds, the table, and the chairs.” Master Jek’s tone tottered over edge and fell onto the “accusing” side.

Oh. Oh. I should have guessed that. I’d even been hiding in the grasses when that duck spirit came by to snoop. But he’d been so appalled when he saw Taila writing, and I’d been so worried that he would ban her from learning, that I’d forgotten that he’d complained about the coop and pigsty first. Something about not applying for permission before building them. It hadn’t seemed like a big deal. I’d assumed it was the sort of hassle you could fix with a fine. Or, at worst, the baron might order that the Jeks tear down the structures, apply (and pay) for proper licenses, and then rebuild them. If he were spiteful, that was.

But a permanent thirty-three percent rent increase, starting this quarter? Who would do such a thing? In the middle of the winter when farmers couldn’t even farm anything, no less?!

Well, I would have, I supposed, back in my Piri days. But that was because I was pushing the empire to revolt! Presumably this short-sighted baron did not want his castle surrounded by a mob of starving peasants!

Except…one family did not a mob make, did it?

The baron would only be in trouble if the Jeks were leaders of the community who could rally everyone to stand with them and oppose an injustice that affected them alone. Given what I’d seen of the Jeks’ relationships with their neighbors, it seemed…unlikely. This baron was diabolical.

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Well. We’d just have to come up with something else. Three silvers’ worth of something else.

After I set Taila to work practicing addition and subtraction, I pondered the problem. What fundraising options were available to the Jeks? Borrowing from their neighbors was the obvious first step. Everyone else was also struggling to stretch their supplies until spring, but maybe if the Jeks borrowed a little bit from every household in the barony, it would be enough.

However, when I suggested that at noon over dinner, Master and Mistress Jek dropped their gazes. He simply shook his head, while she sighed, “It won’t work, emissary. No one is…happy with us right now.”

No one is happy? I started to ask before remembering Stripey’s words: “Everybody thinks the Jeks have gone mad! No one wants anything to do with them!”

He’d also said: “We’re all waiting to see what the Baron decides to do!”

And: “Nobody’s gonna touch a family that the Baron might imprison, evict, or execute for being a threat to the peace!”

Was the Jeks’ ostracization really so complete? Stripey had to be exaggerating: I remembered all the lesson-interrupting holiday visits to and from extended family and friends. Surely some of them would lend the Jeks a few coppers. We didn’t need a large sum from any one person, just a small one from many people.

But when I pointed that out, I got the same discouraged, downcast gazes.

“We can try,” promised Mistress Jek at length, although not as if she believed it would work.

Which it didn’t.

For two days, they left Bobo and me in charge of the cottage while they trekked all over, begging for loans. But not even the sight of four tattered children who needed to be fed, housed, and clothed convinced the good people of Claymouth Barony to open their pocketbooks.

Mistress Jek’s brother did rant about going up to the castle to “have a word with that upstart lordling,” but she talked him out of it.

It was probably for the best.

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Meanwhile, I borrowed Bobo’s bamboo stand, for whose rent she had scraped up enough coppers and from which she probably wouldn’t be evicted until the next Settling Day, so I could hold a private conversation.

Flicker! Flicker, I need to talk to you now! It’s urgent!

No response.

Flicker! I’m serious! I really, really, really need to talk to you right now!

A good five minutes later, golden motes winked into existence among the bamboo leaves and coalesced into one irate clerk.

“What is it? I was literally in the middle of reincarnating a soul, which you know is a delicate and potentially hazardous operation. I cannot be interrupted by a barrage of messengers delivering notes ordering me to drop everything and go help you at once!”

In that case, he should be directing his ire at Aurelia, who was the one who’d panicked and sent aforementioned barrage of messengers to disrupt some hapless soul’s reincarnation. But I didn’t have time to quibble.

I need three silvers right now. Baron Claymouth raised the Jeks’ rent.

His mouth opened in an O of indignation. “What do I look like, a bank clerk? Never mind, don’t answer that. I don’t carry coins, especially not Earth coins.”

That didn’t surprise me. Why would a star sprite clerk carry Earth coins on him? Can you get some? East Serican coins, to be precise?

Even though Flicker wasn’t the sort to spite me and offend Aurelia by giving me currency from a different country on purpose, I wanted to be specific. Just in case.

He groaned and pressed a palm to his temple. “I don’t even know where I’d get them. I’ll have to ask around. Carefully. Because why in Heaven’s name would I need East Serican coins?!”

I’d let him figure that one out. But you’ll do it? You’ll get the money?

“I’ll try. I can’t promise more than that.”

How long will it take?

“How should I know?! Like I said, I don’t know how to get them! I don’t even know how to find out how to get them without setting off all sorts of alarms!”

We don’t have forever, I warned. The Jeks are going to get evicted very soon.

“I know! I know! I said I’d try! But don’t expect me to succeed! You should try raising the money yourself down here.”

I planned to anyway, in case he failed. Okay.

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So, two days gone, five days left to find three silvers. What had once been loose change now felt as unattainable as the imperial treasury.

At my suggestion, Master Jek went to the homes of the wealthiest shopkeepers in town and offered to sell them the chairs. Unfortunately, they reminded him that they already had standing contracts with the officially licensed carpenter, Master Gravitas, to purchase all their furniture from him. What they were too polite to say, but which Master Jek inferred from their sitting rooms, was that the Jeks’ untrained carpentry attempts were too crude to fit in with the rest of their décor.

Next he tried the middling and poorer shopkeepers, who might tolerate clumsy but functional furniture. However, they already had all the chairs they needed and, right after paying rents, fees, and fines for the quarter, lacked the funds to buy more even if they wanted to.

At last, in desperation, Master Jek approached Master Gravitas, who bought two chairs out of kindness.

“He said Pepper loves sleeping on chairs, so he can never have too many,” Master Jek reported that night. There was no hint of triumph in his voice.

I seized the opportunity to quiz Taila: If you start with six chairs and you sell two, how many chairs do you have left?

Before she could finish her mental math, Nailus burst out, “If he needs more chairs, we have four more!”

Mistress Jek swatted him for me. “Don’t be silly. He was just being polite. If he needs chairs, he can make much better ones himself.”

The next day, we inventoried everything in and around the cottage and divided the Jeks’ possessions into “Can’t live without,” a category that included the plow and cooking pot; “Could survive without (but prefer not to),” which included their one set each of festival clothing; and “Don’t need,” which stayed stubbornly empty until Cailus put Taila’s rag doll there.

She snatched it back with much wailing and crying, forcing the rest of us to waste precious time convincing her that the doll was such a treasure that none of us would dream of selling it.

At last, Mistress Jek put a reluctant hand to the neck of her tunic and pulled out a muddy green rock that dangled from a faded red cord. “I do have my jade pendant,” she said. “It’s been passed down in my family from mother to daughter for generations. I was going to give it to Taila when she grows up, but….”

Master Jek squeezed her shoulder. “I’ll take it into town tomorrow.”

Wait a minute. I couldn’t let a woman give up her one piece of jewelry! Even if it weren’t very good jewelry. Especially because it wasn’t very good jewelry and wouldn’t fetch a good price anyway.

Don’t sell it yet, I urged. I spoke to the goddess’ messenger.

“You did?” exclaimed Master Jek. “What did he say?”

That he’d try his best to find the coins but couldn’t guarantee it, so we should try to do it ourselves. It’s a challenge because Heaven does not keep a supply of Earth currency. But he’s working on it. Let’s give him a little longer.

With a sigh of guilty relief, Mistress Jek tucked the pendant back under her tunic.

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But Flicker kept not showing up.

In the end, it was Bobo who saved us: Bobo and Stripey. Two days before the extra rent was due, it was so cold that Taila refused to get out of bed. I was waiting under the window, listening to Mistress Jek’s struggles and tapping my forefoot, when Bobo slithered into the yard.

Stripey waddled alongside her.

“Hey, Rosie, Bobo told me about the rent,” he greeted me. “I have a proposal.”