The royal government had let the west deteriorate even more than I'd imagined. While the Household Guards played waiter and pacified the mob by feeding them whatever the palace chefs could throw together, we got a crash course on the situation.
"The demons farm humans for food," explained the grizzled old general who'd been assigned to bring us (well, Katu) up to speed.
"Farms! For humans?!" cried Bobo. "That's too horrible!"
Accustomed to stoic, soldierly types, the general blinked at her, then opted to continue as if he hadn't heard her. "We've liberated humans from farms here, here, and here." He pointed on a map to a few spots abutting the foothills of the Jade Mountains.
Leaning in so close that the front of his robes brushed the parchment, Katu examined the map. "Those are all in territory that was lost during the old king's time, aren't they?"
He got a sour glare back. Yep, this general was old enough to have been personally involved in that territory's loss.
"Where's the demon army now?" Lodia asked, so quietly that the old human didn't hear her.
I nudged Bobo, who obligingly moved her jaws along as I repeated the question.
"Here." The general's stubby forefinger landed square on the map close to the capital.
Katu measured the distance between the two points with his fingers and compared it to the distance between Lychee Grove and Goldhill. "That's...they're maybe – a week out?" His voice lifted incredulously near the end.
"They're only a week from the capital?" exclaimed Floridiana, and Dusty whinnied his alarm.
"Less. More like a few days."
At the general's answer, everyone rocked back.
"Three days?! What happened to the Queen's army?" Katu demanded. "Don't tell me it was slaughtered?"
"Slaughtered, devoured, deserted, surrendered." The general ticked off the options.
"That's jussst too sssad...."
"Are you telling me that you lost the entire army? Goldhill has no defense?" Katu's hands flexed, as if he were on the verge of grabbing the general's tunic and shaking the man.
"Isn't that what you lot are for?" (I noted that the general did not deny either of Katu's accusations.)
All around the map table, there was a moment of silence. Bobo was stunned by the magnitude of the disaster that had happened and the one that was to come. Lodia twisted her fingers into her skirts. Dusty cast terrified glances at Floridiana, while the ex-traveling mage, survivor that she was, quivered from the instinct to grab her horse and cart and flee the carnage zone.
As for me, where others saw tragedy, I saw opportunity.
Perched on Bobo's coils, I proclaimed, Fear not, friends. This is for the bessst.
Insultingly incredulous stares met those words.
You sssee, the more ssstupefyingly powerful the demons, the more ssseemingly asssured their victory, the more convinsssing it will be when we – I mean, the Kitchen God – vanquissshes them.
My plan was simple, and overwhelmingly elegant in its simplicity. Counter to what Jullia and her advisors expected, we wouldn't meet the demon army in a pitched battle to prevent it from reaching the capital. We'd let it march, trot, slither, and flap its way right up to the capital. We'd let it surround the capital. And then, at the crucial moment, when all hope seemed lost, when all inhabitants seemed doomed to gruesome deaths or even more gruesome, short lives as livestock for demons – that was the moment we would strike.
YOU ARE READING
The True Confessions of a Nine-Tailed Fox
FantasyAfter Piri the nine-tailed fox follows an order from Heaven to destroy a dynasty, she finds herself on trial in Heaven for that very act. Executed by the gods for the "crime," she is cast into the cycle of reincarnation, starting at the very bottom...
