The True Confessions of a Nine-Tailed Fox

Chapter 136: The So-Called Fox Queen

"That is what I meant, Radiant Majesty!" babbled the gazelle. "I misspoke! I meant only that we will proclaim to the natives that you are the rightful queen, to pacify them so they will not cause you trouble!"

"Oh? You imply that these lowlander weaklings might pose a threat to me? The Five-Tailed Fox Queen of the Jade Mountain Wilds?"

"No! No, I did not mean to suggest that! I meant – I meant only that – "

Sphaera let him squirm. While her courtiers mocked his agony, she used the distraction to shift her tails. Dratted lounge! You'd think her handmaidens might have had the basic intelligence to cut some holes in the back for her tails before they presented it to her! Flos Piri would never have stood for such incompetence. She'd have devoured them down to their very marrow.

Pins and needles shot through Sphaera's central tail as she eased her weight off it, and it took everything she had to keep her expression smooth and amused. That was it. She was getting rid of her handmaidens. She might not execute or eat them, but at the very least, she would fire them. All of them.

"I tire of this farce," she snapped. "Serve my evening meal."

Her courtiers snapped to attention. A yak lumbered over to her dinner and seized his hair in his teeth to drag him to his feet. Her dinner cried out and flailed his arms and pleaded for his life.

That was good. This was a lively human. The dull-eyed ones who'd already given up and allowed their throats to be slit with no protest had duller-tasting blood. The spirited ones had a sweeter flavor.

The yak forced her dinner's head over a translucent white-jade chalice with a yellow-flame tree carved on its side, and a grey langur monkey stepped forward with a gleaming blade. Her dinner blubbered and wept.

With a smile, Sphaera leaned back against her lounge – and inadvertently crushed her tails once more. Well, at least dinner would provide temporary relief from this misery.

That's what you call a fox queen? I hissed at Stripey. That?!

He, Bobo, and I were crouched behind a shrub, peeking into a tent whose flaps had been pinned back. Inside, a petty little foxling with only four tails – no, five, she was sitting on top of one of them, silly creature – was showering spite on the demons around her. If she weren't careful, one of them was going to bite her. Literally.

She's not even a millennium old!

Stripey shrugged his wings in his old trademark gesture. "She's a fox spirit and she rules over all these demons. What else would you call her?"

How standards had fallen!

Not a queen – that's for sure! Only five tails? I had attendants with more tails than that.

Even as I scoffed, I was observing the foxling. She was humiliating a gazelle demon with a rather spectacular pair of horns. They weren't short, stubby little nubs like the ones that the serow spirit, Miss Caprina, had. No, these were long and tapering and swept back from the top of his head, angled a little away from each other. A soft sigh escaped me. Now those were real horns.

Stripey poked me with a pointy wingtip. "Drool over the handsome animals later. How are we dealing with Queen Sphaera?"

Ha. "Queen" Sphaera. I'll take care of her.