I paced across the table, hunting for a way out.

I already knew that I wasn’t caving in to Aurelia’s capriciousness. I wasn’t abandoning this attack on Lord Silurus, not when I’d spent so many months planning it. I wasn’t going to sit in an archival box fretting over whether the coalition had fallen apart without me. I was going to watch things play out with my own two turtle eyes and collect my hard-earned positive karma with my own turtle life.

What was her exact wording?

In response, Flicker drew a sheet of paper – paper! I hadn’t seen paper in so long! – out of his sleeve and laid it before me. I read it.

“Recall her now,” she had written. The command didn’t leave much wiggle room – but it was there, in the precise definition of “now.”

After all, “now” to a goddess was a very different beast from “now” to a mortal or “now” to a star sprite.

“Now” to a goddess meant: “The next time I remember issuing this command, you’d better have executed it already.”

“Now” to a mortal meant: “I’ll start working on it this instant, but realistically it won’t be done for the next few minutes to hours, maybe even a day or so, depending on how long it takes to reach wherever I need to be, collect whatever I need, and talk to whomever I must.”

On the other hand, “now” to a star sprite meant: “I was supposed to have finished this five minutes ago! Aaaaaah!”

I just had to convince Flicker to use one of the other two definitions.

I looked up from Aurelia’s angry words. Ah, I see. This does seem urgent.

At my cooperativeness, Flicker eyed me suspiciously.

Let me explain to my allies that I must return to Heaven. We are just about to launch an attack against Lord Silurus, and if I were to vanish without a word, it would throw that operation into disarray. My friends would waste precious time searching for me instead of preparing, various members of the coalition would seize the opportunity to claim that Heaven has withdrawn its support, and the attack would fail due to chaos and confusion. As you are aware, taking down Lord Silurus is also important to the Star of Reflected Brightness. I am certain that as much as she wants me back in Heaven, she would not want to jeopardize this operation.

Flicker gulped. He must have been picturing the massacre that would ensue when the coalition fell apart, and Aurelia blaming him for it.

Gently, I reminded him, You’re in the middle of your workday, are you not? I remember that before, when you’ve come down to Earth to talk to me, you’ve described how your waiting room was full of souls, and how you were going to have to pull unpaid overtime. It may take a little time for me to put my affairs in order here, so perhaps it would be best for you to return to your office while I speak to my allies. You can come pick me up at the end of the day. The Star is generous and compassionate and would not begrudge you a few hours.

“She did say ‘now’,” Flicker pointed out, but without much force. “If you return with me in the next few minutes, Glitter won’t find out that I was away at all….”

Except that I cannot. At least, not in a responsible fashion, and I am certain that the Star would not want me to leave chaos behind me on Earth.

I didn’t have to say, “Like last time.”

And if you were to wait here, if Glitter were to discover that the Star has been dispatching you on unauthorized trips to Earth, it would be damaging to the Star as well.

Flicker opened his mouth, then shut it again.

Just give me until the end of the workday. I promise that everything will be in order by then, and that I’ll go with you without complaint.

He shot me a skeptical look but was too stressed to comment. He thought a moment longer, ran his hands through his hair again, and drew a deep breath. “All right. All right. You have until the end of the day. No longer. You’d better be ready to go when I return.”

And he vanished in a cloud of golden motes before I could finish promising, Of course.

I stood alone on the table in the Great Hall, surrounded by shadow and stone and singed tapestries. Through the heavy oaken doors drifted muffled, uneasy voices: the rest of the coalition leaders waiting for the results of my conference with the Heavenly Messenger.

Taking a deep breath of my own, I called, You may come in now!

The doors creaked open. Heads, furry or feathered or scaled or smooth, peered through the crack. In came my friends and allies: Floridiana and Den, Stripey and Bobo, Mistress Jek (Master Jek was off plowing with the boys again), Masters Gravitas and Rattus, Baron Claymouth and Sir Gil, and the two demons from the Wilds who had caused all this trouble.

I was standing in the center of the table, gazing at them like an empress on her dais.

I have received a message from Heaven. We must attack at once.

Two hours later, with the midafternoon sun racing across the sky towards the end of Flicker’s workday, I flew above Black Sand Creek. My friends and allies waited below me; an army was arrayed at my back. A safe distance away, the good people of Claymouth crowded on rooftops to spectate. Gasps and cheers rose from them when Yulus and Nagi breached the surface of the river in a fountain of water.

Den stepped forward and bowed. He would speak on our behalf, dragon king to dragon king. We’d agreed on that beforehand.

“Well met, King Densissimus Imber,” Yulus greeted him, with an inclination of his head.

It was the first time I’d seen him up close since my life as his pampered pet catfish, Mooncloud. He looked well. A little less hangdog, a little more confident in his own judgment, enough to override Nagi’s objections even (sometimes).

“Well met, King Yulus,” replied Den, straightening. “May I introduce my allies?”

He began with me, as was only proper. He pointed overhead, where Stripey was hovering with me on his back. “That is the Emissary from Heaven.”

(Stripey himself needed no introduction.)

Yulus squinted at us. With the sun in his eyes, he wouldn’t be able to see me clearly, but I fought an urge to hide behind Stripey’s neck anyway. So many reasons I didn’t feel like facing Yulus again, whether he recognized me as Mooncloud or not.

He and Nagi bowed – to me, of course, but it was possible to interpret the gesture otherwise. Stripey wheezed a chuckle.

Den proceeded to introduce the rest of our allies, gesturing at each in turn, finishing with: “And these are Master and Mistress Jek, the parents of Maila, whom we shall avenge this day.”

The Jeks stepped forward. Master Jek started to execute a not-too-clumsy bow – he’d been getting a lot of practice in the castle lately – before his wife, always the quicker study, shot him a glare and prostrated herself before the dragon king. He followed suit.

“Ah,” began Yulus, then hesitated. His instincts must have been shrieking at him to apologize for letting the monster rampage in his river and murder their daughter, but his dragon-kingly dignity didn’t permit him to grovel before mortals. “Ah, we have recovered Jek Maila’s flute. We return it to you, as a token.”

He didn’t say a token of what, but the message was clear.

One of the frog guards hopped onto the riverbank and presented the Jeks with a long silk-wrapped bundle. It was among the nicer pieces of silk I’d seen in the Black Sand Creek Water Court, probably from the stash for wrapping offerings to the Dragon King of the Eastern Sea.

Mistress Jek accepted the bundle. It wasn’t proper etiquette to open it right then and there, but she did and no one stopped her.

Maila’s flute was a crude instrument, no more than a length of bamboo with six holes hacked in the sides, and it had suffered significant water damage in the years since her death. But her parents stared at it as if Yulus had just presented them with the pearl from under his own chin. Bobo, too, slithered over to touch it lightly with the tip of her tail.

Yulus, I thought, looked like he wished he were anywhere but here.

At last, Den cleared his throat, and Floridiana laid a hand on Mistress Jek’s shoulder, reminding her where they were and what they still needed to do before they could grieve properly. Mistress Jek wrapped the flute back up and tucked it into her belt.

Yulus nodded at Nagi, who addressed us in a matter-of-fact tone. “As agreed upon, we have cleared the zone around Lord Silurus’ hole. For the duration of your military operation, Captains Carpa and Carpio will prevent any living creatures from straying into that zone. Captain Carpa will command the guards upriver, Captain Carpio the guards downriver.”

Why did it not surprise me that the cannier carp spirit had obtained the safer post?

“You understand that the Black Sand Creek Water Court maintains its official stance of neutrality.”

At her cold words, Yulus glanced down, too ashamed to meet the Jeks’ eyes.

The Prime Minister concluded, “We will not take part in any of the fighting. Our role here is simply to keep innocents away.”

After all my preparations, she still expected us to lose. But did she truly believe that Lord Silurus would forgive the Black Sand Creek Water Court for cooperating in any way, shape, or form with those who attempted to execute him?

He wouldn’t. At best, he would accept the court handing over the Prime Minister to him to punish as he saw fit. At worst, he would turn Yulus into a puppet dragon king and rule the river himself.

Nagi had to know all of this. That must be why she was keeping the court out of it to the best of her ability.

But we were not going to lose. I was not going to lose. Not to that ugly, oversized excuse of a catfish. A catfish, of all things. It was beneath my dignity as a former thousand-year-old nine-tailed fox to lose to a prey animal.

“Why’re they still talking?” fretted Stripey. “We’re wasting sunlight. Did the Messenger say why Heaven wanted us to attack today, instead of waiting for tomorrow morning?”

I felt a pang. This was going to be one of my last conversations with my friend – at least, until I reincarnated and grew up again, and even then, only if I found a way back to the Claymouth Barony. Which was by no means guaranteed. Glitter was going to reincarnate me as far away as possible from anyone who liked me.

Stripey was still waiting for my answer, I realized.

No. Then, because he seemed to expect more than just one word, I shrugged my shell (one of the last times I’d do so, in this life anyway) and intoned, The ways of the gods are ineffable. Switching back to my usual voice, I added, And political. So political.

He wheezed out his whistling duck laugh. “Aren’t they always.”

Below us, the official meet-and-greet was finally ending. Yulus and Nagi sank back into the river, to shelter in the Water Court. Beneath the surface, the blurry forms of frog and shrimp guards were moving into position, forming ranks to block access to the zone around Lord Silurus’ lair.

Meanwhile, on land, Captain Rock was bellowing instructions at squads of rock macaque soldiers, who stuffed their cheeks with acorns. Lord Magnissimus pawed the ground, impatient for his feast. Next to him, Sir Gil the Brave waited on his horse, ostensibly as a reinforcement, mostly as an observer. Master Gravitas and his cat spirits had climbed the willows on either side of the river to watch; they wouldn’t come into play unless the battle dragged past sundown. Among them, I recognized Bell, Star, and Targee from that long-ago trip into town with Taila to hunt for a red-bean sticky-rice dumpling – which we’d never found.

Followed by puffy-cheeked rock macaques, Den and Floridiana marched to the edge of the river. The dragon wasn’t needed for this part, but he took up a protective position on her left anyway.

One of the rock macaques presented Floridiana with a smoke crock. She pulled back her arm and hurled it into the river. It sank, and we all craned our heads, straining to follow its progress.

Halfway to the riverbed, it exploded.