“That doesn’t follow!” cried Floridiana. “You – how – we don’t have the resources to establish a Serica-wide system of temples to the Kitchen God! We don’t even have the authority to do it!”

Of course we do. We’re doing it, hence we have the authority.

“That is not how it works!”

Of course it is. Look. Is anyone else trying to set up this Temple? No. Has anyone else tried to set up this Temple? No. Does anyone else even have the VISION to set up this Temple? A hundred times NO! Hence no one deserves to have authority over it but US.

(Me, actually. But I didn’t say that.)

Floridiana raked her fingers through her hair until it fell loose from her bun and straggled down around her face and shoulders, making her like some kind of she-ghost. “There’s something wrong with that logic. There is definitely something wrong with that logic.”

If there were, I’d like to see her find it. Perching on a stack of codices so I could look down at her, I waited.

And waited.

She did sputter for a while about limited resources and proper authority, but she made no cogent arguments refuting my logic, so I decided to ignore her. I had bigger problems to deal with anyway.

Namely, whether the robes or the priests should come first.

In the end, it was Bobo and Dusty, of all people, who solved that conundrum.

“I don’t underssstand. Why do we have to choossse?” she asked.

“Yeah, if it’s so complicated, why can’t we just do both?” he seconded.

Do both? I gasped, stunned at my own lack of vision.

“Uh-huh! Why can’t we find sssome, um, ssstarter priesssts, and Lodia can sssew robes for them ssspecially, and at the sssame time ssshe can alssso make extras for future priesssts?”

Bobo truly put me to shame. How had such an elegant solution not occurred to me?

Yes! That’s brilliant! You’re a genius, Bobo!

I flew at her and flung my wings around her neck, and she grinned happily.

“Hey, what about me?” complained Dusty. “Why does she get to be the genius? I helped come up with the idea. I’m a genius too.”

Before he could swing his head our way and slobber all over me and Bobo, I landed between his ears. Clinging to his forelock with my claws, I leaned down and stroked his forehead with one wingtip. “There, there, you just keep thinking that.”

He snorted and tried to blow me off, but no matter how he craned his neck, he couldn’t hit me with his breath.

And then two tragedies struck, in quick succession.

Everything had been going so smoothly – much too smoothly – so of course Heaven had to counterbalance it.

It began one breakfast when Floridiana announced out of nowhere that she and Dusty needed to start their return journey to the Claymouth Barony soon. I knew that she’d only come along for the summer – that I’d only allowed her to come along for the summer – but somehow I hadn’t drawn the connection between the passing of the weeks and the approach of autumn.

And she wasn’t nearly close to done compiling an official text for the Temple.

How soon is “soon”? I asked warily.

“The sooner the better. Even if we leave tomorrow, the harvest will be well over by the time we return, and I haven’t made any lesson plans for the new school year.”

Well, that seemed just a tad irresponsible when she’d had the whole summer to develop them.

Why didn’t you start sooner?

For some reason, the question made her bristle. “Why didn’t I start sooner! Because – because – I’ve been working on that! For you!” And she waved a hand in a direction that probably pointed at her messy desk across the mansion.

Okay, yes, fine, she’d been researching the Kitchen God and writing up what she’d learned, but that certainly hadn’t eaten all of her time. She’d been working on her own pet project too. I’d seen her.

You’ve spent far more time on your own book than you have on the Kitchen God text.

I didn’t know that for a fact (I didn’t track her work hours – what was I? An Accountant?), but the way she stiffened told me that I was right. Well, of course I was. I knew her.

How far have you gotten on it anyway? Can’t you use that as your lesson plan?

Floridiana had taken it upon herself to write a definitive revised and updated edition of her beloved A Mage’s Guide to Serica, which she had titled…A Mage’s Guide to Serica: The Definitive Revised and Updated Edition by Mage Floridiana, Headmistress of the East Serican Academy, under the Most Generous and Gracious Auspices of Her Majesty Queen Jullia of the Kingdom of South Serica, Their Graces Lady Anthea and the Lady of the Lychee Tree, and The Right Honorable The Baron Claymouth.

No wonder codices required an entire page for the title.

I couldn’t be absolutely certain, because, again, I didn’t track Floridiana’s personal projects, but I thought she’d concocted that grandiose monstrosity of a title after hearing about my vision of a Serica-wide Temple to the Kitchen God.

Long, long ago, so many lives and one whole Tier ago, I’d reincarnated as a rare type of butterfly and died at the hands of a boy who collected insects. Flicker had told me that I’d earned positive karma for inspiring him to become a renowned natural philosopher. If I’d earned positive karma for that, then think of what inspiring a reference work aimed at all mages in Serica would do for me! Not as much as a Temple to the Kitchen God that extended all over Serica – but still a hefty dose.

And probably more than I’d get for indirectly educating the children of Claymouth by encouraging their teacher to educate them. Hmmmm.

You teach geography, don’t you? (I knew she did – Taila’s and Nailus’ tests on the South Serican map were what had clued her in to my return.) You can teach geography based on your book. There! That’s one subject done.

Floridiana still looked dubious. What – did she lack faith in her own scholarship?

What else do you teach? Reading? The students can practice reading your book. There. That’s another subject done.

“Ssshe teaches writing too,” Bobo put in. “I sssee Taila and Nailus writing esssays for their homework.”

Oh, that’s too easy. They can write about what they read about in your book. There! Anything else?

“’Rithmetic,” said Dusty through a mouth full of greens. “She teaches ‘rithmetic too.”

Right, the three R’s: the basis of childhood education.

Curious now, Floridiana propped her elbow on the dining table and her cheek on her hand (we definitely weren’t letting her teach etiquette classes!) and inquired, “How would you use my book to teach arithmetic?”

Hmmm, how indeed? Arithmetic required numbers. I hadn’t read much in the way of geography books, but why would they include numbers? This was a true conundrum, and I was stumped until –

Oh! Easy-peasy! You’re writing about South Serica’s ridiculous currency “system,” aren’t you? I made sarcastic air quotes with my wingtips. Have the students practice converting the same amount of money from Lychee Grove coins to the royal rice standard to, I don’t know, Yellow Flame coins, and all that. There! All done! You have your lesson plans for the year!

“Oh, hmm, yes, you’re right,” she said, taking way too long to draw the obvious conclusion. “Yes, using my Guide as the theme to tie together different subjects…. Yes, that should interest the students…that could work.”

Could work? Of course it would work. It was my idea, wasn’t it?

But that was the first tragedy averted, as Floridiana took the time and energy that she would have spent on lesson plans and channeled them into composing the official Kitchen God text instead.

The second tragedy struck shortly thereafter: Anthea balked at paying for the silk and embroidery thread that Lodia and I had ordered.

The raccoon dog didn’t even have the decency to come tell me so in person. She left it to a teary Lodia to break the news.

“I’m so sorry, Pip, I tried to tell her that we need them for the priest robes, but she – I – maybe I didn’t explain it right, but I couldn’t get her to see that we need them….”

Did she say why she won’t pay for them?

Lodia hung her head. “She said it’s too expensive and we should have gotten her approval before we placed the order. I’m so sorry, I should have thought of that, I should have asked her first….”

I waved away her apologies. It wasn’t her fault that the gods-cursed raccoon dog had decided to go Accountant on us. Requiring pre-approval for expenses incurred in the service of her patron god? What was this nonsense?

Maybe, just maaaaaaybe, I could tolerate stinginess if Anthea had asked me to re-structure her household – but my mission wasn’t nearly so mundane as designing the perfect livery for her servants, or selecting the correct artists to paint the perfect scrolls for her walls. I was organizing the formal worship of a god on her behalf. And not just any god, but the one who oversaw reincarnation!

Didn’t Anthea know that? Did she believe that she would never die?

If so, I had some bad news for her: No matter how old you got, no matter how much power you amassed, no matter how utterly unassailable you believed your position to be, you could still die. The instant your divine patron turned on you or, through deliberate inaction or even just casual oversight, let you fall through the cracks of Heavenly politics – you were dead. It was only a matter of time before your inevitable scapegoating and execution.

And then, after your inevitable scapegoating and execution, you really didn’t want to be known as the soul who’d cheated the Direction of Reincarnation out of his due offerings!

I realized that I was hopping around on Floridiana’s desk in a fury – and that, as usual, I looked unbearably cute doing it. Lodia’s tears had dried, and she was gaping at me with her lips open in an O of adoration.

My first reaction was a hop of even greater fury that, as a sparrow, I couldn’t project the appropriate awesome wrath.

My second reaction was more reasoned. In and of itself, cheering up people (humans) wasn’t a bad thing. And, caught between me and my old nemesis, Lodia had certainly been in need of some cheering up.

I hopped onto her finger and let her lift me to eye level. Don’t worry about Anthea. Dealing with her is my job, not yours.

At my reassurance, she nearly fainted from relief.

Your job is to make the robes. Keep going on them. You did place the order for the silk and embroidery thread, right?

She gulped and nodded, perhaps remembering Anthea’s response to that.

Good. Have you received any of the materials yet?

“Yes…. They delivered the first shipment yesterday…which was when Lady Anthea found out….” She gulped again. “She said she wasn’t going to pay for any of it. Pip, what will we do if she doesn’t pay for any of it?”

Oh, she’ll pay. She’s just throwing a tantrum and trying to assert her authority. Like I said, dealing with that is my job. If she gives you any more trouble, tell her to come talk to me.

“Yes, Pip. Thank you. I will. So then, should I – may I – am I permitted to – cut the silk, when I get back…?”

Yes.

As I’d predicted, once Anthea had calmed down and thought things through, she didn’t make another peep about the cost of the materials for the priest robes. Lodia reported that she was starting from the low-ranking priest designs for practice before she started on High Priest Katu’s elaborate costume, so I turned my attention to recruiting low-ranking priests to wear those robes.

With the exception of Katu, the upper echelons of the priesthood would need to come from the nobility, so they could promote the Temple’s interests at court. However, there was no such restriction on the lower ranks. In fact, I liked the idea of plucking humans from impoverished backgrounds. The more impoverished, the better, because the improvement to their lives would be that much more dramatic.

I’d been wondering for a while now (okay, fine, I’d been wondering on and off, whenever I happened to remember to wonder) how Taila would have turned out if the Jeks had been as well-off as the Kohs. Here was my chance to test it on a fresh batch of humans. As long as I didn’t repeat the mistakes that I’d made with the Jeks, I would be fine.

And it wouldn’t be as easy to err here. The South Sericans had preserved much of the old speech and etiquette. (So much of it, in fact, that after living in the Claymouth Barony, I found their insistence on the distinction between “thou” and “you” to be jarringly old-fashioned, although I wasn’t admitting that to anyone.)

I’d train my new priests here, and no one would call them weird or stuck-up or possessed by fox demons, and raise their rent by a third to force them out. Because this was my Temple, and no one was going to chase any of my people out of it.

Well, that was decided. Now we just needed humans.

Floridiana, Dusty, I called. I need you to go to the slums to find our priests.