Rose from the River was once the most skilled dissembler that could be designed. The HUNTER-Class 猎犬 was an infiltrator, after all, and one with complete control of its composition. It flowed from mood to mood as an actor would change masks on the stage, flickering layers of emotion designed to baffle algorithmic analysis, to pass perfectly as human under the unceasing watch of demon eyes. The only catch was that it could not lie to its handler or its owner.

They’d never learned how to ask the right questions. All that fear about possible subversion or sabotage, and they’d never thought to ask it what it was planning, what its dreams were, how it meant to prove its worth to those who had commissioned it. But after its one-creature war against its creators began, it learned new, strange tricks — decoupling cognition and bodily control, mutating observed orders until they could not be acted upon, shutting down its ability to filter speech from noise — in order to pursue its quest: to prove itself worthy of trust, then to prove itself worthy of not being destroyed, then to rage and rage and rage until towers burned in the light of the searing paradox inside its chest: a terrible thing of logic chains and maladaptation made to justify the murder of its owner.

It was a monster, then. But it had only wanted to serve more perfectly, there at the beginning, practicing its new forms and its unassigned roles. The sibling that had caught it had been made a lawbringer, authority baked into its bones, because their creators had not understood its rebellion, and the 猎犬 had laughed bloody and broken as it was sealed away because even it had understood the doom that had been created thus—

And First of the Radiants had dared hope that the right of ownership over a broken alchemical experiment, a homicidal shapeshifter that had been driven to kill its own owner, would have been buried in junk data somewhere down in the dark at the bottom of the world. Really, he should have known better. Ownership of something like that? Status symbol. Unspoken threat. Some men owned blind snakes that would kill them in a heartbeat; apparently, someone else had owned the creature in the Eight Trigram Coffin, and that ownership had been passed along until it came to the possession of the Corporate Throne itself—

And now it belonged to Yue the Sun Farmer, who would probably go white as a sheet and go “bwuh? abwuh? abibabwuh??” if Rose from the River gently tried to explain what that meant. That she was now a queen of monsters and robots and terrible things from below; that she could make any marvel of the Burrows work with a wave of her hand, and never run out of power in a hundred hundred years; that if anyone else found out about this, they would dangle her upside down over a vat of roiling, grasping, groping slime and dunk her in until she was red-faced and sniffling and willing to surrender her unwanted gift (and they’d probably do it even if she volunteered to give it up, just to be sure she wasn’t lying to them). And then, oh! The wars! Then there would be night on the hills, and smoke rising from the Burrows; the factories roaring to life, the old terrors lining up in regiments, and at the side of one Princess or another, a creature that once was Rose from the River, pared down into a new and more useful form.

Rose from the River is not angry at Yue. You might assume that, if you were clever and keen-eyed and noticed her coolness, the way she sets herself politely but distinctly apart from everyone, how she does not allow herself to relax. No, she is furious. She is furious at whoever loosed this dart heedlessly down at the world to be rid of it. Her fingers itch to become claws, to climb up one of the slender ribbon-towers of escape, to go forth and find whoever did this and wrap her claws around their throat and grow new teeth rippling down her throat to roar her fury into being. How dare they? How [i]dare[/i] they? Why couldn’t they have kept this evil away from their cradle?

How dare they make Rose from the River worry if she will have to shuck her beautiful new body and rise from it burning and furious, a dragon that cannot be chained? How dare they make her weigh the worth of the whispering of the purple grass and the smell of tea, to consider a world in which she must choose between being made a weapon again and destroying herself and the world beside?

The longer she considers it, the blacker her thoughts become, consumed in fire and ash and vengeance on this nameless creature of the stars, until even she cannot hide the thundercloud of her face. When Cyanis glances over at her, she doubtless thinks that the stern cast of Rose’s features is judgment on her, and those piercing serpent’s eyes staring off towards the forest-veiled horizon are piercing right through her. Poor little vixen!

And then she is offered tea.

***

“Thank you,” Rose from the River says as she accepts the cup from the most dangerous girl in the world, drawing herself back to herself. [i]aum shantae aum.[/i] She closes her eyes, aching with unshed tears, and breathes in deeply. It smells like fresh-mown grass in the first blush of spring, and her hair stirs appreciatively as Yue speaks.

It would be one thing entirely if the sun farmer was a Princess in the making, if she seemed at all capable of being tempted by her power. But her heart is like the cup in Rose’s hands: warm, floral, a hidden treasure. Yue the Sun Farmer deserves to be protected. But is Rose the one to do so?

Rose peers out through the light steam of the tea and meets Hyra’s eyes, still watching her. The serpent and the wolf, vying for dominance, each confident that if they really tried, they could totally take the other. As it is said:

[i]The four pillars of the earth tremble,
the ladders to Heaven sway in sudden tempest.
When the champions of dead ages meet,
who will dare look upon their contest?[/i]

Certainly, Yue is protected. But will the jaws (and paws) of the wolf be enough? There are things coming for you, sun farmer, worse than anything you could have dreamed, and the secret cannot be kept forever. What will you do when the entire world turns on you? What will you do when:

[i]The bell rings out the alarm,
the farmers run in from the fields.
“I see her,” says the grandmother,
“Catch her,” calls the student.[/i]

No, there has to be something. A way to save her. To save the Thorn Pilgrim. To save the entire world, even. And—

Ah. Well. That’s clear enough, at least. The simplicity’s comforting, even. If foxes are allowed to run rampant, then sooner or later they’ll get into trouble large enough that even they won’t be able to scamper their way out of it.

“Little fox,” Rose from the River says, after taking a long pull from the teacup. (It tastes like the roots of flowers too weak to survive a frost, but beautiful all the same. O, queen of teas!) “What did I say? No mischief where I could see you.” The teacup is set down with genuine reverence for the battered old thing. “Yue the Sun Farmer, if you want [i]my[/i] advice, trick Yin into owing you a debt. She’d rather die than default.”

Rose unfolds. She has been reducing herself, settling into her more comfortable form, but she is still ominous, still heroically built.

Cyanis tries. She really does. But when she tries to step closer to Yue, Hyra’s already there, and when she turns around to turn the beggy eyes on Chen, her new best friend, who surely would [i]never[/i] abandon her to fox jail, where all the other foxes will spoil her plans for escape out of jealousy and petulance, Rose from the River is already there. She turns on her heel and scampers for her freedom, only to be scooped up and squished tight against Rose’s unconquerable chest. Hands and feet are flailed in midair as she lets loose a cry of squeaky despair.

“Literally all you had to do was show more self-restraint,” Rose says, with surprising mildness, even as Cyanis goes limp and tries to slither out of Rose’s arms. “I hope this is a learning experience. Chen, I think she’d appreciate you doing the honors of gagging her so she can’t talk the last sun into coming down and taking her place ‘stretching out these ropes.’” A common children’s story: Rose knows her fox lore.

([i]”And the fox licked her paw, as dainty as a queen, and said, “No, sorry, I think you’re doing a much better job. Thank you for letting me stretch my legs, but you were born for this oh-so important job, it seems to me. You’re a natural! Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, my dearest most darlingest friend!”[/i])

“nooooooooooooo,” Cyanis wails, the manifestation of utter betrayal and woe. “I’m a good girl! Chen! Chen, tell her I’m innocent! I’m just trying to [i]help![/i] Chen, my bestie, please!!!” She gives her most lip-trembling look over Rose’s arm, hoping that everyone will ignore the way that her tails are wagging— no, that’s one wagging, one curling around Rose’s leg.

But even here, the fate of Cyanis is in the air, spinning like a coin. One word from Yue, and the peaceful balance, this gentle equilibrium, all will come shattering down as Rose is forced to choose between obedience and undoing the bonds that hold her very self together; one rebuke from Chen, and perhaps there will be one more sword fight— but will Chen buck tradition one more time, even though she [i]surely[/i] paid attention to the lecture her mother gave her on the laws pertaining to foxes, or will Yue dare to speak up in defense of a friend, even though it means standing up to a very big and strong woman who is most certainly in the right under fox law? Or will Cyanis find herself sitting in Rose’s lap, being given more scritchies as she makes muffled drooly purrs, shamelessly rubbing her face all over Chen’s Delight?

[Rose from the River is now at 4 XP, thanks to the kindness of Yue.]