The cat spies were nearly as competent as I had hoped, meaning that they were already tracking the whereabouts of a group that was in the process of transforming the political and religious landscape of Serica.

  Boot “let me escape” into the foundation of the bakery while she went inside and reported our bargain to her spymistress. She bounded back out, chased by the apprentice with a broom, with a sausage roll clamped between her teeth. She dropped the roll in the dirt to render it irretrievable for the human, and tore it apart messily so I could dart in and snatch pieces to eat too.

  Best cat ever. (No, I didn’t tell her that.)

  As the two of us shared a meal, Boot whispered, “Northwest of here. Foothills of Jade Mountains. In a village called Blackberry Glen.”

  I poked my head out of a hole under the steps, sniffed, twitched my whiskers, and pretended to watch her warily. She pretended to ignore me.

  “They apparently had the Black Death – ”

  They WHAAAAAT?! I shrieked before I caught myself and turned it into a panicked: Squeak squeak squeak!

  Maybe that covered my mistake if any gods were watching.

  Boot lifted a paw and washed her face. “Calm down.”

  How can I calm down when you just told me that my friends caught the Black Death?! I hissed back. That’s a death sentence. It’s literally there in the name.

  Her answer, however, made no sense: “They’re all alive. And well.”

  I dropped the crumb in my front paws. How?

  “That’s what we’d like to know too. You’ve told us how it spreads. When you meet them, find out how it’s cured.”

  You forget yourself, I told her frostily. I’m not one of your informants.

  “I know you’re not. But don’t you want to spread the cure, so we can save more lives?”

  How very altruistic of you, I said sarcastically, buying myself time to search the conversations I’d had with Boot or while she was in the general vicinity. Did she know that you earned positive karma for helping humans?

  No, she couldn’t, I concluded. She’d left Claymouth long before I let that information slip. Unless it had spread all the way into a different kingdom, in which case I might be in serious trouble….

  Her answer nearly stopped my heart. “Altruistic? Not at all. Every time the Black Death strikes, it devastates society. Food shortages, trade disruptions, general drops in the quality of life, and all that. I like having access to freshly baked cinnamon rolls every morning, thank you very much.”

  Oh, thank goodness her concern was rooted in self-interest. Limp with relief, I agreed, That does make sense – wait. What’s a “cinnamon roll”?

  “You don’t know what a cinnamon roll is?” Her yellow eyes opened so wide that you could have plucked them out and hung them up for the Lantern Festival.

  How in the world would I know what crazy uses you modern Sericans have concocted for cinnamon?

  “Does that mean you don’t know what cream cheese frosting is either?”

  Of course I do, I lied with the greatest dignity. What barbarian hasn’t heard of “cream cheese frosting”?

  “Hang on one sec!” Boot bounded back up the steps and started clawing the door and yowling.

  The apprentice flung it open. “Boot! Bad girl! No clawing the door!” She made a half-hearted attempt to grab the cat, but Boot flashed by her into the kitchen. The clatter of pots and steamer baskets ensued. Another yowl, and a streak of black fur came flying out the back door and up the nearest heap of barrels. A sturdy, middle-aged human woman in a floury apron shook her fist from the doorway.

  “Bad kitty! No dinner for you tonight!”

  The door slammed shut. Boot leaped down from the barrel, holding a goopy blob in her mouth. Her nose, cheeks, and even whiskers were smeared with some kind of thick, whitish paste. The aroma of cinnamon mingled with a scent that was sweet and sour at the same time.

  She dropped the goopy blob in the dirt in front of my hole. “This is a cinnamon bun.”

  Okay…?

  It was cylindrical and the dough showed a swirl on the top, like a plain steamed bun stood on its end. Most of the whitish paste was sticking to Boot’s fur, but some of it still clung to the roll.

  Boot looked at me expectantly before she realized that I couldn’t just come out and start gnawing on the thing, not if we didn’t want every passerby or spy to know that I wasn’t an ordinary rat. She sank her teeth into the roll and started her messy eating routine again. I sprang forward, seized a piece, and crammed it into my mouth. A rich, creamy, sweet tanginess hit me first, followed by the spiciness of cinnamon, all locked together by the gooey, barely-baked bread dough.

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  Okay, maybe modern-day Sericans had concocted a few neat tricks.

  “Well?” demanded Boot.

  ‘S not bad, I mumbled through a mouthful.

  “Not bad,” she mimicked. “Guess I’ll just eat the rest myself then.”

  She stretched a paw towards the scattering of pieces next to my hole. I flew out and snatched one before she could hook her claw into it, and she smirked.

  “Knew it.”

  With all the dignity of a rat whose face was covered in cream cheese frosting, I said, Now that we have sampled the products of this bakery, shall we get back to business? How do you intend to reunite me with my friends?

  It took a bit more haggling, a few more trips in and out of the bakery, a steamed pork-and-green-onion bun, and a baked coconut-and-raisin bun, but we eventually finalized the details. By the time we were ready to set out, the back door of the bakery was significantly worse for the wear.

  Is the clawing a critical part of your cover as spy? I asked from my hiding spot inside a basket of rosemary and lavender sprigs.

  Boot’s pink tongue flicked out to lick her paw. “Not at all. It’s just fun.”

  That was about what I expected.

  The cat spies had an unlimited supply of down-on-their-luck peddlers (and yes, I did include traveling mages in that category, even if Floridiana would scream) who served as informants and transportation. Boot and I hitched a ride out of Roseberry Topping with a wiry human man who sold herbs and herbal essential oils door-to-door.

  “Rosemary and lavender,” he declared, patting his wares when he picked us up from the bakery just after dawn. “Keeps the fleas away!”

  I scampered up a wheel and over the side of the wagon. Boot wiggled her rump and bounded into the wagon bed after me as if she were chasing me. The man grinned, clucked to his donkey, and drove off. Any watching gods probably weren’t suspicious of us.

  Does he know? I whispered to Boot. About you-know-what?

  Boot sprawled out on her back as if she intended to meld with the wooden slats. “Yep. He’ll spread the word.”

  What?! I told you we can’t do that! It’ll tip off Heaven! Then we’ll all be in trouble!

  The man clucked to his donkey. “Good girl, there’s a good girl. Beautiful day, innit? Easy does it, nothing to worry about, everyone hates fleas, just another beautiful morning on the road, huh, old girl?”

  The donkey flicked her black-tipped ears.

  “Everyone hates fleas”? Was that directed at us?

  So you’re going to push flea remedies door-to-door?

  “O, bright is the mornin’, bright is the sun!” he sang. (Or, rather, croaked. He didn’t have much of a singing voice.) “The rosemary’s a-growin’, the lavender’s a-bloom. The ladies are all dancin’, ‘cos the fleas are leavin’ town.”

  I was impressed by his spycraft. If any gods had been eavesdropping on us up until this point, they were certainly clapping their hands over their ears and turning their attention elsewhere now.

  The first peddler took us as far as the next market town. When he stopped his wagon in front of a house with a tidy herb garden, Boot leaped out and trotted off. I gave her a couple minutes and scurried after her.

  She led me into the open-air market, then took her time meandering from stall to stall. We passed humans and spirits who were hawking spoon cabbages and green onions and strawberries and woven baskets and little sachets of lavender. It all reminded me so much of Claymouth: I’d promised Taila a red-bean sticky-rice dumpling if she studied hard, and we’d set off into town to get one at entirely the wrong time of year.

  “ – Here! Hey! Hey! Psst! Over here!” Boot’s voice broke through my nostalgia.

  I stopped and blinked. The cat spy was pricking her ears at me from inside a basket next to the communal bakehouse. A robin spirit was removing fresh rolls from the oven using a long-handled wooden peel. She tipped them one by one into a second basket. A bamboo carrying pole was propped against the wall nearby. An awful, shrill cacophony rattled out of her throat. It took me a minute to interpret that as “bursting into joyous song.”

  “The sun sets but will rise just the same tomorrow morning, the flowers fade but will bloom just the same next year.”

  Another wave of nostalgia struck me when I recognized the words: It was the same children’s song that Floridiana and Dusty had suggested as the tune for the Kitchen God hymn, but that Lodia hadn’t known because it was a northern song.

  Soon. I’d see them all again soon.

  I scrambled into the basket next to Boot. The robin spirit tucked a piece of checked red-and-white cotton over us. I bumped its edge with my head until I could peek out. The robin covered the other rolls with checked cloth, secured the baskets to the ends of the carrying pole, and balanced it on her shoulder. The world swung. I gagged.

  “You’ll never survive as a spy with a stomach like that,” Boot observed. The strips of light that fell through the woven basket turned her into a tabby.

  I bared my too-long, too-yellow front teeth at her, knowing the spirit could see them. You’d need a stronger stomach than a god’s to survive that singing.

  She preened. “I know. Isn’t it convenient that most people are such awful singers?”

  Apparently the cat spies had devised this method for keeping divine eavesdroppers at bay. It was effective, I had to admit. I just wished I didn’t have to hear it too.

  The basket continued to swing back and forth as the robin took her rolls into the countryside to sell farmstead to farmstead, and I continued to retch. Her “singing” shifted from the children’s song about the sunrise to “Ro-ro-ro-ro-rooooooolls! Fresh rooo-oooolls! Get yer fresh roooooooo-olls!”

  I didn’t mind at all when she finally sang, “Last stoo-op!” and Boot whispered, “Get ready.”

  When the robin set down the baskets “fer a quick rest,” we tumbled out and sprinted into an overgrown field. There, we hid among the wildflowers until a cart rattled by. This one was loaded with bottles of milk, drawn by a dog spirit who looked scarcely large enough to pull the cart. He had no problem with our (mostly Boot’s) added weight, though.

  He pulled us to the next town, where we switched to a stag spirit who peddled ribbons. In addition to the packs he slung across his back, he tied samples of his wares to his magnificent antlers, along with little bells that jingled when he moved.

  And so it was that Boot and I passed from peddler to peddler as we crossed the width of North Serica.

  Our final ride was another herb salesman. He left us along with an entire basket of rosemary and lavender on the outskirts of a town. It was much larger than I’d expected for any population center so close to the Wilds, bustling with people and mortal animals, and all aflutter with colorful pennants strung back and forth across the main street.

  “Blackberry Glen, O Blackberry Glen. Ah’ll jist be off then,” the peddler sang off-key, and then he tramped off down the road.

  I barely registered his departure. This was it. This was Blackberry Glen. I’d made it. After so many years and so many lives, I was about to see Stripey and Bobo and Floridiana and Dusty and Lodia and all the rest of them again. I sat up on my haunches and sniffed the air, even though I didn’t know how my friends would smell to a rat.

  Where are they? Where are they?

  Boot scanned the street. “This way.”

  She trotted straight towards the center of town.