at once in the gardener’s hut, where she was safely awaiting him. “Oh, my heart’s delight!” he cried, then raced from the tower and rode across his land to the royal gardens. Sure enough, he found his wife in her bath and was so overcome immediately with lust for her that they sent away the servants and made love there and then in the wooden tub. The battle plans remained untouched.
“How did he figure this out?” one adviser asked the group.
“He’s too clever for us,” replied a spy.
“No, she sent him a note. Didn’t you see?”
“Why would she do that?”
“Maybe she’s an agent of Maitake,” one of the spies suggested.
“Is that possible?”
“What other explanation is there?” the other spy asked. “The spell must have been her own.”
“What can we do? The enemy’s at the very gates! We need him now.”
“Maybe,” someone said, “we could have the spell removed.”
“We don’t know if there’s a spell.”
“There must be a spell.”
“Maybe we could kidnap her again. For real this time.”
“We can ask her to visit us. Can’t we? And then say she was kidnapped on the way here.”
“Will he believe a second kidnap plot?”
“Do we have a choice?”
They couldn’t think of an alternative, these clever men, and so they sent a message to the empress. To their dismay, she answered that she would not attend. Instead, she commanded all of them to attend her at the gardener’s cottage. At least, they thought, they might confront her in the emperor’s presence. However, when they arrived, they found her alone.
“Where is the emperor?” they asked.
“I sent him off to war.”
“You what?”
“As we were making love, he asked me what I wanted most in the world, and I told him that I wished to see him victorious over his enemies.” She unfolded a slip of paper and placed it in front of them. “He has more enemies than he knows. He tells me everything, you see. He keeps no secrets. He’s too good a man for secrets. I wish to do likewise, yet I cannot help but keep secrets when such plans as yours are required. Such plans depend upon deception.” She raised a hand to stop some of them from protesting. “Please, don’t defend the need for subterfuge. The problem with your method is that it’s quite easy to hide one deception inside another. This note, for instance. It’s a note from me, telling him that I’ve hidden myself in this cottage in order to have an assignation with him away from all the business of the court, and that the kidnapping was merely a ruse.
“I wrote no such message. I was playing your game, gentlemen. By your rules. Therefore, one or more of you must be a traitor.”
“Arrogant child! How dare you accuse us!” yelled one of the true traitors.
She stared at him, and the fox emerged from that black stare. The fox snapped its jaws at the spy’s throat. He clutched his neck with both hands and fell back a step. His neck was unmarked, but he knew that what he had seen would happen if he said one thing more; pale, trembling, he took his seat again while his partner looked on, fearfully mystified.
The fox-woman made some slight gesture and suddenly four armed warriors stepped into the cottage. All of the advisers reacted with fear then; but she watched their expressions carefully for any that were more or less than they should have been. She already had the first traitor. And now the second one gave himself away as his hand slid into the folds of his robe, where his hidden dagger lay. But the soldiers merely blocked the exits. They made no move to attack.
“All of you are under house arrest,” she said, “although I do now know the identity of at least two traitors in your midst.” She made a point of looking at none of them, although they looked at one another.
“I love your emperor dearly, yet nothing he says to me can I trust, because it’s threaded with magic, which is my fault. I told you that I would have no secrets from him, and I don’t. He knows what you are about to know.” Before their eyes she transformed then. Her sweet face became that which the traitor had seen. Her hands and bare feet changed shape and grew soft with fur. The advisers gaped; even one of the soldiers drew back. She continued to speak as if none of this had happened. “Because of my negligence,