On the flagpole in front of Blackberry Glen’s City Hall waved a pair of flags. The lower one bore a grey cylinder, probably the emblem of North Serica. The upper flag, however, I would have known anytime, anyplace, even if it were in tatters and I had only the tiniest shred to go off. The background was a bright yellow that glowed gold when the sunlight streamed through it. Against it curved a proud scarlet dragon, eyes staring, mane flowing, five-clawed hands and feet outstretched to embrace, protect, or destroy.

  It was the standard of the Serican Empire.

  “That’s the Temple’s flag.” Boot’s sour voice broke into my thoughts.

  No it’s not.

  Not unless the Temple had appropriated the standard of the old Empire. But why would it do that? The Temple was an entirely new creation in all of Serican history (here I could almost hear Floridiana launching into a tedious lecture on all previous organizations that could be interpreted as antecedents of our Temple).

  Boot bristled at my reply, even though my curtness hadn’t been aimed at her. “Do you doubt my intel?”

  I supposed not. She was, after all, the professional spy here. But why would my friends shackle our Temple to the past?

  “By the way,” added Boot, “you need to start acting more like a rat again. The gods are bound to be watching this town – and specifically what your friends are up to in this town.”

  Oh, yes. Of course. And we’d lost the cover that the peddlers’ terrible singing had given us. I squeaked. It was too sarcastic to sound realistic. I squeaked again, channeling my terror that the Goddess of Life was looking down at us right now, homing in on this conversation, narrowing her eyes in recognition, extending a hand for her willow branch, and –

  Boot’s shadow whumped over me. Teeth prickled against my skin as she picked me up by the nape of my neck. “No need to put on that much of a show,” she muttered out of the corner of her mouth. “Now I have to pretend I’m torturing you, or people are going to wonder what you’re screaming over.”

  Squeak?

  “Drop the sarcasm, or I bite.”

  I dangled limply and silently from her jaws. Her breath blew past my fur in a long-suffering sigh, but she trotted for the front door of the City Hall. I was curious how she planned to get through it – if she were going to rear up on her hind legs with me still in her mouth and claw the wood, or if she were going to drop me and yowl while I pretended to be too mangled to escape. Before I could find out, the door flew open and a mass of green and yellow exploded out.

  “Boot! Boot! Isss that you?” Without waiting for a response, Bobo called back inside, “It is Boot! With a…presssent? You didn’t have to bring a visssiting presssent, Boot! We’re happy jussst to sssee you!”

  A visiting present?

  Boot’s breath ruffled my fur in a fit of chuckles. “But I had to bring you something.”

  She spat me at Bobo. I struck her chest scales and bounced off. Her tail flashed out and coiled around me before I could hit the ground. I found myself staring up the bamboo viper’s nostrils. Rat-brain whimpered.

  “A rat? Thank you, but I’m not hungry right now….” Still, Bobo politely flicked out her tongue to taste the air around me. From the way her mouth turned down, I didn’t smell too appetizing.

  It’s me! I wanted to shriek. Don’t eat me just to be polite!

  A thump behind me. I craned my head around at the same time that Bobo gave a start. Boot was rolling around with laughter, flashing the white patches of fur on her chest and belly.

  “It’s not for eating, you silly snake! It’s a very special rat! You should keep it as a pet.”

  “A very ssspecial rat?” Bobo blinked her big golden eyes and inspected me again.

  Come on! I thought at her. I stared back as hard as I could, willing her to make the connection. She knew that I had once pretended to be a normal sparrow and “let Lodia tame me” and keep me as a pet, right? Come on, come on, come on, figure it out! It’s me it’s me it’s me! Bobobobobobo!

  Her eyes went wide. “Ooooooh! You’re right! It is a very ssspecial rat! It’s ssso cuuuuuuute!” She cradled me against her cheek and whispered, “It’s you, isssn’t it? Right? Right? You came back?”

  If only I could have hugged her back! I swallowed hard and risked a whisper, hardly more than a breath. It’s me. I’m back.

  She went so still for so long that I started to worry she was having a heart attack. Then a big drop of salty liquid rolled down her cheek and plopped onto my face. I jerked and shook my head furiously. Bobo and Boot both burst into laughter, and I joined in, if only inside my head.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “Come inssside, Boot!” Bobo cried. “Everyone’s gonna be ssso excccited to sssee you!”

  “I rather doubt that,” the cat spy observed drily, probably remembering how angry Floridiana had been back in Honeysuckle Croft when the mage had learned how the cat spies had lied to her.

  Still, Boot padded after Bobo through the door, leaving it wide open in case she needed to make a hasty exit. I smirked and wondered how to tease her about it, but then Bobo was slithering into a study as fast as she could, calling, “Hey! Everybody! Guess what? Guess who came to sssee us?” and Floridiana was looking up from a large book with a brush in her hand and a scowl on her face, and Stripey was striding towards us on his long crane legs, and Lodia was peeking around the doorframe, and Dusty and Den were trying to squeeze through the window at the same time and snapping both literally and figuratively at each other, and they were all here. I stared at each one in turn, focusing on their faces for longer than a normal rat would have, but I couldn’t help it. All of my friends were here. All here, all safe, all healthy.

  “Boot came to visssit!” Bobo scooted sideways so Boot could incline her head at the others. “And ssshe brought us a very very very ssspecial presssent!”

  Stripey’s black and white feathers and bright eyes filled my vision. A “very very very special” present?

  I wanted to answer him. I wanted to call out to him. I would have given anything to fling myself at him and cling to his long neck and wail, I missed you! I missed you so much! Being a mindless rat was so awful! And then I’d regale him and the others with all the times and ways I’d died so they could ooh and ahh and gasp at the right moments and pat me on the head and comfort me that none of that would ever happen again because I was safe now. Safe and home.

  Except I couldn’t do any of that. For my sake and for theirs. Because the gods might be watching – were probably watching – and I couldn’t let them figure out that Flicker had defied orders. They would punish him and the others too, for aiding and abetting his crime.

  So I forced myself to un-focus my eyes and start squirming and squeaking and scrabbling (gently) with my claws against Bobo’s scales. She had horrible, long, melted welts all over her body. When had that happened? How had that happened?

  “Is that…?” Floridiana reached us next. Her long, callused fingers extracted me from Bobo’s coils and lifted me up by the nape of the neck.

  I squeaked at her, hoping she would hear the implied “yes.”

  She gasped. “Den! Dusty – oh.” She turned far enough for me to get a good view of the dragon and the horse. They had both managed to stuff their ribcages halfway through the window and were now thoroughly stuck. The wooden frame creaked most alarmingly as they thrashed, unable to push forward or pull back. Floridiana assessed the situation at a glance. “Den! Can’t you shrink?”

  “I’m…the…dragon king!” panted the dragon. His words came out in bursts as Dusty and the window frame squeezed the breath out of him. “It’s not…for me…to shrink!”

  “Yeah, but he can’t, so unless you do something, the two of you are going to stay like that forever.”

  “We could leave them there,” suggested a silky voice behind us. The foxling glided in, followed by Steelfang and that handsome dancer boy from Flying Fish Village. “It does lend a certain…atmosphere to the room.”

  The boy – what was his name again? – flashed his dimples at her. “And the outside of City Hall too! Weren’t you just suggesting that we decorate it, Majesty?”

  With the tail of a dragon and the rump of a horse?! My jaw dropped. I gawked at him until I realized that the foxling was staring at him with the exact same expression, and I hastily rearranged my face.

  “You could go outside and push while I pull from inside,” Steelfang suggested to the boy.

  His dimples flashed again. “Sounds like a plan!”

  Before he could run off, Dusty neighed, “Wait! Wait! What’s Steelfang going to pull with? His teeth?”

  Den agreed. “Shouldn’t it be the other way ‘round? Steelfang pushes with his nose while Cornelius pulls with his hands?”

  Steelfang showed them all of his pointy teeth. “Our way will work better.”

  Den and Dusty traded a look. There was a pop. Then a Caltrop-Pond-sized Den shot into the room, landed on the floor, and grew to human height. Dusty yanked his neck back and shook himself from nose to tail. They leveled twin glares at the wolf.

  Steelfang’s shoulders rippled. “See? Toldja our way works better. ‘Nelius, you can come back in!”

  Dusty and Cornelius entered the study, from the door, and one after the other this time.

  The horse spirit tossed his mane and eyeballed me. “You looked better as a sparrow. Those little hands and that bald tail creep me out.”

  I bared my long yellow front teeth and swiped a “creepy little hand” at him.

  “Shh!” snapped Floridiana and kicked the horse’s front leg.

  “Hey! What was that for?!”

  Lodia stood on tiptoe and whispered into Dusty’s ear, “Your old friend Boot brought us all a visiting present.”

  “Yeah, what about i– oh! Oooooh. I get it. A visiting present. Yup.”

  “A very cat-like visiting present,” added Stripey, wheezing with laughter.

  “That’s perfect for a sssnake!” Bobo chimed in. “That I’ll definitely eat later! Yep yep. Thanks ssso much, Boot!”

  Floridiana rolled her eyes at Den.

  A tiny smile played over Lodia’s lips. “Aww, but it’s such a cute rat. Maybe we can keep it as a pet.”

  Everyone looked at me, where I was baring my long yellow teeth and flailing my creepy little hands while dangling from Floridiana’s thumb and forefinger by the nape of my neck. From their dubious expressions, I did not look the least bit “cute.” I snapped my jaws shut and tried to look fuzzy.

  Lodia held her hands together, palms up, and Floridiana deposited me on them. Lodia rubbed the top of my head with a fingertip. I could not for the life of me recall how a contented rat would act, and rat-brain was too stressed to help out.

  “I’ll make you a little hat and cape.” To any eavesdropping god, Lodia’s voice held a girlish coo, but I could see the mischievous glint in her eye. “You’ll be the cutest rat in Serica.”

  Well, that went without saying. I stood up on my hind legs, twitched my whiskers, and chittered adorably at her while the others gathered around us.

  Over their heads, through the open window, I could see the blue-green peaks of the Jade Mountain Wilds. We were all together again, with the mountains of my birth on one side, and the capital I had loved and destroyed on the other, here in the heartland of Serica, where everything had begun.

  I had come home.