You all smell like cats, he said crossly, a terrible insult, but they only sniffed.

Oh, stop worrying! We’ll be careful!

It was enough to turn his fur silver. Especially since there were Monseans at this dinner, and the fox had learned that Monseans paid more attention to blue foxes than the Keepish did. That strange-eyed Monsean girl, Hava, stared at him, trying to tell him apart from the others. And her mind was strong. The fox tried, at one point, to influence her mind with the idea that foxes weren’t worth noticing, and immediately she peered at him harder. Monseans seemed to notice when foxes tried to plant messages in their minds, which was a thing all foxes could do, with any humans, but which was supposed to be a secret of foxkind. How were the Monseans noticing that? Humans never noticed that! The fox influenced Ferla’s feelings all the time by touching her mind with ideas about how trustworthy he was. He influenced the cook, with a suggestion of benevolent generosity toward foxes, so that she was more likely to drop snacks onto the floor when he visited the kitchen. He was also working on Benni’s mind with visions of how distinguished Benni would look flying in the airship with a fox at his side, because Benni was the one who took the airship out most of the time. So far, the fox wasn’t making much progress on that, but sometimes it took a while.

The point was, the Keepish never noticed when foxes were in their minds. But Monseans apparently noticed. Their minds were harder to read too. You should be extra careful around the Monseans! he told his four siblings. They can tell when you’re trying to get into their minds! When they pooh-poohed him, he went electric with alarm, like a lightning bolt. He screamed. I cannot solely be responsible for keeping all the secrets of foxkind!

You’re one to talk about being more careful, they told him. Do you EVER do anything your person tells you to do?

They didn’t even know the half of what he did. The fox thought it must be nice to be part of a herd. To have six other minds on hand to come up with solutions, explanations, plans. To be able to hide behind someone else, if anything bad happened. To be bonded to a person who lived to please foxes and wouldn’t mind at all if she found hers in the heat ducts, instead of to Ferla, who lived only for herself, had eyes like whip ends, and hurt those the fox wished to protect.

Well? said Gorga Balava’s fox when he returned to the dining room. Why are they being so carelessly disobedient to their person?

She told them to come, he said.

Oh, said Gorga’s fox, interested. She’s a rather reckless human, isn’t she?