Journeyman Cat

by Virginia Ripple

  “I’m really sorry. I don’t know what else to say.”

  Lowrance continued to glower. “So what was so important you thought you needed to fillet my arm?”

  Tobias’ anger began to return. “I thought you’d like to know that Adam isn’t in the hospital. He’s been reassigned.”

  The boy’s eyes widened. “Wait. What?”

  The gray tom sighed. “Mother Hazel said Adam’s injury was just a strain. They sent him somewhere else to work on light chores.”

  “A strain? Since when does a break look like a strain? I’m telling you, his arm was bent where it shouldn’t have been.”

  Tobias couldn’t ignore the ripple of fear that ran down his back, raising his hair in a ridge. No, a strain didn’t look like a break and Lowrance had no reason to lie to him.

  “So if he’s not in the hospital with a broken arm and he’s not patched up working in the gardens,” the tom said, “where is he?”

  “Good question. I think we need to start searching. I don’t like the way things are shaping up here.”

  The tom had to agree. Nothing was what it seemed, but there was one big problem.

  “How do we search the school? It’s not like anyone here trusts us.”

  “No, but you’ve got more leeway than I do.”

  “I suppose so, but I still can’t just poke around wherever I want. It was hard enough getting into the hospital without the overseer getting suspicious.”

  “What about evening meditations? Do you think you could get them to let you roam the halls then?”

  “I’ve never shown any interest in evening meditations before now. That may seem odd.”

  “We have to do something.”

  “I agree. Listen, let me think about it tonight. I’ll come up with some idea of how to search the premises.”

  “Sounds good. I’ll keep my eyes and ears open while I work. Just because those cats haven’t said much so far, doesn’t mean they won’t eventually say or do something that’ll clue us into what’s really going on here.”

  “It’s a plan.”

  Lowrance’s eyes began drooping again. He reached his hand up to rub his eyes, flashing the angry red slashes toward Tobias. The tom’s stomach clenched again, remembering another set he’d given to the girl in the mirror room. He looked into his friend’s face.

  “Why don’t you get some sleep. Morning comes early around this place.”

  The young human nodded and curled up on his cot, tucking his rough, brown blanket around his neck. Tobias kneaded the blankets in his nest and settled down, staring at the locked door. His thoughts tumbled over each other, alternating between trying to come up with a plan and self-recrimination.

  It seemed just a few moments later he heard a noise outside the door. The tom looked up at the slit of a window in their room. The moon had disappeared above the eaves, meaning he’d fallen asleep at some point. He resettled himself and closed his eyes, figuring if he was going to fall asleep anyway, he might as well get comfortable.

  He heard the noise again. It was in the hallway. It sounded like low murmuring. He slunk to the door and pressed an ear against its wood. There was the soft sound of paw steps accompanied by low voices getting closer to the door.

  “Filthy beasts,” said one with a distinctly feline growl in it.

  “Such sacrilege, digging there. Obviously they haven’t any souls or they’d know better,” answered another feline voice.

  “You’d think the Master would keep them away.”

  “Hush!”

  The paw steps stopped outside the door. There was silence for several moments. Tobias wondered if he’d somehow missed their passing.

  “He has ears everywhere.”

  “You don’t believe that whole omnipresence drek, do you?” asked the one who had accused their master. Although the words sounded sarcastic, the gray tom caught a hint of fear. He pressed his nose to the crack under the door and inhaled. He recognized his overseer’s scent, but the other was new to him.

  “Of course not,” said the overseer. “I mean he has spies among us. Unless you want to end up as one of his precious experiments, you’d best remember that.”

  The cats moved on in silence. Experiments? What did that mean? The gray tom shivered, turning toward his nest again. He stopped and looked at the rumpled cloth. A shiver ran the length of his body again. He looked up at Lowrance, who had shifted position, laying on his back. He looked again at his nest and decided he couldn’t sleep there tonight. The gray cat gathered himself and leaped onto the cot, landing softly beside the sleeping human’s head. As he curled up in the hollow of Lowrance’s neck, the boy reached his hand up to cradle the tom beside him. Tobias settled into a ball and purred himself to sleep.

  The gray tom was still trying to decide how to search a wider area around the school. The best he had been able to come up with so far was taking different routes to and from the hospital wing. His late arrivals didn’t please Mother Hazel, but neither she nor the overseer had seen fit to chastise him yet. Each time he chose a different route, he peered into every open room and often paused to listen at doors, but he still didn’t know where Adam was.

  During one direction change, Tobias happened to see Councilman Damon walking beside Father Hanif. The gray tom backpedaled and hid in the shadows as they passed by, then followed them as they walked to the cat’s office. His fur prickled as he waited for Hanif to notice him. The two continued their conversation and walked into Hanif’s office. He let out the breath he’d been holding and crept to the closed door, checking both directions of the hallway for anyone.

  This door was thicker than the door in their quarters. Even pressing his ear to it he couldn’t make out more than two male voices. The tom settled onto the floor and put his satchel down. He found that if he stretched his neck out his ear was closer to the crack between the door and the floor and he could distinguish their voices better.

  “It seems the school is doing well, Your Excellency,” said Damon. “The Master is proud of you.”

  “We are delighted to know that. We strive for perfection.”

  “Have you had any set backs? Anything the Master needs to know of?”

  “Absolutely not. Our preparations for the New Eden continue on schedule as Our Lord orders.”

  “That is good because I have news from the Master. Our special source has finally given us the information we were looking for.”

  “Wonderful. We were disappointed that We had to call Our Lord and Master to finish this task for Us.”

  “There is no shame in asking for help, friend. The Master wants his plans to unfold in the right time and if his servants need aid in bringing tasks to fruition, he is willing to stretch his paw out to us.”

  “So true, brother. Might We inquire as to how the source was finally broken?”

  “The Master showed him that his black queen had been toppled. Simple strategy, really, but effective.”

  Tobias gasped, then shoved his mouth between his paws. Was is possible? Were they talking about his father? He pressed his ear closer to the crack.

  “Poor devil. We shall pray his soul be cleansed for the New Eden. It would be a waste for such as he to enter damnation and torment.”

  “Indeed. He has suffered enough of that already. You would think he would be ready to embrace our Master’s ideals, yet even now he resists.”

  The gray tom jumped as he felt claws rake his back leg. He skidded around to face his attacker, ready to lay into whoever had clawed him. He came face to face with Janelle. The mottled brown and black she-cat glared at him.

  “Just what do you think you’re doing,” she hissed.

  “I saw His Excellency go in there with a human.”

  “That is no concern of yours. Pick up your satchel and be on your way be
fore I chase you in there and let His Excellency flay the fur from your hide.”

  Tobias bowed and picked up his package. He scurried down the hall, glancing back once to see the she-cat still glaring at him. Thoughts of his father circled the young tom’s mind. He might still be alive. Tobias couldn’t wait to talk to his partner and begin planning how to interrogate Hanif.

  By the time the young cat returned to their quarters, he’d almost convinced himself they could snatch Father Hanif and disappear somewhere to interrogate him. He was surprised to see Lowrance pacing their room.

  “What’s up?”

  “Trying to stay awake. Didn’t want matching scars on my other arm.”

  Tobias laid his ears back, looking pained. “How many times do I have to say I’m sorry?”

  Lowrance smiled. The gray tom splayed his whiskers in return, glad he’d been forgiven.

  “So, what have you found out?” the boy asked.

  “You won’t believe it. My father is still alive and Hanif knows where he is.”

  The boy’s eyes widened and he dropped to his cot.

  “Back up. You found out your father is definitely alive and Father Hanif knows where he’s being held?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you find that out?”

  “I saw Councilman Damon go with Hanif into the cat’s office, so I followed them. It wasn’t easy to understand what they were saying, but they were talking about torturing information out of someone. It had to be father because they said he broke when he found out his black queen had been toppled. And they said he’s still resisting them.”

  Lowrance reached up and stroked his chin, then stared at his hand. Tobias shifted from foot to foot.

  “We have to grab Hanif and find out what he knows.”

  The human dropped his hand to his knee, shaking his head. “We can’t catnap the head temple cat.”

  “Why not?”

  “For starters it would blow our cover.”

  “So what?”

  “Did you forget we’re already on a secret mission?”

  “Of course not. This is the whole reason we’re here: to find out where my father is.”

  “That’s one part, Toby. Master O’dorn asked us to find out what’s going on here. You know he wouldn’t ask us to investigate without the OKG’s go ahead unless it’s something much bigger than finding your father or helping a few orphans.”

  The gray tom snarled, lashing his tail. “You just want to free these kids.”

  Lowrance shrugged and waved toward the door, including everything beyond in the gesture.

  “Of course I do. I don’t know how they’ve become such puppets, but what’s worse is that they’re also being abused. I’d love to just bust them all out and burn this place to the ground, but I think there’s a bigger mystery here. I think we’ve only scratched the surface.”

  The tom stalked to his nest and ripped into the cloth, savoring the sound of tearing cloth. The boy sighed.

  “Okay, let’s consider it this way. Say we manage to disappear with this cat and he tells us where your father is. Now, unless you have some fantastic way to keep his disappearance a secret, we can assume whoever is behind capturing your father will be alerted. At best, they’ll move your father and we’re no closer to finding him than we were before. At worst, they’ll kill him out right. Either way we lose.”

  Tobias cast a glare over his shoulder at the human.

  “I know you want to find your father, but now isn’t the best time, and catnapping the head of the temple isn’t the best way. If we keep poking around here maybe we’ll find more clues to where your father is and then we can go after him without letting his captors know we’re coming.”

  The gray tom curled up into a ball in his nest and covered his nose with his tail. Lowrance bent down beside him and looked him in the eyes.

  “And what about your mother?” he whispered. “Whatever is happening here was worth killing her for. Don’t you owe her as much as you do your father?”

  The tom flattened his ears to half mast. He hated it when his partner made sense. He lifted his head to better look into the boy’s freckled face.

  “What do you propose, then?”

  Lowrance sat crossed legged in front of the cat. “I think we can assume that Councilman Damon is in the thick of this, as is Hanif. We can’t be sure Damon’s cat isn’t involved.”

  “I think that’s a safe bet. There was never any love loss between them and Master O’dorn and mother. Master O’dorn often mentioned they were at odds during council sessions.”

  “Yes, but you know what he always says, just because you think someone is involved in something, you can’t go around accusing them.”

  “Not without proof, anyway. So what else?”

  “We also know that these kids are being drugged somehow. Did you ever find out what they’re using?”

  “No. I’m pretty sure those flowers have something to do with it, but I have no idea what else they use. For all I know, the flowers mask the smell and taste of some other herb. You certainly can’t smell anything else once you’ve stuck your nose in one.”

  “So we’re no closer to finding out how the drug is administered, then.”

  “Not yet. I’m still waiting on Terence to send me that information. Did I tell you he took a vow of silence?”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah. The Brother I talked to said there was no way of knowing when his vow would end, if it will at all.”

  “Wow. That’s something I never thought I’d hear about him.”

  “That’s true enough. Unfortunately, that could mean we’ll have to come up with the information ourselves.”

  Lowrance stroked his chin again, making the young cat’s whiskers splay.

  “You’ve really grown attached to that beard, haven’t you?”

  The boy stared down at his hand again, then shrugged. “I’ll be glad to get back to normal. In the meantime, did you find out anything more about Adam?”

  “No on that as well.”

  “So in other words, we’ve been here three weeks with little to show for it other than knowing there’s a drug being used, Hanif may be involved in the disappearance of your father and there’s a boy somewhere around here that no one wants us to believe has a broken arm.”

  “Don’t forget that Harold is doing some kind of research in a library that isn’t used.”

  “That’s not a lot to go on.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  The partners stared at each other for a long time. The boy’s eyes began to droop and he yawned. Tobias put a paw on his knee.

  “You seem to be exhausted every night anymore. Janelle said you should be back to yourself by now if you’d cooperate. What’s going on out there?”

  Lowrance shook his head. “Nothing except working nonstop. Well, except when we stop for lunch.”

  “Have you been eating what they give you?”

  The boy shook his head again. “Only about half. Just enough to keep me going and I haven’t drunk the tea at all. I’ve been sneaking drinks from the trough when I can.”

  “No wonder you’re exhausted.”

  He shrugged. “Until we know how they’re drugging the kids, I don’t want to take any chances.”

  “Good idea. I just wish there was something I could do. I’d sneak more food to you, but I don’t have pockets in my fur and I’m leery about using magic in this place.”

  “Me, too.”

  “The other night I overheard my overseer and another cat talking about their master having spies all over the place. They may have been talking about real felines or about those traps we learned about that are tripped any time someone uses magic.”

  “That may be the reason magic is so
taboo here. Using it without knowing what will trigger a trap would certainly cause problems. Maybe it’s not that these cats can’t use magic,” Lowrance said, “It’s that they’re not supposed to without prior authorization.”

  “That’s my thinking. I’ve been watching the Anointed Ones and they do use magic, but so far only within the herb room. I’ve never seen anyone use it outside of that room.”

  “It might be worth keeping a close watch on them while you’re there. Maybe we could sneak in and do some investigating later.”

  “Good idea. I would certainly like to know what they’re doing in that back room and I’m pretty sure I’m not likely to get the chance any other way.”

  Lowrance yawned and rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hands.

  “I wish I could be more help, but a human sticks out like a sore thumb around here.”

  “You may get a chance. Just keep watching and listening. Those cats have to say something sometime.”

  The boy yawned again and nodded.

  “You better get to sleep. Half rations won’t help you at all if you’re sleep deprived, too.”

  “Agreed,” he said, climbing into his cot. “I think we should keep searching for Adam, too. He may be a key to solving this whole mess.”

  “I’ll see what I can do about searching the other non-essential buildings, though it may be tougher now that Janelle caught me eavesdropping.”

  “You’ll figure out how.”

  The human mumbled something else incoherent and started snoring. Tobias stared at him for a while, wondering how long a human could continue working hard labor with very little food before they dropped. He doubted it would be very long. If someone was going to find clues to break open this investigation, it would be up to him.

  Getting away from everyone had been a miracle. He still wasn’t sure how he’d convinced Janelle to let him take a walk by himself outside. Of course, the school bordered the area he was walking in on two sides and by a thick forest on the third side. He’d been warned a large pack of wild dogs roamed the forest. That meant he had to go east and he knew if he went far enough in that direction he’d be hedged in by the same forest. Since he was also taking a walk in an old cemetery, he supposed the she-cat had no firm excuse to keep him inside under her watchful eyes.