by Unknown
“You might be surprised,” I responded. I had to pause while speaking to dodge a loaded wagon that had stopped right in the middle of the road. When I came around it and back to Aletha’s side, I continued, “I’m hearing accents from all provinces, especially from the far southern side of the country.”
“Oh?” she perked up, much more alert. “In that case, you want to split up? Say, you get the breads, cheeses, and meats, I’ll get everything else? We’re more likely to get information that way.”
I took another look around us, twisting this way and that in the saddle. I saw quite a few dark heads mixed into the crowd. There might be enough foreigners here that Aletha wouldn’t really warrant a second glance. “You don’t think you’ll be hassled?”
She arched an eyebrow at me, head slanted in a challenging manner. “You think it would matter?”
“Yes, wifey, I’m aware that you can beat a lecher’s face flat, that’s not what I’m saying,” I drawled patiently. “We are supposed to keep things low-key, remember?”
“I promise to beat them up silently,” she retorted sweetly.
Why was I even worrying about her? It was the possible lechers that needed my sympathy. “Fine, fine. Then, meet me there,” I jerked my chin to indicate the fountain that sat in the middle of the town square, “in an hour?”
“That should be enough time,” she judged. “Then, in an hour.”
The market made a split and our noses basically told us which directions we needed to go. I followed the smell of baking bread to the left, and Aletha spied vegetables farther up the street and kept going. I discovered quickly that I couldn’t keep riding, or even lead my stallion along, as the market started crowding over the street. It became close quarters, so tight that I myself had to go sideways just to make it through.
I found a carriage house around the corner that agreed to hold my horse for a small fee, and I left what I’d already bought with the stallion. Then I went back to the street, haggling for bread and cheese and jerky. I asked questions of the merchants and vendors as I went, looking for anything strange that might be weather-related, but no one had heard of anything. In fact, I got odd looks for even asking, as apparently the weather this season was unusually fair.
This relieved me in a sense, because it meant that the girl mage hadn’t been discovered yet, but it also meant that I didn’t have any indicators of where to go except in a southerly direction.
That was less than helpful.
It was instinct that made me turn a corner, stealing a glance behind me as I did so. I saw them instantly. Three men, armed with knives and long walking sticks that could be quarterstaffs if needed. They looked rough, their clothes shoddy, beards and hair ill-kept, and I fancied that even from this distance I could smell the cheap alcohol on them. Street thieves, and hardened ones, from the looks of it.
Growling to myself, I started looking for a place to lose them. I didn’t need to tangle with the city guard. Way too many questions would be involved and the answers could tie me up for weeks. It would be better all-around if I could just ditch them here and bypass all that trouble.
My eyes nearly skipped over it, the opening was so narrow. It was a dinky little alleyway, probably only used for refuse, crammed in between two buildings. Perfect. I ducked in between two food stalls, blocking the vision of my would-be-thieves, and then dove into the alleyway. There were several crates stacked up on one side and I scrambled behind them, sinking down to one knee to keep my head out of view.
The smell of the alleyway wasn’t exactly pleasant—actually, it stank to high heaven. It was like leather armor not cleaned in three months, dead fish left out for a few days, and Chatta’s potions all mixed into one. I nearly gagged. To keep my mind off of it, I strained my hearing to the max, trying to figure out if I had lost my tagalongs or not.
I didn’t hear them…of course, with all the city sounds out there, I probably wouldn’t…yeeooooowwww!
From out of nowhere a striped orange and white cat had appeared and taken a layer of skin off my hand. With an angry hiss, it arched its back, hair standing on end, and snarled at me. Cripes, was I intruding on its territory?
“Just put up with me for a bit, would ya?” I pleaded in a soft whisper. “I’ll be out of your furballs in a minute.”
He didn’t like this answer and took another swipe at me. I avoided this one in the nick of time, and I decided that since negotiations had obviously failed, I was going to have to go with more drastic measures. Reaching for him quickly, I tried to snatch the alley cat up by the back of the neck.
Being a fast little bugger, he dodged and landed another hit on me.
Swearing, I reached for him again, just catching him by the front leg. He promptly leaned over and bit me, levering up all his paws so that he could dig in with three sets of claws. Hissing in pain—that bloody well hurt!—I clamped my free hand over his mouth to stifle the angry, screeched challenges he was making.
Of all the blasted luck! Why did I have to dive into the one alleyway in all of Visela that had a territorial alley cat in it?
My tagalongs hadn’t heard the commotion and come to investigate, had they? I pressed the cat against my chest, restricting his movements, and cautiously eased one eye around the crates.
Nothing.
No one had heard the cat and me tussling. Or maybe they had heard and dismissed it as nothing of consequence. Whatever the case might’ve been, no one was even bothering to glance into the alley.
Hoping that I had lost the pursuers, I got to my feet and cautiously made my way to the mouth of the alley. Staying low to the ground, I peeked in either direction. No sign of them anywhere. Blowing out a breath of relief, I turned my attention to my more immediate trouble. The cat was still now, but I was sure that the minute I let go of him, he was going to come right back at me, all claws bared. Maybe if I tossed him farther into the alley and hightailed it out of his territory, he wouldn’t pursue me?
Since I couldn’t think of another plan, I went with it. Supposedly, if you picked up a cat by the back of their neck, they couldn’t move. Or at least Chatta always picked up Didi that way, and Meurittas were rather similar to cats…. Shrugging, I lifted my hand off his mouth and grabbed his neck.
Wait a minute, he wasn’t making any noise. I hadn’t smothered him, had I? A little worried, I maneuvered him so that I could look at his face. Well, his eyes were closed, but he was still breathing. So he was just unconscious? Good then, I could just put him down—hold it.
Out of the corner of my eye, I had caught a flicker of movement that seemed odd. Focusing, I looked closer at his front paws. In front of my disbelieving eyes, his fur was slowly losing its stripes, turning a uniform white.
Shrieking hinges!
I didn’t see how it was possible, I couldn’t imagine how it was working, but the evidence was in front of my eyes and I couldn’t refute it. Somehow, I had accidentally turned this cat Jaunten.
A cat as a Jaunten.
Never in my life did I wish that I had either Garth or Chatta nearby so badly. I needed someone to explain this to me. As far as I knew—and I was Jaunten, so I should’ve known something, right?!—this wasn’t even possible. Sure, Night was Jaunten, which was very unusual. But even though a Nreesce was in the body of a horse, it was still a sentient creature. It had always been assumed that it was only because of Night’s intelligence that the Jaunten blood had taken hold.
Last I’d checked, cats weren’t known to talk much or think like humans.
I shook my head to clear it from going around in dizzy circles. I couldn’t just stand here until I figured this out. At the rate I was going, that’d take a few decades. I made a snap decision to just take the cat with me. I could figure this out later, once I was safely out of the city and away from any curious eyes.
First I had to figure out how to tell Aletha.
I’d pulled a lot of stupid, crazy stunts in my life. Because of that, I’d gotten some pretty interesting looks from people, but I
do believe that Aletha’s expression took the prize. She gave me the blankest, most dumbfounded look I’d ever seen on a person’s face. Her mouth kept moving, too, like she wanted to say something only couldn’t find the words.
“You…turned a cat…Jaunten,” she said slowly, as if she were trying to use those words to do some sort of complicated mathematical problem, only it wasn’t adding up.
“I think he’s about half-baked,” I responded with a deliberately devil-may-care grin. Holding up the cat by the scruff of his neck, I pointed at the area that was quickly turning solid white. “See how half of him is still tabby? I give it another hour before we have a fully-turned Jaunten cat on our hands.”
“How did this happen?” she demanded, pointing accusingly at the cat.
“He bit me!” I retorted defensively.
“No, I mean how?”
Oh, she meant ‘how’ as in, how was this even possible. “That I don’t know,” I admitted. “According to my Jaunten knowledge, this can’t happen. But then, according to my Jaunten knowledge, no one has ever tried this before either. I wonder what other animals this would work with….”
“Shad, focus!” she growled at me. Her eyes darted around, looking to see if anyone was eavesdropping.
Why she bothered, I didn’t know, as I had taken the precaution of dragging her out of town before telling her anything. We were at a well near a copse of trees that gave us some shelter and water to fill our canteens with. There was not a blessed soul near us, except for a few people on the road, but they were a good twenty feet away and not within earshot. Still, she lowered her voice even further.
“What are we going to do with him? We can’t very well let a cat with Jaunten blood run around southern Chahir.”
“We’re not even sure at this point how effective the Jaunten blood will be with him,” I pointed out. “I say we travel, wait for him to turn, then try to talk to him when he wakes up. At the rate he’s going, it won’t take much longer.”
“Hmm, I suppose that’s the only sensible plan to take.” Staring at the cat, her mouth pursed. “He’s not much to look at, is he?”
No, he truly wasn’t. He had a good long split in one ear, as if he’d been in a fight and it had never healed properly. His tail was outright missing, he had lumps in his fur from where burs had gotten tangled and matted, and he smelled vile.
“Before he wakes up, let’s give him a good scrubbing.” Aletha picked him out of my hands and laid him on the ground next to the well.
Bathe a sleeping, defenseless cat? Inspired decision. Call me a coward if you must, but I had no desire to wrestle with him again and get more scratches to show for it.
I cranked the lever on the well and drew up a bucket of water as Aletha rummaged around in her packs for a bar of soap and a towel. Between the two of us, we scrubbed him from head to toe three times before the smell was gone. Then we dunked him in the bucket several times to get all the soap out of his fur. Aletha even went so far as to comb him out and take a knife to the worst of the clumps.
He looked like a mangy, drowned rat by the time we were through with him.
But at least he smelled better!
After wrapping him up in the towel, we cleaned up and mounted, heading south on the highway. Because of our delay in shopping, and dealing with him, we’d lost more than the hour we’d allotted for our stop and it was now close to midafternoon. I squinted at the sky, estimating that we had perhaps another four hours of daylight left to travel in. Fortunately for us, it was summer and that gave us a lot of light. Of course, it also meant riding became unbearably hot at times, but getting sunburned and sweaty wouldn’t kill us.
“Hubby dearest?”
“Yes, darling?”
“What exactly do you plan to do about the Trasdee Evondit Orra when we get back?” Aletha jerked her chin to indicate the sleeping cat curled up in my lap. “You know they’ll find out about him one way or another. Aside from breaking two or three laws, you’ve also set a new magical precedent.”
“Which would be the second one,” I joked, shrug rueful. “As they’re still trying to figure out how I lasted for two hundred years in that crystal.”
“That one wasn’t your doing,” she pointed out calmly. “This one is.”
“Actually, it isn’t,” I retaliated sweetly. “As I said, his doing.”
“Shad. You’re the super soldier. You’re honestly expecting me to believe that you couldn’t dodge an alley cat?”
“The term ‘catlike reflexes’ exists for a reason, dearest.”
She rolled her eyes. “Still doesn’t answer my original question. What are you going to say to the Trasdee Evondit Orra?”
“That they do not govern the magic in Chahir, so this is not their problem.” I beamed, satisfied with my own answer.
Her look in my direction said she didn’t give that plan a very high rate of success. I had to admit, it was a bit weak. But then, what she’d failed to consider was I had an ace up my sleeve.
Eyebrow cocked, her eyes studied my face for a long moment. “You plan to let Garth get you out of this situation, don’t you?”
I reeled in my saddle as if shocked. “You can read minds now?!”
She snorted, amused. “Only yours, darling. But then, you’re easy to predict.”
Most people found me very unpredictable, actually. I think it was more a matter of her knowing me very well.
I knew the instant that the cat awoke. He went from a peacefully sleeping creature in my lap to a hissing, spitting, half-wet furball in a split second. Before I knew it, he’d somehow wrangled his way out of the towel and leapt for the ground, landing in a sideways slide on the grass.
“Oh, you’re awake,” I greeted pleasantly, leaning over my stallion’s neck to look him in the eye. “Greetings.”
He arched his back and hissed at me. The look was somewhat marred since half his fur had dried in a weird direction, so it refused to stand up properly along his spine.
“Now, I’m not going to apologize for the change you went through,” my tone was perfectly level, “as you rather brought it upon yourself by biting me. I won’t apologize for the bath, either, as you sorely needed it.”
I got quite the dirty look for that. I’d always harbored the suspicion that it wasn’t water or baths that cats hated, it was just having to put all their fur back in place that irked them.
“We just have two questions for you.” Aletha dropped out of her saddle and stared cautiously at the cat. The expression on her face said she felt a little silly for seriously conversing with a four-legged creature. (Why, I didn’t know, as it didn’t bother me.) “Do you realize what you are?”
The cat’s ears went flat, creating the perfect look of annoyance. After a long moment he gave a very human nod.
My mouth went dry. I couldn’t mistake that gesture for anything other than assent. Heavens. Wait until the magic council heard about this.
Aletha wet her lips and continued hoarsely, “Can you understand perfectly everything I’m saying?”
He drew himself up in a dignified way and gave us such a superior look that it left us no doubt that he did, in fact, understand. The look made us feel stupid for even questioning it.
I let out a low whistle. “So that theory of Night only becoming Jaunten because of his sentient intelligence just went up in smoke. Last I checked, cats weren’t supposed to be that smart.”
The cat didn’t care for that statement one bit.
Aletha waved me down. “Look, if you have Shad’s knowledge, then you know where we’re going and why. You also realize how dangerous it is for you to stay in Chahir. If anyone suspects what you are—and they have ways of detecting the magic in you—then they’ll hunt you down. Killing you will probably be the kindest thing they do to you. Since that’s the case, won’t you go back with us? We can take you to Strae Academy, which is the safest place for you to be. You won’t lack for anything there, either.”
I rather hoped he’d agr
ee, as I enjoyed the thought of showing a Jaunten cat to all those oh-so-masterful magicians and watching their eyes bug out of their heads.
The cat considered us both for a long moment, and I could just see the wheels spinning in his head, but he finally consented with a flick of his ear. Then, to the surprise of us both, he gave a light hop from the ground and settled on my stallion’s haunches. I twisted with a creak of leather to look behind me.
“You sure you want to ride there?” I asked in surprise. “You won’t fall off?”
He gave me a look that adequately said, Please. As if I would.
I held up a hand in surrender. “Alright, fine, sorry I asked. Gorgeous, let’s get going.”
“Wait, I don’t think it’s right to just pick up a companion and travel with him without knowing his name,” she protested. “I mean, what if we need to call him?”
Good point. Although it begged the question: “Do cats even have names?”
He started licking his paw, completely bored with this conversation.
I’d take that as a “no.” Hmmm, in that case…I gave him a thorough scrutiny, trying to think of a name for him. He was a pristine white now, but still looked like a beat-up alley cat. I wasn’t going to name him something cute like Snow.
“Tail.”
Both cat and woman gave me a funny look, as if my naming sense didn’t have any logic to it.
“Because he’s tailing us until we reach Strae,” I explained. “Besides, he doesn’t have one. A tail, I mean. Isn’t it perfect?”
Aletha gave a put-upon sigh. “I suppose I shouldn’t have expected much since you named your dark bay stallion Cloud. Fine, Tail works. Let’s keep riding.”
We got some strange looks as we traveled the main highway south, let me tell you. It was common for people to travel with dogs as protection or because they were moving flocks of sheep, that sort of thing. And varieties of farm animals were a regular sight in a company of travelers as well. But a cat? No one traveled with a cat unless it was a fine lady of some sort. And even then, the pampered feline was riding in a carriage on a silk cushion, not lounging on the back of a stallion.
