by Unknown
What made the situation stranger, from their perspective at least, was that Aletha and I were carrying on a conversation with him.
It was actually quite fascinating. I started with my earliest piece of knowledge, something I’d inherited from the Jaunten blood, and started asking him questions. Despite the fact that he couldn’t speak, he was quite capable of conversing with body language and perfectly-timed meows and sniffs. He knew everything I knew, and he wasn’t shy about letting us know it, either.
I had to wonder, if it worked this well on cats, how would it work on Meurittas?
Then I imagined Didi with a human’s intelligence and shuddered. No, some things were better left alone.
We found a small brook off the side of the highway and made camp for the night. Tail proved to be a good fisher, as he caught a small river trout and dragged it over to the fire. Then he dropped it on my boot and gave me a significant look.
I looked back at him blankly. “What?” I doubted he was feeding me.
Aletha looked up from where she was unpacking the cookware. “Shad, I think he expects you to clean that for him.”
Tail gave a satisfied purr, happy with her translation.
“Wait, last I checked, cats don’t care if a fish is raw or not,” I protested.
Aletha and Tail’s eyes met and she gave a shrug. “Apparently, turning him Jaunten has given him some human habits.”
Just how could she understand him so well? I knew that women and cats were a lot alike, but still…. Resigned to my fate, I picked up the fish and went back to the stream so that I could clean it. I even baked it in the coals for Lord Furball, as he seemed to expect that as well.
With him purring and contentedly eating his fish, Aletha and I managed to cook up a stew and some flatbread for our own dinner. As we ate, Aletha asked, “So what exactly are we looking for?”
“I think it’s further south than this,” I answered thoughtfully. “The land the Gardener showed me looked like grassland, but it had a lot of low hills and rocks. I got the impression of water too, so maybe near a large lake? Or even the sea, for all I know.”
“So you don’t think we’re even in the right province?”
“No, not really,” I admitted. “I had Garth drop us off in Darlington because I didn’t want to paint a target on the girl mage’s location. That earth-traveling method of his sends off all sorts of magical flares.”
“It was probably for the best, but that also means it’s going to take us longer to reach her.”
I set my bowl down on the ground with a sigh. “It’s a fine line to tread, to be sure. I hope I don’t regret the decision later.”
“Are you sure we shouldn’t have kept him around? I mean, he could have felt where she was and taken us directly to her.”
I shook my head. “There had to be a reason why the Gardener came to get me instead of Garth. If it was speed needed to rescue her, it would have been him they called for. No, I think we can find her just as well without him. Besides, we were lucky to keep him for as long as we did.”
She chuckled in agreement. “Yes, it did seem like a disaster was waiting for him at the academy. How do you suppose a student managed to blow a hole in the building?”
“Who knows? Potions accident, maybe?”
“I never thought that being a teacher at a magical academy should involve hazard pay until now.”
I laughed outright at this. “Maybe I should negotiate for that before signing on, since I’ll be teaching weapons.”
“I want to meet the kid that can hurt you,” she retorted, “and recruit him myself!”
“Hey, it’s possible!” I protested, still smiling. “Not likely, I’ll grant you.”
“Pfft.” Shaking her head, she put her hands on her knees and pushed herself up to her feet. “I’ll get more firewood.”
“Alright.” I supposed while she did that, I should start cleaning up.
Tail dragged a fish over to me and dropped it at my feet, manner imperious.
I looked at the fish, then looked back at him. “Another one?”
He flicked his ear in affirmation before sitting down like a prim and proper lord.
Heaven spare me. Cats were egotistical creatures to begin with, but give them a little intelligence, and they thought they could rule the universe. Rolling my eyes, I reached for the fish and started cleaning it. I didn’t dare do otherwise. Cats could be creative and outright cruel when getting revenge.
If only I could somehow divide up the intelligence. My stallion had good staying power and was well-trained, so he didn’t spook easily, but he could be a brighter horse. I called him Cloud because it always seemed like his head was up in the clouds. Even now, standing over there nibbling on the grass, he looked dazed and out of it.
My eyes trailed back to the cat sitting patiently at my side. I’d asked this question before, although Aletha had quickly squashed the idea. If I could turn a cat Jaunten, what other animals would it work on? Really, the first animal I would have chosen to experiment with was a horse, as Jaunten blood worked well with Nreesces.
“You’re cleaning and cooking another fish for him?” Aletha asked in amusement, coming around the campfire with some firewood in her hands.
“Oh?” I blinked, switching back to the present. “Uh, yes. I don’t dare do otherwise. I don’t know what he’ll do to me if I don’t.”
She chuckled. “Yes, cats are good at getting revenge. Tail, you know that I’ll cook fish for you too?”
Tail gave her a bored look.
“Apparently I’m a good cook,” I drawled, amused when he gave a very human nod of agreement.
“With fish, you are,” Aletha agreed, her pride not the least bit singed. But then, my superior fish cooking skills made me Tail’s personal chef, so she likely thought she was getting the better end of the deal. “Well, if you’re cooking again, I’ll get another bucket of water.”
“Sure, thanks.” I watched her leave the campfire’s light and pass into the shadows again. My mind went back to thinking about Cloud. Would it work?
Would it hurt anything to try?
The only con I could foresee was riding around on a white horse. And that was if it worked. If it failed, it wouldn’t do anything. Well, except get me into trouble with Aletha, who doubtless wouldn’t look well upon my experimenting. But potential trouble had never stopped me from trying anything.
I quickly propped the fish up near the fire so that it would cook, then skirted around to Cloud’s side. Before Aletha could come back and stop me, I nicked my wrist with the knife and then nicked him on the neck. Being a good-tempered horse, he just flinched and didn’t try to head-butt me. I quickly put my bleeding wrist up against his neck, watching the blood mix together.
With one eye on him, one eye on where Aletha had disappeared into the trees, I held that position for several long seconds. I couldn’t see her in the darkness, but I could hear her boots as they slapped against the tall grass, so I didn’t have more than a few moments before she came back and asked what in blue blazes I was doing.
At that moment, Cloud’s eyes rolled back into his head. With a yelp, I quickly scrambled away before he sank to the ground and onto his side. If I hadn’t moved that fast, he would have pinned me underneath him. I scanned him anxiously, looking for signs of him turning white, but didn’t see anything yet. Then again, it would likely take longer to work on a horse. Let’s see…it took six hours for a human to convert, two for a cat…so perhaps ten or so hours for a horse? If we were just going by body weight.
“Shad.”
I spun about with a bright, innocent smile on my face. “Yes?”
Aletha had both arms crossed over her chest, a hard look in her eyes, and her toe tapping out a suspicious rhythm. “Did you just try to turn your horse Jaunten?”
I thought about how to answer that. Nothing that I thought of seemed likely to appease her and get me out of trouble. So I went with the blunt truth. “Yes.”
She drew in a long breath. Held it. Let it out again. Her eyes rose to the heavens in a clear bid for patience. “Why?”
“I wanted to see if it would work?”
Aletha pointed a stern finger at me. “You are hereby forbidden to experiment or deliberately mix your blood with anyone else’s. Do it again, and I’ll turn you in to the Trasdee Evondit Orra.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I responded meekly. Meek was good. It would soothe her ire and make her think I was repentant.
I would need to be much sneakier with trying something in the future.
Turned out Jaunten blood was much more effective on cats than horses.
Cloud turned pure white during the course of the night. But when he woke and got back on his feet, he still had that dazed look in his eyes, as if someone could poke a stick into his ear and it would come out the other side without meeting any resistance.
I put one hand on his nose, the other on his neck to hold him still and get his attention. “Cloud?”
His big brown eye focused on me with a slow blink.
“You understand me?” I asked slowly. “Nod if you can.”
He bobbed his head once.
Ha! So it had worked to a good degree. Shame it hadn’t given him Tail’s level of intelligence, though. Wait, maybe this was better. After all, Tail didn’t have an ounce of obedience in him and had the human smarts to evade me. Did I really want to deal with a rambunctious, intelligent stallion?
Aletha might have a point. I should have thought this through a little more before experimenting.
She came up beside me, slung an arm around my shoulders, and leaned against me as she took the horse in from head to tail. “Looks like it sort of worked. I’m not sure whether to smack you or congratulate you.”
I patted Cloud on the neck. “Well enough, I think. Alright, Cloud, from now on, let’s work together. You know as well as I why we’re here.”
The horse gave a wuff of agreement, ears flickering. He looked…a little hung over, but I remembered that feeling well after waking up Jaunten. It had taken a few hours before I’d really felt like myself again.
We broke camp, saddled up, and returned to the road. Tail resumed his perch on Cloud’s back and rode well there, as if he were accustomed to doing so. I eyed him over my shoulder. For some reason, he’d taken a shine to us. At several points in the night, I’d woken to find him curled up either under my blankets or under Aletha’s. He acted aloof most of the time, as if he couldn’t care less what we did, but he never ventured far from us, either.
Was it fear? He knew as well as I that if he were caught by a Star Order Priest down here, they would show him no mercy. He was certainly safer with us. Or maybe he just felt estranged from the other cats now, as he had changed so much. Perhaps he just felt like he belonged more with us.
I could hardly ask him to explain, all things considered. Technically, he knew how to write, though. I wondered if we could somehow rig up a way for him to hold a pen….
I looked up and found Aletha watching me with the strangest expression on her face. In the years that I’d known her, I’d seen this woman in a variety of moods and humors, but this one was new and unknown to me. I couldn’t decipher it. Maybe she was still exasperated by my experimenting.
We really didn’t know where to go from here. My impression of south, body of water, and flat land wasn’t much to go off of. Most of southern Chahir could fit that description. Aletha suggested going to Forz, as it was a trading hub for the southern provinces and near the Elkhorn River. I had to admit, it was an excellent suggestion. It sat on the borders of Darlington, Beddingfield and Kaczorek, so it was in the right direction. Well, at least it would mean going in a southerly direction, which is what we wanted. But more importantly, it would likely have a lot of rumors flying about, so it might have some helpful information.
One could hope, anyway.
It took another two long days of being in the saddle before we finally reached the lovely town of Forz. And by ‘lovely’ I meant cramped, chaotic, and filthy. The city had grown from the small trading post I was familiar with two hundred years ago to this sprawling place that seemed to branch off in every possible direction. We were on something of a rise as we connected to the main highway, and from here, it looked like the outskirts butted up against the Elkhorn.
Aletha’s nose wrinkled up. “What is that smell?”
“Oh, you name it, it’s mixed in there.” My nose gave a few involuntary twitches as a particularly strong gust of wind brought the odors of the city directly to my face. Thanks for that, wind. Much obliged. “Tanners, paper makers, city refuse, all mixed in a melting pot for our sensory pleasure.”
She nearly gagged as the wind wafted over us again. “Don’t they believe in sewage systems?”
“Apparently not.”
The smell got worse, of course, the closer we got. Tail actually climbed up under my vest, using the leather to save his nose. Some enterprising souls had booths set up on either side of the highway selling scented masks. To anyone unfamiliar with the town, these brightly-colored scarves looked like offerings from heaven. Aletha promptly pulled over and bought two, a plain white one for each of us. I took one from her with a grateful nod and tied it around my nose and mouth.
Oh, the scent of orange blossoms. Delightful. So much better than the city smell. “I wonder how long these last.”
“According to the merchant, it’s a guaranteed eight hours or our money back.” The look in Aletha’s eyes said she was holding him to that promise.
We had traffic coming up and down on either side, so Aletha and I stuck close to each other, our boots overlapping. We both had our eyes peeled for trouble, because in this sort of crowd, pickpockets and the like weren’t uncommon. Wagons filled with every type of merchandise, from food to uncut logs, passed by us. With them came the creaks of the wagons, the calls of the drivers, and the usual din of caravans like these.
Aletha had to raise her voice a little to be heard. “I don’t see any gates or security!”
I had to rise up in my stirrups to get a good look at the road ahead. Huh, she was right. I didn’t see anything either. Now, that was unusual for a Chahiran city. Or was this one of those matters where because the city sat on the border of three different provinces no one was sure who was supposed to provide guardsmen?
Knowing politics, that was likely it.
With our scented kerchiefs guarding our noses, we waded into the city proper.
“Hubby.”
“Yes, wifey?”
“Might I ask a favor?”
“Anything.”
“Can you not employ your usual routine of getting information?”
I put a hand to my heart, acting offended. “Me? What have I ever done wrong?”
Aletha started ticking things off on her fingers. “You started a bar fight to find a renegade priest—”
“Hey, that worked!” I protested, grinning. “And Hazard agreed it was the quickest way to figure it out.”
Unfazed, she kept going, “And then there was that time when you first came onto the Red Hand, when you convinced a double agent that you were actually a triple agent—”
“I had that well in hand until I got ratted out.”
“—or perhaps I should remind you of that lovely incident when you hired yourself onto an assassin’s payroll in order to sneak inside a building?”
“Ah, good times, good times.” Frowning, I added regretfully, “I doubt there are any assassins here.”
Aletha lifted her eyes to the heavens and muttered, “Thank the Guardian of the World for small favors. My point is, please, when you go asking for information, try not to start any bar fights or turn any other cats Jaunten?”
“You’re simply taking all the fun out of this, dearest.”
“I live to put a spike in your wheel.”
Not bothered by this warning, I smirked. “I’ll do my best.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.” Without glancing b
ack, she said in a nonchalant tone, “Tail? Feel free to scratch him when he starts misbehaving.”
Tail purred in a rumble of agreement.
“Hey!” I glanced between them, brows furrowed. “Seriously, since when did you two get to be on such good terms?”
“Secret,” she purred, sounding strangely feline.
I gave her a suspicious look out of the corner of my eye.
The highway we were on dumped us onto the main street which had vending stalls and open markets clustered together on both sides. There was absolutely no sense to how everything was laid out. Food stalls were right next to blacksmith shops, clothing shops next to junk stalls, farmers’ tables butted up against physicians’ clinics. I couldn’t begin to sort it out. How did anyone shop here without feeling lost the entire time?
“Farmers first,” Aletha suggested.
I raised my eyebrows at her. “Why them?”
“Farmers pay attention to the weather more than anyone else. With the possible exception of sailors.” She shrugged. “Surely they would be the ones to notice a change.”
“Excellent point. Since it’s your idea, will you do the honors?” I waved her forward.
She guided her horse over to the nearest farmer’s table and leaned down, carefully asking them in her best Chahirese if the weather had been strange in the past few weeks. The two old men looked at each other and then shook their heads, silently saying they hadn’t noticed anything. But the young girl actually manning the table—I took her for a granddaughter—piped up with, “But you said it’s been raining more than it usually does, Granda.”
“It’s not been that much more, Celli,” he objected.
She got this mulish set to her jaw, eyes narrowing. “You said.”
He held up a wrinkled, gnarled hand. “I know, I did. We get a few more inches of rain, a farmer notices. Been good for crops. But it’s not what this lady is asking. She wants to know if there’s stormy weather ahead, and we ain’t seen that.”
Aletha gave them a sweet smile. “Even rain is bad news for a traveler. Thank you, both of you. Can I have some of those apples?”
