“He hit me. I’ll kill him.”
Kirin released her. He stepped to the window, leaning out as far as he could, feeling the broken glass crunch under his palm. Clouds obscured the moon and earlier, the midday sun had melted all the snow around the Inn. Now, there was no sign of the Seer, save a skid of freshly churned earth where his feet had landed.
When he turned ‘round, the room was full of people.
“You, you and you,” he jabbed a finger at the three leopards. “Alert the guard in the stables. Find Sireth benAramis now and return him to the Inn.”
“Sir,” they echoed as one, and left the room.
Kirin swung around to face the others, the Scholar and Alchemist, both of whom had obviously been awakened by the crash.
“I thank you for your concern, but we shall handle this. Sidala, if you could tend to my brother. I believe his pain is returning.”
“Of course, sidi.”
She slunk from the room.
“Are you sure I can’t help, sir?” asked the Scholar. “I was pretty good at tracking bukbuks back home.”
Kirin frowned, reaching out a hand to remove a tiny needle sticking out of her forehead. He handed it to her.
“Thank you, sidala, but I’m quite certain the Queen’s guard can locate one man, this quickly after he has gone missing.”
“Oh, yes, yes I’m quite certain they can too, sir. I didn’t mean to say, that is to say—”
“Thank you, sidala. That will be all.”
He tried to move around her, but she stepped into his path.
“Um, I’m really sorry, sir, but, um...”
He glared at her. She swallowed, wringing her hands, but pressed on.
“Captain, your men are probably really good at tracking down criminals and soldiers and monsters and things like that, but, none of them are tigers, sir. They can’t think like a tiger. I can. “
“Your point, sidala?”
“Well, sir, it is the middle of the Second Watch, isn’t it?”
Suddenly, her point grew crystal clear. Kirin swore under his breath.
“Of course. Go. And sidala, be careful.”
She smiled and disappeared out the door.
Kirin swore again, this time not under his breath and he rubbed his throbbing forehead. He began to pace.
“I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it!” With a snarl, he stamped the mahogany planks of the floor. “It completely escaped me! I didn’t even think it might happen again!”
The Major stepped in beside him. “I didn’t think of it either, sir.”
“It is not your job to think of it, Major. It’s mine.”
“We will find him, sir.”
“No, Major. She will.”
***
Fallon watched them split up into pairs and head off around the Inn, swords drawn and ready for anything. She shook her head. What was she thinking? These were trained men, the best there were to be in the Queen’s Elite. She was a skinny little tigress. What could she hope to accomplish that they couldn’t? Why couldn’t she ever keep her mouth shut?
Emerald eyes cast upwards, to a narrow cart-path that likely led to isolated farms up in the mountains. The sky was black, the path slick with ice and frozen mud, and to fall from such a steep angle would most certainly give her more than wobbly legs and snowy hair. But she remembered how gently the Seer had held her, how like her own father he had stroked her hair.
She squared her chin and set off up the path.
***
Kerris opened his eyes, only to be greeted by large golden ones.
“Hello, sidalady cheetah,” he said, smiling. “My, but you have lovely eyes.”
She kissed him.
“Well,” he said, his hands moving completely of their own accord and he pulled her down onto the bed.
***
Fallon Waterford paused to pace in a small, tight circle.
“Now, if I was a tiger, which I am, this would be where I would want to hide. You can see everything from up here, right down to the Inn - Oh, look, I can see the guards right now. Hm. And it would be pretty hard to sneak up on you from above. Yep, this is where I’d hide. Wow, this is so beautiful...”
Her breath was frosting the air in front of her face as she drew her cloak around her throat and let her eyes linger over the panorama laid out below her. The mountains in the moonlight, so ethereal yet so very real beneath her boots. One slip would mean certain death. She could almost see the clouds, springing up from the valleys like the breath of a dragon. And the star, brighter than any in the sky, bright as a tiny sun –
A gloved hand wrapped across her mouth and pulled her down onto the rocks.
***
Ursa glanced down at the Inn, dark save for a few windows glowing with candlelight. This was very wrong, she thought grimly, very strange. She hated to see her Captain upset. He was far too compassionate for his own good. She would have handled this matter much differently had she been in charge.
Icy blue eyes darted up to his silhouetted figure. She studied the noble carriage and stoic demeanor as he picked his way over snow and rock in pursuit of the tigress. Such was the way with lions. No one ever dared challenge their authority, so on the rare occasion when a challenge did arise, they were often slower to respond than the smaller cats. They were often more concerned with ‘why’ a challenge should be presented in the first place, rather than dealing with it swiftly and without remorse.
Ursa never needed to know why.
She tossed her head and followed her Captain, picking her own way over the rocks.
***
Her heart was racing in her chest, as the hand tightened across her mouth. She had been pulled down next to an outcropping of rocks and while a part of her was terrified, the other part felt warm and secure. She could smell leather. She knew where she was and who it was that had her.
“Shhh,” said his voice in her ear, at the same time familiar yet strange. “Can you hear them?”
“Mmeea mmoo?”
“The animals. This place is crawling with animals.”
She allowed her eyes to dart upwards, for a glimpse of his face. All she could make out was the beard. The rest was obscured by loose, dark hair. His grip was extremely tight, and he was breathing quickly, much the same as the night previous, when in the clutches of the terror that had killed six of his fellow Seers. He was in those clutches now even as he spoke, for also like the night previous, he was speaking in the common accent of the tiger.
“The others are dead,” he was saying, “The cold – it had to be. Something’s gone wrong. There’s no power. No computers. Nothing. How could this happen?”
Fallon swallowed hard but, steeling her resolve, reached up with trembling fingers to lower his gloved palm from her mouth.
“Who are you?”
“How could this happen? How long have we been down here?”
“Please, sidi, can you hear me? Can you tell me who you are?”
“Max?”
“No. My name is Fallon Waterford. I’m a Scholar in the Court of the Empress. Who are you?”
“What? You don’t you know? Check your files – I’m there. Hell, I encrypted the damn things.”
“Oh. Um...” She frowned, understanding the context if not the phrase. “There’s been a small problem, um, with the um, files.”
He laughed, a short sharp bark of a laugh.
“Is that what they’re calling it? A small problem with the files? Six supervisors dead, which means all the Subs are in limbo, no power, no computer link, no communications whatsoever, except of course, for you, my friend, whoever you are. And then, to top it off, there’s all these, these horrible creepy little animals.”
She could feel his grip weaken, as if suddenly the strength were gone from his muscles. She didn’t dare pull away, however. She knew enough from her ‘Abnormal Thinking’ studies at the University to bait him. Instead, she too relaxed her body until he pushed her away, lowering his head in w
hat appeared to be exhaustion.
“It doesn’t matter. None of it matters. I’ll probably be dead by morning anyway.”
For some strange reason, she felt sorry for him, for this strange unknown tiger, trapped in the Seer’s soul. She reached out a tentative hand to touch his cheek.
His head snapped up and, clasping her hand to his face, his eyes grew sharp with focus.
“Kittens,” he gasped. “Six kittens. Six grey striped kittens.”
Then suddenly, Sireth benAramis was back, blinking and panting and pulling her hand away.
“Sidala, forgive me. I — Why are we outside?”
A darker shadow passed in front of the moon, and Fallon glanced up to see a tall, regal silhouette, a shorter, slimmer one rising by his side.
“Oh mother,” said the tigress.
“Sireth benAramis, you are under arrest.”
To Market
The sun was chasing the moon back beyond the mountains, sweeping the darkness away with her golden brooms and dusting the clouds with brushes dipped in honey. In the Great Mountains, it seemed that half the Kingdom was sky and that the other half was constantly reaching to claim it, trying to snare the clouds with her peaks and luring the heavens downwards into stark, empty valleys. Even still, the sky went on forever.
A slim, scarlet figure swept through the halls of Pol’Lhasa, as swifly as her slippered feet would carry her. She had not slept and as the night had marched, watch by watch, into the breaking of a new day, she found claws as sharp as daggers digging into her heart.
His party had not returned to DharamShallah.
Leopard guards as still as stone watched her as she carried down the long, high antechamber to the Throne Room. The great gold and red door opened and she flowed inside, the many layers of skirt and sash sweeping the marble floor as surely as servants. The dawn sun sliced down with beams of light and color and many a day she often felt she could reach out and catch those beams in the palm of her hand. Today, she brushed right through them toward a far, curtained corner glowing in tones of scarlet and jade.
The falcon was still alive.
She breathed a sigh of relief as it chirruped an early-morning greeting. It was perched as before on the wrought-iron pedestal, hooded and belled, its tiny head snapping with quick, sharp movements. She stroked its downy breast.
“Good morning, dear Path. I trust you slept well.”
From a deep, embroidered sleeve, Empress Thothloryn Parillaud Markova Wu withdrew a slip of parchment. She held it fast as if not daring let it go. Finally, she brought the parchment to her lips and closed her eyes, letting it linger there a while longer with perhaps the most intimate of Royal Seals. Ultimately, she knew it must go and she tied it securely to the banded leg. The bird sprang to her wrist as she moved to the window.
She threw it open and removed the hood. With a shrill cry, the falcon lit from her arm, talon bells jingling and streaked off into the blinding sun of morning.
“You carry my heart with you, Path of Sha’Hadin,” she whispered to the fading silhouette. “Find my Captain. Find him well. It is all that I can hope.”
And she remained at the window for a very long time.
***
Kerris yawned and stretched his arms over his head, flexing his grey claws toward the ceiling. He flexed his toe claws as well, for he was bootless at the moment and he enjoyed the tingling sensation across the tops of his feet. Toe flexing was an odd luxury, he thought to himself, for since kittenhood, people were trained to curb that inborn tendency in favor of footwear. Unsheathed pedal claws made for a very good climb but were generally rather hard on one’s shoes.
He sat for a moment on the edge of his bed taking a moment to orient himself to his surroundings. He was quite accustomed to waking up in strange places, in even stranger beds. It never seemed to bother him much for most important things in life were constant no matter where you found yourself. Such things as the ground below, the sky above, and breakfast. And, he reminded himself, at least he was waking. That was more than could be said for some.
The mahogany floor was cold so he reached under the bed for his yak-hide boots. As he did so, he noticed his arms, swathed in wraps of fine linen. He tried to remember the reason for them but somehow it was escaping him. Perhaps he had gotten drunk. Things like this frequently happened when the ale and rice wine flowed too freely, which they often did in the company of tigers. Frowning, he scratched the back of his neck only to find more problems there. Tentative fingers traced the ruts in his shoulders, his back and again, he had no recollection of the cause.
It disturbed him.
He rose from the mattress and padded to the door, cracking it open ever so gently so as not to bother the leopard who was likely sleeping at his post. Instead, he saw no one. On the other hand, he heard many raised voices from the great room down below, his brother’s among them. It sounded rather touchy and since Kerris hated business of that sort, he decided that whatever it was that he wasn’t remembering could probably wait.
He reached into a pocket, pulled out a stick. ‘Six’ is what it read.
Six.
He closed the door and went back to bed.
***
“You hit me!”
“I’m sorry.’
Kirin swung around. “You do not deny it, then?”
“How can I deny what I do not remember?”
“So you say,” Ursa seethed, pushing her face up into his, lips pulled away from gritted teeth. “But your fists speak louder than your words, Seer.”
Sireth benAramis shook his head, lowering his eyes to the floor. He was standing in the middle of the Inn’s Great Room, hands bound behind his back, the Major circling him like a shark.
Three of the four leopards were also present, each with blades drawn and ready. On top of a table nearby the Scholar sat, knuckles between her knees, her brows knit together in worry. The Alchemist leaned against a wall, apparently engrossed in braiding her hair with strands of silver thread.
The Innkeep had broached the subject of breakfast only once before quickly disappearing into the recesses of the kitchens.
And the Captain of the Guard was at the heart of it all.
“Are you maintaining that this, this spell is the same as that which befell you in Sha’Hadin?”
“I don’t know.”
“If so, where was the cold? Where was the ice?”
“I don’t know.”
“He’s lying,” hissed the Major.
“Are you?”
“No.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“Because you want to.”
“I believe him,” said the tigress.
“Then you are a fool.” The Major wheeled upon her Captain. “Sir, I demand reparation. He hit me. He does not deny this. It is my right.”
Kirin ground his molars. The Seer’s words were true. He wanted to believe. But there it was, the 'darkness’ in his own glass. If the man was innocent, then he was not the enemy. If he were not the enemy, then the enemy was still unknown, still at large and still capable of bringing destruction down on the Upper Kingdom. It was far easier to believe that this threat could be removed, quickly and cleanly, by the edge of a sword.
Finally, he nodded.
“It is your right, Major. Vindicate yourself.”
Like lightning she struck, her small fist swinging in a fierce arc that connected with a *crack* on the Seer’s jaw. Though considerably taller than she, the force was sufficient to send him staggering back into two of the guards. They caught him with well-trained precision.
“Wow,” whispered the Scholar to the Alchemist. “That was good. I wish I could do that. I hit like a girl.”
“You are a girl,” said the Alchemist.
“Oh. Maybe that’s why.”
“An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” said Kirin. “Major, the matter is settled. You no longer have grievance against this man.”
“Yes, sir.”
&nb
sp; She took several steps back, grinning and grinding her fist into her palm.
Sireth straightened up, working his jaw back and forth to relieve the stinging.
“Interesting, Captain, how swiftly justice moves when one is pure of Race.”
“That has nothing to do with this, sidi.”
“Oh, it hasn’t? As I recall, you were sent to Sha’Hadin to save, oh do let me recall…me! What will your Empress think when you tell her that, somewhere along the way, you decided I wasn’t worth saving?”
“She is your Empress as well, sidi,” said Kirin.
“I had thought so,” said Sireth. “Until you abolished the Council.”
”I saved your life.”
“So you could take it later. Yes, yes, I’ve been there before.”
“Watch your tongue,” Ursa growled.
“Captain, I am not the enemy.”
The exact words. Kirin eyed him with renewed suspicion.
“Convince me.”
“Free my hands and I shall.”
“I find many things about this matter disturbing, sidi. It was you yourself who suggested that we spend the night here, in this place, a place you seem to have some familiarity with. Moreover, you did not wish to make the journey to Pol’Lhasa at all and here again, we find ourselves not there. Yes, I find these things disturbing.”
“You intend to blame me for the avalanche, Captain? Was I somehow the cause of that?”
Kirin felt a pang of guilt, for his brother had warned him of the dangers that very morning. But he had no intention of tipping his just hand yet. There was simply too much at stake. Instead, he merely shrugged.
“Many things are possible at the seventh level, sidi.”
“Perhaps he is a firestarter...”
All eyes swung in the direction of the Alchemist. She did not look up, however, seeming quite content to study the braid she had been working on all morning.
“A firestarter? Explain.”
“It is as it sounds, sidi. One who starts fires, only…” Now she did look up. “Not by conventional means.”
The Way of Things: Upper Kingdom Boxed Set: Books 1, 2 and 3 in the Tails of the Upper Kingdom Page 16
