“Don’t get cocky, kitten,” Eclan growled from halfway down the cliffside.
‘Come on, we’re running out of time. Hurry, hurry, hurry, please.’
“O-okay. I’ll go.” Kivyress said.
Ember swatted the air with a forepaw. Her mechanics whined, as if they also sensed the urgency of the situation. Kivyress raced toward the Glade, moving farther away with every step.
“Whatever you do, don’t die. Don’t even pretend to die. I don’t want to lose you again,” she called over her shoulder.
Ember swallowed hard. “I’ll . . . try not to.”
With Kivyress gone, Ember turned back to the ravine. Eclan jumped onto the rotting log. She held her breath and waited for it to break. It didn’t.
“It was either brave of you or stupid of you to send her back,” he said, strutting across over the rushing water. “Your backup won’t be getting here before I can get to you.”
Frantic, vivid green sent her into a cold sweat. ‘What does he want to do to me? Does he want to kill me? Or someone else?’ Images of Eclan biting her throat, then sneaking in and wreaking havoc on the Glade filled her head. ‘No, I can’t let that happen. Come on, Em, you can do this. Claws. You’ve got claws now, and you know how to defend yourself. You can do this. Try to keep him busy.’
She positioned herself over the closer end of the fallen tree and lowered herself into a fighting stance.
“What do you want?” she asked weakly.
He stretched out against the log and yawned, then looked up at her with a smirk. “Telling is boring. But I will say, in my own defense, I wasn’t hired to kill anyone today. Or back when we first met. If you were s’posed to have disappeared, let’s just say I would already be back home by now.” He chuckled. “Oh, don’t look so scared, kitten. No, wait, you might want to be scared if you keep standing there. I got a job to do, and if you get in my way, your disappearance might just be necessary.”
Ember shivered. ‘Job? Wait, if you’re telling the truth and you weren’t hired to kill anyone, what are you supposed to be doing? Are you a scout? Is the East coming? Oh no. What if it’s happening all over again? If anyone can hear me, please, no, don’t. Don’t let them come. Please. Not now.’
“S-so, uhm, why did you attack me, then?” she asked.
“Everyone’s gotta have a little fun sometimes. Makes life more interesting.” Eclan reached the end of the log. He glared up at her with his multicolored eyes. “Let me past and no one gets hurt. I promise.” He narrowed them to slits. “Don’t try to be a hero, kitten. Heroes are always the first to die.”
He sank his claws into the dirt-stone mixture forming the cliff beneath her. An all too familiar adrenaline rush charged through her bloodstream. She took a single step back, far enough away from him to not be in immediate danger, but close enough to attack him, should he decide to jump up. Dull grey and silver static swirled through her mind. With it came a touch of decayed green as her stomach did backflips inside of her.
‘Oh tahg, what do I do? What do I do? What do I do? Something. I’m supposed to do something. What would Dad do? He would stay and fight. I guess that’s the right thing to do, but I don’t know. Would Mom do it? She’s a hunter, but she knows how to fight too, so maybe. But this is my job. And I just have to hold him here until help comes. Whenever that may be. You can do this, Ember. Don’t be a hareheart. Don’t be a coward. You can do this. It’s just a professional mercenary whom you’ve fought with in the past.’
“Last warning,” he hissed.
Ember lowered her head, jaw trembling. “You’ll have to get past me.”
‘Huh, that sounded so much better my head. Wait, what am I doing? Is this suicide? Did I make a—’
Eclan lunged upward. She swatted at his face but missed. His claws tore down her neck and caught on her collar. In that moment, his scent filled her nose, sending a flare of yellow pulsing through her thoughts. A tiny mew of pain escaped her throat, but before she could so much as brace herself, he yanked her forward. She stumbled over the edge, became weightless for a millisecond, then slammed into the log. The impact knocked her breath out. Pain filled her chest. She tried to breathe in but found she couldn’t. Sliding—she was sliding off, toward the rocks and rushing water below. She closed her eyes and sank her claws into whatever she could. The sliding stopped. The white noise of water competed for attention with the growing ringing sound piercing her ears. She pressed her cheek against the log and clung to it for dear life.
Ember opened her eyes and gasped for air. ‘Okay, yes. That was a mistake. Ouch. Blood. Am I bleeding?’
A few spatters of red glistened on the rotting wood in front of her. She bit her tongue as hard as she could without injuring it, then heaved herself back to the uneasy safety of the top side the log. A tiny Michelle-like voice in the back of her head scolded her for not trying harder to break her tongue biting habit.
‘Not now. It keeps me calm-ish, and since a crazy rogue just tried to kill me, I’m allowed to bite it, because right now I need to focus.’
For a moment she wondered if the real Michelle would show up to reply. Or Matthew. Or anyone. Anyone who could help her figure out what to do. A rogue mercenary was in her territory, threatening everyone who got in the way of his mystery mission. She pressed her white forepaw against her neck. The pressure stung, making a sickly green flash in the back of her mind. Ember lifted the paw in front of her face. A smear of warm red coated the tips of her toes.
‘They’re just scratches. Nothing bad. Come on, Ember, you’ve gotta find him. There’s no telling what he’s been sent to do, and you know you don’t want to find out the hard way. Focus. Focus. Concentrate. Let’s go.’
She climbed back onto stable ground, then looked around. Eclan was gone. A trail of prints led into the swirling mist, ghosts of where her attacker had once been. She lowered her head and followed them.
‘Guess he figured making sure I was dead would be too much trouble. Or he didn’t actually want to kill me. Or he just doesn’t care if I live or die, as long as I’m out of his way. Yeah, that’s the most likely option.’ Her eyes widened. ‘But hey, I’m still alive! For now, at least. Maybe I made the right choices after all. Hopefully when Kivy gets back with help, they’ll see the tracks and know where we’ve gone.’
The prints stopped at the base of a tree. Ember unsheathed the claws in one of her forepaws to examine them. They looked sharp enough still, so she climbed up. The tree’s rough, grey bark pressed against her toes as she moved along, sniffing at branches for Eclan’s bitter scent. Something about it still caused internal pulses yellow to appear, but beyond a sinking sense of deja vu, she couldn’t place why. She crawled onto the limb and willed herself not to fall. Unlike her domestic relatives, if she slipped, she wouldn’t be able to right herself before landing. Her jaw trembled. She closed her eyes and held her breath for the count of five.
‘Now is not the time to panic, Ember. Stay calm. Tahg, you’re turning into Hyrees. Why are you suddenly afraid of heights? You can do this. You’ve done it a hundred times before. Pretend you’re racing. Aaaaand go.’
Her nose, legs and mind worked in tandem to keep her in the trees and on the right trail. In the back of her head, she calculated the best places to put her paws to minimize the chance of slipping. With snow still on the branches, the task proved itself to be a difficult one. In the front, she wondered how fast Eclan himself was traveling and, more importantly, what she would do when she found him. Somewhere in the middle, she realized something. Her heart lurched. She stopped.
‘Oh, most cats don’t climb trees. Or least most colony cats. Whoever Kivyress gets for backup might not know how to tree track. Fight a fox, if I keep going, I’ll have to fight him alone. I’m not supposed to die yet. I can still help my colony. I have my ETAg, and I have yet to use it properly. And Michelle would be so disappointed if I died on the same day she went through all that trouble to bring me back. And maybe, just maybe, I’m too big of a c
oward right now to face him. But if he’s telling the truth, he’s not here to kill anyone, so it’d be a waste of life. I don’t know what he’s doing, but—oh wait, we’re heading for the Glade. I’ll just go there and see if he shows up.’
She climbed back down. The frigid earth greeted her toes once again. She turned the sensitivity of her legs down another half-point and sighed as she trotted toward her home. ‘Dad might be disappointed, but he’ll also be relieved. I know he will. Mom will definitely be relieved. And Kivy. And me. My opinion also matters in matters concerning my death.’
A large crow fluttered into a nearby tree. It glared at her for a few seconds, then cawed at the top of its lungs. Ember flattened her ears and broke into a run. The yellow came back again, along with the eerie feeling of deja vu. Fog rolled into her head, threatening to choke out her internal voice entirely.
‘Come on, Ember. Think! You’re missing something. Something obvious. Something so obvious you’ll feel like a fluffhead for missing it. What is it? Erg, go away, grey. I can’t focus on anything.’
As she neared the Glade, a flash of white caught her eyes. Eclan leaped and climbed through the trees ahead of her with the agility of a squirrel. The wind changed direction, blowing his yellow-inducing scent into her nose. Ember’s eyes widened.
‘Wait a moment.’
She lost focus entirely for a split moment. Her paw hit a root. She tumbled to a stop, landing face-first in the snow. The wind changed again, carrying all traces of his scent away, but the damage had already been done. Ember got to her feet.
‘No wonder it felt wrong. That’s not just his scent. Jade. That was Jade’s scent on him. About two days old. Faint, but it was hers. I know it was. They really were lying—all of them. He really is their spy. Which means she’s also behind the ambush and what happened to Tainu. Not unexpected, of course, but still. It means she really didn’t want to do all of those things. She shouldn’t have died. I shouldn’t have killed her. Why did I kill her? What did they do to her to make her kill him? And why not use the assassin? To make it less obvious? But why her, of all the cats?’
Another thought struck her as she accelerated back into a run. ‘Shard and Echo. Do they have anything to do with this?’ Her heart sank in her chest. She revisited her memory of Tainu and Echo leaving the Glade on the day of the meeting, then coming back and explaining their absence with lies. ‘Echo does. And to think I thought they were friends, or even . . . what about Shard, though? I don’t think he does. But I’ve been wrong before. Maybe everyone in the East knows. Either way, they’re the enemy now, and we’re probably going to have to fight one day. Would Echo really kill me? I know Shard wouldn’t, right? Oh wait.’ She shivered. The whirring of her prosthetics grew louder. ‘He almost did. That’s it. I officially hate war.’
The inner abatis and an unfinished portion of the outer wall appeared through the brambles. Ember scanned the trees for signs of Eclan. He was nowhere to be seen. She stopped and looked behind her. Five trees down from where she’d last seen him, his tracks in the branch snow stopped. He’d turned around for some reason.
‘Maybe the second wall was all he needed to see. Though it seems like a waste of a trip. It wouldn’t take much to improvise a strategy to fit with that thing. We’re doing nothing, and he’s doing nothing. This is pointless, and I don’t understand. But then again, why do most cats do most of what they do? There are so many pointless, fluffheaded things out there that I’ll never understand. Well, since I’m here, I should probably tell someone what happened. I’m too tired to keep following him anyway. Hopefully Hyrees is still here. It would be nice for him to come with me while I tell Lupine. Then maybe I can think more clearly.’
She walked around the abatis until she reached the western entrance, then padded into the Glade. She sniffed the air, trying to locate her mate. Scents swirled around, filling her nose and overpowering any one specific smell. It was a familiar kind of chaos. A few leaps away, a couple of cats coming in from a recent hunting trip turned from their turkey to stare at her. She ignored them.
“Ember! You’re back?” Hyrees’s voice called.
Ember spun around to find him padding out of Wren’s old den. As she trotted toward him, the tension in her head released. They touched noses, then transitioned into scenting.
He slowed to a standstill, tail twitching. “I mean, I’m not complaining or anything, but I thought, well, Kivy said you were facing off with some kind of wildcat assassin. What happened?”
“I followed him here, then he left,” she replied.
“What do you mean he left? He came here? To the Glade? Why? How do you know he’s gone? You know, your dad just left with your sister and a few other cats to go help you fend him off. I hope they don’t panic when they can’t find you.”
“They’ll be fine. There are prints. Let’s go to Commander Aspen’s den. I can—wait, no, it’s Lupine’s now, isn’t it?” She sighed. “I guess we’ll be going to Commander Lupine’s den. We can go together, and I’ll tell both of you what happened when we get there.”
Hyrees’s ears drooped. “Uh, yeah, okay. Let’s go then.”
She nodded once and they set off across the Glade. ‘What would Kivyress say he meant, doing that with his ears? Did my getting the name wrong upset him? Seems likely. Sorry, Hyrees. I didn’t mean to. Oh!’
Her eyes lit up. The fiery reds of excitement overpowered the dreary grey in her mind, even stomping out the uneasiness of Eclan’s intrusion. Ember smiled and welcomed the emotional high flooding into her spirit. ‘I might not have been born able to face-read or speak well, but no one ever said I can’t teach myself. Or get someone to teach me. Kivy could do it. Then I would know everything I need to understand these cats.’
She let her gaze wander around the Glade. As it landed on the features of her colonymates, she recalled what secrets she remembered about them: secrets and whispers she’d heard when everyone thought she wasn’t listening. It was enough information to turn a colony against itself if used incorrectly.
‘And I’ll prove them all wrong.’
Chapter 18
Ember
“I told you we should’ve gone back together,” Kivyress mewed.
They sat around a small, open fire a few leaps outside the Glade. The designated pits were too crowded, so Cloud, Ember and Songbird had worked together to build a private one. Shadows cloaked the forest around them as the sun sank beneath the Western Mountain. The rising mist, combined with the patchy snow and the fire’s swirling smoke, painted the forest blue.
Kivyress and Farlight rested beside each other, across the fire from Ember. They took turns pawing twigs and dead leaves into the flames. Ember yawned, content. Her tail wrapped around Hyrees’s bony side. Turkey and venison filled her stomach. The celebratory feast had reminded her just how much better her kin’s cat food tasted.
“But then we wouldn’t have found out about his relationship with the East,” Ember said. “All things considered, I think we actually got the best outcome of all this.”
Hyrees shifted beside her, shivering as the wind picked up. Ember leaned closer, trying to keep him warm. As she did, his stomach growled in her ears. Even though she’d encouraged him to get more, he’d picked through less than an average ration’s worth of food while everyone else gorged themselves.
‘I know your dad is gone, and me being here isn’t going to change that, but can’t you eat normally now? Dad said you barely ate anything while I was with the people, and looking at you now, I believe him. Weren’t you complaining about me being too scrawny at one point? I hope you go back to being pudgy, food-loving Hyrees soon. Someone’s gotta clean up my scraps, right? Though after tasting the stuff domestics have to eat, there probably won’t be as many, but I promise I’ll leave you enough to hide those ribs better.’
She sighed. Her mind wandered back to Eclan. Lupine took the news of an East-hired rogue infiltrating the territory surprisingly well. He didn’t panic but instead called
Whitehaze in to discuss the possible implications of the visit. He made her and Hyrees leave, of course, because females weren’t allowed to join council meetings, and apparently him talking with the new chief advisor counted as one.
Ember didn’t care that being born a molly meant not being able to lead or obtain a position on the council. She didn’t want to lead or even advise through boring meetings. However, otherwise insignificant things, like not being allowed to speak her opinions on a problem she’d discovered, burned at her insides. She hadn’t even been able to bring up the inefficiency of the second wall.
“What do you think, Farlight?” Kivyress asked.
“I think we should stop talking about it,” he replied, eyes narrow. “I mean, he’s gone now, and once the log falls, he’ll have a hard time even trying to get back in. And like Ember said, just knowing about the second wall isn’t going to help them much. It’s a pretty pathetic defense. Though I’m guessing he was mostly sent to make sure we aren’t planning some kind of vengeful, offensive attack yet, which we obviously aren’t. But hey, I’m breaking my own rules. Let’s just take a moment to admire how neat Ember’s legs look. You can really see the little glowing lines now that it’s dark out. It almost makes you look like you’ve got embers inside of you, just beneath your skin. Or even ember blood, which is especially three-credit.”
Ember chuffed and lifted a foreleg to examine Michelle’s perfectly constructed heating grid. It made her happy—everything perfectly organized in even rows and columns, nothing unexpected or misplaced. As she looked at it, her heating system turned off. The little streaks of color faded back into their usual metallic grey.
“Oh, I guess that means I’m warm enough now. So much for looking like myself,” she said.
“You still look like yourself, Ember,” Songbird mewed. “You still look like my kitten, and I still have a hard time believing you’re actually here.” She nuzzled against Ember’s side, opposite of Hyrees, but didn’t touch a whisker to her prosthetics. “You don’t mind me being this close, do you?”
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