by J. C. Hendee
But for nearly three years, the guild had become Kyne’s second home.
It had been her favorite place to be until Wynn Hygeorht had again come and gone, along with Shade. So much the worse after what Domin Ginjeriè had asked Kyne not to do.
She was almost to the left turn off to home and barely noticed a few more people about the streets closer to the bay. Something interesting was always coming or going in the largest and capital port of Malourné. Wagons often rolled cargo in and out, late into the evenings.
This night, Kyne trudged along with her eyes on the street stones, even when she heard a mewling ruckus. Livestock of all kinds came through here as well.
“Stitz’uhtyom! Ty méshanetzé!”
A major port saw people from all sorts of places. Languages, especially ones she had never heard, often caught her ear. Not this night, but then something struck sharply with a metallic clang.
Kyne flinched and raised her head. When her next step ended with a squish, she quickly looked down.
Her right boot was stuck in a pile of mucky mule dung.
Could this night get any worse?
She barely began to stomp off the mess when another clang made her flinch.
Less than a block up the mainway toward the port, a bullish man in a crude fur jacket and hide pants stood behind a halted wagon. As he raved on viciously, he slammed a wooden club, again and again, against a large tarp-covered square in the wagon’s back.
Something about his words reminded Kyne a bit of Master Andraso whenever he whispered in his own language while lost in thought. By the clang at each blow of the club, whatever hid beneath the tarp was made of metal. It was also big enough that Kyne might have crawled into it.
A peeling yelp—and something like hisses—rose from within the tarped cube. Maybe it was a cage rather than a crate.
Kyne stopped trying to stomp her boot clean. Livestock or not, whatever was in there was not any goat, sheep, pig, or even a calf. And why cage up just one of… whatever?
Another man rose up from the wagon’s bench and twisted around, looking every which way.
Kyne merely turned into the street toward her home. She should have gone onward but she slowed. In barely another moment, she crept back to the corner for another look.
“Are ya stupid?” the driver whispered too loudly at the other man. “You’re attractin’ more attention than that beast… ‘long with ya foreigner’s babble!”
The driver was also a big man, with lanky dark hair lashed back with a twist of cord. He looked top-heavy, for though his thick arms and shoulders bulged beneath a dingy canvas shirt and dun-colored cloak, his hips and legs were narrow.
Kyne had seen his kind before. Private teamsters hired out for moving cargo about the city and port. Since this one had his own wagon, he must be doing better than most, not that he looked like it.
“I pay coin for wagon… work… not mouth,” the other answered back in broken Numanese, and he finally stopped thrashing the covered cage. “Many coin.”
He was darker and more weathered-looking than the driver, with stubble all over his thick jaw, and he obviously disliked the man he had hired.
“Many coin?” the driver mocked. “Not for being bitten!”
That one peered nervously about the street. When he spotted Kyne, he fixed on her.
Whatever was happening was not her concern. She quickly turned about to shuffle toward home.
“I pay,” the other rumbled. “You find ship.”
“I found ya ship from the port master!” the driver returned. “Not that it’s worth a whelp of a wolf.”
Kyne stopped.
“Wolf,” the other repeated, then snorted, and followed with a gravelly chuckle like pebbles poured on a large drum. “Little wolf… yes… many coin.”
“Get aboard! I want done with ya cargo… and you!”
Kyne heard a clatter of wood, perhaps something tossed into the wagon’s bed. Then came a creak as the vehicle jostled, followed by the scrape of wheels rolling along the mainway’s stones.
By the men’s talk, the foreigner had caught a wolf cub.
Kyne thought of that man’s dusty coat, and now its fur seemed disturbing.
Wolves were known in most places, or so she had read, but she was confused by why anyone would pay to ship one elsewhere. Unless it was a place where there were no wolves, but then why would someone—wherever—want one?
Kyne should have gone home. Instead, she went back to the corner again.
One sidestreet down the way, the wagon turned off the far side of Old Procession Road and behind the more inland row of warehouses. She inched out across the mainway, strolled a little closer, and when she neared the corner and peeked around a tackle shop, both men stood behind the wagon.
The one in the fur coat started to lift the tarp’s rear flap. The driver stood nearby with a wooden bowl in hand. When the first cocked his head toward whatever was under the tarp, the second shook his head and stepped back.
“I’m not doin’ it,” he said.
The big one snatched the bowl, spilling water out of it, as he slipped his other hand under the trap. With a squeak of metal, he pulled on something. The tarp’s flap pushed out and up as a door of rusted iron slats swung open a little bit. He quickly slid in the bowl, shut the cage door, and the flap fell back into place.
“That make it quiet… it drink,” the wolf-catcher said.
No sound rose from beneath the tarp, not even that of an animal lapping sloshed water.
“That’s one eerie-lookin’ little beasty,” the driver muttered. “Why’d anyone wanna buy it?”
The big one, the wolf-catcher, said nothing. With his back to Kyne, and little light from street lanterns piercing the dark behind warehouse, she could not see what passed between the two men. She thought she saw the driver cringe under the other’s attention.
“Worth more I pay you,” the wolf-catcher finally growled. “To own… or for pelt.”
“Up north?” the driver scoffed. “Who’d pay for that thing among wastelanders and barbarians? They’d just kill it, maybe eat it… and that’s a costly meal for a hide.”
Kyne grew sick to her stomach. Certainly livestock were food, but a little wolf was somehow… another matter.
For a long moment, the wolf-catcher made not a sound—and then he shoved the driver back against the warehouse’s wall.
“Make for store it here!” he growled. “I pay you when ship come.”
The driver sidestepped along the wall beyond the wagon’s far side, and Kyne lost sight of him, until he passed his two horses and neared the warehouse’s rear bay doors. The wolf-catcher followed, and when the driver banged on one big door, it opened soon enough. Both men slipped inside before it closed.
Kyne still hesitated.
If she lingered longer, someone later checking with her parents might hear that she had returned home later than she should on any night. Caught in uncertainty, she still dropped her sack of clothes by the streetside. Slipping around the corner, she crept up to the wagon’s back.
The wolf was property, and she was not a thief.
The only other thing she noticed was the wolf-catcher’s wooden club now lying beside the tarped cage. She looked around the wagon and along the warehouse, but the bay doors were still closed, and since she heard nothing, she faced the tarp and…
What did she think she could do now?
She knew nothing about handling a wild animal, and one that made the driver afraid at being bitten. Even the wolf-catcher had been quick in sliding in the bowl. Then she remembered that no key had been used to open the cage.
Kyne pinched the bottom right corner of the tarp flap’s edge, lifting it a little. When she leaned down to look, all she saw was the bottom of mottled iron slats in the cage door. It was too dark beyond those to see anything else, and the cage was still silent. She lifted the flap a little more and spotted a simple bar latch that held the door closed.
Where could she even take young wo
lf, if it let her take it anywhere?
If she let the animal loose in the city, what then?
Just the same, Kyne reached for the latch bar and then heard one of the bay doors sliding open.
“I told ya they wouldn’ let ya bring it in… or load it to a ship for ya.”
Kyne panicked at the driver’s voice. She leaned aside, but in clinging to the latch bar to keep from falling, she couldn’t lean far enough to see. At a sudden scrabbling of claws inside the cage, she turned back too late, and something slammed the cage’s door.
Teeth closed sharply on Kyne’s wrist, and she clenched her mouth against a squeak of pain. When she ripped free those jaws and stumbled back, the tarp’s flap fell with a rustle. More snarling rose inside the cage, and footsteps beyond wagon quickened, one pair faster than the other.
“Why’s that whelp worked up again?” the driver grumbled.
Kyne looked about, but the street corner was too far. She dropped, scrambled under the wagon, and hunched near one wheel in gripping her hurting wrist. Two pairs of boots rounded the wagon’s back, the heavier and travel-worn ones arriving first. The cage went silent again as the second pair of boots, old thin leather, joined the first pair.
Kyne held her breath as the tarp rustled sharply.
“So… what’s wrong with it?” asked the driver.
She only heard the wolf-catcher’s rumbling exhale as the tarp slapped against the cage door as if dropped. His heavier boots turn a little at a time, as if he looked all ways in the night.
“We’ll leave the cage out here,” the driver added. “Nobody’s gonna bother it, and nobody else’ll wanna store it for ya.”
“No! Leave in wagon… leave wagon here.”
“What?”
“If need move, wagon stay. No other touch cage if see in wagon. Take horse if want.”
“Your ship don’ leave for two days,” the driver snipped, “and ya didn’ pay for me losin’ two days’ coin made elsewhere.”
Kyne began shuddering, wanting them to leave any way at all. Another softer rustle came, but not from the tarp, followed by soft clicks and scrapes of metal.
“And?” the driver said.
At one more click, perhaps the wolf-catcher paid another coin.
“Come back two day,” he said. “Move cage to ship.”
“Yeah, right.” And the second boots of thin leather walked off.
Kyne listened as the driver unhitched his team of horses and the wolf-catcher fiddled with the cage door. After a loud clatter and a metallic clack, the wolf-catcher walked off. She waited until the driver did the same with his horses while trying to slow her too-quick breaths. When she finally crawled out, the cage was still silent as she wiped saliva off her wrist.
Small scratches on her wrist had little blood in them, though they stung badly. She was still shaking as she inched closer in studying the tarp’s flap. She had to do something, but this was certainly stupider than past trouble that Grim or Marten—especially Marten—had made for all three of them. And the only way to do it was to do it fast.
Throwing the flap fully up would likely startle the wolf cub. Maybe it would hang back long enough for her to jerk the door open and get out of the way. Frightened as it was, it might simply bolt out and run off. And later, no one would know but her.
Kyne carefully gripped the flap’s bottom edge with both hands and took a deep breath. With a sharp upward jerk, she flipped it hard. When the flap hit the cage’s top, a sudden scrabble of claws filled the dark within the cage. She quickly reached for the door’s bar… but never touched it.
An old padlock now held the bar in place.
Kyne sagged, and the furred head slammed the cage door
She lurched back as small jaws clacked at her through the door’s slats. In another panicked back-step, she lost her footing and went down hard on her rump. The cub’s snapping and snarling grew too much, and she cringed away in looking about for anyone who might hear.
Few people walked along the mainway and none too close. Only a couple looked over and not for long. Hopefully it was too dark behind the warehouse for them to see what had happened.
The cub’s noise dropped to a low rumble—and a hiss almost like a cat.
Kyne turned back and froze.
She could barely see the wolf cub halfway back in the dark cage. Even so, its ears appeared to flatten, and then its jowls curled back, exposing small teeth and not–as-small fangs. Then it crept forward with its head low as its growl rose again.
The closer it came, the stranger its fur looked—almost a gray though paler.
Other than ink-drawings in books, Kyne had seen only one real wolf, and that had been from far off in the outskirts beyond the city. For what little she had read of them, this one was as small as a baby goat and so very lightly colored. Maybe that was normal for young ones, or maybe it was dark night shadows that made it look tinged slightly bluish. And those eyes glaring at her, looking a bit too big for its little head, were…
Kyne’s shudder went all the way into her stomach.
Even her fingers shook as she clamped a hand over her mouth to keep from crying out. Light from somewhere caught strongest in the pup’s eyes, and crystal-like irises glittered.
They were sky-blue… like Shade’s eyes.
· · · · ·
“What are you doing?” mother asked. “Get ready for bed, please.”
Kyne hung upon the small front windowsill of her second floor home in a tenement near the port. Ignoring her mother, she kept peering out that window with her forehead pressed against the old glass panes.
No, she could never have seen all the way down the street and around two corners to where that wagon stood behind the warehouse. And she still didn’t leave the window.
“Are you shivering, dear? I’ll stoke the stove a bit before bed, and… Kyne, are you listening to me?”
No, and her head was filled with a scrambled mess. What she had seen—thought she had seen—inside the cage could not be real. Life was not this cruel.
Kyne didn’t remember how long she had sat there staring at the wolf cub… the pup. Too long, and after a while, the pup had gone silent in glaring back at her. It then retreated out of sight to the cage’s rear.
Without anyway past the cage’s locked bar, she had finally run for home. Halfway there in a panic, she realized she had forgotten the excuse of her laundry bag. She ran back for it even quicker before fleeing again.
Perhaps that had been fortunate. All was bad enough when she had raced into a cutway between the buildings, up the side stairs, and burst through a second level door.
Mother’s surprise, followed by happiness, had quickly turned to worried fright at the sight of her daughter.
Kyne almost blurted out everything, there and then.
Even without Domin Ginjeriè’s warning and the promise Kyne had made, how could she have ever explained? Instead, she remembered her excuse for a sudden return home, and rather a bit late, at that. She held up the bundle of laundry.
Mother had sighed with a frown but smiled again in shaking her head.
As little as Kyne had ever lied to her parents, her mother had been relieved that nothing serious was wrong—except for the awful stench from Kyne’s right boot. As Mother placed those boots on the landing outside, she mentioned that the warehouse where Father worked was too overburdened for more cargo due within the next few days. Fortunately, Father was working late.
Kyne had found it very hard to chat over a quickly made super of chipped beef and potatoes, dried apples and bread. Mother had done most of the talking, too often asking if Kyne was “all right.” She never dared answer with the truth, let alone why. And that had been when her mother noticed the scrapes on her right wrist.
Mother grew fretful, wanting to know how her daughter had gotten those.
After everything else, Kyne had been unable to think of an adequate lie.
“I… I do not… remember,” she answered.
&n
bsp; “Were you getting into some trouble?” Mother had demanded, as she washed, fussed, bandaged, and fussed some more. “Did Marten drag you into something again?”
Kyne had thought it best to let her mother think as she pleased. “I would rather not say,” she answered; that was not exactly a lie.
“To bed… now!”
Kyne jumped slightly and looked away from the front window.
Mother, dressed in a plain muslin apron over a faded maroon skirt and more faded yellow shirt, now stood in the narrow main room near the narrow little bed—Kyne’s bed. With hands perched on her hips, a washing rag still gripped in one, Mother frowned. Disapproval slowly turned to worry again on a face more freckled than Kyne’s.
“What’s the matter, dear, really now?” Mother asked. “I haven’t seen my little chatterer so quiet so much since… well, ever.”
Kyne forced a smiled. “A long day… another public class day… and I never feel like I do enough on those days.”
Mother rolled her eyes with a quick huff. “You do plenty—too much—for your age. I still think your father shouldn’t have pushed you into… that place… so young.”
“Mother,” Kyne sighed. “Father didn’t push me. The guild is… is where I want to be.”
After today, that was now another lie in part.
Mother sighed right back, waved her over, and Kyne reluctantly left the window.
After tucking Kyne into bed, Mother sat beside her and asked even more questions about her day. Kyne’s answers were brief. With a final kiss upon her forehead, her mother finally went off to bed in their one other room, but not before stoking the little iron stove.
Kyne lay wide-awake in the near dark with only slivers of orange-red glow from the stove. Father had saved coins for a year to purchase that stove, or so her mother had once said. Thankfully, they had it in place before the next winter in their little home, after Kyne had been born the previous fall. And she was still awake when slow footfalls rose late on the stairs outside.
When the door opened, there was Father, looking too weary with his old lantern in hand.
“What?” he said, spotting her. “My little genius is home but not asleep?”
Kyne forced a smile as Father closed the door and came nearer.
