by J. C. Hendee
“No, but I have to try… to do something for him,” she answered, and then a grumbling moan pulled her attention.
“I’ll get the stuff,” Grim said.
He carefully scooted out of the bottom bunk, never taking his eyes off the pup. Side-stepping along the bunk to the alcove curtain, he started to pull it aside.
“Maybe some food, if you can,” Kyne added. “Plus a towel or something to dry him off when done.”
Grim rolled his eyes and slipped out as Kyne looked to Marten. “Give me the tarp.”
After he folded it up, he leaned instead of stepping to hand it over.
“Are you certain?” Alshenísh’ìn asked.
“Unless you want to try,” she returned, and instantly felt bad when his eyes brow wrinkled. “Sorry… and sorry you are trapped here.”
Kyne expected another of his coy smiles, or some other reminder of what she surely owed him now. Instead, Alshenísh’ìn shrugged slightly in looking at the pup.
“Think no more of it,” he whispered. “I will deal with my parents in my own way… considering what is needed.”
Kyne stared at him, though he still watched the pup. His reply was the most un-self-serving thing he had ever said to her. That made her suspicious.
She set to arranging the tarp into a small bed, doing everything right before the pup’s eyes. While he watched, she slowly slid the tarp underneath Grim’s bunk, next to the trunk with the missing back. Likely, she would have to make Grim take the bunk above Alshenísh’ìn, for both his peace of mind and the pup’s. That was, if any of them were able to sleep tonight.
When Grim finally returned, he had everything Kyne needed, including a biscuit and a slat of smoke-dried fish. She had already figured out how to get the pup to eat and drink, but cleaning him was another issue.
After all she had done before, she had a notion of how to start.
Pouring water from an earthen jug into a dented copper bowl, Kyne set the bowl before her knees. The pup inched in, perhaps thinking to drink, so she slowly blocked the bowl with her hands. That startled him, and he looked up at her.
Rolling up the sleeves of her robe and shirt, she dipped one of two rags in the bowl, wrung it out, and began wiping one of her forearms. She switched hands as the pup watched and did the same with her other arm. The next step was a lot scarier.
Kyne paused, feeling Marten’s, Grim’s, and Alshenísh’ìn’s attention on her and the pup. In one shaky breath, she reached out slowly with the rag in hand.
The pup’s jowls wrinkled, and he backed up.
Kyne froze—and then shuddered as Alshenísh’ìn’s whispered, “Perhaps you should not—”
The pup’s head swung toward him in that silent snarl.
Alshenísh’ìn said nothing more.
Kyne took another breath and reached out farther. The pup’s jowls quivered in warning, and this time his ears flattened. Kyne softly touched the rag to his shoulder.
The pup clamped his jaws on her wrist.
Alshenísh’ìn shot upright as Marten took a step.
“No!” Kyne whispered. “Stay back, both of you.”
The pup’s teeth pressed her skin, but he did not bite down; at least that was something. Anything new startled him, and why not, considering all that had been done to him? Showing him that food and water she offered were safe had worked. This time, washing herself first had not.
Or was it the rag that frightened him?
Kyne had no idea why he would fear that. Perhaps something else the wolf-catcher had done to him. He had to be cleaned up, so she carefully—slowly—turned her caught hand and brushed the rag against his shoulder.
His jaws tightened on her wrist.
She kept on, making one short, soft stroke after another, until the grip of his jaws began to loosen. By the fifth stroke, he let go, though he still wrinkled his jowls. After that, it was a long, slow process of inching in on her knees to gently rub the rag all over him, dip and wring it out in the copper bowl, and continue.
The pup finally lay down, though he flinched and growled when she pressed a little in getting dried blood out of a spot in his fur. With his rump backed under the little table at the alcove’s rear, she was forced to brace her other hand between his forepaws. She leaned up and over him, and barely touched the rag to one of his haunches.
Something wet and rough flicked sharply over her braced forearm.
Kyne lurched back without thinking, though she didn’t get her braced hand off the floor before another flick.
The pup looked up at her with those bright eyes, and one of his upright ears twitched sideways, just once. He went back to licking her forearm, working up from the wrist to the elbow, and back down again.
“He is… bathing you… his way?” Alshenísh’ìn whispered.
“Or tasting her,” Grim mumbled.
The pup halted, head pivoting between the two of them. When neither moved, he returned to bathing her arm. His nose pushed in under her rolled-up sleeves as he continued up her forearm even higher.
Kyne quivered as his tongue reached the inside of her elbow.
That was a bit too ticklish.
In the end, letting him do as he wished was the easiest way for her to do what was needed. It was all too astonishing, especially when he peeked up at her as he licked. He finished before she did and appeared more content and settled where he lay.
Kyne decided not to bother him more in wiping him down with the towel, as it was warm enough in the dormitory that he would not catch a chill. But when she tried to coax him to the tarp under Grim’s bunk, he growled softly and stayed put.
So much for the notion of a hiding place, at least for now.
“We should get some sleep, while we can,” Marten whispered. “But somebody better stay awake and make sure no one looks in here.”
“I will be awake for a while yet,” Kyne answered, still watching the pup’s eyelids droop where he lay.
“Wake me when you hear the night’s second bell,” Marten added. “I’ll wake Grim at the midnight bell, and… Allen… can go last.”
No one argued with his plan, so he turned down the lantern to barely a glow and climbed up onto the bunk above Grim’s.
Kyne decided against making Grim relinquish his bunk, since the pup was quiet and content.
The last thing Marten did before flopping flat above Grim was to sullenly glare at “Allen.” He pointed to the top bunk across the alcove and down at Kyne. She was baffled until Alshenísh’ìn rose up, pulled a blanket and pillow from that top bunk, and handed those to her.
“Do not take another nap,” he whispered with a smile.
Kyne roughly jerked the pillow and blanket out of his grip. When she turned her back to Alshenísh’ìn, her irritation broke upon seeing the pup.
His eyes were open again—and his ears then flattened. With head still on paws, only those narrowed sky-blue eyes glanced sidelong beyond her.
Kyne heard Alshenísh’ìn settle on the lower bunk behind her. It was so strange how the pup treated a lhoin’na with as much suspicion as anyone else but her. Well, except his extra contempt for Marten.
“How did you know… recognize… him?” Alshenísh’ìn whispered.
Kyne set the pillow on the floor, pulled up her blanket, and lay down facing the pup within arm’s reach.
“I knew someone like him,” she answered.
“Another… like him? How?”
She didn’t answer, for it would take too long, and she had already said too much to too many in getting so far into this mess. The pup watched her through drooping eyelids, and she had another foolish urge.
It was one thing to hang on to him in desperation, when they were all trapped in the street, or even in struggling to clean him up.
Kyne slowly reached out, keeping her fingers turned aside. She stalled when the pup almost lifted his head in another wrinkle of jowls. He settled again, instantly closing his eyes.
Only one of his ears twitched as she barely touc
hed the top of his head.
That, and sudden exhaustion from released tension, wiped everything but him from Kyne’s thoughts.
· · · · ·
“What now?”
Kyne awoke suddenly and then panicked in realizing she had fallen asleep. A scrape of metal startled her, and she quickly sat up in looking about the alcove.
The pup stood on all fours in poking at the copper bowl with his nose. Every time he did that, the bowl skidded a little on the floor stones, sloshing what little water was still in it.
“Will you do something about him?” someone whispered sharply.
Kyne looked up to find Marten leaning over the edge of his upper bunk with a mean, sleepy glare at her.
The pup swung his head back toward her, huffed once, and nudged the bowl again.
At another scrape of metal on stone, Marten let out a growling groan and flopped back out of sight.
Kyne was still foggy from rousing and didn’t understand at first. Looking at the bowl made it clear. The pup wanted something other than wash water to drink. Unfortunately, she had used up all the water in the jug.
Marten swung his legs over the bunk’s edge, sitting up still in his robe.
“I’ll go get some water,” he grumbled. “It’s probably time for my watch anyway.”
“No, I will,” Kyne whispered. “You… sit in front of the curtain.”
Marten eyed her and then the pup.
“He will not try to leave,” she added, “if you are in the way.”
Before Marten could grouch again, Kyne grabbed the earthen jug and got up. When she took a first step toward the curtain, the pup swung around toward her.
“So much for that,” Marten whispered.
He slid toward the upper bunk’s foot, nearer the alcove’s curtain and away from the pup, before he dropped down. And the pup wrinkled his jowls.
“Just stand in his way,” Kyne whispered.
Even at that, Grim stirred in the bottom bunk, though Alshenísh’ìn remained still, faced away from her on the alcove’s other side.
Kyne didn’t wait any longer. She peeked around the curtain, to make certain no other boys were up, and slipped out and headed up the dark aisle toward the only light in the initiate’s barracks.
Floraile still sat in the entrance alcove and started slightly at Kyne’s approach. She looked up from a handwritten journal filled with Begaine symbols that she read by the soft, white light of her cold-lamp crystal.
“Where are you going?” Floraile whispered.
“To the cistern,” Kyne answered, raising the jug. “Need fresh water for… you know.”
Floraile leaned out to peer down the aisle of the boys’ wing.
Kyne had no more time for Floraile’s fidgeting. “I will be back right away, and Marten is watching over… you know.”
She hurried up the passage through the keep wall, and when she reached the outer door of the apprentices’ dormitory, she cautiously peeked out.
The gatehouse’s inner braziers were still burning, and by their light, the guild’s inner courtyard was empty. She slipped out, quietly and quickly following the outside wall of the apprentices’ dormitory toward the gatehouse end of the courtyard. There around the corner was the cistern.
Kyne slipped around behind it, out of sight of the tunnel and the keep’s main doors. She had to set down the jug and use both hands to lift the heavy wooden lid off the cistern. Even in that, the big lid scraped on the cistern’s stone walls. Lowering the bucket to get water was even more nerve-jarring, but she finally filled the jug and struggled again in putting the lid back into place.
As the lid settled with a clunk, she heard a voice in the courtyard.
“I know it’s late, but this cannot wait until dawn.”
Kyne was almost too frightened to move. When she did, she left the jug behind and crouched low in creeping around the cistern’s curved wall to the dormitory’s corner. She saw the worst possible person to catch her out at night… or dipping into the keep’s water reserves without permission.
“Why can you not wait and simply watch from outside?” High Premin Sykion demanded.
Dressed in her long gray robe, as head of the whole branch and the order of Cathology here, she was a tall, slender, elderly woman. She carried herself like the Farien noble she had once been, born to that status and forsaking it for a life within the guild.
“Lady” Tartgyth Sykion was in a state of disarray, likely roused from her bed. Her long gray hair hung loose instead of bound, and her usual calm, commanding demeanor was cracked by bleary old eyes wrapped in a stern expression.
“The corporal feels this cannot wait,” answered the city guard walking beside her. “We can’t find the one who lodged the complaint about the stolen dog. Tonight, when one of ours went to contact him, he was gone for good from the inn where he claimed to stay. The private wagoner he hired is missing as well.”
Kyne grew worried and confused at hearing the wolf-catcher and the driver were missing. Those two trying to get into the Hoof House, when Master Boulg was out of the way, were why she had snuck the pup into the guild.
“The corporal?” the premin returned rather brusquely. “Not Captain Rodian?”
The guard looked uncomfortable at that. As the pair reached the courtyard’s midpoint and stopped, Kyne noticed this was the same guard she had earlier passed at the bailey gate.
“Corporal Lúcan has the full support of the captain,” returned the guard.
Kyne remembered that name; Corporal Lúcan was the strangely gray-haired young guardsman who had argued with Domin High-Tower. She didn’t remember seeing him since then.
“Of course he does,” Premin Sykion replied sharply, “as with anything the captain assumes involves the guild. I do not see that as the case… this time.”
The city guard let out a slow, audible breath, perhaps trying to maintain good manners.
“I apologize, Premin,” he replied, “but I am ordered to insist that we check the grounds. There may be a hidden danger to the sages. My partner on watch has gone for two more of ours to assist.”
A bell rang across the city.
A far door across the courtyard swung sharply open.
Kyne’s gaze shifted to a figure in a midnight-blue robe stepping out of the storage and laboratory building across the courtyard. He held a small bell in hand, and in barely two steps, another person exited the keep’s main doors and pulled her attention. That one in a cerulean robe also carried a small bell, which he rang out once, like the city’s own bells.
Both newcomers stalled at the sight of the high premin, and the one in midnight-blue made Kyne’s stomach hollow out.
Sirron Gauld and the other one quickly closed on Sykion.
Kyne should have known, and so should have Marten, though this little complication had never occurred to her in the middle of everything else. When Marten had done whatever to get Floraile to sit night watch on the initiates, Sirron must have taken over nighttime bell duty to be up and about with her.
Kyne wished just once something would be easy in all of this.
After the high premin exchange a word or two with Sirron and the apprentice, both turned away. Sykion spun slowly in visible frustration, looking all about the courtyard, and when she looked along the apprentices’ dormitory…
Kyne rolled out of sight and flattened against end of the dormitory. She sat there shuddering and worried that she might have been spotted.
“Very well,” the premin sighed out. “Proceed.”
Kyne waited but heard nothing at first, and then heavy footsteps echoed in the courtyard. In hiding, she caught only a glimpse of the city guard as he entered the gatehouse tunnel. She waited even longer until another set of softer steps ended with the sound of a heavy door opening and closing. And she waited even more.
She was too scared to even peek out, but when she finally did so, the courtyard was empty. She crawled around the cistern to retrieve the jug and crept back to th
e corner of the building.
A muffled voice reverberated out of the gatehouse tunnel.
Not wishing to linger longer, she stepped quietly along the front of the apprentices’ dormitory. Halfway to its door, she paused in listening, but the voice in the tunnel was too low to make out what it said. What she didn’t hear worried her even more.
The portcullis had not risen, so the guard down the tunnel had to be talking to someone outside of it. The only other one she had seen earlier at the bailey gate had gone off before she, Marten, and Alshenísh’ìn had snuck the pup into the guild. Certainly if that one had retrieved two more guards, the outer portcullis would be going up. Then again, it was the middle of the night.
Kyne was tempted to go back for a look, but getting out of sight seemed the safer choice. When she reached the door, she set down the heavy full jug so she could be extra quiet in opening it. She was halfway down the passage to the initiates’ dormitory before she stopped in noticing something was wrong.
A cold-lamp crystal on the little table ahead still dimly lighted the entry alcove, but the chair was now empty.
Floraile was gone.
When Kyne reached the entrance alcove, she looked first into the girls’ wing, thinking Floraile had left the crystal behind in checking on the girls. It was still dark in there, but when she looked into the boys’ wing, light filtered through an alcove curtain halfway down the aisle.
That was Marten and Grim’s alcove.
Which one of those idiots had turned up the lantern?
Kyne rushed down the aisle, sloshing water in the jug. She almost reached that lit-up curtain when she heard someone in there say, “Sit! Now!”
She lurched to a stop, and a rumbling, hissing growl rose inside that alcove. Before she could lunge for the curtain, the alcove curtain across the jerked aside.
A young boy barely taller than herself, and dressed in only a nightshirt, stuck out his head while rubbing one eye with a fist.
“What’s going on?” he mumbled. “Who turned on the light?”
Kyne was lost for what to do as Shinat blinked sleepily. When he looked across the way, his gaze quickly shifted to her. She heard others up and down the aisle stirring in the alcoves.
