4

	While Megan was being measured by a small team of Ophelia’s best tailors, Jess studied the new dresses they had out.  Bright colors and low necklines were popular now, and most of the styles were years too young for her.  She preferred black and at least some degree of modesty for those rare times when her time was her own.  She eventually settled on an ankle-length cotton dress that matched the brown of her fur and snuck off to the fitting room at the back of the store.  Megan was still surrounded by tailors, and safely trapped for the moment, but she still left the stall door open a crack so she could keep an eye on the girl.
	Jess changed clothes quickly.  Strangers saw her naked every day, but she still felt embarrassed when she had to change clothes in public, and now she had to worry about Megan as well.  The blouse was stiff with starch and she had trouble forcing the buttons through the holes, but the skirt was soft and much warmer than her old clothes.  It fit her better too, which went some way towards justifying the forty dollar pricetag.  She had picked up some weight lately and the older she got the harder it was to keep it off.  She fixed the blouse and knelt down to retrieve her money pouch from her pants pocket.
	She was still folding up her old clothes when she heard a crash from the front of the shop and heard the door slam.  She didn’t have to look up to know that Megan had bolted.  She finished folding her clothes and walked up to the front desk, deliberately unhurried.  She counted out the right amount for the clothes, and poured all of the silver into the bobcat’s hands.
	“The next time you bring an untrained girl into my shop, you're banned,” he said “You ought to put a short leash on that one.”
	“Did she hurt you?” Jess said.
	“I'm too fast for that.  But she bared her teeth and growled at me.  I didn't think you girls were allowed to do that,” he said.
	He opened the till and dropped each coin seperately into the appropriate slot, moving more slowly than he needed to.
	“She's young, and scared.  House girls aren't made of stone,” Jess said.
	“You’d better go and catch her before she hurts anybody.  Or the guards find her first,” said the bobcat.
	“That will be their mistake,” Jess said.
	She snatched her reciept out of the cat's hand and ran out of the store with her old clothes tucked under her arm.  Outside, she paused and sniffed the air, hunting for Megan’s scent among the confusion of smells around her.  She’d never been very good at tracking people, even when she knew what they smelled like, and she knew she had no chance of finding Megan that way.  All she got was a noseful of smoke from somebody’s cigarette as they passed, and a hint of cheap perfume from the shop across the street.
	She went east again, on the assumption that Megan wouldn’t want to go back to the House if she could help it.  In spite of her fear, she managed to hold herself to an easy walk as she moved through the crowd.  She didn’t want to run, not with so many people around.  It didn't take much to cause a panic in Jaspertree, and a girl could get in a lot of trouble for causing a riot.  The last one who did had been unlucky enough to survive the stampede and Marcus had had her hanged outside her House.
	Jess didn’t have to look for long.  There was already a ring of excited people at the end of the street, some of them cheering, some of them shouting and all of them shoving at each other to get a better look at something.  As she got closer, Jess heard an animal snarl and someone yelped like they’d just been bitten.  She dodged around a stout old badger and broke through the outer ring of onlookers.  There were a few city guards on the outside, too, trying to push their way through, but they weren't as small, or as agile as she was.  She still had to shove several people aside and she slipped on the icy sidewalk, into the back of the one of the soldiers just inside the ring.  He snarled and tried to grab her, but he was a big wolf in bulky armor and she was faster than he was.  She ducked between the legs of a vixen in a yellow dress and nipped a stoat on the leg to make him move.  The stoat yelled and tried to hit her, but he smacked the guard instead, and Jess ran out into the middle of the circle while they were distracted.
	She found Megan on one side of the circle, pacing back and forth with her ears flat and her tail tucked between her legs.   The girl growled constantly, a low, feral sound that made Jessamine's fur stand on end.  On the other side of the circle was an ocelot, dressed in the same uniform as the soldiers outside.  He held a long dagger in both hands, and he looked like he was about to wet himself with fear.  There were little dots of blood in the damp fur on his wrist.
	“Are you responsible for this bitch, miss?  You need to keep a closer eye on her and not let her run around loose where she might hurt someone,” he said.
	“What do you expect, when you grab someone’s tail?  You got what you deserved and if you touch me again I’ll give you worse,” Megan said.
	Two guards carrying catch-poles made it through the press and came towards Megan with their weapons up.  Neither of them looked very sure of themselves.  Megan was bigger than either of them, and she looked like a House girl.  Nobody wanted to get into that much trouble. But they kept coming, because the ocelot had a sergeant’s stripes on his sleeve and he still hadn’t put his knife down.
	“I told you that running would get you into trouble,” Jess said.
	She darted in front of Megan, so that she was between the guards and the girl.  Megan's growl deepened when Jess reached out a hand to her, and she shrank back closer to the other side of the circle.
	“I’m sorry for the trouble, but you know how it is with these new girls.  She still has a lot to learn,” Jess said.
	“What about my hand? I’ll be lucky if I just need shots, and who’s going to pay for that?” said the sergeant “No, you’re both going to have to come to the station with me until we can find someone responsible to come and take you both home.”
	His companions opened the pincers on their catch-poles and one of them took another cautious step forward.  Megan lunged away from the guard nearest her and grabbed Jess by the shoulders as she danced past.  Jess found herself pulled tight against the bigger girl's body and Megan folded her arms over Jess’s chest to hold her in place.  The wolf growled again and Jess could feel it all the way through her body.
	“You don’t need those.  She only bit you because she was scared and it doesn’t look that bad.  I’ll give you five dollars for your trouble, if you insist, but that’s all you're going to get.  I’m not going anywhere with you, either.  You can see what I am,” she said.
	“Yes I can, and they can come and get you when they miss you,” the sergeant said.
	The closer guard lunged at them with his staff.  Jess cringed, but the hook didn’t close on her.  Instead, someone reached out and grabbed the staff just under its head and shoved it back at its owner, hard.  The cat who held it doubled over when the butt of his weapon hit him in the stomach and a female wolf with cinnamon-colored fur stepped out of the circle.  She glared at the guards down the length of her narrow muzzle and let just the tips of her fangs show from under her lips.
	“I’ll take them,” she said.
	“Just like that?  Why?  What are these little bitches to you?” the seargeant said.
	“They’re people.  It might be legal for you to rape them whenever you have a little extra money in your pocket, but I’m not going to let you hurt them,” the wolf said.
	She walked out into the middle of the circle and turned her back to the sergeant.
	“I'm Catherine Coburn.  You know why that gives me the right to speak for these girls.  If you want to argue, you can talk to my father, but you’d better hurry.  The Scylla never stays in port for long,” she said.
	“I will speak to him, you can count on that.  Someone still has to pay for my arm, damn you.  Now get these whores off the street before I decide to arrest you all for loitering,” the sergeant said.
	He stomped off, followed by his sheepish guards.  Jess watched until they were out sight, and then reached behind her for Megan's hand.  It was Catherine who grabbed her instead, and the wolf pulled her around with a jerk.
	“You heard what he said.  The two of you need to come with me before you get yourselves in even more trouble,” Catherine said.
	She was a pretty wolf, with fine reddish-brown fur and waist-length brown hair.  Her claws were blunt and she looked like a dock worker, but she was clearly someone important from the way the sergeant had listened to her.
	“Why did you do that for us?” Jess said.
	“Because he was a bully.  I don't like seeing anybody treated like that, even if you are a House girl,” Catherine said.
	“I'm sure.  What is it you really want,” Jess said.
	“Why should I want anything from you?  I've already got a girlfriend and paying for it isn't my style,” Catherine said.
	“Nobody helps out a stranger unless they want something,” Jess said.
	“Is that really what you think?  You could say thank you,” Catherine said.
	“If I thought there was any reason to,” Jess said.
	“The two of you really are friendly, aren't you?  Come on.  If you don't trust me, that's up to you, but we might as well get out of the cold,” she said.
	The wolf turned with a swish of her tail and walked across the street towards a low brick building with glazed windows.  She didn’t look back to see if they were follwing her, and it would have been easy enough to slip away, but Jess hated for anyone to think that she was ungrateful.  She grabbed Megan’s hand and dragged her over before the girl could run away again.  Catherine smiled at them again and opened the door.
	The first thing that came out was the smell of hot food, which made Jess’s stomach squeak.  She couldn't remember the last time she'd had a decent meal that didn't come out of a cart.
	The second thing that came out of the door was a streak of black and white fur.  A spotted skunk in a blue dress ran out of the restaurant and threw her arms around Catherine.  The wolf was obviously ready for this assault and she grabbed onto a nearby lamp post to keep from being knocked down.
	“You finally made it,” said the skunk, her voice muffled against Catherine’s chest  “I was beginning to think you’d gotten lost.  What took you so long?”
	“Just a couple of little things,” Catherine said, and she tilted her head in Jess’s direction.  The skunk glanced over her shoulder, and her mouth twisted down in a pout.
	“Aw, come on Cath, you promised.  Just one day, that was all I asked for.  We haven't had a real date all year,” the skunk said.
	“They were in trouble.  It’s only for an hour or two, until the guard changes and they can go home.  You’ll have me the rest of the night,” Catherine said.
	The skunk grumbled under her breath, but she held her hand out to Jess.
	“Sarah,” she said.
	Jess touched her fingers and gave their names.  Catherine gave Sarah a kiss on the cheek and a push back towards the door.
	The restaurant was dim and hot, and a cloud of strange-smelling smoke hung near the ceiling.  Booths with red cushions lined three walls and the rest of the room was a tangled mass of spindly wooden tables and chairs.  A greasy curtain at the back of the room seperated the kitchen from the rest of the place.  It was still too early for the dinner rush, so the place was nearly empty.  The only other people inside were a couple of lynxes curled around each other in a corner booth, and a plump otter wiping tables.
	A large table in the middle of the room was set with two plates full of food.  It was covered with a stained red tablecloth and had a small candle burning in the middle of it.  Everything was clean, and the cutlery by the untouched plate was wrapped in a white paper napkin.  In the places where Jess could normally afford to eat, diners were lucky if the plates were wiped off between meals.
	Sarah flopped down in a chair on the opposite side of the table from them and drummed on the edge of the table with her fingers.  Megan perched herself on the edge of a seat, and Catherine dragged an extra chair over for Jess.  They sat down together and Catherine picked up the half empty glass from beside Sarah’s plate and sniffed it.
	“You’re supposed to stay away from sugar, aren’t you?” she said.
	“I was bored.  I thought we were going to have fun tonight, and not worry about diets or doctors for a while,” said Sarah.
	She banged on the table for a few more beats.  Then she leaned forward and peered at Jess's throat.  Embarrassed, Jess covered her collar with her hands, but this only made Sarah lean in closer and push her hands away.
	“I couldn’t stand to live the way you do,” Sarah said.
	Jess saw the tips of Catherine’s turn red and the red wolf hooked two fingers in the back of Sarah’s shirt and pulled the girl back.  Sarah just shrugged her off and tilted her head to try to read what was stamped on the leather.  Such close scrutinty made Jess nervous, but she gave in and tilted her head to let the girl have a better look.
	“I don’t like it, either, but nobody asked my opinion on things,” she said.
	“But why do you put up with it?  All you’d have to do is take off the collar and you could go anywhere,” Sarah said.
	“Because she’s scared,” Megan said.
	“Because she’s sensible,” Catherine said.
	The wolf grabbed an unguarded bread roll off of Sarah’s plate and crammed it in her mouth.  While she chewed, she waved a hand in the air to catch the otter’s attention, and pointed at the table.
	“Everyone thinks it would be easy, but it isn’t something I can solve by just taking off my collar.  What about my friends?  Or all the girls who come into the House who are young and scared, and have nobody else to turn to?  What about Elizabeth?  They don't deserve to be abandoned like that,” Jess said.
	“I know that trap.  You don’t feel like you can quit until you’ve helped just one more person, and then one more after that, and there’s never any end to the people who need you.  Nobody will think that you’re heartless if you help yourself,” Catherine said.
	The otter finished wiping down his table, slung his cloth over his shoulder and limped over.  Catherine pointed at the untouched steak on her plate.
	“Two more, if you please, for my new friends.  And a wolf apple, or two, if you still have any left,” she said.
	“You have those here?” said Megan “You know what they are?”
	Megan’s wagging tail thumped against Jess's leg until she reached down and grabbed it.  Megan blushed and tucked her tail behind her.  Catherine grinned at them and snuck another piece of bread.
	“We have everything in this city,” she said.
	“In a few years, we might even be as good as Oseille,” Sarah said.
	“If you believe the stories.  Is it better than here?  That wouldn’t be hard.  But I don’t believe it’s as wonderful as people make out.”
	“If you ever saw it, you’d change your mind,” Catherine said.
	“You've been there, I suppose,” Jess said.
	“Once or twice.  It's the main trading hub on Viridis, which is a neat trick for a city that's miles from the coast,” Catherine said.
	“You’d like it.  It’s run by rabbits, but there are more hybrids in that city than anywhere else in the civilized world,” Sarah said.
	Megan covered her mouth with her hands, but Jess still saw the grin under her fingers.  She felt the blush rise in her ears this time and she shrank back in her seat a little under the weight of everyone's stares.
	“Is it really that obvious what I am?” Jess said.
	“You’re too relaxed.  How many mice do you know who would be this comfortable in a room full of predators?” Catherine said.
	“You have it easier than some.  My cousin is half fox, and he looks just like one, too.  If it weren’t for the fact that he had his mother’s markings, nobody would ever know,” said Sarah.
	The otter came back with a tray full of food.  He set plates of thick steak in front of Catherine and her girlfriend, and a small bowl of what looked like slices of tomato next to Megan’s plate.  Megan barely glanced at the meat, but she grinned when she saw the bowl.  It was the first time Jess had ever seen her student look anything but sullen.  The otter refilled Sarah’s glass with a caramel-colored, sweet-smelling liquid that hissed and bubbled up over the side of the glass.
	“What do you really want from me?” Jess said.
	“I just want to help you, like I told you on the street,” Catherine said.
	She glanced over her shoulder at the otter, then she leaned across the table and lowered her voice.
	“When I was young, my father used to take me to Viridis, sometimes, to see the Triple Cities.   We usually stayed with one of his innumerable cousins by the coast but, once, he took me all the way to the Oseille, so I could see the capital.  It’s a beautiful place, and I didn’t want to leave.  That wasn’t the only reason.  In Oseille, females are treated like real people.  They can own property and they even have a say in how things are run.  And nobody can own them,” Catherine said.
	“Good for them, but that doesn't really help us does it?  Even if everyone who wanted to could get passage to the island, they can’t fit us all in,” Jess said.
	“They wouldn’t have to.  Not if Deirdre’s Edict was made legal again,”  Sarah said.
	She sipped her drink while Jess shivered with the shock that had just run through her.
	“That’s heresy,” she said.
	But it was just an automatic reaction.  Everyone in the city admired Deirdre, and that was okay as long as you were careful  to publicly say that she’d been wrong about certain things.
	“Why?  A hundred years ago, some sticky little male buys his way into the presidency and suddenly the vixen who founded this city was wrong about everything?” Sarah said.
	“Things are changing.  There are already some people speaking out against the Houses, trying to get them banned.  Why not take things a step further, and free everyone while we’re at it?” Catherine said.
	The otter drifted further away to one corner of the restaurant.  The lynx couple were counting coins out onto the table and putting on their coats.  Nobody appeared to be paying any attention to the four of them, but the fur on the back of Jess’s neck felt prickly.  She pushed herself back from the table a bit and wished that she hadn’t taken the chair that left her back to the door.
	“Is that what you think you’re doing?” she said.
	“Things have gotten off to a rough start.  The Sunrise House Campaign was a disaster.  But I think we can do better this time,” Catherine said.
	“Better?  What are you talking about?” Jess said.
	“It was nobody's fault, really.  We thought if we could pay off all the debts of the girls in one House, they might be able to help us with the rest of you,” Catherine said.
	“But Sunrise House was burned to the ground.  Half the girls there were killed,” Jess said.
	Catherine turned her face away, and took a sudden interest in cutting up her steak.
	“That wasn’t us.  We don’t know who set the fire, but we didn’t go anywhere near  the Sunrise that whole week,” she said.
	“No.  You’ll have to do better than that.  I’d get the same answer from the person who was holding the match,” Jess said.
	She got up and knocked the chair backwards so it fell to the floor with a bang.  Megan followed her and Jess reached back to take the girl’s hand, as much as to comfort herself as to help the girl.
	“You aren’t going to do the same to Silver Street, if I can help it.  You won't kill us.  We’ll free ourselves, thank you, and we’ll do it without your god or your false charity,” she said.
	“I’m telling you the truth,” Catherine said.
	Sarah put a hand on Catherine's arm and gave a small shake of her head, which made Jess even angrier.  She pushed Megan back away from the table until she thought they were a safe distance away, then they turned and bolted for the door.
	The door opened just as they reached it, and a fox came in, stamping his feet and blowing on his fingers.. He wore a hooded coat that looked too big for him and Jess thought he looked familiar.  He must have thought the same of her, because he opened his mouth to speak to her, but Megan shoved him out of the way and then they were outside and running.