9

   For the most part, everything was normal. Birds fluttered about their business in the canopy, chirping and whistling in the heavy air. Somewhere to her right a squirrel barked its frustration at her. Whatever horror had passed though the trees ahead, it had been gone long enough for the wildlife to return to normal. To the contrary, the huntress was stone, a statue in the oppressive forest. Only her ears, eyes, and the very end of her tail showed any sign of life. Tingles crept down the length of the latter; the dark, oblong rosettes grew with the increasing diameter of the appendage. Along her spine, the rising fur tried to form a ridge but was stopped by the grey wool of her tunic and trousers. 
   A few paces back down the game trail, her horse was equally disturbed. His stamping hooves, flared nostrils, and the anxious scanning of his own eyes and ears did nothing for the tension that crept through her gut and kept her ears flicking toward every sound. Clicking her tongue, the cat broke her stillness to walk back and pat his neck, then led him in a short retreat down the trail. After tying the lead rope to a sturdy branch, she rummaged through one of the packs behind the saddle. 
   She favored the trail they had followed through the day with a wistful glance, as she withdrew a water pouch and drank. It wouldn’t necessarily be running away if she never allowed herself to see enough for what lay ahead to be properly scared, right? The water pouch went back into its place in the horse’s pack and she closed the flap a bit harder than she meant, drawing an angry, snorting head toss and tail flick from the beast. She ran her paw up through the coarse black hairs of his mane, pausing behind his ear to give an apologetic scratch with her claws. 
   The huntress gathered herself and returned to inspect the scene, tail and head whipping side to side out of sync with one another. The scattered spots on her forehead pinched together with the rising and gathering of her eyebrows. Something in the back of her mind had made her distrust the site immediately, and that distrust was only growing with exposure. The wide path—which cut at an angle across the game trail—had not been there the last time she hunted this area, and she couldn’t remember seeing its like anywhere before. Whatever had moved through the forest had trampled trees as thick as her arm, meaning it was quite large. Stranger, though, was that it had also been unnaturally hot. The edges of the path were blackened and charred, as was everything overhead and under foot. It was as if some giant had dragged a hot brand through the forest. The scent of fire still lingered in the weird tunnel. Before she had stumbled on the scene, the scent of the burning had conjured images of wild fire. Perhaps that was the reason for her misgivings: it just didn’t fit. Forest fires didn’t move like the thing that had forged the path, nor did forest fires leave footprints.
   She knelt over one of the tracks in the soft ground. Mud squished around her boot and pressed through the knee of her trousers. The moisture worked its way through the fur beneath the faded grey fabric, making her skin crawl. She pushed the pads of her fingers through the spotted fluff of her cheek—faded by time to a smokey silver from the rich blue-gray of her youth—as she examined the ground. The track had three large, ovoid indentations spaced close together and three smaller indentations that were spaced father apart. The arrangement was eerily similar to a deer’s track; though, the impressions were clearly not made by any hoof or dewclaw she‘d ever seen. More concerning were the rest of the tracks. There were three sizes of prints and the arrangement of them suggested that they all belonging to one individual.
    “`What in the names of the peaks did this?`” 
   Her whisper was accompanied by a shiver, despite her thick fur and wool outfit. Prickles ran up her arms and down the back of her neck, as the rest of her fur followed the example set by her tail and spine. Her hackles strained against the cloth of her tunic. Thirty-four years of hunting every sort of beast in and out of her native Baki Highlands, no matter how big or how fierce, had steeled her against fear of wild animals. Now she was trembling worse than she had on her first hunt. It was embarrassing.
   The long whiskers that swept outward from beneath the corners of her mottled pink nose trembled as she took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and stood. She balled her paws into fists and pressed them to her lower back, just above the base of her thick tail, and leaned backward to work out the knot that was forming in the muscles on either side of her spine. She let the air out through pursed lips, aiming to blow out most of the fear with it. The sigh tickled the short fuzz at the edges of the cleft that ran from her nose to her mouth. Before she finished exhaling, her slate gray eyes snapped open to the sound of a frantic whinny.
   Growling, the huntress wheeled around to find her horse tugging against his lead, trying to pull free of the branch. His wide eyes and backward-turned ears bespoke a panic whose match was building in her. Was the thing that made this path returning? Her tail lashed behind her, increased to its greatest diameter. Her belt knife had found its way into her paw; but, any comfort it could have brought her was dashed by how impotently small it felt. She wanted to move but couldn’t convince her feet. Moisture stung the corners of her eyes as she turned back to stare down the path in the direction that the tracks seemed to point. The roaring of her pulse in her ears all but drowned out the growing sound of running footsteps. A detached part of her mind noted that her paws were shaking, indeed all of her was. She had always thought that the peaks would take her with a grin on her face and a weapon in her hand, maybe struggling with bear or a pack of wolves. Oh, aye! A bear would have been perfect. Now it seemed more likely that she would meet death with tears in her eyes and piss down her leg. The pitch of her growl raised in the back of her throat. She squinted her eyes and clenched her teeth. All of her senses strained down the trail before her.
   A small voice rang out with an unintelligible shout and a sudden collision took the huntress by surprise from behind and to the left, drawing a brief scream from her. The horse whickered as she went down in a heap with her attacker. Whatever it was, it wasn’t large enough or hot enough to have created the trail. It also wasn’t dangerous enough for that shit-headed horse not to sound amused. The huntress hissed and spat, kicked and shoved to rid herself of her assailant. In the tussle, she caught the scents of human skin, sweat, mud, steel, and ash. There was a squeak and a grunt, then the weight was gone. When she opened her eyes, a small hand was extended to help her up from the ground. She took it and started to pull herself up, but let go again when she saw the owner of the hand and felt its strange warmth.
   Standing over her was a confused young woman with an apologetic smile and coppery-brown skin. A dark, chaotic mess of curls dangled over her face almost to her eyes—large, almond-shaped eyes of such a dark brown that the pupils were nearly invisible. Between them was a bluish-green line that led up to a half-seen mark on her forehead. The most notable thing about her at the moment, though, was her apparel; she wore not one thread of clothing. Across her back was slung a long bow made of a rippled metal that had to be Nifal make, the wire bowstring of which crossed her chest between her small breasts, pressing into her skin to leave an uncomfortable-looking red mark from her collarbone on the left to the bottom of her rib cage on her right. Another mark, this one faded, crossed the opposite direction, probably from the bow being recently repositioned. A quiver of the same strange metal hung by a cord at the girl’s waist and bristled with thin steel arrows and ungainly wooden ones. How distracted had she been that she hadn’t heard the rattling from that? The girl’s feet were caked with ash and mud that stretched halfway up her lower legs and splattered up the backs of her bare thighs. Her copper skin was peppered with old scars, many thick and poorly healed.
   Blood rushed to her ears and she blurted out, “`Who the hell are you and where did you c—,`” stopping when she caught the look of impatient frustration on the girl’s face.
   “Baki,” the stranger mumbled in an unfamiliar accent, pushing her curls out of her face and rolling her eyes. The motion exposed the rest of her tattoo, a curve with four short rays and one long one that dipped to the bridge of her nose. It looked a bit like a closed eye.  “Baki nae pashu tsité?" The tone suggested it was a rhetorical question, but the language was not one she had heard before.
   The hunter sat up slowly, still shaken from the impact and the appearance of the interloper. At the moment, she didn’t give a damn if it was rude to meet someone with one’s ears cast back and teeth out. Rubbing her bruised hip, she demanded again, “`Who are you? Where did you come from, and why in the names of every peak haven’t you got any damned clothes on?`”
   The young woman frowned and scratched at the skin just below her navel. “`Slow. Not good talk Baki.`”
   “`Of course,`” the huntress signed and rubbed her face with her paws, “`you don’t know much Baki. Wonderful. You,`” she pointed at the girl. “`Name?`”
   The girl stood tall, pressed the fingertips of her right hand to the center of her forehead and proudly said something that sounded like "Kah-ei". Her air was that of uttering the most sacred of all sounds. It came off a bit self-important to the cat. The stranger inclined her head to the huntress, with an eager question in her eyes.
   The huntress slowly stood, still aching from the impact. “`Kah-ei? Fine, I’m Tholi.`”
   “`Toh Lii,`” the girl said slowly pointing at her, then back at herself. “Cae. Good…good meet.”
   “`Yeah, grand. Now that’s out of the way, where are your sodding clothes?`” She tugged at her tunic to drive the point home.
   The girl waved dismissively. “`No time. Also not need. Stick to skin. Make slow. Get in way.`”
   The cat huffed, “`And we've seen what happens when things are in your way.`”
   Cae just tilted her head quizzically and cocked an eyebrow. She clearly didn’t have a good enough grasp on Baki for sarcastic banter. Well, she also didn’t have fur for sap and whatnot to stick in; so, maybe the clothes thing was moot. Tholi considered the girl for a moment. She'd almost be cute if she didn’t have such a strong air of weirdness. At a glance, she was in line with most of the hunter’s tastes: short but well proportioned, a bit too slender but reasonably healthy, clear eyes, plainly intelligent. Under any other circumstances, a nude girl like her appearing out of the forest would probably have had the cat blushing to the ears and stammering over her—as well as thanking every peak twice over by name. Maybe the huntress was in the wrong mood; or maybe something about this Cae tickled the back of her mind wrong. Whatever it was, it grated on Tholi like a mother’s tongue.
   As patiently as possible, Tholi asked, “`Where did you come from?`”
   “`North, far.`” The girl pointed to indicate the direction, then made a peak with her hands. “`Big mountains. This many dark moons,`” for which she held up four fingers.
Four new moons? “`Four months! You've been running stark bollocks naked down this peak-blighted path of horrors for four months? You’d have to have come from just shy of the Hinwood! Why, for the peaks' sakes?`”
   Cae frowned and shook her head, sending her curls dancing around her ears and across her eyebrows. The huntress was speaking too fast in a tongue she hardly knew. Her people had traded with the Woëti province in the south, which had a very similar language; but, they had only very limited contact with the people of the Highlands, a range that made up the western spur at the southern end of the mountains that divided the continent along its length. The Baki were a self-sufficient people, inclined to distrust outsiders, and would sooner show a wandering trader the road than do any sort of business. She was still well behind in her pursuit of Ishné and this conversation was going nowhere.
   “`Not worry. A friend I search. Sorry I hit you. Must go.`”
   Tholi watched as the girl dashed off down the trail, disappearing around a bend. The quiver must have had something stuffed in it to hold the arrows still; it made no noise as the girl ran. The cat pinched and rubbed the bridge of her muzzle between the pads of her index fingers, trying to clear a building headache that promised to be enormous. With a frustrated growl, she walked back to her horse. Untying the lead, she pulled herself onto the horse’s back, settled her long legs on either side him, and signaled him to head off toward the northeast, deeper into the woods. It was past time to be getting back to her camp and the little cask of ale she kept there. She desperately needed a drink after that exchange.

10

   A shadow deeper than any of the shadows around her, Ishné shuffled to an unsteady stop at the edge of a narrow tree belt. She groaned, letting her hind legs fold until her rump rested on the ground. Every part of her seemed to hurt, inside and out. Her fires had dwindled to the point that little burned in her proximity. Beyond the distance her limbs could stretch, the grass and trees didn’t even brown. She still absorbed sunlight during the days, but it no longer restored her energy. The sensation reminded her of an old memory from an individual long before her time: the galaxy where they had resided had been consumed by the gravity well in its center—which itself had wobbled momentarily and vanished with a sickening lurch—leaving them to hover in the void until some errant body drifted by to give them motion. From then on, the signs of such a cataclysm were known and could be avoided; it was a lesson that spread throughout her kind with each new hatching, passed down from that individual’s memory. They had nearly died of starvation, only barely managing to survive upon the weak glimmer of unreachably distant points of light. She was starving, despite all the light of sun and stars. Her pace over the last month had slowed to a weary shamble. It felt like she could sleep again, though it hadn’t even been a year since her last slumber. Whatever the illness was, it was only growing worse.
   Ishné surveyed a lake below her, nestled between the sloping meadows of a broad valley. The still water reflected a clear night sky, with the exception of those rays that fell through to illuminate the uneven lakebed. Broken trees and old stone buildings glistened beneath the surface, their lines softened by years of mud. Winding through the muck of the lake bottom was a deep channel that disclosed part of the secret of the body of water. The rest of the story unfolded at the far end of the lake, where a thick stone wall had been constructed to hold back what had previously been a river, thus submerging the valley which it had carved. Astride the dam stood two large buildings, connected by an axle whose five broad wheels cranked continuously with the overflow from the reservoir. In turn, the axle passed within the walls of the buildings to turn massive stone wheels. 
   Glancing away from the mills, she surveyed the sleepy villages on the lakeshore. There were three small settlements along the water’s edge with no more than a dozen structures in each. Groups of narrow boats sat upturned on the bank near long racks where nets swayed in the breeze off of the water. Most of the humans appeared to be asleep and none of the stragglers paid the distant shadow on the ridge any attention. Their ignorance of her came as no small relief. The humans who had spotted her up to this point in her flight from Cae had been less than receptive. Fortunately, most had simply fled and none had been aggressive. It would be a shame for some otherwise innocent individual to hurt themselves trying to attack her. 
   There was nothing any of them could do to harm her anyway, of course. Her kind could withstand tremendous forces during their travels and incubated within chaotic nebulae—the billowing carcasses of stars whose vibrant lives had ended in all the more vibrant deaths. Indeed, the final moments of the stellar foundry where she hatched would have destroyed this world, its star, and every one of its sister planets if it had been no closer than farthest-flung of this system’s bodies. As a result of the memories inherited from her predecessors, the end of nearly every nest star before her hatching resided within her. The end of the nest star that hatched her, though, remained clearest in her mind. 
   The nebula had been drastically depleted by the time the end arrived. As the moment approached, nearly all of the eggs had opened and each hatchling faced the star. It had been created in this place because the volume, density, and proximity of the surrounding clouds predisposed the young star to a brief but energetic life and a uniquely violent demise. The ravenous, young star drew in every part of the nebula within each of its gravity. Denser and denser the materials collected at its core, increasing the star’s mass and its pull on the space around it. Reactions and radiation emissions became unstable as the growing mass warred with the energy released. The hatchlings and lingering adults escaped the worst of the star’s wildly fluctuating gravitational and magnetic fields by manipulating their own, allowing them to drift into wider orbits. Those unfortunate enough to remain unhatched—as well as a few stunted individuals who were unable to properly attune their fields—were consumed by the star and added to its swelling core. 
   Eventually, the energy output of the star fell too far behind its increasing mass. The energy released could no longer overcome the pull of gravity and began collecting within the core as well.  Finally, the buildup of mass and energy reached the breaking point. Forces that typically repel and those that attract inverted in a spectacular implosion, and the entirety of the star’s mass and energy passed through itself at what might as well have been a single point. The ensuing shock compressed all of space around that point into a tight series of waves, which radiated spherically in all directions since the core of the star had not been rotating. Walls of matter and energy collected at the leading edge of each wave, forming a tremendous bubble of concentric spheres. As the first wavefront reached each hatchling, their bodies and outstretched wings caught the rapidly expanding wall and they were carried off. By the time the third wavefront reached them, their velocities matched that of the racing debris. Each young creature folded their wings and curled their bodies into tight spirals to reduce their profile and the chances that they might collide with something even they could not withstand.
   Billions of years passed before surrounding forces began to act on her enough to appreciably alter her course and momentum. She whipped around a region of high gravity at the center of an large galaxy. As it pulled on her, she responded in kind by increasing her own gravity. Drawing closer, she watched as innumerable stars winked into and out of existence all along the broad arms. The swarm of stars condensing near the hub formed an unappealing froth of warring gravity and magnetism. Ishné allowed herself to be flung out to the far edge of one of the arms. The continued pull of the center of the galaxy and minute changes of her own brought her to relative rest near a new rotating star. Not over fed by a rich nebula, this star was both weaker and more stable, with a broad ring of matter orbiting it. She remained in the star’s gravity well, feeding off of its radiation and watching as the disc of material collected into several small points. The outer group of bodies were primarily gaseous; their tumultuous atmospheres were unappealing and their intense gravity might have been inescapable for something of her mass, especially since so little nutritive radiation would pierce the clouds. Navigating the solar winds, she selected one from the rocky inner group, settling on it when it was nothing more than a molten mass of stone and gases. The planet cooled, a thin atmosphere developed and oceans eventually formed.
   She had occupied this world longer than its sentient inhabitants could conceive. Her body had been assaulted by conditions that would have frozen, boiled, or crushed humans. Their weapons were nothing of concern to her. Cae was another matter. Ishné had sensed the fear and hostility in the minds of those humans who had seen her shadowy form ambling southward. Cae still followed her and there was no telling how the other humans would react to her. In the best case, they would perceive her as a brave soul in search of a monster to slay. The worst case…she didn’t wish to ponder. In her fatigue, her resolve already floundered.
   Ishné sighed and looked up at the moon. The familiar feeling of Cae’s mind tickling the back of hers returned as it had done every night of her journey. It had been getting stronger over the months that the girl followed her, both because the girl gained ground on her little by little and due to Cae’s growing proficiency at mental communication. If it weren’t for the girl’s need to eat and sleep, she would have already caught up—something Ishné both dreaded and desired. This internal conflict vexed her. 
   Her prior solitude had left little room for emotion. Witnessing the emotions of the creatures who shared this world and remembering those encountered by her kind in the past did little to help her understand her own. Fear, longing, anger, and loneliness were tied to needs. Her sustenance was provided automatically. Her life was not threatened by anything on this world. Fear and anger had never been personal to her. Not once in her seclusion had she desired to be with others of her kind; so, longing and loneliness were also strange to her. The things she felt now were confusing and painful. She was furious with Cae for her pursuit and terrified that, should the pursuit end successfully, she might somehow hurt the girl again. Still, she hoped that it would end with them beside each other once more. The absence was a physical pain, only reduced during those moments when their minds touched. 
   In addition to closing the distance between them Cae had taken to meditating each night before falling asleep. The strength of their connection would increase to the point that she nearly felt the girl beside her. A part of her wanted to give in and wait for her. She missed the sound of Cae’s voice and the cool touch of her hand, even if their time together had only been a matter of days. Only her desire to protect the girl from harm—the harm she felt so certain she herself would do—urged her on.
   No, she admitted to herself, staring down at the lake, it is me I am trying to protect. I cannot bear for her to look at me that way again, to feel those emotions directed at me.
   She shambled out of the forest and down the hill at a slight angle to the lake. She would skirt it wide to one side in the hopes of avoiding notice. Near the bottom of the hill, she lurched to a stop as the now-familiar feeling of Cae sitting beside her told her that the girl was once again meditating on their shared connection. Ishné groaned and started forward again.
   The girl’s smiling voice echoed around her. “Good evening, dear friend!”
   She huffed in response and continued walking, trying to move a bit quicker and put more distance between them. She was still so weak and it hurt to force herself farther away from Cae. She wanted nothing more than to stop, turn back and return to her friend. But doing that would hurt, too. At a loss, she continued forward.
   “I am sorry to speak with you later than usual. My day has been,” followed by a terse laugh and a wave of—what was that?—perhaps abasement, “eventful.” Yes, she was definitely humiliated about something, despite the smile.
   “Hmph!” she grunted, continuing her slow stroll. “How has it been eventful?”
   Cae chuckled and there was the briefest sensation of pain and a wince. “Nothing bad. Suffice it to say that you have gained yourself some time to put more distance between us.”
   That was different. She usually joked about how she was closing in on Ishné. Any time that she increased the distance between herself and the girl, Cae’s tone would indicate frustration at losing what she had come to see as a game. Now her tone seemed jovial but strained, as though she were feigning happiness. It wasn’t like her to deceive. Ishné focused on the girl and slowly could make out more of the sensory input and emotions from Cae’s end of their bond. The girl was putting on a brave front, but the emotions beneath the surface suggested that something was wrong. She was cold, hungry, injured, and the optimism that had formed a strong undercurrent in their exchanges during the girl’s pursuit was all but gone. She stopped walking and closed her eyes, focusing harder on Cae. The information from the girl’s senses resolved itself. There was a strong odor of decay and mold.
   “Cae?”
   “Yes, my love?” That wasn’t new. The girl had selected that term of endearment a couple of months back. It didn’t make fleeing her any easier; especially when the emotion that urged her to flee seemed to be the same that influenced the girl to follow her.
   Ishné frowned and said, “Open your eyes.”
   There was an uncomfortable shift and the touch of cold, wet stone against the girl’s back. An icy tingle slid across the skin of her arms. “I think I will keep them closed. It...ah...it’s harder to speak with you when my eyes are open. You know, because I can’t concentrate with all of the sounds and sights—”
   “Cae,” she interrupted softly, “your eyes, please.”
   There was a moment of uncomfortable silence. She could feel tears burning at the corners of Cae’s eyes and the clenching of her jaw. Ishné prepared to ask again, but the girl’s vision slowly appeared. It took a moment for everything to come into focus, there was hardly any light where the girl was. The edges of her vision were blurry from the tears that continued to build. She was in a very small room with a thin vertical slit in one wall, opposite a heavy wooden door. Across the room, maybe two strides away, was a foul smelling bucket. Decomposing plant matter littered the floor. The barriers that she had erected against Ishné’s intrusion crumbled and her full state was revealed. Thin, scratchy fabric covered the girl’s body from shoulders to knees, leaving her arms and lower legs bare. There was a pile of dirty rags under Cae’s folded legs and heavy steel strips circled the girl’s wrists. Chains, barely long enough to allow the girl to reach the far side of the room, linked the metal strips to a hook high on the wall. The girl was bruised and there were so many places where pain screamed in her body that it was difficult to distinguish them. The odor that filled the room was noxious.
   Concern welled up in her. “What is this?”
   “Ishné, it’s nothing! Really, this is just,” she could feel the girl’s frantic attempt to devise an explanation and to shore up the remaining walls inside her mind, “just the storeroom of an inn, albeit a poor one. My lodgings for the night. When one doesn’t have a way to pay for better accommodations, she takes what she can get.”
   The silence that followed was deafening. Cae squirmed on the other end of their bond. She took a deep breath.
   “I know, love; I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to worry. I was following your trail through the southern forests and I was taken by soldiers on patrol from some town at the edge of the Woëti province, the lands just south of where the mountains end. They were investigating your path and saw me running down it. I speak Woëtic well enough, but I guess that doesn’t matter much when you’re a foreigner running naked through the forest. They were not inclined to believe that I didn’t have something to do with the “demon” that had passed through the outlying fields. They are claiming that I am a sorcerer or perhaps a demon myself. 
   “They brought me to the capital of the province and delivered me to the Temple of the Divine Order. The Order is under a lot of pressure by the provinces we've passed through to find and stop the demon. Their plan is to try me before a council of the Order’s highest officials, confirm me for the blasphemy that I surely must be, and burn me at the stake,” she laughed wryly. “I would wish them luck, but they probably wouldn’t understand.”
  Ishné’s chest tightened.“I cannot leave you to this, even if their fire cannot harm you. If this Order wishes so badly to see you die, they will surely try something else. Where are you, Cae?”
   Cae closed her eyes and the barriers slammed into place again. The sensations of captivity faded to the edge of perception. The girl’s response was firm. 
   “No.”
   “Cae, I must help you,” Ishné pleaded.
   “No,” Cae said again. “No matter what, you must not help me. This city has a large population, Ishné. All of these people are not responsible for this treatment and I won’t let you endanger them all to merely to aid me.”
   “But—”
   Cae interrupted, “I don’t yet know how I will escape this; but I will. When I do, I intend to keep my promise. I am going to find you and I am going to make you understand why your decision to flee was the wrong one.” As she spoke, a bit of her old optimism returned.
   “You are certain?”
   “That you’re wrong?” the girl asked with her first genuine smile of the night. “Without a doubt.”
   “That you will escape.”
   “Oh! Sure. I'll be fine.”
   “You will still speak with me every night?” Against her decision to separate herself from Cae, she wanted to hear the girl’s voice and know that she was safe; else, what was the purpose of her flight?
   “Every night. Maybe every day. Unless—” she paused for a moment. “Unless something happens.”
   “If it seems something may happen, I will fly to you and—”
   A choking sound between a sob and a laugh cut her off. “I know better, love. You can barely lift your wings, much less fly.”
   “Perhaps not…” she sighed. 
   Ishné took a few tentative steps along her southward course, then abruptly stopped again and turned around. Her heart warred with itself. She could not decide which was in Cae’s best interest. The girl answered for her.
   “No, Ishné. Go on; I’ll catch up.”
   Ishné sighed and glanced up at the moon once more. It’s old, pock-marked face glared down upon the world in blank indifference. For just a moment, she recalled the indifference that had been hers before she met the girl. The image of the Phranhikaf village briefly resurfaced in her mind. It was replaced by a thought of devastation on a much wider scale—a whole city laid to waste and all of its people burned to cinder. A handful of memories trickled through to her: a mother and her two children watching with helpless sorrow as Cae was hauled through the streets of the city, a filthy man leaning outside the cell window as he chatted with her, a young girl who tried to stop her peers from throwing things at the prisoner through that same window. 
   “I understand,” Ishné relented, resuming her southward slog.
   In her cell. Cae withdrew back into her mind. She slumped against the cold wall and softly beat the back of her head against the stone.

11

   Tholi led her horse along the main street of the city. Her ears drooped as soon as she passed under the gateway arch, and she shrank into herself the farther beyond it she moved. The melange of scents that assaulted her as soon as she was through the gates became more and more intense with every step along the road. As the second largest city in the province, Capital—the cat thoroughly hated the Hinnish deficit of imagination that it took for the Order to call the city that when they assumed authority over the place—housed around twenty thousand permanent residents. On any given day an additional eight to fifteen thousand came to trade or visit the temple. She had come to offload salted meat and furs from her recent hunt, to buy supplies, and to do something that could be done nowhere else. If the peaks willed it, this would be a short trip. The huntress hated large settlements, but particularly this city. There were too many people, too many sounds, too many scents, and the tall, grotesque temple that dominated the central square gave her the creeps. 
   The Baki did not subscribe to the foreign pantheon, brought across the sea centuries ago by Nifal merchants, that much of the continent worshiped. The spotted cats of the mountains had their own gods and those were behemoths of stone covered in snow. At least you could see them, and if you screwed up they wouldn’t hesitate to send you to a hell of their choosing. The Divine Order, curators of what had become a global religion, hadn’t approved of the godlessness that they perceived in the Baki. In their cruel attempts to bring order to the Highlands, they had proved themselves to be somewhat undeserving of the self-appointed title “Divine”. As far as Tholi was concerned, they weren’t particularly deserving of life, either. Unfortunately, Woëtic metal work was superior to anything produced in her province, and this was the only trading center near the Baki Highlands where she could find merchants who spoke her language. It was also the only place that held what had driven her back fourteen times after her initial visit.
   She approached the stall of her preferred merchant and found it crowded with baskets of rotten vegetables. Throngs of people were lined up at his storefront, thrusting coins at the shopkeeper. Tholi waited until the crowd finished their business and bustled off down the road. She walked up to his counter and greeted him.
   “`Wahki, good day.`”
   “`Ah! Miss Tholi! Yes, yes, good day. Very good day! Making coin like madness.`” 
   The scrawny, energetic man leaned across the counter in a conspiratorial manner to whisper the last sentence. His breath stung the cat’s eyes; she never could get used to it.
   “`So I see. What’s the occasion? Another purse-snatch in the pillory?`”
   Wahkennet grinned his half-toothless grin. “`Nah! Patrol caught some kind of «witch» or something the other day. Gathered the whole damn council for this one. They gonna post her and roast her in a few days.`”
   Damned temple trash, of course. She only vaguely understood the Woëtic word that he had used; but, it didn’t sit well with her. 
   “`What does that have to do with you skinning people over rotten turnips?`”
   “`Before they fire her, they letting the common folk have fun. Anyone wants to chuck shit or old eggs or veg at her can do it until curfew.`” He leaned closer again, to Tholi’s disgust. “`Secret is, you sneak out there in the early morning and pick up anything what didn’t make it through the window. I've sold some of that shit three, four times!`” He rocked back, chortling at his cleverness.
   What a bastard, Tholi thought, cocking her ears back. Still, he’s better than the Order. 
   “`Shame, though,`” the merchant said, looking uncharacteristically wistful as he glanced down the road toward the city centre, “`kinda wish they let her go.`”
   The cat’s tail jerked and she cocked her head. “`Must be a looker, Wahki; don’t think I’ve ever seen you care for anything that wasn’t round and metal.`”
   He turned back with a grunt and shrugged one shoulder. “`Don’t care really. Talk to her when picking up the veg. Ain’t much to look at. She strange, but the «witch» bit is nonsense. Nice girl.`”
   Setting the unusual conversation aside, Tholi did the business that she came for: selling the pelts and preserved meat that she had collected for the last few months; and buying supplies enough to get her through the next few months until the waning of autumn pushed her to change her routine once more, something she was not keen to do. Finished at the shop, she made her way to the center of the city to find a room at the inn on the square. She and her horse both needed food, rest, and a bath. It was a pity that she could only find what she wanted directly across the square from the temple complex. Fortunately, they had a room available at the back of the second floor which overlooked the stables. She didn’t have to see the creepy vulture of stone and stained glass that loomed over the square, and she might be able to sleep.
   The door to her room was stuck, but she was familiar with this one. A stout lift on the handle and a well-placed knee popped the door loose from the threshold. The boards beneath her boots were worn in a shallow channel from the doorway to the bed, a testament to the weary travelers and religious pilgrims who had been stumbling in to collapse on the bed for more than a hundred years. The rickety bed frame looked to be even older than the inn itself. Fortunately, the mattress looked firm and the covers were relatively clean. The scents of the previous dozen or so occupants—along with the telltales of their activities—lingered above the beleaguered quilt and mingled with those of the cedar furniture and the stables outside. The window was cracked slightly, allowing the cat to hear the clomping of hooves, rustling of hay and oats, and the soft singing of the stablewoman who brushed down her charges.
   Tholi dropped her pack and the bundles of new supplies into a pile at the foot of the bed. She rooted around in one bundle for the cake of soap that she had just purchased. It was something she ended up having to coax Wahki into ordering about once a year. Following the faint scent of desert flowers, of which she had never smelled a living specimen, she quickly located the fist-sized, translucent, purple cube in its wax paper wrapping. That scent might have seemed like a begrudging concession to femininity; but, the huntress liked the scent more for being sharp and exotic than smelling pretty. 
   She took the soap and a clean set of clothes down to the stone-walled bathhouse that adjoined the inn. After dropping the necessary coins on the counter she received a large towel and a smiling nod from the mute, red-headed attendant. This marked the fifteenth time that she had visited this bathhouse; she did her best to come once every few months. The pale, silent girl seemed to be ever-present. Seeing her disheveled red hair, large green eyes, and pale freckled face had become the highlight of any trip she made to the city. Tholi was hopelessly enamored with the girl but still hadn’t worked up the courage to ask her name or try talking to her as anything more than a customer. Tholi flashed the attendant an awkward wave and an even more awkward smile, then walked through the door into the women’s wing to locate an empty stall in the hot, humid corridor. 
   The bathhouse followed a style common to the Hinnish province, which was carried south by the first missionaries of the Divine Order. Tholi had been given a tour of a similar one by its overly proud, slightly drunk proprietor and recognized the telltale architecture, scents, and sounds. Running the length of the attic, above the arched stone ceiling of the corridor, were two parallel troughs, in which wood or coal were burned. Fire tenders would be wandering the sweltering walkway between the troughs, ensuring that the fires burned evenly. The fuel had been wood on her last visit, but the scent in the chamber revealed that they had switched coal. She shook her head, hoping that the poor bastards upstairs at least had masks.
   Above each bathing stall sat a cistern of fresh water, thrice the volume of the tub below. The water came to the bathhouse via one branch of a system of aqueducts that spiderwebbed the city from a central reservoir, which was in turn kept full by means of a pumping station on the riverside beyond the city walls. Each cistern was fitted with a float that triggered a gate to stop the flow when it was full. As the water sluiced into the building, it turned paddle wheels connected to long chains. The chains ran the length of the attic and fitted into the gears of rotating metal grates, which were mounted at an angle to dip into their respective cisterns. As the wheels turned and pulled on the chains the grates slowly turned into and out of the water. The higher sides of the grates were exposed over the fires just long enough to heat the metal before it swung around again. Water hissed and bubbled around the hot grates as they rotated through the cisterns, something that most of the patrons probably didn’t hear.  
   The bathing cubicle was as wide and as deep as Tholi was tall, just shy of a fathom. The ceiling’s domed center could just be touched if she extended her arms fully above her head and stood on the tips of her toes. Wavering light filled the corridor from oil lamps that rested in niches in the walls and the scent of the burning oil tangled with those of wet stone, coal smoke, rust, and the little bit of mildew that even the owner’s careful cleaning couldn’t fully eradicate. A valved copper pipe protruded out of the ceiling and another out of the wall. 
   The pipe in the wall carried cool water from an unheated cistern outside and under it sat a large bucket with a tap on the side. Tholi stooped with a soft grunt to open the valve, then stood again and rolled her neck. As the bucket filled, the huntress placed her fresh clothes and towel onto a dry shelf on the left wall of the cubicle. She fetched her soap and carved a fingerpad-sized corner off of the cube with one claw, enjoying the sudden rush of sharp, floral scent. The chunk of soap went with a soft clang into the elliptical copper tub that took up most of the space in the cubicle. After she ensured that the drain plug was in place, Tholi opened the valve above the tub and allowed hot water to pour into the basin. Warmth began to permeate the cubicle as the pattering stream brought a stronger scent of copper and soot. The soap would dissolve in a moment and mitigate the harsher tones. While the tub filled, she turned off the cold water and began undressing.
   Battered boots went onto the floor below the shelf that held her clean clothes. Her toes stretched, finally freed from their day-long confinement. The fur from her hocks down to her toes was a sweaty, disheveled mess and the pads of her feet throbbed. As the claws protracted, their tips clicked against the stone floor. The sheath on the outside claw of her right foot split down the midline, to which she sighed with some relief. It had been giving her gyp for the last two days. A few quick scrapes against the stone floor forced the sheath the rest of the way off. Tholi groaned softly as she leaned down and picked it up. The tip of the claw had started curling inward; she had to be more careful about that. A quick glance at the rest of her claws showed that they all needed care. As she placed the shed claw on the shelf beside her clothes, she made a scowling mental note to spend some time tending to them later. 
   The huntress gingerly raised the hem of her grey, wool tunic up over the black rosettes of her aching back. The motion rubbed her fur the wrong way, offering a flickering glimpse of the yellow-brown bruise that still lingered beneath her undercoat from the her collision with that strange naked girl in the forest. The bruise ran down from just below her left shoulder blade to wrap across her left hip. Tholi twisted carefully and stretched her torso and tail; eliciting a series of small pops that rattled down her aching spine and halfway down the length of her tail. Riding long distances was beginning to take more of a toll on her than it had in years past. Sucking air through her teeth, she reached back to unbutton the waistband of her pants where they fastened over her tail. About a dozen muscles complained as she slid the trousers off, then untied her shabby linen underwear from around the base of her tail and worked them off, too. Her mother had tried to convince Tholi to wear silk, “like a proper lady”, almost to the day she died; but the huntress learned early on that she couldn’t stand the way that it clung to her fur after hours spent in the saddle. The peaks could take propriety and being a lady, too, for that matter. She wasn’t about to let her life be dictated by whatever bits of flesh did or did not dangle between her legs.
   A splash of cold water over her face cleared those thoughts away. She took more into her cupped paws and splashed her face again, then closed the cold water valve. Sputtering, she shook her head and rose to place the bucket handle on a hook hanging from a pulley in the ceiling. A few cranks of a winch on the back wall brought the bucket above head height. She opened the stopcock on the bucket’s wall and stood beneath the tap. Dirt and sweat from the road slid onto the stone floor as she worked the water into her fur with her paws. It was cool, but nowhere near as cold as the streams back in the Highlands. Tholi lowered the bucket from the ceiling and placed it back under the cold water tap, which she opened slightly to refill the bucket over the course of her bath. Long practice satisfied her that it wouldn’t overfill. She padded over to the tub and reached up to turn off the water. Rafts of weak bubbles clung to the sides of the tub. The flower-scented steam that rose from the faintly purple water relaxed the cat’s mind.
   She dipped a paw into the water and quickly withdrew it with a shake and a reflexive spit. The water wasn’t painfully hot, but it was sure a shock to her pads after the cold bucket. She glanced around the corridor, ears folded, to see if any one had noticed her react like a kitten a hot rock around a bonfire. Most of the other cubicles were empty and the occupants of the others ignored the cat.
   Tholi huffed through her flared nostrils and allowed her ears to relax. Steeling herself, she stepped one leg over the copper wall, followed quickly by the other one. With teeth clenched to keep from crying out, she lowered herself into the tub until she was sitting on the bottom with her back resting against the wall, her arms draped on the rim, and her tail awkwardly wedged between her buttocks, so that the tip of it bobbed on the surface of the water at the other end of the tub. She slowly let out the breath she had been holding and allowed the water to ease her aching muscles. Her eyes closed and she allowed her mind to wander.
   As much as she loved the solitude and freedom, she wasn’t going to be able to keep hunting forever. The aches and knots that reluctantly eased out of her muscles told that tale well enough, and they’d only been getting worse over the last couple of years. That left about three options, as far as the cat could discern: return to the Highlands and the family responsibilities she’d left behind, settle down somewhere outside of Baki lands, or die alone somewhere in the woods. Of the three, she knew which sounded most attractive at the moment. 
   She shied from the duty that was demanded of her: it was ever her father’s domain, even with him gone. He had been a rarity among the Baki: a man suited to governance. There had been no end of jibing among the other representatives of the Nine Peaks Circle, suggestions that perhaps he had accidentally passed his testicles down to Tholi. Maybe that was true, in a way. Tholi had no patience and palate for planning or negotiations. Death certainly sounded better than attending council meetings and managing the goings-on of her Peak’s lesser families. She was sure that an interim representative from the second family was probably doing a far better job than she would anyway. She could easily have settled outside the Highlands—as her sister had—if it weren’t for all the other damned people. The huntress flopped her head backward, hanging it over the edge of the tub and staring at the wet stone wall. The spots over her eyebrows and forehead pinched together in time with her soft grunt. “Settling down” had one implicit condition, which was probably harder for her to face than the lack of peace and quiet: the question of whom to settle down with.
   After several minutes, the sound of soft footsteps reached Tholi through the blood buzzing in her ears. She raised her head to find the attendant girl who bowed apologetically, then motioned to Tholi’s boots with a small brush that she was carrying. The girl pantomimed holding a boot and brushing it, then raised he thin, orange curves of her eyebrows and nodded at Tholi with an obvious question in her expression. The cat nodded back to the silent girl and smiled her thanks. She did not quite trust that she could manage to not make an arse of herself by talking. 
   The girl took the boots and settled to her knees on the floor. Baki boots were made to accommodate a people who stood on little more than their toes and the balls of their feet. The hard leather of the oval sole was creased to allow a small range of articulation around the toes. These creases tended to collect mud and grit as the wearer walked, even more so than the notch between a human boot’s sole and heel. The attendant knocked the dried crust out of the soles and scraped out the seams and creases using the corner of the brush, then turned the stiff bristles to the task of clearing away the remaining dirt. The effort that she put into the job caused a few wisps of red-orange hair to escape from the loose bun at the top of her head and drift around the pale skin of her face and neck. Her earnest concentration didn’t break, but for the swift movement of her left hand sweeping the locks back into place. A smile played across Tholi’s lips as her grey eyes watched the girl work through narrowed lids. 
   Once the attendant was satisfied that the dirt and mud had been removed, she withdrew a dry cloth and a small phial of hazy, yellow-orange oil from a pouch at her waist. The stopper squeaked out of the phial with a rush of citrus scent which rapidly filled the small cubicle and warmed the cat’s nose, mingling with the desert flowers in a way that made her head swim. The girl dribbled a coin-sized puddle of oil into her right palm, before sealing the tiny bottle and setting it aside. Her hands briskly rubbed together to coat her palms and fingers in oil. There was something almost indecent about the wet sounds produced by the motion. Tholi thought she priced a fair blush rise on the freckled cheeks.  
   The girl cleared her throat softly and turned her attention to rubbing the oil into the leather with her bare hands. Her thorough, practiced movements bordered on hypnotic. Watching the pale, soft hands move over the leather, Tholi thought to herself that the girl must give amazing massages, too. An unbidden image arose in the cat’s mind of those translucent fingers carefully kneading the sore, calloused pads of her paws and threading through the thick fur between them. Quite against her will, a low purr began to rumble in her throat. The copper tub picked up the vibrations and thrummed faintly.
   The loose folds of the attendant’s thin, azure robe swayed with the rhythmic motions of her arms and slipped, unnoticed by her in the sweltering chamber, off of one shoulder as she bent over her work. Tholi’s ears, already flush from the warmth of the bath and the proximity of the one she’d come all this way to see, blushed almost purple and folded back as she watched the fabric slide over the freckled, translucent skin of the attendant’s shoulder and chest. Her purr was briefly interrupted by a hard swallow. When the oil had been worked fully into both boots, the girl rested the phial on the flagstone floor and used the dry cloth to remove the excess residue from both the leather and her slender hands. Finished, she held up the boots with a questioning smile to show off her handiwork. They looked as good as new—well, maybe not that good; the mute girl was adept, but she couldn’t turn back years of hard use. Tholi smiled her approval then pointed toward her coin purse on the shelf by her clean clothes.
   "«Thank you! Looking great!»" Tholi said, uncomfortably aware of the accidental innuendo and conscious that her choppy Woëtic was even further distorted by the purring that had yet to subside. She pointed over to her coin purse on the shelf and held up three fingers. "«Help yourself to three silver.»"
   The boots clattered to the floor and the girl quickly picked them up and set them upright back against the wall, glancing at the cat lounging in the bath. Her eyes were wide as she reached over to the shelf and pulled three silver discs out of the worn leather pouch. She had to have also noticed that they were the only silvers in there. The only other large coins the cat had were seven gold, each worth about ten times one silver, depending on the province you were trading in. The fifteen copper wouldn’t have amounted to one silver, and the single piece of Baki currency that occupied the pouch—a turquoise rhombus the size of the girl’s thumb—had no value at all in the Woëti province. Under the circumstances, five copper would have been customary. Three silver was absurd. Leaving the pouch open, she turned back to Tholi and held up the coins between her thumb and forefinger, her expression quizzical. Tholi nodded and ticked off points with raised fingers.
   "«One for the kindness. Fifteen times I’ve been here and I have not seen you do that yourself; it is usually one of the others. Another for a job done beautifully,»" she paused, unsure how the girl would take the next bit, "«and the last for the display, accidental though it may have been,»" she said with a flush-eared nod toward the girl’s still-drooping robe and exposed skin.
   The poor girl looked down in bewilderment, then her face went so red that the freckles across her nose and cheeks vanished. Her right hand whipped the cloth back up to cover herself. She stood and turned on her heel, almost slipping on the damp floor, and hastened her way down the corridor and out into the anteroom, leaving her phial of oil and her cloth behind. As the door banged shut, Tholi tipped her head back and groaned. What else should she have expected? She slid down beneath the water until she was fully submerged. Rough pads massaged the fragrant water through the short, thick fur of her head and paying close attention to the heavier ruff around her neck. When she broke the surface again, she ran her paws from her face back over her ears and down her neck. Her paws continued scrubbing the rest of her body, careful to thoroughly clean wherever sweat had a tendency to gather. The water was losing its heat and her stomach was grumbling; so she finished quickly, tugged out the drain plug, and pulled herself up to step out of the tub.
   Tholi pattered across the stone floor, foot fur squishing with every step. She shook out her feet as she twisted the cold water tap closed and winched the full bucket over her head once more. The cool water felt genuinely cold after the bath; so, she hurried through the rinse. The cat shivered slightly as she lowered the bucket and watched the bubbles slide across the sloping floor to the drain grate against the back wall. Tholi squeezed the excess water from her tail, toweled herself off, and put on her fresh clothes. Pulling on her boots, she stooped to pick up the phial and cloth. On Tholi’s way out through the anteroom, the attendant turned to wave goodbye and bow her thanks to the departing guest. She blushed anew when she saw who it was and put her hands over her face, failing miserably to cover either the redness or the smile tugging at the corners of her lips. The cat placed the cloth on the counter and rested the glass phial atop it with care. She whispered her thanks to the girl again on her way out the door.
   The smile that had played at the corners of her muzzle vanished once she was out of the bathhouse and back among the rabble. Baki weren’t common in many Woëtic cities, so heads had a tendency to turn. More adventurous cats might enjoy the attention; Tholi did not. All the glances formed an almost tangible barrier around her, and the seeming encroachment of the walls made her breath catch in her chest. She made her way quickly to the inn’s common room for a hot meal. The roast mutton and rich mushroom stew which she received would have gone really well with a mug of warm, dark beer; but the self-righteous Order bastards had outlawed alcohol when they took over the city and constructed the stone monstrosity across the square. No wonder everyone was so hard up for entertainment that they would buy thrice-sold rotten vegetables to hurl at some poor wretch. She wrinkled her nose in contempt and sat at a small corner table, away from the other patrons.
   Halfway through her meal, as she was mopping up grease and blood from her plate with a chunk of flatbread, she caught a snippet of conversation from a group in the middle of the room. Eight grimy kids—the youngest looked to be ten and the oldest around fourteen—were clustered around a low table sharing a loaf of brown bread with honeyed butter. Judging by the look of them, they were probably street rats, small-time pickpockets and thieves. Probably orphans, definitely homeless. 
   A scrawny, pimple-faced twerp had the spot of honor; earned in some sort of game earlier. She tried to ignore their conversation and enjoy the rest of her meal; but Pimple just wouldn’t shut up. Despite slouching so much that his chin was practically touching the table, his squeaky voice carried over all of the other noise in the common room. Just watching the wispy whiskers around his mouth ripple and and undulate with his exaggerated speech was about to kill her appetite. She shifted her position to avoid seeing him. Pity she couldn’t do the same about hearing him, or smelling the lot of them. Through her limited fluency in Woëtic, she overheard that the group had stolen some fruit from a shop today and had wagered a quarter of tonight’s bread and butter against any of them scoring a hit on the prisoner through the temple cell’s window. Pimple, it seemed, had threaded the narrow slot with a fat tomato and scored a direct hit on the poor creature’s face. His jubilant retelling was frequently punctuated by shouts of "«...right on that stupid mark on her forehead...»". 
   Wahkennet’s words returned to her: weird girl, nice. Tholi stared down at her stew. No. It wasn’t any of her concern. The prisoner probably wasn’t even the same girl. Lots of people had tattoos and other marks, many of those had them on their faces. She dipped her spoon into the bowl and snagged the last mushroom from between rafts of congealing fat and popped it into her mouth. Pimple suddenly squeaked louder, "«What’s it supposed to be, anyway? Some sorta upside-down bird’s arse?»" The group around him laughed uproariously at that, but Tholi damn near choked on her mushroom. She was remembering the blue-green semicircle and lines on the strange girl’s head. Her spoon dropped back into the bowl and she pushed impatiently back from the table, barking the legs of the chair against the floorboards. Coins clattered down next to her dishes. 
   On her way up the stairs she passed a window facing the temple. The huge grey edifice loomed over the square and darkened a swath of the yard before it, almost to the blackened stone pillar in the center of the square. The cell in question was at the base of the building, facing the plaza and the pillar to provide the condemned with plenty of time to dwell on their fate. She could see the scattered debris and dark smudges from a day’s worth of unwashed morons throwing rubbish at the narrow aperture. 
   She gritted her teeth and continued up the steps. "`It’s not your damned concern,`" she mumbled to herself repeatedly, all the way back to her room. She latched the door and removed her clothes to climb into bed. Halfway onto the battered mattress, the bruise on her side throbbed again. She caught sight of her grimacing face in the cracked, dusty mirror over the wash basin and paused. The grimace faded into a stoney glare that saw her, not for the first time in her life, angling her ears back on herself and snarling. Tholi’s claws dug into the cloth of the bed, as she stood and fumed in her underpants. 
“`Leave it,`” she growled at her reflection. “`It. Isn’t. Your. Concern.`”
   Clipping the syllables did nothing to convince her. She looked over at the dappled grey hunting clothes that she had left in a pile on the floor. Peaks take it all.