“I do not bring creatures to this garden to destroy them,” she said, dropping a cube of sugar into her tea. “I bring them here so they can realize who they are.”
“Surely it is not the Grey,” Wittendon said, taking the weapon from her hand as if it were a toy.
“It is indeed and more than a little,” she said. “Our father has very few weaknesses, but I will tell you of two. First, he forgets to look for things in unlikely places. It’s a foolish failing, actually, for what does one ever find in the likeliest of places. Certainly not one’s lost kitchen shears, I can assure you of that. Those I found under the fallen petals of the hardy hibiscus last summer. Hmph. Who would have thought?”
Wittendon just stared, still touching his wound, which was now a blot of shimmery flesh. He rolled the Grey blade in the fingers of his other hand.
“And second, he forgets some of the oldest rhymes. Or rather he ignores them. Our father is old, but he is hardly as old as this land and even younger than the land before it.” Wittendon struggled to focus as she spoke, still touching his chest as she continued. “It doesn’t help that, until recently, Crespin believed the riddle keepers extinct.” Zinnegael looked to the two white feline sentries and smiled fondly. “If he has heard the rhyme, it would have been when he was quite young.”
“What rhyme?” Wittendon asked.
Zinnegael ignored the question for a moment, watching as Wittendon felt his chest. “It’s quite gone now, brother. You know, for one our father claims is expert with the dead, you seem to have a hard time understanding that you are not.” Zinnegael turned again to the north, sniffing. “And, yes, the rhyme. The cats do not forget. And neither should we.”
When two worlds meet,
An era complete,
And one sun assumes the day;
The other ordains,
His own captains,
The moon Lords of the Grey.
Wittendon had stopped touching his chest, but looked no less dumbfounded. “Did you mean to explain something to me?” he asked. “Or just spin my head in circles?"
Zinnegael pressed her lips together for a moment before speaking. “In the times before your father’s time when this world was young, the Greylords were established; and quite feared. They could change the course of the new world if they thought it wise. If you believe, as the dogs do, in the God of the White Sun, then you will believe that this was one of the things the White God ordained when he stepped aside for his red brother—“his own captains” as the rhyme goes—those who could reverse the suns or alter this world if the need ever arose.”
Wittendon looked skeptical and Zinnegael continued, “If you do not believe in the White God, it is nevertheless true that there were those among your kin capable of resisting the Shining Grey and capable of handling its mother stone, but very few. These special ones—these Greylords—were so feared that soon enough they were hunted. By the time the Council was established, it was firmly believed that they were all gone. But bloodlines are funny things, passing along traits in a skipping, summery sort of way. You carry it good brother. A gift from a lost time that comes when lost things must be found.”
Wittendon stared at her with his mouth wide open.
“Truly you are not completely without our father’s manners,” she said. “But manners are not your only weakness.”
“I know,” he said quickly. “I have no magic.”
The witch made a piffing noise with her nose. “No,” she said, “that is not your weakness. What inhibits you is rather the opposite of what inhibits our father—you neglect to look for things in the most likely places. You, dear brother, ignore the things you know. How often have you thought of your mother and seen her as more than a pretty simpleton? How often have you thought of my mother and felt that her disappearance never fully made sense? How many times have you come near the Grey to find your veins singing with strength in its presence? You have felt truth, but ignored your instincts. Ignore them no longer.”
Wittendon looked at Zinnegael for several very long moments before saying the only thing he could think to say, “But my eyes don’t glow.”
She smiled. “They will, brother, they will. As soon as you find your magic.”
Before Wittendon could argue, a rustle shook the trees behind them and two more large cats appeared before the witch—one, the black animal Wittendon knew as Ellza and a fiery striped one Zinnegael called Savah. It was the fiery one that carried an unconscious boy face down on her back.
“Ah, the dear,” Zinnegael said. “Take him to the cellar with Emie. I’ve a plate of cakes that will do him good.”
The cats obeyed, hurrying the boy to the cellar before Wittendon could get a good look at him.
“And now, Wittendon,” she said. “Our father strikes. In a way uncharacteristically desperate for him. That is good.”
The winds from the north blew down in a great gust, as though Zinnegael had suddenly chosen to release them.
“Fire,” Wittendon said. “We must leave.”
“No,” she replied. “It will not reach its mark, though it will do much damage. To whom, in the end…well, that remains to be seen.”
Wittendon did not bother asking what she meant. The scent began to choke him.
The girl picked up an old staff in one hand and her cup of tea in the other. She began to mutter.
“Go below,” she said calmly. “The boy is one you’ll want to meet.”
Wittendon did not resist.
The witch Zinnegael sat in her chair, taking a sip of tea as she watched the skies. “I could have done with another cube of sugar,” she murmured, tapping her staff to the earth as the forest grew up around them.
Chapter 32
Markhi stepped into the clearing where just a few short weeks ago he had fought the king’s wolves. There was nothing left. He walked through the gray dust, the dead coals staining his fur and the pads of his feet. He kicked at an ashen stump and it fell with a soft plunk to the earth. For several hours, he had been looking for the remains of his two missing sentinels. They had been stationed here on the edge. They would have had very little time to retreat from the fire, very little time at all. The fire had torn through the land like a rabid phoenix. Markhi lifted his paw and blew at the dust. Every insect, leaf, and worm was dead.
The land was not the only thing changed. Markhi’s face was stitched together crudely—the work of a kind human healer who had barely the supplies to string a thread through a needle. Markhi had avoided infection only through memories of his grandmother’s herbs. So while he had never considered himself a great treat to look upon, he now saw in his face the same type of pink tracks that covered the wolf general Wolrijk. And Markhi hated that.
He walked to a clear pool in the middle of the wreckage. Its beauty was striking in this valley of death. He stared into the water and noticed how his scar zigzagged along his face like a switchback up a mountain.
“I think the she-hounds like it,” Humphrey said, coming up behind him. “There’s nothing that says warrior like a big old scar.”
“Good thing I can smell well or you would have scared the bark out of me,” Markhi said grumpily. “And the she-hounds will not like this.” He looked over the burned valley and then sat on his haunches in a slumping way that made him look old.
Humphrey sighed.
“I cannot find them,” Markhi continued. “Not so much as a bone. Silva and his brother. They were my friends. Now their families will have no peace. Our people will have no body to bury, no ritual to close this tragedy. Only our song.”
“Which is more than others have,” Humphrey said, looking across the land to the wall of healthy trees at the boundary of the dogs’ territory. The trees stood straight and tall, every leaf in place and bursting with green. “The winds shifted the flames suddenly, didn’t they?” Humphrey said, noticing a movement along the edge of the trees.
“Perhaps,” Markhi replied, his heavy eyebrows pulling down into a frown.
At that moment the moving object took shape and a large cat came forth from the trees. She walked slowly and deliberately, carefully placing her paws so as to keep them as clean as possible. Markhi sighed and stood, his neck long, his eyes set firm.
Humphrey just stared. The fairy stories he’d heard of this race could not have prepared him for the actual sight. The she-cat was larger than either of the dogs with short hair streaked in orange, red, and gray as though she herself were the flame that had lit the land on fire.
“Evening, Savah,” Markhi said curtly, and now Humphrey turned to stare at his leader, looking a little hurt that such a secret had never been shared.
The cat nodded her head gracefully in reply, but her eyes were thin slits.
Will you now join,
The cause that will,
Destroy the force,
That your realm kills.
“You may dispense with the rhyme, Savah,” Markhi said. “The pup will figure out sooner or later that you don’t always speak that way.”
Humphrey did not take the time to be offended at being called a pup. “Your voice,” he whispered. “You are the voice who led us to the mines.”
“No,” she said. “That was the human Winterby.”
“Yes, but you—”
“Do not think me rude,” she interrupted, “but I haven’t time for reminiscences at present.”
The cat calmly smoothed a whisker and again faced Markhi. “Will you join us?” she asked again.
Markhi looked at her, his scar a little pinker than usual. “Why?” he replied, trying to stay calm, though his voice was rising. “So we can cry to your mistress any moment trouble rises in the air? So we can be guarded in exchange for obeisance? So we can follow her about eating crumpets and growing fat?”
The sleek cat opened her mouth, baring two extremely long, extremely sharp incisors, but said nothing.
Markhi sighed again and the muscles on his neck relaxed somewhat. “I am sorry, Savah. I do not wish to give offense. It’s been a difficult day.”
The cat’s face did not change. She stood perfectly still, awaiting an answer.
“The dogs run free, good cat. Any allegiance, however noble, however seemingly helpful, will compromise that. We cannot join your Lady. Any dog who wishes may join the resistance as we will not inhibit the freedoms of our own, but do not expect our kind as a group to join your mistress or the Septugant rebels she supports. It cannot happen for those who wish to remain free.”
The enormous cat laughed. “Free?” she said. “Your land burned without cause by a king you cannot oppose or contradict. Your sentinels missing with no chance for retribution. Your face mauled by a wolf”— Savah moved close, her whiskers brushing Markhi’s nose—“that you cannot by law kill.” She stepped back. “You may have your freedom, dog. I will take my rebel band.”
She bent for a drink from the pond, her tongue flicking out so delicately to catch the liquid that none at all splashed onto her face or whiskers. “Let me know if you change your mind, Markhi, arch hound of Sontag. And tell your comrade it is bad manners to stare with his tongue hanging out like a dead goose’s neck.”
Humphrey put his tongue back in his mouth as the cat walked delicately across the dead meadow without looking back at them.
“You know,” said Humphrey. “I did think her a little rude.” He sat for a minute and then turned suddenly. “You called me a pup.”
For the first time that day, Markhi smiled. It didn’t even hurt his face anymore. Until he looked over his land. The dead dust that stared back at him made everything hurt.
Humphrey stood beside him. “Do you really think it would be bad to join them? Just sometimes?” Humphrey asked.
“That’s the problem,” Markhi said. “You can’t join sometimes. You can’t put just a toe in the water. Soon, they will pull you in. There will be duties. There will be fees—not in money of course, but time spent away from the pack. And they wish us to fight with them, for them. There is talk of a great war brewing. War costs much more than time—injuries, lives.” Markhi licked his scar. “You must consider all aspects of a decision when you are choosing for a pack.”
“But look around,” Humphrey said. “Injuries, death; they’ve happened. What if the cause leads to a better place? What if it means less destruction in the long run?”
Markhi paused before answering. “We may not have the most rights, yet among all the races we run the most free. The humans and wolves are subject to the Veranderen—providing labor, tools, protection, food, information. Even the Veranderen are tethered by the needs of their peoples—forced to worry about diplomacy, taxes, foreign relations, plagues. But we live alone, work alone. We care for our kind. We have land, food, air on our backs. There are few things that threaten our way of life.”
“But the king? This wood?”
“It is true that the king can command us if he wishes. But he rarely does. Truth be told—he doesn’t dare. Again—he is tethered—finding it easier to avoid civil war with a force as strong as ours than to manage the wreckage such a disaster would bring.”
Humphrey stamped an irritated paw in the ash so that a puff of smoke rose around them.
“And this,” Markhi said, answering Humphrey’s wordless accusation. “This I believe was a mistake. A disaster intended for another group.” Markhi looked across the land to the untouched wood.
“Which doesn’t make it less of a disaster for us,” Humphrey pointed out.
“We will adapt—it’s what we do best. This will grow—lush and young and green, and my bet is that if well-handled the king will reimburse us grandly for our loss.”
“Right,” Humphrey said. “Because you’re free from diplomacy and stuff.” He shook his paw, which was black from the ash.
“You are too much like your mother,” Markhi said, just a hint of fondness leaking through the annoyance in his voice. “And you do not fully understand our ways. You do not understand our traditions, our history. You were not raised with our kind.”
He expected Humphrey to come back with something snarky, but Humphrey only looked into the reflecting pool in front of them. “It’s true,” Humphrey said at last. “I’ve always been a creature of different worlds—worlds that will pull me to pieces if I’m not careful. I should have realized it earlier when my mother and siblings were ripped from me, when Pietre and my sweet Cari were left behind.”
Markhi paused. “Different worlds,” he said thoughtfully.
Humphrey looked up at him.
“You,” Markhi said, “will be our toe in the water.”
Humphrey looked at his ashy foot with a confused look on his face, but Markhi didn’t notice.
“Perhaps the dogs are not ready for a rebel band, but you can be our ears that listen, our eyes that see.” Markhi laughed. “It will be a mission like your mother used to dream about.”
“A mission,” Humphrey said, tasting the word, his eyes bright.
“A mission indeed,” Markhi murmured, looking at Humphrey and thinking of Hannah, the scent of her death creeping into his memory. Markhi turned abruptly and when he did, he saw a shape move to the south. He narrowed his eyes and sniffed, but could sense nothing more.
On the southern hill, the white wolf Zinder stood very still. His position hadn’t changed much in the last day, but the entire world around him had. An unconscious dog lay at his feet—the animal’s fur singed, his skin burned in various places. Zinder had dragged the dog sentinel from the fire just as the dog had collapsed from fumes the day before. Zinder had covered him with cool mosses from the hill, watching him drift in and out of fevered dreams throughout the night. If the general Wolrijk ever found out, Zinder would have his throat torn out as all traitor-wolves did. Until now Zinder had not thought of himself as a traitor. Until now, he had thought of himself only as an observer—as one who saw things others of his kind often refused to. Yet lately the things he noticed had become more and more alarming. Watching the flames threaten the inno
cent dog sentinel, Zinder had abandoned mere observation and stepped into action.
Action was the one thing he and the General Wolrijk held in common. It had given them a mutual ground to stand on when they otherwise could not see eye to eye. But now, at last, Zinder’s actions had deviated unforgivably from Wolrijk’s ideals. Zinder supposed his treachery had been brewing for a while. It made sense when one had the tendency to save, the other to destroy.
The damage from the fire stretched on for several miles. Zinder watched the two dogs in the distance as they surveyed the wreckage. One was the head dog who had fought Wolrijk in the clearing; the other he did not know. He watched them until they ran back through the blackened trees, deeper into their lands. They swam through the creek that had halted the fire, and at last disappeared into a part of the wood that had not been destroyed.
Zinder sighed. Having a paw in different worlds was not a task for the weak of heart. Turning, and carefully stepping over the unconscious dog sentinel, Zinder headed east to the palace. It was his job to report to the king. His lordship would not be pleased to find where his fire had spread. And where it had not.
Chapter 33
King Crespin was tired. It had burned. It had burned plenty. But it had burned nothing he had wished it to burn. The dogs would now have to be appeased. There was even a chance he would have to send food to them for a period of time, though it would have to wait until after the Mal. At this point he needed any extra resources for the tourists and dignitaries who would be arriving shortly. Crespin felt like his veins were burning. Several of the ships with food and supplies necessary for the large gathering at the Motteral would be arriving late—another reason the dogs would have to wait to receive food supplements. Wolrijk had no news about Sarak; Kaxon was slinking around like a criminal; and Wittendon was nowhere to be seen if not with that female. Stress was nothing new. It was the cost of being king of everything. But on nights like this, Crespin missed Loerwoei. Her touch could calm him better than any tonic Kaxon brought up from the kitchen. At least before she had gotten sick.
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