Tarrin smiled at his father. "Not really," he said. "This will be an inside job."
"Just be careful," Elke said. "You don't want to get into too much trouble."
"Why?" he said. "If I'm right, I could kill someone on the front steps, and they'd just slap my wrist and put me back in class. If I don't miss the mark, I'm too important to misuse. They don't want me vanishing again."
"Don't push it too far, son," Eron warned.
"I don't intend to, father," he said. "The Cat is a very subtle creature. I have no doubt he'll help me sneak around and find what I need to find without raising too much of a ruckus. He's good at that."
"Just be careful, my son," Elke said, putting her hand on his shoulder. "We just got you back. I don't want to lose you again."
He gave her a short hug. "You won't," he told her. "I'll be careful, I promise."
He didn't really want to say goodbye, but he had to let them go. They were his family, but they didn't need to be any part of what was soon going to happen.
Tarrin was going to find out what was going on, even if he had to peel the Keeper out of her skin strip by strip to get the answer. He didn't like being manipulated, and he wasn't about to play someone else's game without knowing the rules. His advantage was that they really had no idea that he suspected something was going on. Oh, yes, they knew that he knew that someone out there was trying to kill him, some Wizard named Kravon. But they knew he didn't know why. They could give him any explanation that pleased them, and they felt that he would take it at face value. But it wasn't that easy.
The Cat was subtle, but it was also very suspicious. He had his suspicions about the Tower now, and he wouldn't trust them until he could lay those suspicions aside.
Having a goal is one thing.
Figuring out how to reach it is another.
Tarrin returned to his room and slept away some of the afternoon, catching up on sleep lost the night before, and as he slept, and sprawled on his bed in cat form, he thought about what was going on and what he'd have to do. The main problem was that he had no idea where to go to get the information he needed, not without making it obvious that he was up to something. For some reason, he was pretty sure that letting the Keeper know he was nosing around about those things would get him in trouble. Maybe even put him in danger. He knew that, since he was important to the Sorcerers, they'd give him a bit of breathing space, he didn't want to push that advantage.
Everything more or less hinged on the Keeper. He was positive that she knew what was going on. He knew that she knew who was trying to kill him-more to the point, she understood just who this Kravon fellow was. So, the problem was that the Keeper had information that he wanted. He had to get that information, but he had to do it in such a way that she wasn't aware of him getting it.
And that wasn't going to be easy. Tarrin didn't really like the Keeper, but he respected her. She was a capable ruler, and she was by no means stupid or careless. That kind of information was bound to be very sensitive, so it wasn't just going to be laying around. If it existed anywhere but in the Keeper's mind in the first place.
The first step, he guessed, would be the Keeper's office. It was where she was bound to keep her official business. There, and in the possession of Duncan, her secretary. And to a lesser degree, he realized, the official offices of the other members of the Council. From the way they all looked at him, he had little doubt that they knew a great deal about what was going on. To a lesser extent, their personal quarters were also places of interest to him. There could be information he needed in one of their rooms. So he needed to find out where the Keeper and the Council members lived. And also Duncan. When it came to information in the Tower, nobody probably knew more than Duncan, so that man could never be ruled out.
He realized quickly that he didn't have to ransack the Keeper's office. Tiella's job as a Novice was to clean it. She was already inside. He needed to talk to her. Tiella was a friend, and would probably help him out, so long as the risk to herself was minimal. She was a friend, but she wasn't stupid, and Tarrin wouldn't put her in danger for his own sake to begin with.
Another thing he needed to do was start talking to the other Sorcerers. He knew a few of them, such as Dolanna, Sevren, and Jula, but he needed to get on friendly terms with a few more. Sorcerers were more open with Initiates. He hoped that there were some rumors or gossip about Tarrin floating around between the members of the order, and if was lucky, he could pick some of that up. Dolanna would be his best bet there. If he could get her to start nosing around on her own, using her own sources, talking to her own friends, there was a good chance she could pick up some information that he could use. Dolanna was probably the only Sorcerer in the Tower that he really trusted.
His reverie was disrupted by a sudden high-pitched screeching sound. For a second, Tarrin thought it was some kind of animal caught in a trap. Then he heard it again, and realized that it was a voice screaming the word "no". It was relatively faint, as if it was coming from a goodly distance off.
Curious, Tarrin jumped down off the bed and changed form, then went out into the hall. To his surprise, a few other Initiates were drawn out as well, curious as to the animal making that sound. But their ears weren't quite as sharp as Tarrin's, which could pick out the words.
The screaming continued, changing timbre and cadence, going from long drawn-out bellows to chittering shrieks, and Tarrin followed it up three flights of stairs and down a hallway. It kept getting louder and louder, until the higher ululations made Tarrin's ears ring painfully. He came around a corner and found the Keeper standing face to face with a figure that had her back to Tarrin. She was wearing a dress, and what stood out about her was the long, very bushy tail that sprouted from the back of her dress. It was long and thick and very bushy, with reddish fur that was crowned with a white band between the red fur and a black tip. It was a fox's tail, a tail that was on a rather slender young woman with long red hair. A young woman with black-tufted fox ears poking out from her red hair.
She was Wikuni, one of the animal-people from across the sea. They all looked different, the Wikuni, two-legged beings that resembled common animals. This one resembed a fox, obviously, from the ears and tail.
She was wearing a cream colored gown that went well with her red fur and hair. Tarrin could only see the back of it, but he could see even from that angle that it was silk, it was slashed with red goring, and it had a brocaded bodice that sewed into the silk at her sides. A belt of beaten gold was around a very slender waist. She was a bit taller than an average human woman, about half a head taller than the diminutive Keeper, but she was slender and had very attractive feminine curves. A foot appeared under the hem of her dress, a dainty furred foot in a cream colored slipper. That foot stamped down, and her hands went to her hips as she shouted at the Keeper. "Unacceptable!" she shouted. "This room isn't fit enough for my pet cockatiel! I want an apartment, with piped water, and a balcony overlooking the gardens! I'll not live in this, this dungeon cell! I won't!" she shrieked, and it hurt Tarrin's ears.
For such a little thing, she was certainly loud.
"Highness, your father sent you here to receive education," the Keeper said in a cordial tone. "You're in the Initiate now, and this is where Initiates live."
"I am Keritanima-Chan Eram, Jewel of the Western Star, Lady of the 20 Seas, Bearer of the 5 Bands of Nan, Holder of the Ring of Bakul, Crown Princess of Wikuna! I will not be treated like a peasant! Do you understand me?" she finished with a ear-splitting scream that about pierced Tarrin's eardrums. Tarrin's paws went up to his ears, and he bowed a bit and winced.
"You think you can lower it to something less loud? Like a thunderstrike?" he asked acidly.
The Keeper's eyes darted up in surprise, and the Wikuni whirled around. Her face was a cross between a human face and a fox's, with human shaped amber colored eyes over a short, boxy muzzle. Her cheekbones merged with the sides of that muzzle to give her the pattern sharp fox-like face. A button
nose was at the end of that muzzle and her maw hung open in astonishment. Tarrin noticed the teeth. Despite being a hybrid of human and animal, her mouth was all fox. She had the jaws and the teeth, and for a moment, he wondered how she spoke. The ability to speak the human language depended a great deal on the shape of the human mouth. He was totally incapable of speaking any man-language while in cat shape, because his cat maw and muzzle were incompatible with those sounds.
"Highness, this is Tarrin Kael," the Keeper said. "One of the other Non-human students I mentioned."
"How dare you speak to me so, you, you, whatever you are!" she snapped at him. He watched her mouth closely as she spoke. She had different lips than what would have been on a fox's muzzle, stronger and as prehensile as human lips, which sealed the sides of the mouth and allowed her to direct the sound in the proper manner. Interesting. They were by no means human lips, but they were not animal lips either. "I am Princess Keritanima, and you will address me so!"
Tarrin approached them, looking down the considerable distances between their heights. She came up to his chin. She stared up at him coldly, but he could see the very faint amusement in her eyes. This close to her, he got a good sample of her scent. It was not human, nor was it fox. It wasn't even a mixture of the two. It was a scent uniquely individual, not what he would have expected from the looks of her. If he hadn't scented her, he'd never have identified her scent if he encountered it in the hallways. "Highness, Tarrin is the son of a king's daughter," the Keeper said bluntly. "He is as much a prince as you are a princess. And if you look, you'll see he is wearing the Initiate uniform. I myself am a Duchess. So you see, we're not quite as impressed with your title and rank as you are. Your father sent you here so we could educate you, and we intend to do just that. That means that you will live where we tell you. You will eat with the other Initiates, you will attend classes with the other Initiates, and you will live like the other Initiates. That means that everyone except the one maid we agreed to goes back to your ship. So do the clothes, the jewelry, and the furniture."
"NO!" she shouted. "They are mine, and I'm bringing them!"
"They may be yours, but this is my Tower," the Keeper retorted angrily. "Your father gave custody of you to me, and that means that you do as I say. And unlike your father, I'll make you do what I tell you to do."
"You will not!" she snapped in a loud voice.
Without another word, the Keeper began rolling up her sleeves. "I may be a Duchess, but I was born to a woodcutter and a seamstress," she told the Wikuni in a deadly voice. "And I have never seen in my life a girl in more dire need of being spanked than you."
"You wouldn't dare!" the Wikuni screamed, then she turned and ran into the open door beside them. She closed it, and the sound of the bolt being thrown from the inside was loud and clear.
The Keeper drew herself up, and Tarrin could feel her starting to draw in. "Keeper, please," he said quickly, cutting her off, "allow me."
"By all means," she said with a courteous bow, motioning to the door with both hands.
"How would you like it?"
"Direct, but please go easy on the local geography," she replied. "We do have to fix what you break."
"I can handle that, ma'am," Tarrin said as he stepped up to the door. It was just like the one to his own room. That meant that he knew exactly where the latch was in respect to the door's wood. Balling up a fist, he reared back and punched the door precisely, driving his paw through the solid wood. The Wikuni screamed in fear when Tarrin's paw exploded through the door, and he heard her stumble back and fall down against what sounded like a chair. Unballing his fist, he reached down deftly and grabbed the latch, then lifted it. Then he removed his hand from the door and pushed it open.
The Wikuni was sitting unceremoniously on the floor, an overturned chair laying beside her, and a look of abject terror was in her eyes as the door swung open. Tarrin made a grand sweep of his paw, motioning to the Keeper that the way for her was clear. "Thank you, Tarrin," she said in a crisp, businesslike voice.
"Any time, Keeper," he replied grandly.
"Now if you'll excuse us, I do believe that her Royal Highness would prefer to have her bare backside blistered without an audience." The Keeper marched into the room like a general about to do war.
"Yes ma'am," Tarrin said, closing the door.
The sound that Keritanima-Chan Eram, Jewel of some star, Lady of some sea somewhere, and so on and so on, made after a few seconds was just as loud and high pitched as they were before, but now they were howls of pain and outrage that proceeded a sharp sound of a hand against a fur-clad backside. Tarrin found that this time he found the loud caterwauling to be somewhat pleasant to his ears.
Now that he could hear himself think again, he returned to his room and changed form, then laid back down on the bed.
Tarrin considered what would happen after he got the information, and decided on a course of action. One thing was plain. The Tower would not let him just walk out. He would have to sneak out or flee, one or the other. The fact that they didn't find him the first time was very comforting to him, but he knew that they knew that they couldn't find him. He needed to plan things so that, if he did flee, he would act as if they could track him down. That meant that he needed somewhere to go. He was a Were-cat, and his home was the trackless expanses of forest that humans called the Frontier. He was pretty sure that, if he could make it there, he could simply vanish. The Sorcerers would have to be desperate to send people in after him.
That was if he left. He considered also the possibility that he would stay. He wasn't sure how learning whatever these secrets were would affect his position in the Tower, but if he stayed, he had no doubt that things would be much different for him.
Another thing to consider were the ones he left behind. Allia would not be in a good position if he fled the tower. There was every possibility that Allia's position here had nothing to do with him or this information. Then again, considering the increase in attention she received after Tarrin ran away, he wasn't so sure about that. And there was every possibility that this Wikuni would also have a stake in whatever it was that was going on. She was the last of their very unique three, a Non-human that had the ability to use Sorcery. If that indeed was the reason they were in the Tower, Tarrin's removal from the playing field made them much more important.
He'd have to think about that more, but that was something that he'd have to think about after he got a better idea of what it was he was trying to do. He was trying to walk a maze with a blindfold on as it was, and making only the crudest of plans based on information he had yet to acquire. But it was a start, and it made him feel better knowing that he was preparing for the future.
In the interim, there was one thing that he could do that really didn't require anything, something that he needed to do no matter what happened. Learn. He had to learn as much about Sorcery as he could, as fast as he could. If he fled the Tower again, his power in Sorcery would help him get away. If he stayed, that power was leverage to use against the other Sorcerers. No matter what road he travelled, the ability to use Sorcery loomed large on each of them.
Tarrin already knew that he was powerful. From what the Sorcerers said, what he saw in them, the little hints, and Dolanna's discussions, he knew he was very, very strong. Probably stronger than three average Sorcerers put together. That power was his leverage, and that was what he had to concentrate on for the time being. It did him no good if he couldn't use any of it. And, not forgetting any of the points here, he knew that knowing Sorcery would be a big help the next time this mysterious Kravon decided to send someone to try to kill him. True, he was hard to kill. True, his Were-cat nature made it that much harder. But this Kravon knew what he was, and he knew how to kill him. And he was sneaky, and he had his own magic at his disposal. The invisible Trolls and the Wraith were more than enough evidence of that. Tarrin had been lucky, very lucky, more than once, and that luck had saved his life. But there was going to be a point
where he was going to run out of luck. If that happened, then he would need to fall back on something a bit more dependable than wild luck. And Sorcery seemed quite an effective crutch.
It was quite a bit to think about. Tarrin yawned and stretched, then snuggled down a bit more into the bedspread and brought his tail around to wrap around his body. Maybe too much for a simple farm boy who was just trying to stay sane. All this thinking and planning and plotting wasn't what he had in mind when he left home. It wasn't in his nature-well, his old human nature. The Cat was a methodical creature, so it didn't mind the planning and plotting all that much.
One of the two doors opened, but Tarrin didn't respond. The scent coming into the room was Allia's coppery scent, and that meant that there was no danger. "Tarrin," she called. He heard the door close, and then felt the bed shift as she sat down upon it. He opened his eyes and looked up. She was wearing Initiate red, and he saw that she was wearing that shaeram that she found in the courtyard. "Were we going to train today?"
Tarrin shook his head, then he yawned again.
"We have to get back to it, Tarrin," she told him. "You've gone three months without a single workout. You may be getting soft."
With a flick of his tail, he shooed her off, then closed his eyes and put his head down on his paws.
"You're sure?"
He shooed her away with his tail again.
He felt her get up. "Oh, Tarrin," she called.
Annoyed he opened his eyes and glared at her. "What?" he demanded in the unspoken manner of the Cat.
"There's no need to get snippy," she said frostily. "I just wanted to know how your parents are doing."
Although the strangeness of it seemed to be lost on her, it was not lost on him. He did not speak. And her response was more than merely understanding what was in his eyes. She had been snippish in response to his own blunt demeanor. Such a reaction could only come if she understood what he'd said. Giving her a strange look, he rose up into a sitting position. How could she have understood? Only other cats, or a Were-cat, could have understood his words.
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