by Kacey Ezell
“You’re under interdict,” she said, spitting the words out. “Your whole upstart clan is, for the murder of Peacemaker Hrusha!”
Deluge twitched at this news, which nearly killed him. His attacker brought her back paws up and attempted to stab at his vitals with the wicked hooked knife she carried with her back foot. He brought his own back paw up and blocked it, barely. He felt the sting of a cut, and the warm wetness of his own blood as she nearly severed one of the fingers there. A cool, spreading numbness brought immediate physical relief, but whispered to him that he had very little time. She must have poisoned her blade.
Well, fair enough. If that was how this was going to go, he would go with it. And luckily for him, he was bigger and stronger than she was.
He wrapped the now-numb fingers of his back paw around her ankle and held her off with brute strength. He balled the fingers of his other back paw into a fist and kicked her as hard as he could in the pelvic region. She let out a gasp of air and would have recoiled, but he wasn’t about to let that happen. He dropped the knives he held in his front paws, and, while one paw grabbed her crossed wrists, the other gripped her throat hard, squeezing with everything that he had. At the same time, he reared up and sank his teeth into the forearm that held his knife-paw immobile. She let out a scream, and raked her front claws at his vulnerable eyes. He closed his eyelids and took the slash, feeling agony tear into his face as more warm wetness began to drip down into his fur.
She struck at him again, and this time, he took her movement and forced the two of them into a roll across the debris-covered floor. She continued to scrabble at him with her poisoned knife, but his strength held out for the moment. He squeezed harder on her throat, feeling the bones and tendons under his paw grind together, and she began to drag at the air with ragged gasps.
“If not me, then someone will kill you,” she whispered, her eyes triumphant. “My poison taints your blood even now.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve got a lot of blood,” he replied. Perhaps it wasn’t the pithiest thing he could have said, but to be honest, her pretentious prattle was getting on his nerves. He squeezed harder, watching her eyes start to bulge in their sockets as he held the rest of her body immobile.
“Scramble,” he said, as her tongue began to loll out of her mouth. “It will be faster and better if you do it. In fact…”
He leaned close and tongued loose the little pouch he always carried sealed to the roof of his mouth. While her struggles grew progressively weaker, Deluge skinned the pouch open with his teeth and dropped the single pill it contained into her open, gasping mouth. He then let go of her throat and clamped his hand over her mouth and nose, preventing her from taking the deep gulp of air she had started to take. Instead, she swallowed the scramble pill, and her eyes went wide for a second before rolling back in her head.
The dissolution protocol started immediately and smelled terrible. But at least she was properly scrambled.
The rest of the world came back to Deluge all in a sudden rush. Chaos reigned around him. Goka dropped from the ceiling, knives first, and slashed at enraged Lumar who battled back with all the fury their heavy fists could bring. Even though he knew it would highlight him to any other Hunters lying in wait, he pulled quintessence and bent the light around himself once more. He had to find Rurranach. The Sidar had a Medkit under his cloak. He had to stop that poison.
Quintessence couldn’t identify one individual being over another. At most, it could give Deluge an idea of the size of a living being. Fortunately for him, Rurranach wasn’t as big as the Lumar. So, when Deluge felt a moderately large, but still smaller than a Lumar, living being under a swarm of stabbing Goka, he knew it had to be either Rurranach or Gage. And as he could still hear Gage shouting commands, he was fairly certain it was the Sidar.
Goka liked to attack from above, it seemed. Well, he could certainly play that game.
He took a second to retrieve his knives, and then used the piled rubble to leap up to a vantage point that overlooked the Sidar-sized scrum. Then, remembering his dama’s lessons about how the Basreeni hunt, Deluge dove into the fray, knives extended, and began moving with as much speed as he could muster. He hacked a wing here, sprayed a blast of brightly colored ichor there. He struck out with his clawed back paws as often as he did his knives, and he twisted and dove as he struck, staying in constant motion, leaping from one insectoid body to the next. He stabbed down between a carapace and a thorax, and kicked himself up and backward, twisting in the air to avoid the counterstrike as he landed on something that was softer. Quick as a thought, he pulled his quintessence cloak around himself, causing the Goka to pause for a half second in confusion.
Which was more than long enough.
Deluge kicked aside the flap of Rurranach’s cloak under his feet and reached for the Medkit strapped to the Sidar’s waist. His back-foot fingers toggled open the clasp and removed two nanite injectors. He stabbed one into his numb leg, depressing the plunger and letting out a hiss of pain as the agonizing lifesavers shot into his bloodstream. He crouched down and stabbed the second deep into the Sidar’s shoulder.
“Wake up,” he whispered. “Come on, Rurranach. Wake up and spread your wings! Get them off of us and I’ll get us to safety.”
Deluge never knew if the Sidar heard him or not, because a voice started yelling for everyone to hold. The Goka around him backed up a step, knives still at the ready. Slowly, the enraged Lumar were persuaded to leave off their pummeling of the attacking force, and the noise of combat slowly subsided.
A large Goka stepped forward, rustling its wings.
“Where is the Depik?”
Deluge pulled a small cylinder from his harness. It didn’t look like much, but it was a sleek kind of projectile weapon that carried a particularly nasty nerve agent-filled dart along a laser-designated path. All he’d have to do is point it and lase his target, and that target would die within seconds. He fervently hoped that if this went bad, a few seconds would be enough time to save his life.
“I’m here,” he said, releasing his quintessence and letting the light reestablish his presence.
“Not you,” the Goka said, clicking its antennae impatiently. “The female. Our client.”
“Oh,” Deluge said, surreptitiously readying himself to use the weapon. “She’s dead. See that pool of goo over there?”
“Burning black entropy!” the Goka cursed. “Are you serious? She hadn’t paid us yet!”
Deluge’s ears twitched in surprise. That was not the reaction he’d expected.
“Should have…insisted…payment up front,” Gage said, stepping forward out of the tight knot of Lumar clustered around him. He was breathing heavily, and carried a wicked slash down the side of his face, but he appeared to be otherwise well enough.
“I tried,” the Goka said. “She threatened to kill me if I ‘impugned her honor’ by suggesting she’d fail. Stupid cat.”
“She was overconfident,” Deluge said.
“How…much?”
A fierce triumph leapt in Deluge’s chest. The ragged voice that spoke came from the crumpled form beneath him. Rurranach lived!
“What?”
“How much did she promise you?”
“Five thousand.”
“Double…it,” Rurranach suggested to Deluge. “You can…afford it.”
“Excellent idea,” Deluge said. “I’ll pay you double if you’ll go away and keep silent on this affair for as long as possible.”
“I can do that,” the Goka said. “I can easily do that. You can transfer credits?”
“My Sidar friend here can,” Deluge said. “In the meantime, we’ve both got wounded to see to. Gage, would you be opposed to opening up your infirmary to our new friends here? Uban knows what to do, I’m sure.”
“Uban know,” the big Lumar said. “Good fight. Need medics.”
“Fine,” Gage said. His voice was clipped, but Deluge couldn’t figure out if that was because he didn’t like Goka, o
r because he was unhappy about extending medical treatment to their erstwhile attackers. In the end, it didn’t really matter, he supposed. Gage’s issues were his own business.
“Excellent,” Deluge said. “Let’s get started then. I’ve much to think on.”
* * * * *
No Plan Survives First Contact
The well-built den tunneled deeply into a rock fall that appeared ancient. Though the more he looked at it, the more convinced “Chirruch” was that it had been at least partially deliberate. Or added to, perhaps, as the clan grew and needed more space. The buildings on the outskirts were a mixture—some in stone, some in the ground, and some, Chirruch had been grateful to note, pressed in the trunk of a towering melik tree.
Blade had developed Chirruch’s background partly to make it difficult to investigate, and also partly because he had enough experience in the deep jungle to fake it properly. Reow had insisted her kits spend a full season in the jungle, away from the safety and comfort of the den. She charged them to learn from the Basreeni, observing the primitive predator species, and living in the trees as they did. In that time, Blade had learned more about the peculiarities of tree-dwelling than many Hunters knew. Lucky, or his disguise would have been burned almost immediately. Not for the first time, his dama’s unusual upbringing paid unexpected dividends.
And so Chirruch settled in the tree with every evidence of contentment. This emboldened Ichys, and she offered to introduce him to their dama in at the next evening meal, which was happening tonight.
He had to slip away to ensure no hint of black showed in his orange fur. Of course, there was no flaw—the dye would far outlast this mission, or he had failed spectacularly—and he justified his absence by purchasing a torque of shimmering blue-green metal, deftly fastened into the shape of the sleeper vine found in the far north stretches of the jungle. It would make for an excellent guest gift, hearkening to his supposed home and showing the deep jungle guest had picked up some understanding of city customs in the handful of days since his arrival.
* * *
Ichys fetched him, an honor he recognized. He had entered the den briefly to be introduced, so no one tried to attack him for trespassing in the tree; therefore, he could have gone to the evening meal unescorted, though he likely would have wandered until finding someone to guide him. But she chose to make the effort to bring him, and he warmed at her presence.
She grabbed the torque out of his hands and examined it, turning it this way and that, holding it up to the light, pulling it close and holding it at arm’s length. Her ears flicked briefly toward him and away, making the tease of it clear.
“Does it meet with your approval?” he asked, wanting to laugh far more than her actions deserved.
“It’ll do, Chirruch. As, I suppose, will you.” She turned, tossing the torque back to him in the same motion. She kept the corner of her gaze on him, watching him snatch it neatly out of the air.
“Testing my reflexes?” Blade pitched his voice low, making a challenge of it.
“Always.” Flicking her tail at him, Ichys left his little alcove and he, momentarily helpless, followed without even thinking about it.
“Are we going the long way?” Blade asked, after the walk had stretched longer than he expected, and his head cleared to notice more than the wave of Ichys’s long gray tail. They were too close to the city for true jungle to surround them, but vegetation pushed closely to the paved path on all sides. Greenery tangled above so tightly it formed something of a tunnel around them, making direction harder to gauge.
“Are you in a hurry?” She glanced back over her shoulder, daring him to challenge her, and he slow blinked a content smile.
“Hungry, maybe.” He meant it to be flirtatious, and she took it as such, flipping her tail and flicking her ears at him.
“Eager little jungle Hunter. Dinner will be late; it usually is when we gather together.” Her ears flattened slightly, as though she were considering whether to say more. She apparently decided against it, and they were quiet until the path branched ahead of them. One turn curved off into a tangle of undergrowth, and one in the vague direction of the den. Down that path the upper vines reached lower to the ground, wrapped densely enough that they could only clear it on all fours, not by walking upright. Blade knew that was the one they would take, vague direction or no.
“Showing me a hidden entrance already?”
“Pull it in, kit,” she replied, her tone keeping it a tease rather than a rejection of his deliberate double entendre. Ichys dropped to all four legs, tail waving gently as she sauntered down the tunneled path.
He followed, scenting the air and finding no recent Hunter traffic. If this route into the den were well known, it didn’t seem well traveled. Chirruch could enjoy this time alone with Ichys, but Blade needed to separate himself and file away this approach to the den. If it weren’t well traveled, and his scent would now be expected here, he could use this several times to scout the den, and find other ways in and out. Observing Whispering Fear and its Dama might have just gotten easier.
Their walk remained uneventful, the tube of vines blending almost seamlessly into carved rock, carved rock into natural rock, natural into smoothed. Blade examined the stone, appreciating the subtle carvings and embedded patterns of gems and contrasting minerals that had been carved and set at irregular intervals. This had been a better-used entrance once, or perhaps the special project of an artistically minded Hunter. When he caught himself thinking about doing something similar for Night Wind’s den, he pushed away Blade’s reactions and tried to think of only Chirruch’s.
“Ready?” A rhetorical question, because as she asked it, Ichys straightened to two legs, casually leaned on the wall, and the dead end ahead of them opened into a warmly-lit corridor. She didn’t wait for him to answer, slipping inside and vanishing the moment she crossed the doorway.
Blade laughed, because he should, and because he wanted to. He should have worried how often those two impulses combined with Ichys, but he didn’t.
Not yet.
He didn’t pull his quintessence field up, daring her to attack as he moved casually into the den. The hall had been built high and wide enough to accommodate larger sigiled species and kept clear of furniture or clutter. Small niches and smoothed projections studded the wall, allowing Hunters an alternate path to the honed polish of the floor.
Blade stayed on the ground, guessing if he leaped for a ledge he’d be knocked down mid-air by an invisible female somewhere near him, hidden in her bent light. He turned left, was rewarded with a hiss, turned right, and felt the purr more than heard it.
Without looking he reached to the side the purr had sounded from, poking the invisible Ichys in the shoulder. She dropped her field with a laugh, bumped him fondly, and gestured to their left.
“Now the games truly begin, jungle kit.”
* * *
The gathering room was a long, low chamber; its dim lighting and scale were pitched perfectly for Hunters. Few sigiled companions came here, he guessed, or if they did, they were not meant to be comfortable.
Cushions and some low benches scattered near the table, several of which were occupied by the six Hunters in various stages of repose. Five males and a female, each of whom wasted no subtlety in examining the new arrivals. The female, younger than the rest, jumped from her perch on a far bench and raced over, bumping her cheek against Ichys’s.
“Sister,” Ichys said, tone warm with pleasure. “Sivand of Whispering Fear, I introduce you to Chirruch of Deep Night.”
“Hunter, I greet you,” Blade said, dipping his head to the grey-and-black-striped Hunter before him. She looked him up and down, blatantly evaluating, and slow blinked a smile that was all mischief.
“I greet you, Hunter,” she replied, flicking her ears forward and back. “Handsome,” she added to Ichys. “How does that orange work in the jungle? Do the Basreeni find you in the dark?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Ichys answered, wit
h a stiffness that was entirely pretend. She swatted at her sister, who swatted back, both of them easy with the other. Blade observed the relaxed tails and loose body language, and missed his littermates with a pang so sudden it flattened his ears. Catching the slip, he hastened a question.
“Sisters? Were you so lucky to be littermates?” Few Hunters reached adulthood with a littermate. It had been an advantage for him, to grow alongside so many of his kind, test and push his skills nearly from birth. Not for Chirruch though, who would regard such a rarity with the appropriate awe.
“No,” Ichys said, tweaking Sivand’s ear. “We are some years apart. Siv still yearns to be out in the world more than the den.”
“Not quite so young,” Sivand retorted, flicking her tail. “Wouldn’t you agree, Chirruch?” She added a throaty purring noise, causing Ichys to swat her again, then rolled away, laughing.
“You both do your dama proud,” Blade offered, choosing his safest option. Ichys poked him with a claw, not hard enough to break skin, so he had walked the line well enough.
“No sign of Dama,” Sivand said, returning to her bench.
“I’ve time to introduce you then.” Satisfied, Ichys gestured to each Hunter as she spoke. “Firnt, who knows every merchant in the city. He introduced me to Fip when I’d barely left the den.”
“Fip has excellent merchandise,” Firnt said, after their greeting.
“I met him my first day in the city,” Blade replied, flicking his ears toward Firnt in a display of respect. If Firnt knew all the merchants, he likely knew how the clan spent much of its credit. A Hunter to cultivate. “I knew his goods were quality and am glad to know how lucky I was to meet him.”
“Chirruch was lost in wonder with Fip’s stall the day I met him. Fip seems quite fond of our jungle Hunter.” Ichys tugged Blade’s closer ear, then tweaked his tail when he reached for her hand.