by David Drake
"Ma'am, you're a ghost?" Cashel said. She didn't look like a ghost. He wondered if he could touch her if he stretched out his arm, but he didn't try. It'd be impolite, and anyway it didn't matter.
"Am I?" said the girl. "Perhaps I am."
She licked her lips again. "Your name is Cashel," she said wonderingly. "I used to have a name too. I don't remember what it was, though. It was ever so long ago."
"Do you live around here?" Cashel said. "Stay, I mean, if you're not . . . ."
"I think I came here after the Flood," the girl said. He couldn't believe that she was a ghost; she seemed just as real as real. "I don't think I lived here before, but I don't really remember."
She shook her head, then gave him a rueful smile. "I don't remember anything from when I was alive," she said, "except that I had a name. I'm sure I had a name."
A thread of ruby sparks trickled out of the sky to vanish again above Tenoctris' head. She didn't move or even notice it as best as Cashel could tell.
From what the old wizard'd said on the drive here, she wasn't making things happen any more than the flume makes the water that turns the mill. She just put herself where things would happen and maybe pushed them a bit to one side or the other.
The girl was staring at Tenoctris. "Can she see me too, Cashel?" she said suddenly, turning to face him. Her eyes were very dark, but they seemed like real eyes.
"Ma'am," Cashel said, "I don't know. When she's done we can ask her, I guess."
"Oh, it doesn't matter," the girl said, brushing the thought away with a sweep of her hand. "Nothing matters really, not if you take the time to look at it. Do you—"
She raised a hand and traced the line of Cashel's cheek without quite touching him.
"Do you have feelings, Cashel?" she said coquettishly. "Love and hate, things like that?"
"I wouldn't say I hated anybody, ma'am," he said, feeling a little uncomfortable. Still, the girl wasn't bothering Tenoctris and that was all that mattered. "I've fought people and I guess I will again. People and other things. But I don't know about hate."
"I used to feel things," she said, turning away again. Whatever'd possessed her for a moment was gone now; thank Duzi. "I remember that too. When I'm around people I sometimes imagine I can feel again, but mostly I'm alone."
The ground trembled, though the motion was so faint that afterwards Cashel wasn't sure he'd felt anything more than a distant wagon with a heavy load. "Now I feel sadness," the girl said, her eyes fixed on Tenoctris. "Everyone in this world is going to be killed the way the Flood killed everyone in my world."
She looked at him abruptly. "That's right, isn't it?" she said. "I should feel sad about that? Or should I feel something else?"
Cashel's lips felt dry. "Ma'am," he said, "that'd be sad, but Tenoctris and the rest of us aren't going to let that happen. It'll be all right."
The girl trilled golden laughter. "Yes," she said, "I remember now. There were scholars in my day who were going to stop the Flood, but the Flood came anyway. You'll see that it doesn't really matter, Cashel. When you look back as far as I do, nothing matters. And you feel nothing."
There was a pop near Tenoctris, a dull sound. The air was suddenly clearer, though Cashel hadn't noticed a haze beforehand. The old woman slumped, barely managing to catch herself on her arms.
Cashel trotted to her, holding his staff crosswise before him. Tenoctris looked up and smiled when she heard his feet thumping on the turf. She stayed where she was until he was there to help her up.
"Tenoctris?" he said when he was sure she was all right and firm on her feet. "There's somebody who'd like to meet you."
Cashel looked toward where he'd been standing, but the girl wasn't there any more. For a moment he thought she might've hidden behind one of the pillars, but that probably wasn't it.
"I guess she's gone," he said in embarrassment. "We were talking while you sat here, is all."
Tenoctris nodded and started toward the gig. She touched Cashel's wrist but didn't really lean on him. "The girl was local, then?" she asked.
Cashel grinned. Tenoctris wanted to know more, but she didn't want to make him feel uncomfortable. "I don't know if she was," he said. "She said she drowned in a flood so long ago that she couldn't remember her name. She looked just like a girl, though. A pretty one."
"Indeed?" Tenoctris said in delight. "The Primal Flood, then? My, that's quite interesting, Cashel. And she'd become the spirit of this place, a genius loci."
She smiled. "A genia loci, I suppose, since you say she was still a girl to look at."
Cashel shrugged; the words didn't mean anything to him. Not even "spirit of this place."
"She couldn't remember much," he said, looking to both sides as they passed between the pair of pillars that were still standing. "She told me—"
He stopped and took a moment to reframe his words. He said, "I told her that you were going to stop the trouble that was coming now. Like her flood."
"I see," said Tenoctris, looking at him sharply. He guessed she really did see what he hadn't said. "Well, while I myself can't stop the Last, I think I've learned how to get the ally we need."
She paused, still watching him as they neared the gig. "I'll need your help again tomorrow, Cashel," she said. "If you're willing."
"Yes ma'am, I am," Cashel said. "When will you want me?"
He took the horse's reins in his left hand and gripped the frame of the light vehicle in his right so that it wouldn't skitter forward while Tenoctris climbed aboard. She didn't need his help for that, though.
Tenoctris took the reins. "Around midday, I'd judge," she said as he walked around the back of the gig to get in on the other side. "There are a number of things I'll need, and they aren't all in my apartments. We'll be going to the old tombs in the palace grounds."
"I didn't think people were buried inside Valles, ma'am," Cashel said, mounting with the care his weight required. He was a good load for one horse to pull, though the roads back to the palace were smooth enough and flat so he wouldn't have to get out and walk.
"The palace wasn't part of the city when the tombs were built," Tenoctris said. "The family, the bor-Torials, weren't even Dukes of Ornifal at the time."
She clucked to the horse and twitched the reins; he clopped forward immediately. It looked simple. Cashel was pretty sure if he tried it, the horse would either look at him or run off in some other direction.
"Well, I'll help however I can, Tenoctris," Cashel said. He'd have said the same thing regardless, but maybe listening to the girl made him put a little more force into the words.
* * *
The catmen had been sheltering from daylight in a ravine between two knobs of limestone that'd been a little harder than the surrounding rock. They'd built a low dome of boughs broken from the neighboring pines.
"There's caves all over here," Asion said in a tone of mild reproach. "Why d'they want to take the trouble to build a hut, d'ye suppose?"
"Maybe they don't like rock," Ilna said, speaking more harshly than the question required. She looked down at the shelter while lying on a slab of cracked, gray stone. Sun and frost had broken the surface into rough pebbles that anybody'd find uncomfortable, but no Corl could possibly dislike rock more than Ilna herself did. "How many are inside, do you know?"
Karpos looked at Asion. The smaller man shrugged. "There's one," he said, "but I don't think more than that. And he's got to be hurt or he would've gone after you with the others, right?"
He and Karpos exchanged glances over Ilna's head. "I figure," said Karpos carefully, "that with just one there and laid up, we don't need to be fancy. Besides, it's broad daylight and they don't like that. I'll go down and finish him off, right?"
"No," said Ilna. "I'll stand in front of the entrance. Asion, start a fire and get a torch going. When I'm in place, throw it onto the hut and I'll stop the beast when it tries to get out."
While they waited, Ilna'd knotted a pattern. It seemed right to use yarn from t
he disemboweled woman's tunic to dispose of the beasts who'd killed her. It shouldn't have mattered, but there are more patterns than those woven in cloth.
She looked past Asion to Temple. "Do you have an opinion?" she demanded.
"It's a good plan, Ilna," the big man said. He stretched. His sword was sheathed, but she'd seen how quickly he could draw it. "I'll stand with you in case the Corl is feverish and doesn't see as he ought to."
Ilna grimaced, but Temple hadn't said anything she could object to. There was no excuse for her mood. The rock bothered her, she supposed, and being awake all night; but there was something irritating in Temple's attitude. He seemed to be judging her as dispassionately as she'd eye a hen while planning dinner.
Ilna stood and walked half a furlong to the right so that she was at the head of the ravine, facing the hut's entrance. The door was merely a juniper bush pulled into the opening, but it was where the catman would come out.
It was important to stop him in his tracks. If he headed up the far slope instead of attacking directly, there was no certain safety. Even injured, a Corl was dangerous if you let him pick his time.
Temple paced her, keeping to the right so that he didn't block her view of the shelter. His sword was out and he'd released the strap so that the buckler was free in his left hand. His expression was one of mild interest, as though he was contemplating an attractive landscape.
Karpos stood beside Asion with an arrow nocked. Ordinarily that would've been pointless: the catmen reacted so quickly that arrows were no more likely to hit them than a human soldier'd be knocked down by a flung bale of hay. Sick or wounded, the beast might be more vulnerable, though. Besides, it gave the hunter a way to feel useful.
Smoke trailed up between Asion's hands; he rose and whipped his torch to full life. He'd bound branches to a limb wind'd broken from a scrub chestnut a year or more before.
Ilna met the hunter's eyes but started down the ravine instead of giving the signal immediately. She held the knotted pattern before her, where the Corl couldn't avoid seeing it if he looked at her at all. Only when she'd covered half the distance did she call, "All right, now!"
She expected the catman to charge out of the dome when she spoke. Indeed, it should've been aware of the humans even earlier, from the sounds they'd made if not their scent as well. The beasts' hearing and sense of smell were sharper than those of any human being.
The shelter remained silent. Asion sent his torch spinning end over end into the woven branches. They'd been drying in the sun for several days, long enough to become tinder. The torch bounced off the dome, but the sparks sprayed from the contact. Pitchy needles started burning.
Still nothing from inside. Ilna walked forward, her face set in angry puzzlement. Brush threatened to trip her at every step, but she kept her eyes fixed on the opening. Her feet could take care of themselves.
Had the beast died, or was Asion wrong about one of the pack staying behind? Or—and this was a real concern—had the catman tricked them? It could've left the bush in place over the entrance but hidden in the hills above, waiting to strike from behind when the humans were concentrating on the empty shelter.
As fire crowned the dome, the bush flew back from the entrance. "It's coming!" Ilna cried, but for the hunters—and Temple as well, she was sure—that was like someone telling her a warp thread was broken.
A catman came out of the shelter in a crouch, rose with a snarl, and froze in its tracks as Ilna'd intended that it should. It was two double-paces away. A part of Ilna's mind that was never completely absent considered the cat's russet fur and rejected it as too coarse for most weaving. As well use the long strands of aloe leaves.
The beast was female. A kit, probably less than a week old, nestled against her chest.
Karpos' arrow entered through the beast's right collarbone; the flared bronze point punched out below the ribs on the left side. The beast sprang wildly into the air. The shock had broken the pattern's effect, but that didn't matter now. It thrashed, spraying blood from its mouth onto the clumps of wormwood and broom, but it'd been dead from the instant the arrow hit.
Karpos came down the side of the ravine with the quick ease of a chamois. He stepped from one outcrop to another his own height below, instead of skidding and scrabbling the way most people would've done. Ilna smiled coldly: she certainly would've skidded and scrabbled.
"The kit is still alive," Temple said.
"I see that," Ilna said. She put the yarn she'd picked out of the pattern in her left sleeve.
The female gave a convulsive shudder and now lay as still as a pricked bladder. The infant continued to suckle, its forepaws—its hands, they really were hands; gripping the long hair of its mother's chest.
Ilna bent forward. The burning shelter was too close for comfort, but she wouldn't be here long. She caught the infant by the ankles. It mewled angrily and twisted to bite her. Even so young that its eyes were still closed, it had the instincts of its breed. Ilna couldn't grab it by the head the way she would've done a chicken.
She rose, jerking the infant away from its mother, and dashed its brains out on a rock. She dropped the little body, backed a step, and scrubbed her hands with grit from the floor of the ravine.
Karpos dragged the female's body back from the fire, then knelt to cut from the base of the neck up to the top of the skull, then back down in a single motion. He slid the point of his knife under the strip and trimmed the scalp lock free of the flesh while he pulled up on it.
Temple was looking at Ilna. She glared at him and snarled, "Do you have anything to say?"
Temple sheathed his sword. "No, Ilna," he said. "The kit was too young to live without its mother."
Karpos set the scalp down and began working his arrow out point first. He'd have to refletch it, Ilna supposed, but that was the easy part of making an arrow. There was no lack of birds to provide feathers. This far from towns a metal point couldn't be replaced and a straight, properly seasoned shaft was the work of more than a year.
"Do you think that mattered to me?" she said. "I'm going to kill all the beasts if I can. I don't care how old or young they are, all of them!"
"It's possible for humans and Coerli to coexist," Temple said, strapping his buckler over his shoulder again. He looked up and met her eyes.
"I don't believe that," Ilna said, "and anyway, I don't care. All of them!"
Temple said nothing. "Aren't you going to lecture me?" she demanded.
"Not now, Ilna," he said with a friendly smile. "Perhaps another time."
"Perhaps never!" she said.
He shrugged. "Perhaps."
Ilna picked up the dead kit by the scruff of its neck and tossed it into the fire. "Karpos," she snapped. "We'll burn the female too when you've gotten your arrow out. Asion!"
"Mistress?" the smaller hunter said. He remained where he'd been, watching while the others were in the ravine.
"Cut some more brush," she called. "We're going to burn the beasts before we leave here."
"I brought the adze along," Temple said quietly. "It'll cut brush."
He started up the side of the ravine, moving almost as easily as he walked on the level. Ilna followed, though with more difficulty. She was angry at the big man, though she was too logical to imagine she had any reason to be.
And she was angrier still at herself.
* * *
The linkboy skipped backward, holding out his short staff so that the pool of light from the lamp wobbling from the end of it fell on the ground where Sharina'd next step. The occasional glances he cast over his shoulder can't have done any more than make sure nobody was coming from the other direction. He must've memorized all the paths through the palace grounds, or at least all those on which Prince Garric and his close associates were likely to be walking at night.
"Make way for the Princess!" the boy cried. He was just showing off. Three men, probably treasury clerks going home after working very late, had already crossed the path on their way to the
gate of the compound; there wasn't any chance they'd obstruct Sharina.
The clerks didn't have a lantern, and with the moon as bright as it was tonight Sharina didn't need one either. Protocol demanded it, though, as protocol demanded the squad of Blood Eagles accompanying her. She might not like either thing—and she didn't, any more than she liked the court robes or for that matter her just-completed meeting with Lady Faries, the Commissioner of Sewers—but they were part of the job of being Princess of Haft.
"All rise for the Princess!" the linkboy said as he hopped up the three steps to the porch of Sharina's bungalow. Lamps hung to either side of the door, and the pair of Blood Eagles waiting there were—of course!—already on their feet.
"I guess we can handle it from here, boy," the senior guard said.