Shadowspawn (Thieves' World Book 4)

by Andrew J Offutt

  He had been changed forever by that experience, that realization and decision. He also had no memory that he had lain with Mignureal, but only in a way: it was in her form that Eshi, goddess of beauty and love, had visited Hanse and lain with him. For Eshi daughter of Ils the All-Seeing liked Hanse more than somewhat.

  The senseless killing of Moonflower had affected him as much or more, and changed him even more.

  He was still Hanse, that Downwinder bastard (both by birth and by nature, it had been said of him); still the former ward and apprentice of the thief Cudget Swearoath, who became a father-substitute and whom Hanse had seen caught and hanged; still full of needs and inclined to exaggerate and to swagger and to strive to appear to be as mean and dangerous and free of moral restraint as he could.

  And now there was more.

  Previously he had barely assumed responsibility for himself, and given thought to little beyond tomorrow’s breakfast and perhaps a companion for tonight. Now he had embraced responsibility for both himself and Mignureal. Furthermore his own makeup and needs were such that he would not shirk it. It all meant that Hanse had become a man, ready or not and whether he wanted to or not. True, he was a youthful one, sort of a nascent bud of a man, still in the flux of development.

  He was, however, no longer the duped tool who had stolen the Savankh for ransom and fallen down a well, and certainly not the younger youth who had roached the military standard to use as pissoir.

  Therefore he checked the animals and saw to it that he and Mignureal bedded down near their supplies. Secretly, he kept his weapons to hand. She wanted to be on his left because her habit was to go to sleep on her right side. He was determined to have his left hand free but did not want to say so. He thought of an excuse, and made it sound nice. It worked. She went to sleep that way, fully clothed as he was, partly curled and backed up to his right side.

  Hanse lay alert, forbidding himself to sleep.

  Not a sound disturbed him — well, the dumb donkey snorted a little, now and again, but where they lay it was so quiet that Hanse could even hear the little whistling sound Mignureal made through the nostril she had pressed against her upper arm.

  I hope she doesn’t do that all the time, he thought.

  That was his last thought before he went unwillingly into sleep, for the follower was very quiet indeed in tracking them, and in coming into their camp. But not for long.

  *

  Hanse was shocked into wakefulness by a loud and eerie noise, seemingly close to his ear, and a pressure against his side that was more than just pressure. Since that was not the side turned toward Mignureal, he lurched, rolled, and with a jacking flex of his legs came onto his feet. His left hand was up and back past his head, slim throwing knife poised; the right held the Ilbarsi knife ready for defence or worse.

  He was still staring, open-mouthed, at the source of that ghastly noise when Mignureal came up to a sitting position.

  “Oh Hanse! Look! A kitty cat, way out here on the desert!”

  Hanse nodded. “I see him. By the Shadow Himself, Notable, what in all the hells are you doing here?”

  The cat, which was very large and very red, immediately took a couple of steps and banged the rearward portion of its body into Hanse’s leg. It paced on, purring loudly. Even its tail rubbed him, curling muscularly half around his leg and gliding lingeringly along it. The cat moved on a couple of paces, dragging its body along his ankle, and turned to repeat the process on the way back. Along with its purring, it made an assortment of other sounds, low-voiced but somehow insistent.

  “I can’t believe it! He followed us! That’s what I thought I saw behind us, Mignureal. I did see it! Him, I mean! Notable!”

  “This is Notable? But that isn’t possible! All the way from Sane — this is Notable, Hanse, that cat you told me about?”

  “Aye. Oh.” Hanse thrust the long knife into the ground and made the other one vanish into its sheath even while he squatted. He put a hand on Notable’s back, rather tentatively — Notable immediately arched and rubbed in that direction, too, purring loudly enough to rattle glass — and the other hand on Mignureal. “Notable. Look, Notable. Fr — Notable, damn it, look! Friend, Notable. My dear — my dearest friend, Min-you-ree-al. Mignureal, Notable. Friend.” Out of the side of his mouth he said, low, “He’s ferocious, Mignue, and I’m serious. Don’t try to pet him.”

  “Mrarr?”

  “What a weird voice he has, Hanse! And he doesn’t say what he’s supposed to say at all! He hasn’t said ‘meow’ one time! Hello, Notable, you big pretty boy. I’m Mignureal.”

  Notable cocked his head, ears wagging. Assuming a sweet expression he uttered a sickeningly sweet “mew?” And resumed purring loudly.

  “Ohh, what a lovely kitty! What a nice little — well, what a nice kitty. Hanse! Let go my wrist, I wasn’t going to — Oh, Hanse! He must be half-starved!”

  “Uh. Notable…why in all the hells did you have to follow me? Ahdio must be sick. Or mad enough to punch holes in walls!”

  “Miawr!”

  “All right, all right.” Suddenly smiling, Hanse extended a hand.

  Notable backed two paces and stared, tail lashing. “MAOW!”

  “All right, all right, Mignue: why don’t you get him something to eat, so he’ll, uh, like you. This isn’t just a cat, believe me. Notable’s a watch-cat, and attack-trained. He’s also mean as a snake, but only if he doesn’t like someone. Or if someone attacks or threatens Ahdio. Well, me, now. He belonged to Ahdio, and — ”

  “I remember,” she said, already rummaging in one of the packs. “He’s a one-person cat who hated everyone but Ahdio, you told me, and you hated cats, but Notable right away taught you respect and next thing he was your lifelong friend. And I — I — ”

  “Yes. You Saw for me. You told me to take him along, that night I went up the wall and into the palace to steal the Beysa’s sceptre for the PFLS rebels. Except that you didn’t even know I was going to do that, and you had never seen or heard of Notable. You just told me to ‘take the red cat.’ I did. And he saved my life. Notable saved my life! I took him back to Ahdio though, and never dreamed — damn! What in the Hot Hell are you doing here, Notable? We left Sanctuary three nights ago!”

  Notable’s only acknowledgement was a movement of his tail at sound of his name. He was avidly watching Mignureal, his nostrils twitching.

  “It’s mystical, Hanse, and that’s all there is to it. Here you are, Notable, some nice — oh! He was hungry!”

  “All right, give him some more. Damn, Notable! I’ll be lucky if ole Ahdiovizun doesn’t come after me with a — with nothing; Adhio’s so big he doesn’t need to carry weapons! What are we going to do with you!”

  Notable’s tail moved. He looked only at Mignureal. At Mignureal’s hands, specifically, and his purring was loud enough to frighten babies. He snaffled up his second helping, too, while Mignureal stared blinking. Only then did he look again at Hanse. Notable made a remark.

  “Oh no. Notable — at this time of night? We have to get back to sleep!”

  Notable tried the same sound again, with more volume. One of the horses whickered nervously and stamped a big foot.

  “Oh,” Mignureal said. “Poor fellow. I’ll bet he wishes he had some nice milk.”

  Hanse gave her a look. He sighed and picked up the earthenware bowl. He rose, grunted at the saddle-born stiffness in his legs, and paced resignedly to one of the leathern sacks. Not the one that jingled: the one that sloshed. He set the reddish bowl on the sandy ground. Notable hurried to it, peered within, looked at Hanse, looked at the bowl. Notable said MRAOW! in a voice so loud that Mignureal raised a hand to her cheek in astonishment.

  “Hanse! You’re not going to give that cat b — ”

  The cat was assiduously and noisily lapping up the beer before Hanse finished pouring.

  “A watch cat,” Hanse said. “An attack-trained watch cat. A very large, red, attack-trained watch cat who actually likes me. He also liv
ed in a tavern, remember — Ahdio’s. Notable loves beer.”

  Mignureal clapped her hands and fell back laughing amid a flurry of multi-coloured skirts. That showed Hanse that she was wearing the dark red colour of mourning, after all.

  Damn, I thought I’d talked her out of that. She merely slipped that skirt and blouse on over everything else. Notable lapped noisily, meanwhile making a dreadful sound, purring with his mouth open. Hanse peeled his gaze off Mignureal’s legs and stared down at the big red cat, shaking his head — and yawning.

  “EEEE-AWWW!”

  “Oh shut up, you damned dumb donkey, before I sic this demon-cat on you!”

  Notable burped.

  *

  Hanse and Mignureal watched the strangeness next morning: one by one, pacing with that deliberate and almost regal gait cats sometimes used, the big red cat visited each of the other three animals. One by one, all three calmed. Obviously, one feline and three equines had reached an accommodation.

  “I think — I think that just can’t be a natural cat,” Mignureal said thoughtfully, gazing at him.

  “Ils’ Eyes, don’t say that!” Hanse said, on a rising note, and returned to his careful balancing of their packs on the onager. “Oh, good boy, Dumb-ass! You left plenty of fuel for future travellers. You too, Blackie. All right Inja, what’s your problem?”

  After a while he told Mignureal they were ready to travel. He stood waiting to help her onto her sorrel. Once she’d set a foot into his cupped hands and was in the saddle, he fondly clapped her calf a couple of times with a cupped hand. She jerked her leg away, not quite kicking at him.

  “You stop that!”

  Hanse cocked his head with its extremely black hair and stared at her, brows up a little in silent question.

  “Oh! Oh I’m sorry, darling! Old habit! I’m sorry!” And she offered him her leg for another fondle.

  Hanse, of course, elected to ignore that. Tight as a drawn bowstring, he mused sourly. Moonflower over-raised her, damn it. He knew renewed nervousness about the future. Turning his back on Mignureal while she drooped in the guilt he had chosen to give her, he squirmed himself into the saddle he hated — because it was on a horse.

  Meanwhile he grumbled that these beasts should be equipped with steps. “And some way to ride without just having your legs dangle so you have to clamp this beast’s big round gut with ‘em.”

  “You don’t like horses, do you, darling?”

  “I like horses all right, Mignue. I just hate riding ‘em.” Suddenly he added, “Mention the alternative and I’ll break your neck!”

  She glanced around to hide her smile. “Oh no! Hanse! We forgot about Notable — what do we do with him?”

  “Uh. Hadn’t thought about it. But after all, he did walk all the way from Sanctuary, following us…why’d you do that, you silly cat?”

  Notable paced almost majestically over and alongside Hanse’s horse, not pausing as he looked up with cold, very green eyes. Seemingly without effort and without thinking about it, he took care of himself: he pounced cat-light atop the ass’ load. Mignureal giggled. Hanse held his breath and the onager’s lead-rope. The animal quivered. Then he glanced around, jerked his head a couple of times, and was at rest. Obviously he accepted the unusual rider and its extra weight.

  “Oh,” Hanse said, meeting the seemingly cool, smirky gaze of the cat. “So you two have already made your travel arrangements, have you? All right, let’s go cook in the sun some more.”

  “Well,” Mignureal said, “we’re three now.” And they were.

  Hanse clucked to his mount and flicked the reins. They left the tiny excuse for an oasis and paced once again out onto seemingly endless sand baking under the bright sunlight.

  *

  As they rode, he recounted his meeting with Notable, and Mignureal’s subsequent blank-eyed “When you go up the silken rope for Sanctuary, take the red cat.”

  “I had no idea I’d even seen you until you told me that,” she said in a drifting voice. “I have no memory of that at all. I certainly didn’t know you were going into the palace that night, much less up the wall.”

  “I know. You have it, Mignureal. You’re like your mother: one of the real S’danzo: you have the Sight. You’ve Seen for me three times now. And always what you told me to do or take was necessary; you’ve saved my life three times, Mignue!” And he steered his horse her way, so that they could stretch their arms to touch hands and exchange a look.

  She nodded. “I wish I could remember. But that’s the way of it. The Sight is easier and better — more, uh, acute, mother said — when it’s for someone you love. There are some drawbacks, too. It — look! a snake!”

  They watched the snake, four or so feet long, yellowish and tan, as it moved in weird wise across the sand.

  “Now we know what leaves those weird marks,” Mignureal said. “He seems more nervous about us than I am about him. Easy now, Inja. He’s gone. Probably not even poisonous, like those nasty little snakes of the Beysibs. Hanse? You said Notable saved you from one; a beynit?”

  “Aye. Taking Notable up the palace wall wasn’t easy! I had him in a leather pouch strapped to my chest, because on my back he’d have added weight and pulled me off balance when I walked up the wall.”

  “Walked?”

  “You know; holding a rope in both hands, like this, and just…walking up the wall. It’s a lot easier than climbing, and after all it’s not as if I could do it without a rope!” She nodded, but didn’t smile. “I hope I never have to see you doing that!”

  “I can’t think why you should,” Hanse said. “Not with all that good Rankan coin we’re carrying! Anyhow, once I was inside the royal apartment I let Notable out of his case. Next thing I knew I was eye to eye with a beynit, and knew I was dead. Then Notable scared him into that same bag, and I can tell you I fastened it tight and wrapped it in pillow casing and wrapped and tied that, too! Then I got the crown, and left the wand that ugly urchin gave me, except that she was Eshi, and she said something really strange. So then — ”

  “It’s just impossible to believe that the goddess Eshi appeared to you, Hanse. I mean, gods and goddesses! We S’danzo don’t even believe in such!”

  “Well, we Ilsigi do and I do. So you’d better just not talk about that to me and above all don’t make fun. I know, Mignureal. I saw that ugly warty skinny girl suddenly go all aglow and become unbelievably beautiful, and I knew! That was Eshi, She Who Is Beauty Itself, and patron of love. And she said, uh…” He tried a little lie: “I don’t remember, now.”

  “I know,” Mignureal said, wearing a prim expression. “You just don’t want to say it to me again. ‘Lover,’ hmp! You told me she said, ‘Take it! Have you really forgot so soon, godson…l-lover.’”

  “Actually,” Hanse said, staring straight ahead with eyes slitted against the glare, “she didn’t stammer.”

  “Oh shut up.”

  “Urn.”

  After about forty seconds of that, Mignureal said, “And then she vanished. And when you threw the rod onto the Beysa’s bed, it became a snake and crawled under the covers.”

  Hanse felt the tickly creep of gooseflesh up his back, despite the heat. “That’s exactly what happened. I hope it bit her. Maybe she’s dead by now.”

  “Hmp! If it did bite her it probably died of her poison! How you doing over there, Notable?”

  Notable’s tail moved in acknowledgment of his name; Notable didn’t even glance her way. He had wriggled into a comfortable reclining position atop the onager’s load, and seemed to be staring ahead. Except that he was a cat lying in the sun, coat like flame, and his eyes were closed.

  “Handsome boy! Nice Notable,” she said, in that unnaturally high voice people reserved for animals and infants. “Just a sweet, uh, large — kitty.”

  “Sure. Mignue?”

  “What?”

  “Listen, I’d never even seen that scrawny urchin before, and I certainly hadn’t been her lover! It’s not likely that I’m
Eshi’s godson either, now is it! She must have meant something else. You know, a parable or something. We all know gods like to be cryptic. Why not? Why should gods say things just straight out, like people?”

  “Gods,” Mignureal muttered, not looking at him.

  “Now listen, I told you not to make fun of gods to a man who’s seen one. How’d you like to get dragged off that horse and have your tail whopped?”

  She swung her white-hooded head to stare at him from large and deeply brown eyes. “I’d just like to see you try!”

  “Would you! Hmm…it’s pretty hot right now; could you maybe wait until sundown?”

  Mignureal stared into his nigh-black eyes that could be so sinister, and her mouth worked. Suddenly she couldn’t help it; she was laughing and so was Hanse. It was something at which he had had precious little practice, but he did a quite creditable job.

  *

  The horses and the onager plodded, sweating. Their riders rode loosely, sweating. The sun was a demon straight from the Hot Hell. Yesterday it had been the same, and presumably the same would be true tomorrow. That was this terrain and this journey: sameness. Desert and sun, sky and sun. They hadn’t even known it would be here! Heading northwest out of Sanctuary, they rode across stepped grassland. The grass grew scrubbier, then sparse. And then there was desert. This monotonous, seemingly unending expanse of sand.

  Mapmakers just don’t know everything, Hanse had thought, but that didn’t make anything any better.

  They saw no signs of life save for another of those strange zigzag sets of tracks which they now knew came from a serpent whose way of moving was strictly its own. They saw, by looking close, very small tracks; just lines in the yellow-tan ground that may have been left by some sort of sand-dwelling insect. No footprints, animal or otherwise. Once Notable hopped down, landing with a sort of “brrbllr” sound, and hurried importantly to inspect what appeared to be a thumbsized hole. Forty or so horse-paces later he was back with them, trotting. He looked up at Hanse.

  “Mrar?”

  “Here, no! Don’t even think of jumping up here,” Hanse said, so Notable did, landing with a little burbling noise: he had pounced easily and unerringly onto the damp blanket beside Hanse’s saddle. “Damn!” Hanse muttered, but Blackie only twitched, glanced partway around with a little jingle of harness, and plodded on.