by G. Howell
More hours.
Hours of moving forward and then lying flat in the shadow of a bush or a stump or a stone wall, or simply flattening out in the long grass while guards passed near by. Sometimes close enough for me to hear their equipment rattling. Once laying flat in a riot of wildflowers, close enough that one of a pair of guards hesitated and sniffed the air a few times, looked puzzled, then shook it off and went on his way. When they’d passed I’d wait, then grab my bag and move forward, to the next piece of available cover, all the time expecting a cry to go up. If there’d been sentries on the roof or just someone looking out a window, I felt sure they’d see me. The shirt I’d grabbed from the Ironheart boat was an grey-dyed expensive linen while the pants were tan with blue trim; not too conspicuous against the summer-dry grass, but I fervently wished I’d had time to make up something like a ghillie cloak, something that’d let me blend in a little better. Every time I raised my head to move a little further up the hillside I half-expected to see Rris boiling out the doors towards me.
So when I reached the stone walls of the manor it was with a mixture of relief, exhaustion and more than a bit of disbelief. If their idea of groundskeeping had tended to the human norm, with lawns immaculately trimmed to a fingers length, then things would have been a great deal more difficult. I tucked into a corner provided by an external buttress. Directly above overhead was the balcony I wanted, two stories up.
Compared with what I’d just done, that climb was pretty easy. The facade was rusticated: faced with large blocks of grey stone, set with inches between each piece of cladding. That gave me plenty of places to grab hold of. My feet hurt like hell when I wedged them into the cracks in the stone, and if a guards had looked up at the wrong moment it’d have all been over. But there wasn’t anything I could do about any of that save clamber up as fast as I could. I banged a knee and scraped my suddenly-sweaty hands hastening up that wall, but I made it to the balustrade and hauled myself over, half tumbling to the balcony and scrambling to tuck down into the corner, clutching my gear. The doors were to my right: big, expensive french-style doors with lots of glass panes, and they were closed. When I moved a bit closer I could hear faint voices from inside, too quiet to make out what they were saying. I withdrew and huddled in the corner made by the balustrade and the cool stone wall, catching my breath.
I was thirsty, incredibly so. My stomach groaned and tied itself in empty knots and I felt giddy when I closed my eyes. Over in the west the sun was getting lower. About what... five... six o’clock I guessed. That meant it’d been... it’d been over thirty hours since I’d last eaten, since I’d last slept. I’d done longer than that before, but not after a gun battle and then running a marathon.
Abruptly the voices from inside got louder as someone came toward the door. The latch rattled and my hand was inside my bag, grabbing the wood and metal of the pistol grip and the doors swung open. Escaping Rris voices were abruptly clearer; chittering laughter and fragments of conversation from inside.
The Lady H’risnth stalked out onto the balcony, wearing only dappled fur which rippled in the breeze like the grass in the fields. She laid hands on the balustrade and stretched, mouth slightly open as she sniffed the air. I could see muscles rippling across her back and down her flanks as she rolled her shoulder, her tail curling from side to side. Someone called something from inside and she chittered, reached back and scratched idly at the back of her neck and called back, “Ah, the green one, I believe.”
Then she turned and saw me. Crouching beside the door, frozen motionless, the gun clutched in my hand.
Those eyes, amber and black, stared. Just stared at me. For a split second something flickered across her face and was gone almost as soon as it’d appeared and her expression was almost reproachful. I sagged, sighed and let my hand drop. The gun drooped, the muzzle chinking against the balcony while I slumped back against the stone.
“Huhn,” she vocalized, or something like. Then she twitched back to the doors and raised her voice. “Out. Everyone out. Now.”
Queries sounded from others inside. Uncertainty.
She stalked back inside, her tail lashing, and I heard her. “Out. Everyone. Now! No, leave it, just go!”
Distant doors slamming.
I was shaking wildly, the gun in my hand feeling like a lead weight as the seconds ticked by. Finally her voice drifted out from just inside the door. “Alright you, I think you’d better come in here.”
My legs barely got me up off the gritty stone. They felt like half-cooked noodles as I stepped in through the doors onto deep carpet, stopped at the threshold to cautiously look, left and right. It was a bedroom in there; it must’ve been her ladyship’s quarters. There were paintings on the walls, carvings and gilt and elegance, trappings of affluence... From a door to my left came the sound of running water. Off to my right was the expanse of a bed: a huge low platform with white linen sheets. Beyond that was an archway through to another room, a sunlit study or reception chamber perhaps. Lady H’risnth aesh Esrisa was at that archway, standing and watching me. Wearing nothing save her fur, standing with a poise, carrying a bearing and dignity that somehow overwhelmed everything else and made her nudity utterly incidental. She regarded me, almost warily, her eyes flashing in the light spilling in behind me. Then she heaved a sigh that flexed ribs under her hide. “Mikah, what the rot did you come here for?”
Even though it felt as if it weighed a ton I was still holding the pistol. I think I was too scared, too angry and frustrated to drop it. “Answers, Ma’am,” I croaked.
“Answers, huh?” Her head tipped a little. “Do you have any idea what sort of problems this could cause?”
“No,” I shook my head. She might not understand the gesture: I didn’t care. “No. Ma’am, I don’t understand. You ask me question like that as though it’s remarkable. But... I’m not Rris; all of this is different to me. I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know what’s happening. I want some answers! Goddamit, I killed him last night. You understand that? I shot him. He was my friend and I shot him, I watched him die and I don’t know why!”
Her ears went back. “What’s this?”
“Ma’am,” the exhaustion kept sweeping back in waves, eroding the anger that was keeping me going. In my mind’s eye I saw the agony and blood of a dying friend again and flexed my fingers on the wooden butt. “No games. Please.”
“Games?” She regarded me and there was nothing but confusion there. “Mikah, I don’t understand. What do you mean? Who did you kill?”
“Chaeitch!” I exploded. “Ah Ties! Godamn it! You know that! You must know!”
Her gaze went down to the gun, then back up to meet my eyes. I saw puzzlement. Nothing else I could perceive, just confusion. “But I just spoke with him this morning. Perhaps ten hours ago.”
“No. No you... No.”
“I assure you, it’s true. He was concerned for you, but he was quite well.”
I stared.
“Mediators came last night,” she said. “ He was taken to the docks, where I understand there had been a bit of a disturbance. You know something about that, a? But he returned to his quarters at the Palace last night. Of that I’m certain.”
She couldn’t...
“My agents are quite thorough in their reports,” she said, looking slightly abashed. “And he’s certainly got appointments at the shipyards over the next few days.”
Was she lying? Why? She had to be. “I saw him die,” I said again.
“Mikah, I don’t know what to say. I know he’s alive. You don’t want to go to the Palace to see for yourself? No.” She hissed softly, “I don’t know what you saw... It cannot possibly have been him.”
“It was...”
“Mikah,” she interjected quietly, “you told me yourself you have trouble with peoples’ faces. Your own art, the features are...
unusual. Perhaps you were... mistaken?”
But it had been him. It had been. I wouldn’t forget the coloration of his fur, the blaze on his left ear, the... the utter blankness of that stare. Like someone else staring out through his eyes. But it hadn’t been a mask. It hadn’t been...
Oh. Oh, no. There was a sinking feeling as bits clicked into place. I held up my left hand and looked at it. Under the dirt and grime my fingers were still stained with that paint. They couldn’t have... I couldn’t have been so easy to fool...
I didn’t know how to feel. It meant Chaeitch could be alive. I wanted to believe that, but that would make me such a damned fool. Makeup. They’d just painted someone’s face with those markings I’d identified with Chaeitch, and I’d fallen for it hook, line, sinker and rod. I groaned and shook my head, then just sank to the floor with the bed against my back, feeling exhausted and bedraggled and battered and stupid. The gun hit the rug beside me with a dull thud.
“Mikah?” Her Ladyship was crouching in front of me, her face level with mine. I held out my hand and she hesitated, then took it. I could feel the pads on her palm, her finger pressing against my flesh as she turned my hand, looking puzzled, then dipped her head to sniff my fingers. She inhaled then pulled back. “Ah,” she said
“Paint?” I asked resignedly.
“Dye,” she corrected. “Actors use the like. To color fur. Expensive stuff though.”
I wasn’t sure how to feel. I’d been completely taken in, but... “Then, he is still alive?”
“Most assuredly.”
For a long time I stared and then I think I just breathed, “Thank god.”
“What?”
“I am... relieved,” I said faintly. That was an understatement. He was alive. I’d thought he’d gone mad, I’d thought I’d killed him, now she was telling me that no, he was fine. And I’d been taken in by some makeup. I wanted to believe it, but at the same time it seemed too preposterous to be true. And incidentally, it probably made me look like a complete idiot in her eyes.
“A,” the Lady acknowledged, looking me up and down. Her muzzle creased and she leaned forward, then in a blink her hand was at my chin, gently tipping my head back, and I heard a hiss of breath. Then she was pushing the cuff of my sleeve back a bit: the bruises and scabs on my wrist were quite lurid. She let me go and sat back, rearranging herself so she was kneeling, sitting back on her ankles, hands on knees and staring at me. “Mikah, what’s happened to you? Who did this?”
I pulled the cuff back down over the marks, flexing my hand and rasped: “Your Mediators.”
“My... No,” she said. “Not mine. You know...”
“I don’t know,” I interrupted quietly, as levelly as I could. That took an effort. “I don’t. I thought I did. I thought Mediators were guards, were guards of the law. I thought they were like the law in my world. I thought they answered to the government. I found out differently, a? Nobody told me this.”
She blinked. “No. Mikah. No. How can they be law if the Government could control them?”
“Then... then they can do whatever they want?”
The Lady’s muzzle wrinkled again and when she spoke it was gently, like a teacher I’d known might speak to a cub. “Again, no. They are the law. They are bound by it. There are conventions they must follow or the law is void.”
I ran permutations of that sentence through in my head. God, I was so tired the words didn’t make sense. Rather, in Rris they sort of worked, but when I thought of them in English the concept melted and just dripped through my conceptual fingers. It ran in circles that, rather than reinforcing, became mutually exclusive. I started to form a reply, then sagged, “Ma’am, I just don’t understand. Then why did they take me?”
“For routine questioning, they said,” she replied. “There were things they wished to ask you. That’s why they were holding you. Tell me: why’d you run from them? Why did you come here?”
And I looked at her. “They...” I croaked. “Routine questioning? That’s what they told you? And they told you they were holding me here? In Open Fields?”
“A,” the Lady replied and then slowly cocked her head. I saw muscles under her fur set in place. Her tail had frozen, motionless. “You wish to say otherwise.”
“Milady...” I started to say, searching for words. Words that would stand up to Mediators’. “Ma’am, I suppose they may have taken me for questioning; that may be true. Initially. But... I was told otherwise. And it certainly didn’t seem like that to me. I was afraid for my life. That’s why I ran.”
“You didn’t know they were Mediators?”
“Would Mediators abduct me from Mediators?”
She flinched visibly and her ears twitched as though a fly had buzzed into them. For a long second she was motionless, and then she leaned forward to look me right in the eyes; I could see the tiny flecks of amber and orange and brown around the dark of her iris. “Mikah, I think it might be best if you tell me what happened to you, from that night they took you.”
“Yes, Ma’am.” I nodded and took a breath. “Chaeitch and I were returning to the Palace, after attending to business at the Chartz works... the glassworks.” She just waved acknowledgement.
“On the way back to the Palace we were stopped. Mediators stopped us. One of them I knew, from years ago. Shyia. He was the Mediator sent to Westwater to... to investigate me when I first arrived here. The one who brought me to Shattered Water. He said that I had to go with him to the Guild Hall. Chaeitch looked concerned, but told me I should cooperate. I did so.
“I asked Shyia why I was going with them. He never really answered me. And before we got to the hall we were attacked. Mediators were fighting in the dark; I couldn’t see with whom at the time, and Shyia just made me run. We were caught. I tried fighting... they beat the... they beat me badly. The next thing I really remember I was chained in the back of a wagon, heading somewhere. North. I don’t know where exactly. They were Mediators as well, they said. They said they’d saved me from being executed.
“I don’t know if that was true. I don’t know if they were Mediators. They dressed like it; they acted like it, but I’m not so familiar with such things. I could be wrong.”
Lady H’risnth hadn’t taken her eyes from me while I told my tale. I’d stared back at her as I talked, seeing her pupils contracting and dilating; flicking from slivers of obsidian in that glowing amber to pools of black. Kneeling there, just an arms length away with the waning afternoon sunlight spilling in through the balcony doors behind her washing across a marble wall; across a small landscape painting, bringing out brilliant colors; haloing her Ladyship in a soft nimbus of white.
“That’s all true?” she finally asked.
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“Huhn,” she mused. “Mikah, you know, I pride myself on being able to read people. But you... you’re an exception. I just can’t be sure. As you said before, it does work both ways, and sometime not for the best.”
“Ma’am, it is the truth. That’s all I can say.”
“You have witnesses?”
I opened my mouth, closed it again. “Ma’am, I don’t want to get anybody else in trouble.”
“I’ll take that as a yes then,” she said, and huffed air. “I think you should tell me again. This time, everything. Including how you ended up here.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “But...”
“Yes?” she prompted.
“Do you have any food?” I ventured. “It’s been... a couple of days since I last ate. I’m... quite hungry.”
“A. Of course,” she said, then hesitated and asked, “and how long since you last slept? About the same?”
I did some rough calculations, then tipped my hand in an affirmative. She hissed and rubbed at her cheek, ruffling the previously immaculately groomed fur there. “Huh
n, rot. It shows. Look, I can’t protect you here, understand that? Mediators will come and I cannot stop them. And my staff will soon know that something unusual is going on here. They are loyal, but I would not expect them to tell unsupportable lies to Mediators.
“Still...” She glanced over her shoulder at the light, then back to me. “I think you can stay the night, that should be safe enough. Eat. Get some rest.”
I was too tired to rein in my human smile. “Thank you, Ma’am.”
“A. And there are plenty of questions for you. I want to hear what’s happened to you. Every detail.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“Now, I’m sure there’s food you can eat. I’ll have something brought. And while we’re doing that, through there is the bath, which I suggest you use while you still can.” She sniffed delicately. “Which I really suggest you use.”
------v------
The bathroom was all pale stone and polished veined marble. It echoed with the sound of running water rebounding from wall to wall. Fixtures were elegant and expensive, with silver rails and shelves and narrow, high-set windows admitting gold sunlight, the light fracturing and splintering through the crude panes. Gleaming brass pipes carried hot water from a central boiler somewhere else in the chateau to basins and a bath the size of a small pool. Steaming hot water streamed out of a black marble sluice: a hot waterfall the width of the tub. Wisps of vapor curled from the surface, along with a subtle amalgamation of aromas from the scented oils that swirled across the bath waters and mingled with grime floating there: dirt and grass and leaves, clean water turned grey from the lampblack and dust and leaving a ring around the tub.
I could’ve cared less. The caustic soaps and oils stung on my open wounds, but the warmth sank in, easing the aches in tired muscles. Exhaustion sung in my head like a single high-pitched note whining across my nerves. I could feel it twitching my limbs as I lay back against blood-warm stone, watching the ceiling, listening to water reverberating from marble and tiles. The bottom of the tub was carved marble, contoured to alien shapes that didn’t exactly match my own.