Fleeing Peace

by Sherwood Smith

  She lifted a hand and splashed water onto him.

  Leander jerked awake. He winced as if he had the world’s worst headache.

  “So it was real,” he said in a husky voice.

  “Ship’s at the bottom,” Kitty said.

  Leander’s green eyes focused on Kitty. “We betrayed Senrid, Kyale. It was nothing but a betrayal.”

  “But I didn’t—”

  “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “But you—”

  “I don’t want to hear it.”

  He didn’t sound angry, just definite.

  “Leander, you have to listen—if that stupid—”

  “I don’t. Want. To hear it.” His voice was quiet, his eyes steady and remote.

  Kitty felt excuses piling up behind her lips, angry ones, desperate ones, fearful ones. Underneath the fear lay guilt, but she couldn’t look at that, not even for a moment.

  She groaned, saying pleadingly, “At least we’re alive.”

  “Alive, with a job to do. We must carry word of that rift to someone who can do something about it,” Leander said.

  Kitty was relieved. She’d been afraid he’d just give up. “Right,” she said. “We can swim the rest of the way.”

  “Swim.” Leander winced again. “How?”

  Kitty pointed to her arm, and Leander’s face eased slightly. “Yes. That’s right. I guess that’s why I’m still alive.”

  “I held onto you,” Kitty said quickly. “In the night. I felt the magic go into you. I can breathe still, but I don’t know if two can.”

  “I’ll try first,” Leander said with a grim tone. “The way I feel, it would serve me right to drown. Hold on.”

  Before she could protest, he grasped her wrist, slid off the mast, and dropped into the water. Kitty sank down and watched Leander, whose eyes were closed. Tiny bubbles escaped from his nose. Then more, and then he opened his eyes, his hair swirling ridiculously round his head.

  He motioned down. She motioned for him to wait. What if she fell asleep, or he did, and one of them let go? She had already lost her cloak.

  She yanked at her sash, and when it came loose, she wound it round their hands, binding them together at the wrist. Leander nodded approval. Kicking hard, they swam down, away from the surface, and struck out for the west, and Mearsies Heili.

  Chapter Six

  North and east of the temporal base where Senrid had been taken lies an island called Geranda.

  While Leander and Kitty slogged shivering up onto the Mearsiean shore, and while Senrid sat in darkness, fighting against hunger, and fear, and anger, the king of the largest kingdom on the island of Geranda dispatched warriors to abduct the son of his southern neighbor.

  Prince Rai Ame of Setazhia was playing in the garden with his two best friends, a dog named Dare, and a cat named Rina.

  Rina looked like an ordinary cat, black except for a white spot behind one ear. She was not an ordinary cat, or this particular portion of this chronicle would not need to be written.

  For one thing, she liked birds. Not in the way cats have liked birds for untold centuries, on this world and on any others to which cats have roamed—or been taken. Rina never hurt the birds who talked to her. Instead she talked back to them. She’d been born with the ability to hear thoughts, and (sometimes) to send her own.

  This had made her curious about the world. Birds travel far. They showed her things with their swift mental images. This made them interesting and valuable.

  Local birds who shared their thoughts had learned to trust Rina. They did not peck or bomb her as they did many of her cat friends.

  For their sake, Rina did not eat their cousins who did not talk. She only ate small fish, who did not talk or think enough to recognize much less care for their young. Rina came to understand the difference between the animal world and the human world, so she did not despise her cousins who caught and ate birds and mice and rats. (Rina liked a good rat fight herself.) Animals who lived with humans were given enough to eat, so they could choose not to kill and eat other beings. Animals in the wild did not have that choice. Some did not want that choice. They wanted no part of the human world.

  Rina was partial to humans, especially to Rai Ame. He, too, was ordinary to look at: short, brown hair, changeable eyes, plain of face and form. But he loved Rina, and Rina loved him.

  This particular day Rina crouched under a chair, watching Rai Ame and Dare romp about in the castle garden. The sky was gray, the air wet with impending rain. Not clean, not dirty, just damp.

  Dare smelled the strange humans first.

  He was an ordinary dog, and Rina liked him also, for dogs have good hearts unless their humans are wicked and distort the dogs into resembling them.

  Dare began to bark, sharp and loud, in excitement.

  Rina listened with her inner ear, and heard human emotions of excitement, intent, and determination, of the love of force kept under control not by inclination but by command. Her hackles rose, just as the humans burst through the shrubs.

  Dare attacked one, and Rina another. She got in one good scratch before a huge hand grabbed her round her middle and tossed her (wriggling and yowling) head first into a sack.

  She curled up, and heard Dare give a sharp yip of pain, and his annoyed bark retreating hastily. Rai Ame shouted something, but his voice was quickly muffled.

  Rina’s sack was set on something hard. She heard Rai Ame’s harsh breathing nearby. His thoughts were very clear. He was confused, afraid, and angry, words streaming from his mind in the form of questions he could not speak.

  A jolt and a rolling judder meant they were in a cart, drawn by horses whose thoughts were on food.

  Gentle but insistent taps on Rina’s bag soon altered into wetness. The rain had begun.

  She was thoroughly wet and miserable long before the ride ended. Rai Ame had gone from unconsciousness to jumbled dreams and then to an unhappy wakefulness. As soon as she heard his conscious thoughts—and his question—Rina sent him the sounds and images of what she had heard.

  Rai Ame’s thoughts winged from question to worry. The anger stayed.

  At long last cart halted. Rina’s sack was pulled free, and she heard Rai Ame pulled out as well, but he was borne off in another direction. Rina curled into a tighter ball and followed him with her thoughts. She’d gotten to be very good at this, especially when the mind she wanted to hear heard her, and willingly completed the contact. Rai Ame called it ‘holding hands in the mind.’

  Now she saw what he saw, which was a very large, very grim stone castle.

  Rai Ame was carried down and down into a torch-lit stone passage, and then he was put into a small stone room. The door was closed and locked.

  Rina trembled with fear and cold.

  She had to pull her awareness back inside herself, which usually took time and effort. The sack opened, and she fell out, spreading her claws. She landed on a smooth marble floor.

  “Your Majesty, may-you-rule-forever,” said the human with the sack. “The Setazhian boy is secure, and this is the boy’s cat.”

  “For Prince Guntur?”

  “Yes, Your Majesty, may-you-rule-forever!”

  Rina watched the human on the great throne. He was a big one, with cruel thoughts. He wanted Rai Ame’s parents dead, because he wanted their land. He wanted to see Rai Ame suffer, because it would be amusing.

  His Majesty (may-a-cow-gore-him) nodded complacently. “Take it to his rooms. And do not neglect to tell the brat what happened to his pet.”

  A big hand gripped Rina under the stomach and lifted her. The man held her close to his body. His thoughts were neither cruel nor kind; he was intent on promotion, a human thing that Rina found strange. So she stopped listening, and looked about her instead.

  This part of the castle was made of a glistening white stone. Rina was taken up many stairs to a room with gold trimmed wooden furnishings. The man knocked at a door inside this room.

  “What?”

&nb
sp; The man said, in the voice that he’d used to His Majesty (may-a-bird-bomb-him): “Your Noble Highness, I have come with a gift from His Majesty, may-he-rule-forever, which was taken from the Setazhian rebel’s son.”

  “Bring it in, then.”

  The door opened, and Rina was borne into a huge, airy room that smelled good. She smelled a kind human, and cats, and fish, and . . . cat-herb!

  “Is the boy dead?”

  “No, Your Noble Highness. He’s in the Keep.”

  “My father’s new plan.” This boy’s voice was bland, but his inside thoughts were angry—and not with Rai Ame or Rina, but with his father.

  Rina considered this briefly. Humans were the ones who used language to express their thoughts—yet so often the words and the thoughts contradicted. Many animals who could hear both distrusted humans for this contradiction. The ‘snakes with two heads’ were what the animals in legendary Helandrias—the animals cursed with human speech—called humans, some birds had told Rina. Birds did not like snakes, as a rule.

  Rina had gotten used to this habit of humans. So many, like Rai Ame, were not evil. They were just clumsy with their lives, and with one another. Like newborn kittens. Like puppies for far longer.

  Prince Guntur said, “Please tell His Majesty, may-he-rule-forever, thank you, from me, his grateful son and heir.”

  The man bowed, and left.

  Prince Guntur and Rina surveyed one another.

  She saw a tall, well-built human boy with black hair and dark brown eyes. She saw herself in his eyes: a small, bedraggled black cat.

  He smiled. “Poor cat. I’ll arrange some food for you.” He bent down, holding out his fingers for her to sniff.

  She liked his scent, and put her tail up.

  He scratched behind her ears, then said, “Can you understand me?”

  She looked up into his face.

  He knelt in front of her, his hands on his knees.

  “One of my animal friends can understand me,” Prince Guntur said. “But he’s not here. He’s in Choree. Your friend is in the Keep, the area reserved for prisoners. I’ll be able to go down there in the morning, but I can’t now.” He frowned slightly. “Do you understand me, little cat? Steel, my dog, talks into my head.”

  Rina sent her thought: I can do that, and with the words she sent an image of Rai Ame and Rina hearing one another.

  Rina felt his relief as he said, “That’s why I told my father I want the pets of his prisoners. He thinks it’s to make the prisoners feel worse. But here’s the truth. I’ve an escape plan, but I need helpers, either animal or human.”

  Rina listened inside the Prince’s head as well as outside, and knew that he told the truth as he saw it.

  “So tell your human friend this: if he gets a chance to meet the other people our age down there, to listen to them. It’s not a mistake that the Keep is full of people our age. It’s not my father’s plan, either. It has to do with Norsunder.”

  Rina’s hackles rose. She had heard that word before, carrying ugly images.

  Prince Gunter walked to the window. “Go down that roof, and across that wall. The guards are all used to seeing animals, so no one will bother you. In fact, the night commander gets sick if cats are near.” Guntur grinned. “If you want to make him sneeze, go right ahead.”

  He opened the window as he spoke, and Rina hopped up to the sill, pausing to lick the smell and ticking from the sack from her fur before she trotted out onto the tile roof, and down to the nearest wall.

  She made her way down to the Keep, a long way. She sensed many forlorn, isolated humans there. An evil thing, this Keep. Dog leaders always watched out for their packs. A dog would be better for that huge throne than that human, except a dog wouldn’t want a throne.

  Rina’s mood was dark when at last she found Rai Ame. She joined him by squeezing between the bars in his single window.

  “Rina,” he said, his mind blooming with welcome.

  She jumped down, hating the feeling of damp stone on her paws. Rai Ame sat on the edge of a narrow wooden cot, sneezing at the moldy dust raised when he disturbed the blanket there.

  Rina sent him a memory of her interview with Prince Guntur.

  When he had understood it, Rai Ame whispered, “If it’s true, at least we’ve got someone on our side, don’t we? Except why am I here? Oh. To force my parents into surrender.”

  Rina curled up in his lap, sending Guntur’s image of other prisoners in the keep—allies all, he had said.

  “My age? Boys? Boys and girls?” Rai Ame murmured. “Norsunder wants children? I don’t understand.” And a few moments later, “I hope Dare is all right.”

  Rina sent her memory of his retreating bark.

  “Good. Someone grabbed me round the neck, and I couldn’t breathe, and next thing I knew I woke up in that cart between two fellows holding swords.” Rai Ame’s thoughts were troubled. “This is bad. The more I think, the more terrible it seems. Norsunder? We’ve never had any of them on our island, not that I ever heard.”

  Rina purred, trying to comfort him.

  Rai Ame petted her, but his hands were absent in their movements, and his thoughts were full of worries about his parents and the people of Setazhia and the fear of the stories of Norsunder he’d heard. Conflicting with those was his curiosity about Guntur, and he wish to know who else was a prisoner, and why.

  Presently they both heard the clumping of iron reinforced heels outside the cell, and occasional high voices shouting words that were too muffled to understand. Rina listened to minds: bored humans bringing food, and young humans trying to hear one another though they could not see or be seen in their cells.

  She leaped to the window and squeezed out.

  Back in Guntur’s room again she found food, as he had promised—her very own dish of milky grains. Several other cats had appeared. They were complacent, incurious cats all. Rina touched noses and whiskers, and the other cats ignored her after that. She ate, then returned to sleep with Rai Ame. They kept one another warm.

  The next morning Guntur sent for Rai Ame, who was brought by the sword-bearing humans to a big room. Rina trotted along behind, ignored by the guards.

  Rai Ame took one look at the tall, strongly built boy his age, all dressed in dark colors, armed with sword and long knife, and he said softly, “Oh, Rina, I’m about to become a ghost.”

  The boy made a curt gesture and the guards left, and shut the door.

  “Sit down, please,” Guntur said in badly accented Setazhian.

  Rai Ame sat down on a waiting bench.

  “You are—”

  “Rai Ame Larsan.”

  “Rai—ahmee...Lar-san,” Guntur repeated carefully.

  “If you want to, we can speak Gerandan. My parents made me learn it. Self defense,” Rai Ame said.

  Guntur smiled, and said in his own tongue, “You win. Though I didn’t know this was a competition.”

  “It isn’t,” Rai Ame said promptly. “I’m sorry.”

  “Well, I am sorry, too, about your being here. My father is to hold your life against your parents’ submission, but then he will kill them anyway. You’re the last of the hostages. This is Norsunder’s demand.”

  “Norsunder?” Rai Ame repeated, grimacing. People did not speak the name lightly, unless they were angry. And that was considered bad manners.

  “They gave my father magical aid,” Guntur said in a tight, grim voice. “And in return, he was to gather boys and girls of our age who were in positions of leadership. Rulers or children of rulers, leaders of any kind of group. I haven’t been able to find out why, but you can just wager it’s not for any good purpose.”

  “No,” Rai Ame said slowly. “You are exempt?”

  “So far.” Guntur’s smile was sour. “I am supposedly an obedient, unthinking sort of a son, who lives only for sword practice and marching my honor guard around the court. Since they are searching for smart boys and girls, I’ve been acting as dull as I can get away with. It’s eas
y enough because my father never liked my reading anyway, and he’d as soon think I am never going to question his orders. He had my uncle axed after an argument, and my cousin Mal Venn was stuck in the stables until he disappeared several years ago.” Guntur frowned, his eyes narrowed. “Mal Venn was smart, even though he was only four, and Detlev—he’s one of the leaders of Norsunder—came and took him away. That’s when I started my pretense. I don’t want that to happen to me.”

  “Four,” Rai Ame whispered.

  “And he was out in the stables, which has to mean that those Norsundrians have spies around—others besides my father.”

  Rai Ame hunched up against a chill. “Is that why they want us?”

  “I don’t know,” Guntur said. “No one’s disappeared—yet. But there’s another danger. If you see one of them coming after you with a knife that has a kind of greenish glow on the edge, watch out.”

  “Poison,” Rai Ame said, nodding. “That’s been around as long as trees.”

  Guntur smiled grimly. “Worse. It’s a real nasty magical enchantment. If they put your name on the spell and kill you, your soul is theirs, whether you want it to happen or not. If they just cut you—all they need is to draw blood—then the magic marks you through your own blood. They can always find you, and at eleven—”

  “—the hour before midnight, they can send you nightmares, and torment you until you give in and join them. I know that much.” Rai Ame grimaced.

  “So maybe they’re planning that for us, and then they’ll send us against our families.”

  Rai Ame said fervently, “We’ve got to escape.”

  “Right. And the time to do it is when my father is marching south to force your parents, and the other rulers, to surrender.”

  “And then?”

  Guntur lifted his hands. “And then I don’t know. Hide out? Get off the island? We can’t fight my father. He’s got the army as well as magical aid from Norsunder.”

  “Can we get magical aid?”

  “No one on the island studies magic as far as I know,” Guntur said. “And we wouldn’t want Norsunder’s magic—dark magic.” Guntur looked out the barred window. One of his hands traced round and round the hilt of his sword. “It’s a temptation—a big one—to get Norsunder’s magic and use it once. Fast. Hard. Defeat my father. But there would also be a big price. I don’t want to pay it.”