The Questing Game

by James Galloway

Renoit was a portly man who moved with an ease that hinted he was much stronger than he appeared. His black hair was graying at the temples, but it was still full and long, curling luxuriantly around his shoulders. His brown eyes were very lucid and bright, as if they displayed openly the vitality and vigor the man possessed. He was absolutely everyone on the ship at once, both seeing to the ship's operation and talking to performers as they practiced on the deck. He wore a frilly shirt with a vest over it this day, and a pair of black pants and boots with a red sash, a clean, very sturdy shirt that looked very new. If he only knew how close he was to losing it.

  The battle had been joined. Tarrin sat on a hatch in cat form not far from a group of seven slender young ladies, two of which were Keritanima and Miranda. The dancers. As promised, Keritanima had all but thrown a fit when the lead dancer, a tall, buxom Ungardt-looking woman named Lirenne, asked her to dance something that she knew so she could get an idea of the Wikuni's training. The shouting had attracted Renoit, who was trying to sweet-talk and flatter Keritanima into dancing. Little did he understand that he was dealing with a woman who knew how to sweet-talk better than anyone else on the ship. That gave the Wikuni princess a considerable defense against it when used on her, for she was too wary and distrusting to fall into the trap of flattery easily.

  Tarrin stayed out of it. Mainly because he didn't want to get within reach of his sister. She had a tendancy to throw small objects close at hand when angry, and Tarrin fit that description. He didn't relish the idea of being the world's first sentient projectile weapon, and Renoit certainly wouldn't appreciate getting a face full of four clawed paws. Four of his five limbs ended in sharp, pointy appendages, which had the potential to do serious damage if there was enough force behind them.

  He hadn't seen a performance like this since the Brat. Keritanima was in rare form, dressing Renoit down with a savage efficiency that left very little ground untilled. She insulted him on every level she could think up, leaving no subject, no matter how low or personal, unused. She waved her arms, shook her finger in his face, and reminded him in a shrill voice that she wasn't about to compromise her austere and royal dignity for anyone, no matter who he was or what it meant to her.

  "Well, just answer me one question, Kerri," he said in a mild voice. Tarrin was impressed that he hadn't gotten angry. "Did you dance at balls?"

  "Of course I did!" she spat.

  "Do you like to dance?"

  "Oh, no, we're not going there," she sneered. "I danced because it was expected, not because I liked it. And it certainly wasn't what you want me to do."

  "I want you to strut," he said bluntly. "To challenge every eye that looks upon you. To make humans wish they were Wikuni, and make Wikuni wonder why they never got the chance to meet a woman like you. You were born to dance, young Wikuni, your body begs to be appreciated."

  "That's my business," she said ominously.

  "I am not going to argue, no," he said calmly. "Dolanna told you to dance, so you will dance. How you feel about it is of no matter. You will do it because you were told to do it, and I know people like you. Even though you hate it, you will do your best, because you could not live with yourself if you did badly on purpose."

  Keritanima glared murder at him, but said no more. Clearly, Renoit had won this battle, but Keritanima's eyes promised that it was just the opening clash in the war.

  Speaking of wars, the war between Azakar and Faalken had escalated that morning. Azakar came up from below with murder in his eyes, and missing all of the hair on the left side of his head. Somehow, Faalken had snuck into the young Knight's room and shaved all the hair off the left side of his head while he slept. Faalken came up not too much later, whistling idly to himself and looking for all the world that he had done absolutely nothing that made him feel guilty. Tarrin felt that doing that was hitting below the belt, but then again, he wasn't quite sure what rules existed in a battle of pranks. If there were rules. Dolanna had taken enough pity on the young Knight to use her Sorcery to grow his hair back out, if only to stop the giggling and pointing from Renoit's performers. Now Azakar would retaliate, but Tarrin had to admit that he'd have to really work to come up with something better than that.

  Laying down on the hatch, Tarrin closed his eyes and soaked up the late spring sunshine, tuning out the world. He hadn't slept all that well last night. Triana's appearance, and her promise, had upset him more than he let on. Before, he wasn't sure if she was an enemy or not. Now he knew, and it worried him. She was not someone that he could easily dismiss. She proved she could beat him in a fight, and that meant that he had to make sure that they didn't fight again. Or, if they did, he to have an advantage over her. Jesmind said that she may not be able to get him help. He didn't really blame her, she did what she could. It was just too bad. He wanted to be accepted by his own kind, but they were so rigid, so unforgiving. Before, Jesmind had denied him because of the Tower, and now he was being hunted because he was forced into a fight that he could have avoided if Triana would have only talked with him. Instead, she made all those demands, and goaded him into a fight he would have preferred to avoid. He meant it when he told her that he would kill any of the Forest Folk that threatened him. What he was doing was way too important to let them stop him.

  He had to keep reminding himself of that. More and more, what he was doing was becoming less and less tangible. He'd noticed it before, but every day that went by made it less and less important to him. He knew what had to be done, but it was starting to feel more and more like it was never going to be finished. Too many people were trying to kill him, and he wasn't sure if he was going to live through it. To spend the rest of his days in fear, hunted and pressured, seemed totally insane to him., but he was doing just that to himself.

  The sun was blocked, and he opened his eyes to see Allia sit down beside him. She looked much more relaxed for some reason. Usually her time on a ship put a tightness in her that only he could notice, a set to her body and a tautness in her expression that denoted her fear of the sea. But it was gone, at least for now. Maybe a day or so on land had reassured her that the land would always be there. She didn't say anything, she just picked him up and put him on her lap, stroking him behind the ears, in all the places he liked to have scratched. The scent and feel of her closeness overwhelmed him, and he began to purr in utter contentment.

  If there was more to life than that, then life needed to have its head examined.

  How long he laid there was lost to him, but he knew he could count on Renoit to disturb it. "Ah, there you are, my dear," his voice called. "It is time for the acrobats to practice. Time for you and that other one to earn your passage. Where is he?"

  "Right here," she replied calmly, running her four-fingered hand all the way down his back.

  "Oh, that's right, he can do that, yes," he mused to himself. "Well, the time for laziness is over. Work, it calls to you, yes. Time to display what amazing talents you bring to my troupe."

  Tarrin opened his eyes and gave Renoit a flat look, then jumped down off of Allia's lap. The portly man's image blurred as he changed form, until he was looking down at the man with his cat's eyes. That seemed to make Renoit uncomfortable. "This way," he said, motioning towards the stern. There were ten slender figures there, two of them with tails. Wikuni. The acrobats had gathered in the wide, empty deck space between the main cargo hold hatch and the sterncastle, with only the aftmast interrupting their practice area.

  They were all young. Young, thin, and very athletic, the way acrobats should look. There were six young men and four women, one of the young men being a sleek cat-like Wikuni, and one of the females being some kind of simeon Wikuni whose facial features were almost perfectly human. Only the fur ringing her pretty little face and her brown-furred tail gave her away as Wikuni. Tarrin and Allia absolutely towered over them, the oldest of which couldn't be more than nineteen. The tallest of them only came up to Tarrin's collarbones. The looks they gave him were pensive, uncertain, and not a litt
le bit anxious. Except for one. The tallest of the young men, a dark-haired Shacèan with a wiry frame and a narrow, ferret-like face gave Tarrin a slightly hostile look. The young man looked at Renoit and chattered at him in Shacèan, his tone not entirely friendly.

  "Henri, that is unseemly," Renoit said in common. "You disrespect those who are not blessed to know the True Tongue."

  "I do not see why I must abase myself to speak such a filthy language," the man said arrogantly. Tarrin developed an immediate and intense dislike for the young man. From the look of her, so did Allia.

  "You will do it to accommodate those unlucky enough to not know it," Renoit said patiently. "Not everyone is lucky enough to be Shacèan. Now, show our two newcomers the ropes. It is up to you as lead acrobat to work them into the act."

  Henri, the man, said something under his breath in Shacèan, which made a few of his companions giggle behind their hands. "Alright then, what can you do? You look too tall and gangly to be any good," he said to them.

  "I can do anything you can do," Allia said in a neutral tone. She did dislike him. Tarrin had to supress a smile. He'd better keep his tongue in line, or Allia would tie it in a knot for him.

  "What about you, mongrel?"

  "I can do anything you need me to do," he said in a tight voice. "And if you call me that again, I'll break both your arms and tie them in a knot."

  "I am the lead acrobat and third in command on this ship," he sneered. "You will treat me with the respect due to my station."

  "You won't have much use for your title once I rip off both your legs," Tarrin told him in a hostile voice, narrowing his eyes and extending the claws on both his paws.

  "Tarrin," Allia's voice cracked, holding up an arm across his chest to hold him back. "He is young and foolish. Give him a chance." She looked right at him, her expression sober and serious. "You tread very close to losing your legs, young human. We will treat you with respect, but we demand respect given in return. It is the Selani way. Insult my brother again, and I will show you how the Selani deal with insults. That is also the Selani way."

  If the boy was frightened by Allia's declaration, he didn't show it very much. "Whatever," he snorted. "We will begin with a test. Show me why I should allow you to perform with my troupe."

  "Let's cut this short," Tarrin said. "Show us the hardest move you perform, and we'll do it."

  "It's not that easy," a young girl said, a girl with hair the color of eggshells, a curious beige color that wasn't quite blond, not exactly light brown, yet not quite white. "Our hardest maneuvers are done while working together. It's when we're doing the vaulting pyramid."

  "We are not up to that yet," Henri said. "Prove you can move without injuring yourself first. A good acrobat is flexible and limber."

  Without batting an eye, Allia reached down and grabbed the bottom of her foot, then pulled it out to the side. And kept pulling, and kept pulling, until her leg was sticking straight up, held by the ankle. It looked like she'd dislocated her hip to do that, but she was obviously not in any pain. Allia was probably the most limber person he'd ever seen outside of himself. His cat-augmented skeleton gave him a range of motion impossible for humans to duplicate. He proved that by arcing his leg back and up while he hunched down slightly, until the heel of his foot was sitting on the top of his head, right between his ears. He then wiggled his toes at Henri.

  "Wow," one of the young men breathed.

  "We are warriors, young human," Allia told him simply, putting her leg down. "Both me and my brother are much more conditioned than you are. A conditioned body is a paving stone on the path to victory."

  The beginnings of animosity appeared in Henri's expression. He stepped back a pace and motioned at the deck. "That is not proof of ability," he said. "Show me you can perform without embarassing the rest of us."

  "I am finding you tiresome, human," Allia said, removing her dagger from her belt and placing it on the deck. She stretched herself a few times, then stepped out onto the open deck and performed a complicated series of handsprings, then vaulted into the air and spun several times with enough speed to make her look like a little ball, then her feet landed lightly on the deck as solidly as if she were stepping over a rock.

  "I'd say that's good enough," one of the girls said, which earned her a hot look from Henri.

  "What about you? Can you at least do that?" Henri asked, pointing at Allia.

  Tarrin looked up into the rigging. It was high enough, he wouldn't be getting himself tangled into those ugly ropes. He stepped into the open deck, bent down, then launched himself into the air. He tucked into a ball and rotated with enough speed to make the deck and rigging-blocked sky trade place dizzyingly, but his cat instincts allowed him to know at all times where the deck was in relation to his position and facing. He rose impossibly high, ten spans into the air, then dropped down and snapped into an extended position with perfect timing to put his feet on the deck solidly.

  Exactly where they had been before he left it.

  "I can do it again if you want," he said to Henri's flabbergasted expression, crossing his arms and looking down at the dark-haired youth.

  The look of surprise didn't last long. It was quickly replaced with open hostility. "I do not know what witchcraft you worked to let yourself do that, but I will not be party to it," he sneered. "I will not shame this fine circus by displaying a freak!"

  He didn't say anything else after that. Tarrin's manacled wrist struck him squarely in the temple, and he went down in a twitching heap. Tarrin whipped his paw around, flinging a little blood that was on the manacle onto the stunned performers, pointing at them. "Anyone else want to call me a freak?" he demanded with glowing eyes, ignited from within with the greenish radiance that marked his anger.

  "I-Is he dead?" one of the girls asked in fear.

  "If I wanted him dead, he'd be laying in two different places," Tarrin said in disgust. This was a monumentally bad idea. He turned and walked away, leaving Henri to bleed on the deck as the acrobats, and most of the ship's passengers, looked on in silence.

  There was going to be fallout, he was sure of it.

  Tarrin laid on his narrow bunk in cat form in the darkness, a darkness that was not dark to him, staring at the blank wall. From their viewpoint, a total stranger comes aboard, then whacks a respected member of the circus for what most would perceive to be no provocation. Nobody would talk to him now, not that he really wanted it, but what was worse, the accusation would be there in everyone's eyes as he moved around. He could tolerate the silence, but not the fear. That had been what had driven him so crazy in the Tower, the fact that everyone walked around in utter terror of him. He had been aboard the ship for less than a day, and already he had given them something about him to fear.

  And the part that would get him into the most trouble with the performers was that he had no remorse at all. He'd do it again in a heartbeat. That little punk had openly insulted him, even after he'd been so blatantly warned what it would cause. But he did it anyway. All the blame sat on Henri as far as he was concerned.

  And it hurt. Tarrin could tolerate many things, but not being called a freak. He would probably feel different if he'd been born Were, but he hadn't. More often than not, he felt the freak, and to hear someone say it so openly had stung him more deeply than even he realized. Henri's statement had struck at Tarrin on a level that most verbal abuse couldn't reach, and it was a miracle that he didn't take the little arrogant ass's head right off after he said it. He had no idea what had held him back, but something certainly had. He had no explanation for it.

  The door opened, and Dolanna stepped in. He had been waiting for this. No doubt she would harangue him about spoiling their one, only, and best chance to reach Dala Yar Arak and be able to move around openly. She would look at him with those eyes, those eyes that said everything to him that her mouth was too afraid to say, eyes that would accuse, show disappointment, be frustrated with him. Dolanna's opinion of him was something that matter
ed a great deal to him, and to see it damaged in her eyes always stung.

  "Change," she ordered in a calm, sober voice. He sat up and did so, then sat down cross-legged on the bed from the squat in which he had appeared after shapeshifting. "You disappoint me, Tarrin," she said bluntly. "Renoit is starting to second-guess his agreement with us. I explicitely promised him that we would cause no mischief, and you break that promise on the very first day. What defense do you have for this attack?"

  "He called me a freak," he said in a savage hiss, anger boiling up with frightening speed, the Cat awakening from its dormant place in his mind at the smell of that anger, curious to see if it was something in which it should intervene. "He was being really snide and snotty, insulting both of us. Then he called me a freak. I just couldn't take it anymore."

  "I see," she said, her tone slightly hostile. "I see that it was not enough justification to strike him down. Had I not healed him, he would have died."

  "Like that means anything to me," he grunted, looking at his feet.

  "And that is precisely my problem," she told him in a tone that made him look at her. "I had hoped that it was the trauma that had turned you this way, that your ferality was a condition of your circumstance, but I see I am wrong, and Haley was right. You are truly feral. And there is no more hope for you now."

  She stood up, looking down at him with eyes that had absolutely no emotion in them. "You will confine yourself to your cabin during daylight," she ordered. "You will not interact with the performers. You may only come out at night, and even then only in cat form."

  "You're grounding me?" he said incredulously.

  "No, I am isolating you," she replied, turning her back to him and walking towards the door, then stopping beside it and turning to face him. "You have done enough damage, Tarrin. Now I must contain it, and contain you. Were it not for the seriousness of our mission, I would drop you off at the nearest land and let you go, but I cannot. You cannot. There will be no more unprovoked attacks, Tarrin. I am tired of cleaning up the messes you make.