“I do,” I replied. Quickly I added, “And there might be a horse, Gambler.”
“Free me,” he said, “and I will be your servant, and you my master.”
I looked hopefully at Luca, who made an exasperated noise. “Well, they can only execute me once.”
Seconds later, we were out of the dungeon and moving as swiftly and quietly as we could: Luca, no longer wreathed in light, Gambler, and I.
I trusted that Gambler had spoken truly. My instincts had told me as much. But a lifetime of terrifying tales about the huge cats would not allow me to relax. In seconds, Gambler could kill Luca and me with ease.
Luca didn’t take us back the way we’d come, but instead led us down a narrow stairway, through an echoing unlit space, down another stairway, and into an airless corridor.
He pushed open a door, and there stood Khara and Tobble.
Tobble screamed. “Felivet!”
Khara’s hand went to her sword.
“No, no!” I cried. “He’s a friend.”
“Felivets have no friends,” Khara said harshly. “They’re barely trusted on this isle. And never trusted beyond it.”
“True,” Gambler said, and for a moment I wondered if I’d made a fatal mistake. “We are solitary creatures, unlike you humans. We make our own way.” He offered up a half grin, baring his glistening teeth. “We hunt alone,” he added with pride.
Tobble moved bravely to my side. “This is one dairne you won’t be hunting,” he said in a trembling voice.
“Thank you, Tobble,” I said, placing my hand on his shoulder. I’d missed him more than I’d wanted to admit. “But I trust Gambler.”
“We have a code of honor, wobbyk, whatever you may think of us. I have given my word to serve Byx.”
“Wonderful,” Khara said with a groan. “Now we have to hide a felivet?”
“What’s the plan?” I asked. “Is there a way to get off the isle?”
“Not yet,” Luca said. “But after the eumony, thousands of people will be crowding the ferries and private boats. We stand a better chance in all that confusion.”
“So this . . . this travesty funeral is going ahead?” I asked.
Luca nodded, looking at Khara. “It cannot be stopped. If the scholars admit they were wrong and dairnes aren’t yet extinct, they’ll lose all influence with Araktik, and with it, most likely, the protection of the Murdano. Araktik is the Murdano’s most trusted adviser.”
We fled, moving quietly, silently, even Tobble. The sky was just beginning to lighten. Luca knew the way and walked ahead, with Gambler just behind him. Two humans, a vicious predator, a comical wobbyk, and a not-yet-extinct dairne on all fours, one whose very existence was a threat to great powers.
“Luca has a place,” Khara whispered.
When we encountered a constabulary patrol, we ducked into an alley. Luca muttered theurgic words. They wouldn’t stop the constables from seeing us, he explained, but would ensure they weren’t concerned. The men passed us by with their swords sheathed.
“I turned fifteen a few months ago,” Luca said with a shrug. “I’m just beginning to learn basic theurgy.”
“Worked well enough just now,” Khara said with an admiring glance.
“Are all the constables human?” Tobble asked.
“No. Any species can work for the constabulary,” Luca said. “Though most are human or raptidon.”
“You’ll never catch a felivet wearing anyone’s livery,” Gambler said proudly.
We came to the edge of a vast open space, a square surrounded on all sides by buildings three and four stories high. “The Plaza of Truth,” Luca said.
We crept around the plaza’s perimeter, and Luca led us into one of the buildings. It had scaffolding rising up over its face, and once inside we saw that it was being completely rebuilt. It was empty: no furniture, no light, no scent of food, but also no recent scent of humans.
We climbed a stairway to the top floor, then came upon a ladder that led to a trapdoor in the ceiling.
The ladder was easy enough for the humans, difficult but manageable for me, and entirely impossible for Tobble and Gambler. Khara let Tobble scramble onto her back, but Gambler weighed more than the four of us together. Fortunately, felivets are rather . . . capable.
“Leave the trapdoor open and step aside,” Gambler instructed.
He squatted low, bunched his muscles, wiggled a little to get himself set, and leapt ten feet straight in the air, up and through the narrow trapdoor, landing on the floor beside us with the usual nonchalance of his species.
“You’re just showing off,” Tobble said. Instantly, he covered his mouth in horror, realizing he’d just teased one of the most feared creatures in the world.
“Nonsense,” Gambler said, his voice so smooth he was practically purring. “If I’d wanted to show off, I’d have done a somersault in midair.”
I made a note to myself—despite his oath of allegiance—never to annoy this particular kitty.
The space we now occupied was dusty and gloomy, filled with stuffed chairs and tables, mirrors, chests, and wooden crates.
“They moved everything up here while they’re working below,” Luca said, dusting a cobweb off his trousers.
“Won’t the workers discover us when they come to work?” Khara asked.
“The eumony’s a holiday. No one will be working,” Luca said. “We’ll actually have a view of the ceremony.” He pointed to a row of dormer windows overlooking the Plaza of Truth.
“Won’t you be in terrible trouble for this?” I asked Luca.
“Mmm,” he said, nodding. “Ferrucci would turn me over to the constables and I’d be thrown into the dungeon. Or killed outright.”
“Why are you risking that?” Tobble asked.
Khara spoke before he could answer. “Because unlike Ferrucci, that treacherous old fraud, Luca is a true scholar.”
She was speaking the truth, at least as much as she knew of it. But something nagged at me, a feeling that there was more to know about Luca. I’d had so little exposure to lying, especially to human lying. It was hard to know what to listen for.
“We take an oath,” Luca said. “To pursue truth, and only truth. And what’s happening now”—he gestured toward the plaza where the eumony would soon take place—“is the obliteration of truth.”
This, too, was true. And still, something made me ill at ease.
“Gambler believes this eumony is just the first of many,” I said. “The felivets have seen their numbers dwindle because of the Murdano.”
“The dairnes are merely the first of the great governing species to fall victim,” Gambler said, nodding. “The felivets will be next, and after that—”
“Do you think so little of humans?” Luca interrupted.
“I don’t think too little,” said Gambler. “I know too much.”
Khara, Tobble, and I exchanged worried looks. I wanted to press on, to ask a thousand more questions, but I was suddenly overwhelmed by a wave of exhaustion. I found a pair of pillowy blue chairs, and Tobble and I each settled into one. Instantly, we both fell sound asleep.
When I woke, it was to the sounds of a huge crowd outside, boisterously “mourning” my own nonexistence.
30.
The Eumony Begins
“Before we begin this solemn ceremony,” a raptidon voice cried, “I must make a few announcements.”
I stood at a window, watching the spectacle unfold below me. For a pup who’d grown up in the distant reaches of the world with nothing but a handful of fellow dairnes, the sight of what had to be twenty thousand creatures crowded together was overwhelming.
A large platform stood at one end in the shadow of the massive central library. The library was a pillared beast of a building with friezes and bas-reliefs showing the long line of Chief Scholars—humans, felivets, raptidons, natites, terramants, and dairnes. The Chief Scholar, Luca had explained, was granted a twenty-year term of office, with the position rotating throu
gh the governing species. There had been no dairne Chief Scholar in over two hundred years, however, due to my species’s dwindling numbers.
Khara and Tobble joined me. Luca had gone in search of food. Gambler, stretched out on the floor, yawned, showing his teeth in a grimace.
“Each species should occupy its own designated area,” the raptidon continued, “with the exception of servants, of course.” A shaggy, ancient bird with talons gripping an ornately carved stand, he spoke with the accent typical of his folk. Raptidons have their own language and dialects, but when speaking the Common Tongue, they have trouble with the sounds of w, b, d, f and m, all of which they tend to drop or turn into vowels.
I could understand the speaker, but only if I concentrated. “Food carts will make their way within each section” became “ood carts ill ake their ay ithin eash shection.”
The Chief Scholar, a natite, was already onstage, seated in a sort of throne that was half submerged in a constructed pool. Two other natites floated within the tank as well.
The natite audience was arrayed along the banks of a C-shaped canal. The blue-green water entered the plaza at the southeast corner, curved through, and exited by the northeast corner. Within the space delineated by that canal, felivets paced or lounged on cobblestones. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of the cats, in all their dizzying variations. I saw coats of beige with red patches, pure midnight blue, black, dusty orange, and tan with blue spots. A few had pure white fur ribboned with black, like bare trees in snow.
“Please take care with bodily fluids and do not foul the water,” the speaker continued. “Raptidons in flight are urged not to relieve themselves over non-raptidon sections.”
In spite of the grim setting, I laughed.
Like the natites’ canal on the east, a semicircle was carved out of the west portion of the plaza, though this space was formed by what appeared to be a dirt canal. No paving was visible, just bare earth pierced by a dozen or so terramant tunnels. The massive insects sat throbbing on the dirt or poking antennaed heads out of holes.
“Not many bugs,” Tobble said. “Good.”
“You’re not fond of terramants?” I teased, trying to keep the mood light.
The raptidons were located in the space corresponding to the felivet section. They perched in large numbers on wooden Ts arrayed like a stunted forest, though at any given moment half the birds were in flight, hovering above their section, or floating higher up without regard for seating protocol.
In the center of the plaza was the human section, an hourglass shape between natites and felivets on the right, terramants and raptidons on the left. The humans were packed in tightly, and were far more numerous than the other four species.
“Today’s events will unfold as follows,” declared the speaker. “There will be a brief statement from the Chief Scholar, followed by a recounting of dairne history, followed by the appearance of the Seer to the Murdano, the great Araktik Vel Druand. After that we will unveil the Statue of the Dairnes, whom we mourn today. And then we feast!”
The crowd seemed pleased about the last part, not so enthusiastic about the speeches or the statue. But I, for one, was actually anxious to hear a recitation of dairne history. And I was curious to see the statue, which was in front of the stage and covered with a tarp.
“Please remember that this is a solemn occasion,” the speaker said sternly. He spread his wings, swooped over the crowd of humans, and banked to his right, disappearing among his fellow raptidons.
Luca came back, carrying a heavy sack slung over his back. He plopped it down with a groan.
“I hope this will do, Gambler.” Luca drew out a package stained with leaking blood. He unwrapped it, revealing a cotchet about Tobble’s size.
“My thanks,” said Gambler. “That will do nicely.”
Luca heaved the body toward Gambler, who caught it with his teeth in midair.
For the rest of us, Luca had procured a loaf of bread, a hunk of cheese, two sausages, and a bottle of cider. We fell to, and I missed much of the Chief Scholar’s speech, which rambled on as I chewed and swallowed. But as soon as I was done eating, I returned to the window. The natite Chief Scholar was just finishing.
“ . . . and therefore, having taken careful account of all the facts, we had to conclude, sadly, that the dairne species is extinct, gone forever from our world.”
31.
Araktik
Gone forever.
The two words seem to squeeze my heart. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them, I realized that Tobble, Khara, Luca, and Gambler were all watching me with a mixture of pity, worry, and, in the case of the felivet, detached interest.
I straightened my shoulders and turned my attention back to the stage. An old man, feeble and bent, was ascending the steps, assisted by two helpers.
“It’s Ferrucci,” Luca said.
“That old fraud is going to tell the history of my people?” I demanded.
Luca shrugged. “He’s considered the greatest scholar of dairne history.”
“Greatest disappointment is more like it,” Khara said under her breath.
Ferrucci’s voice was weak, and I could make out only frustrating snatches.
“ . . . then, in the Time of Troubles, Charles Mordan, the Tribune of Hursk . . . warring kingdoms . . . to talk peace with Met’an Nur, the felivet Hunter Supreme . . . both sides bring a dairne to ensure . . . and that meeting began . . . led to . . . the first human-felivet treaty.”
Upon hearing the name “Met’an Nur,” the felivets below let loose with a brief but terrifying roar. The humans managed halfhearted applause, the terramants politely burred their flightless wings, and the natites slapped the surface of the water. The raptidons, for their part, made no response.
“ . . . the Third War of Rivermouth . . . natite queen . . .” I heard the name of the natite queen, but the sounds—whistles and clicks, along with an indecipherable string of consonants—were impossible for my dairne mouth to repeat.
“I have heard of war, but I don’t know exactly what it means,” Tobble said. I was not the person to enlighten him, as I knew little more than he did. Dalyntor had barely mentioned the word in our lessons.
“A war,” Khara said grimly, “is when large numbers of fighters from one tribe or city or species attack and attempt to kill those of another tribe or city or species.”
It was true as far as it went, but—as was often the case with Khara—I sensed other things withheld. Her reaction to the word “war” was personal and painful.
“In any case, there are no wars now,” Gambler said with unmistakable sarcasm.
Khara glanced back at him but said nothing.
Ferrucci continued down a list of wars, negotiations, and treaties, pointing out the role that dairnes had played in each. “Indeed,” he said, pausing to wheeze, “it could be said . . . vitally . . . necessary to . . . without which war might . . . history was made.”
“He’s reaching the conclusion,” Luca said.
“How do you know?” Khara asked.
Luca laughed. “I wrote most of the speech. Ferrucci dictated a bit, and I filled in the rest.”
“I can’t believe I thought Ferrucci would save Byx,” Khara said. “I was sure he was a good man.”
“Good men don’t always stay that way,” Luca said simply, touching Khara’s shoulder for a moment. Impatiently, she brushed away a tear with the back of her hand.
Hearing those words, seeing that tear, I suddenly knew with absolute certainty that Khara had never meant me to come to any harm. She’d genuinely thought Ferrucci would be my salvation. Certainly she’d expected to be paid, but not for my pelt. For my living self.
“ . . . and thus, with deep sadness . . . the end of a species . . . great and . . . now nevermore.”
At last the speech was done. The raptidons set up a loud squawking, apparently believing that only the end required any sort of response. A murmur of anticipation went through the humans below, and
the natites kicked themselves higher in the water to get a better view.
A line of soldiers marched onto the stage. Each wore the Murdano’s red-and-silver livery with an additional sigil, a painted symbol of a blue eye over a rune S.
From the back of the plaza came another procession of soldiers, marching straight through the human crowd. At the end was a palanquin carried by twelve muscular men. When they reached the front, they gave a mighty upward heave, extending their arms until the door of the palanquin was level with the platform.
With impressive synchronization, the soldiers already on the stage formed into two lines, while their officer stepped smartly forward, opened the palanquin’s door, and stepped back.
“Here she comes,” said Luca.
I don’t know what I was expecting to see. I had no notion of what a Seer might look like. Vaguely, I’d imagined someone like Ferrucci, ancient and bowed, with an expression of smug superiority.
Humans, I now knew, came in various colors and shapes and sizes, though nothing approaching the breathtaking variety of felivets or raptidons. This was one of the light tan humans, a female with jet-black hair hanging down to her midback. She wore an ankle-length gown in shades of red, embroidered with silver stars.
Her bare arms were covered in tattoos, blue and red and green. Luca explained that they were magical runes and seals, the visible manifestations of powerful theurgic charms. “It’s said that she cannot be killed,” he told us.
“I could always try,” Gambler said. He loped over and, by resting his forepaws on the windowsill, took in the view. “The Seer is no friend to felivets.”
Luca shot him a look. “Araktik is friend to no one.”
“I’m not that familiar with humans,” I said, “but isn’t she quite young?”
“Barely nineteen,” Luca confirmed. “Not much older than Khara and me.”
Araktik stood facing the crowd, absorbing the cheers and squawks and water slaps. The terramants burred their wings and dipped antennae. The felivets remained silent.
“I feel that I am home,” Araktik began in a strong alto voice. “For many years I lived here on the isle. I learned much from great scholars of all species.”