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The question is not whether we will find our answers, but whether we want to.
—Kenslo, king’s annals
Amid the long shadows of Archemais’s library, Corellian lay awake. He could hear the soft snores of his companions, and the supper they’d eaten sat warm and pleasant in his belly. The banked fire gave off a soft glow. He was tired.
But he could not sleep. It wasn’t the strange mixture of serpent’s den and scholarly residence they’d found behind the locked door. It wasn’t the enormous snake skin lying in one of the rooms—its eye-covers large as teacups. It wasn’t the dead alligator hanging in the cool cellar. What was keeping Corry awake was the other locked door—the one that led presumably to Archemais’s bedchamber. That, and the Earth items he’d found lying about the house.
Corry had a terrible suspicion. He wasn’t sure when he’d allowed himself to examine it, but he knew it had been there for quite a while, locked behind its own door. Images tumbled through his head—bits of lost memories tangling with the events of the past four days—the picture of Gabalon from the book in Danda-lay, Archemais’s green eyes, Dance in a dungeon, a tunic and trousers laid out beside the bathing pool—a little small, but they fit.
Corry got up and went softly to the door that led into the rest of Archemais’s house. He stepped into the hall beyond, shut the door, and flipped on the electric lights. He went past the door to the cellar steps, past the kitchen, and there was the door to the bedroom.
Corry thought for a moment. He’d never been taught how to pick a lock, though he thought he understood the rudiments. He went to the kitchen and searched until he found some kind of skewer. He returned to the door, but soon gave up. Nothing inside the lock felt like a tumbler. In fact, it doesn’t even feel like a lock. Corry stopped. He looked at the lock for a long moment. It was molded metal, with embellished shapes of leaves and fruit. Finally, he reached out, gripped it with his whole hand, and tried to swivel. The lock turned. It rotated around the axis of the keyhole—the false keyhole—and Corry saw behind it the real keyhole—flush with the wood. He took out the key to the main door. It fit.
* * * *
Tolomy couldn’t sleep either, but his keen ears detected Corellian’s uneven breathing, and Tolomy didn’t feel like speaking with anyone. Finally, the iteration got up and went further into the house. Tolomy rose at once and glided out the door that led to the bathing passage, through the tunnel, and into the frosty night. He moved through a fallow vegetable garden and poked about under a likely-looking hedge, but the wildlife seemed in short supply. No surprise there, considering what lives here. He did, at last, find a mouse, with which he amused himself for the better part of a half watch.
Then he went to the stream and had a long drink. When he raised his head, the iteration was standing not ten paces away. The cursed thing moves like a cat.
Corry sat down on the riverbank. Tolomy wondered if he could still slink away without being seen. Then Corry spoke. “It must be difficult—to have Demitri’s soul and Lexis’s conscience.”
Tolomy would later give himself some credit for not flinching. He would also, in later analysis, surmise that his utter stillness was a kind of flinch. For a moment, he couldn’t even breathe. “How did you—?”
“I saw the expression on your face after you killed those dogs...and the fauns.”
Tolomy’s mind raced. His eyes darted to Corry and then away.
Corry lay back on the grass and put his hands behind his head. “You were enjoying it. The only thing you’re really afraid of is yourself.”
Tolomy found his voice. “That’s not true.”
“Oh?” Corry glanced at him. Tolomy saw the eyes, almost as green as his own under the black shadow of hair. “I knew something about you didn’t make sense, but until that moment, I didn’t know what. You’re always watching yourself. Everything you do, every calculated action, is a lie. I suppose when your family hunts, you miss your kills on purpose.”
“You,” sputtered Tolomy, “know nothing about me.”
“That makes two of us.”
The cub jumped to his feet. “I know what I am! I behave the way I do for good reasons.” He wanted to stop, but the words came crawling out of his throat like wasps from a broken nest. “My first memory is of a kill. Some little creature that had gotten into our nursery. I remember how it squirmed, the crunch of its bones, the warm blood in my mouth, and it was pure pleasure, even then. I snuck away to hunt long before they began training us, but you’re right: I do miss my kills when I’m around other cats, because I don’t want them to know—” He bit down the words. Why am I even talking to him?
“Because you think you’re like Demitri?”
Tolomy didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.
Corry thought for a moment. “Leesha didn’t see, you know. She was strangling when you killed those fauns.”
Tolomy felt himself relax a little and hated that it showed. “Leesha hated Demitri and for a good reason.”
“You think she’d hate you, too, if she knew you took after him?”
“I know it.”
“I don’t think Leesha’s as weak as you imagine.”
Tolomy huffed. “I don’t think you understand me, iteration. If father changed his mind today about the succession, if he decided to go back to the old way and put Leesha and I on the Field of Bones next year to fight to the death, I don’t think she would kill me. Not that she couldn’t—although that’s probably true as well—but that she wouldn’t. But I could kill her. I would feel dreadful afterwards, but while I was fighting, while I was killing her, I would enjoy it.” He felt some satisfaction at Corellian’s wince. “So don’t tell me I should be myself.”
There was a long, heavy silence. “Strange,” said Corellian. “Leesha is afraid of the same thing—that she would kill you in the old succession.”
Tolomy growled. “She doesn’t know me. Or...she knows a part of me. Leesha wants...needs something to protect.”
“And so you give it to her,” murmured Corellian. “Interesting.”
“I’m not interesting,” said Tolomy. “Crossbows are interesting. I’m very simple—like a claw.”
“On the contrary, I think you’re one of the most complicated people I’ve ever met.”
Tolomy was staring at the river again. “Leesha likes to jump at me from behind corners. She thinks it’s funny. I’ve asked her to stop. I tell her she frightens me, but she doesn’t understand. What I mean is, I’m terrified that one day she’ll startle me, and before I can think, I’ll do to her what I did to those swamp fauns.”
He glanced at Corry. “But I don’t know what business it is of yours. You come along and stick your nose in the middle of my family’s concerns and behave as though we’re supposed to thank you.”
“I understand,” said Corry looking at the sky.
“You do not unders—!”
“Archemais is my father.”
In the silence that followed, a fish splashed in the stream. Somewhere in the distance, a dog howled. At last, Tolomy said, “Your what?”
“I turned up in Laven-lay unable to remember how I got there. It’s a long story. Just now I broke into his room, and there are pictures—of me when I was younger and of my mother, I think. I suppose she’s dead. And of my uncle. At least, I think that’s who he is.”
Tolomy stared at him. “Your uncle?”
“Gabalon.”
Another long silence. “Oh.”
Corry laughed. Tolomy thought he sounded half mad. “So you see, I do understand about having skeletons in the family closet.”
“Skeletons in the closet,” repeated Tolomy, trying out the phrase and rather liking it.
“Earth expression. Never mind. I thought my other shape was a dragon, but apparently, it’s only a snake.”
Tolomy thought for a moment. “I wouldn’t be so sure of that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, up there on the cliff—whatever you were, you did fly.”
* * * *
Sharon-zool stared at her officers’ latest report. It had not been a good night. Unfortunately, the fire was only the beginning. She cursed herself again for not remembering the cats. But even if I had remembered them, would I have expected Shadock to use them? She wondered, not for the first time, whether Shadock was dead and one of his generals was making the decisions. This does not have his stamp at all. There’s another mind here—a devious one.
The sewage and the glass—that had been a stroke worthy of Daren. The fire had been the barricade’s intended defense, but the sewage and glass were meant to finish what came after. Already her healers were bringing her dire reports. Scratches and burns that might normally be treated were expected to fester. Swamp fauns frenzied with battle had rushed unfeeling through pools of ground glass and filth. Others had slipped in their retreat from the cats through the flooded plaza and fallen in the muck with scratches and bite wounds. The healers were asking her whether they should remove limbs in order to save lives for the long-term or whether they should leave the limbs intact in order to save fighters for the short-term.
He has, in effect, poisoned us. All he needs to do is hide and wait for us to sicken.
The horrible burns were something else. The sight of shelts, moaning and screaming on the floors of the designated hospital building had caused such a blow to morale that she had ordered that the dying be sped quietly on their way.
Sharon-zool paced her chamber. Who am I fighting? There’s got to be a cliff faun left in there somewhere. I refuse to believe that cats would defend Danda-lay of their own accord.
Whoever was orchestrating them, the cats certainly had saved the palace. She had been ready to enter it herself when the fighting started. Sharon-zool felt the cold breath of disaster but-too-nearly averted. A city at night was just the sort of place in which cats loved to fight, with potential ambush points on every corner. They had chased her soldiers all the way out of the palace and into Danda-lay, where, for a short time, it was feared they would retake the city. However, as her archers found their way to rooftops, and with the coming of daylight, the advantage began to shift in favor of those with arrows and spears. The cats retreated back into the palace, and the exhausted swamp fauns assessed their losses.
I’ll never take the palace by storm, Sharon realized. Not when it’s infested with cats and my soldiers grow weaker by the day. I need fresh troops from Port Ory. Somehow I must force my way far enough inside the palace to shut off the water. In order to do that I must find a weakness in my enemy.
She could think of one. It might not move Shadock, but then she was clearly not fighting Shadock. Sharon-zool made up her mind. She thought for a moment more and decided on a messenger. So they have cats. Well, we have something large and dangerous, too. Aloud, she said to her aid, “Go and get Danthra Michweer.” He and his lizard riders have had more than enough leisure to pillage corpses. Time they put in another day’s work.
