MUCH LATER, when I saw Errol, he could not speak without weeping about what he saw. He sat with me, his knees to his chest, hiding in the morgues from a memory he could never escape. Nothing had prepared him. No guild. No workbench. No book. I demanded, when I did see him, to know what had happened to him. I insisted until he relented.
“They dragged that cat into the arena,” he said.
“What cat?” I asked.
“The blackness I had seen. That silhouette.”
“A house cat?”
“It was a wild cat. Fierce. And so black it looked like a hole in the air. It took four men to haul it in. The animal was writhing and clawing at them. They caught its legs in snares and pulled them out to the sides. A cat’s legs don’t move that way. They don’t.”
“Why were they at this? Had the cat harmed them?”
“No. I don’t know. They tethered it to four posts. It was struggling like a demon. Teeth and claws everywhere. The mob in the stands was cheering. I don’t know why. It was just like the pub. They wanted something to die. And then—” He sat silent, his hands over his mouth.
“Then what?”
“They left the cat there alone.”
“Iosal,” I whispered.
“When the bell went off, the mob started to throw things at the cat, over the bars. Purgament from the roofs. Rot, rusted metal, anything they could find.”
“I don’t understand.”
“And then one of them pulled out a crossbow and a bucket full of bolts.”
“This is low—”
“Aye. The first bolt from that archer hit the cat in the thick of the back leg. The cat went down, tangled in the tight tethers, and got up again, struggling. Howling, but more like a kitten, although what do I know about kittens. All the while they were cheering. Hitting it in the face and the head. I was so fixed on the cat that I didn’t realize there were men behind us. They were running around to the shafts of gaol and prying the lids off with sticks, dropping a line in, grabbing anything, anyone, still alive. A beautiful dog, a goat, that sheep I had seen. There was terror in those animals and those foundlings in the pits. All of them were crying out, for one another’s sake. As we watched, the men dragged those animals into the arena, threw them at the cat, and then cheered as it tore into them, even bound as it was. And then came Jago.”
“That fright from the streets? What was he doing to the cat?”
“No. No. The opposite. Listen. He was outside of the bars, running at the bars, jerking and screeching and trying to get them to stop. When that archer started to pull the string to lock again, Jago raced to attack him. Too late.”
“This is that same Jago who told that fighter to murder you in that pub?”
“Aye.”
“He wanted to save the wildcat?”
“Aye. When it was finally over and they’d cut the ties on the cat, they opened the gate and Jago went in there.”
“Was the cat dead? Was it?”
“You would think. But it dragged itself across the dirt, straight to him. Even then, that archer put another bolt into the cat’s flank, right on top of the first. The power of it threw the cat ten yards. Jago leapt onto the cat to protect it and the cat was on him, pushing its face into his face. I thought the beast was biting him, killing him. But it was struggling to climb into his arms.”
Suddenly I realized—“It was his cat, wasn’t it? It was Jago’s cat! What do you call it? His other, his fetch.”
“His fylgia. Aye.”
“Did it die?”
He shook his head. “It wasn’t meant to die. That archer was a perfect shot. The bolts could have hit anywhere—heart, skull—but they were aimed for the leg. One after the other.”
“But the other animals were all dead. Why not the cat?”
“I have no idea.”
The two of us sat in silence, rendered kelps. I could see no way this tale could end, never mind end well.
“There’s more,” he said. “You know how it is in dreams when something happens and you see only a fragment of it? Someone walks through the dream and vanishes? I know I saw the regnat walk through the mob.”
“That cannot be. What would he be doing in such a place? No.”
“He was there.”
And then I asked the most obvious question. “How did you rescue them, Errol Thebes? What did you do?”
Errol flinched as though I had hit him. “Nothing.”
I was silent. Stunned.
“Jago saw us. He was on his feet and running toward me from inside the cage. He climbed the bars without realizing he couldn’t and pressed his head through them. Screaming at me, ‘Stay high! Stay high.’ Mocking. He turned and pointed to the cat. Two shafts jutting out of its back end. ‘Look at what you did!’ In truth? I ran. The mob was coming for us.” Errol made a helpless gesture. “Look what I did, Odd.”