CHAPTER 15
Dara
I wake alone, or almost.
Kakis sleeps beside me, one leg thrown over my waist and her tail twined around my own, as if I were her littermate.
“Get off,” I say, shoving her leg when I find it too heavy to lift. The big cat only yawns, her jaws snapping uncomfortably close to my face, then rolls to her other side. I brush Tangata fur from my cloak and look to what’s left of the camp we made last night.
Faja is gone, Famoor as well. In a tree I spot what remains of his bridle, slashed to uselessness. I swear in Indiri and kick at the ashes of my fire. Faja is Indiri, and raised by cats. I’ll find no sign to mark her path through the forest. Even if Donil were with me, I doubt he could track her.
And why should I try? I wonder, even as I make a cursory circle to be sure I haven’t missed anything. Faja was no help to me, and her cat a hindrance. At the thought of Kakis, I return to what’s left of last night’s fire, giving the Tangata a glare that would have sent a Stillean swordsman to the privy. She licks her paw and wipes an ear, unconcerned.
“I . . .” I bite my lip and look off into the forest, feeling a fool. I clear my throat and try again. “Where did she go?”
Kakis cocks her head, looking for all the earth like she hasn’t any idea who I’m talking about.
“Faja,” I say. “Your . . . mistress, littermate . . . the . . .” I point to my own skin, though my spots are lighter with youth than Faja’s were. “Her.”
A deep purr emanates from the cat, and her paws knead the ground. Mock me she might, but I do believe the cat understands what I say to her. I switch to Stillean, a test.
“Where is your mistress?” I say, and the cat goes still, watching me warily.
“Where has Faja gone?” I use Indiri now, and Kakis crosses the space between us at her littermate’s name. She reaches forward with one massive paw, delicately resting it on my knee. I bend down, for I think this is what she requests of me.
“Faja,” I repeat, and Kakis stretches her neck to bring her nose to mine. It rests there, cold, wet, smelling unmistakably of Tangata.
I’d asked Faja what Kakis’s name meant, and she’d told me to ask my ancestors, and so I had, diving into my memories for any recollection of the name. I’d found it and its meaning, which I remember now as I feel the cat’s flesh against mine.
Loyal to only one.
“Tides,” I mutter to myself, and Kakis sneezes into my face.
“Begone,” I shout at the cat as I pass through the forest, but Kakis marches beside me as if I had not spoken. She’s followed me since midmorning, after I covered what remained of our fire and strode for the edge of the Forest of Drennen. I am close now to the plains that stretch through the middle of our island, and in a few suns will see Dunkai, where my people were slaughtered. I have not revisited my birthplace since I crawled from the pit where my mother died, and do not intend to return with a Tangata trailing me.
Whatever Faja said to Kakis—and I shake my head to even imagine the conversation—it has stuck. Kakis will not leave my side, even when I unhook my bow from my shoulder and swipe at her with it. She only runs ahead of me slightly, tail stuck high in the air, as if to let me know how unconcerned she is.
“I have no patience for you,” I spit at her, but notice that she’s found a break in the brush, one that I hadn’t spotted. I follow, somewhat chastened. The cat turns to face me, and I am about to speak when she shakes her head. I fall silent and listen. I hear breathing, heavy and male. I hear horses, shifting where they stand. I hear a sword, easing quietly from a scabbard. I hear people, waiting to hear me.
Kakis slides smoothly back out from the brush, her tail bushy with alarm and ruff raised. She glances at me, and I nod that I understand. The cat’s lip curls minutely and she makes a low, deep sound. I recognize it as a hunting call, one I’ve heard in the woods more than once.
“It’s only the cats,” one of the men says to the other, his voice carrying.
“Do they use words now? I heard a voice.”
“Maybe it was your mother calling you home to dinner.”
“Maybe it was your wife calling for something else,” the other shoots back.
There are only the two of them, for if there were a third, he would have shushed them by now, their squabbling giving me plenty of time to circle around the large tree they have camped under.
Camped under for some time, I think, looking at many nights’ worth of ashes between them, Pietran armor in a pile nearby. Their horses are hobbled, but even given freedom, they would not go far. They are bone thin and weary, their ears not perking when Kakis gives a call from her side of the woods. The Pietran soldiers react quickly, if somewhat stupidly, both of them giving their full attention to her distraction.
The first does not hear my step, but slaps at his neck as if expecting to find a ninpop bug there instead of the open wound I’ve left behind, his lifeblood leaving in a torrent. He’s on the path of the dead before the second even notices, but I don’t give him long to grieve.
Kakis emerges to sniff the bodies, her paws sinking deeply into the bloodsoaked ground around them. She chuffs over their corpses, then tosses dirt across them with two quick kicks of her back legs before she joins me by the horses.
They raise their heads slightly at her wild scent and spattering of their riders’ blood, but only just. There is nothing left in these beasts, and I spot a crust of sea salt on the trailing end of one bridle. These animals were on the beach, then, the same night as I. They survived the wave and moonchanges of travel eating only what they could graze, and by the smell of them, have resorted to rankflower.
There is nothing of Famoor in these beasts. I unhobble them anyway, leaving them to go where they will. I will not trouble them with a rider, and they could not keep my pace. I hear Kakis fall into step behind me, her pads soft on the forest floor, a light purr in her throat. Welcome or not, I have a traveling companion.
I turn to face her, and she stops, one paw raised in midair. The forest is quiet around me, aware that death has occurred. The sun warms my back, streaming through the thinning canopy. We are near the edge of Drennen, about to leave the woods the cat knows so well.
“To Dunkai?” I ask.
And she steps forward to join me.