THEY REACHED A town the next day, on wide, well-maintained roads at last, a full week after they had passed through the wild man’s gap in time. Richon said it was called Kirten, and it had a grand marketplace. There were voices calling out everywhere, merchants hawking their wares, people bargaining for the best price, and children running and laughing underfoot.
Chala saw ahead of her a man standing near cages that smelled of animal. When she got closer, she could see that inside one was a small creature with a long tail and a face like a small child’s. She had never seen its like before and was intrigued, though the sight of it caged and forlorn made her heart ache.
“Sir, come. Lady, too. See this fine creature. The perfect exotic pet for nobles such as yourselves.” The animal trainer held a whip and a rope. He wore a long mustache and no shirt.
“No, thank you,” said Richon, backing away, his hands held up.
But Chala, behind him, did not move.
“Ah, the lady has had a long journey, has she not?” He gestured at her dirty gown, which Chala herself had not noticed. She had simply not bothered with it, though she kept her face and hands as clean as she had as a hound.
“Give her something to hold on to, eh? A pet would make her very happy, make her grateful to the man who gives her such pleasure,” the animal trainer suggested to Richon with his eyebrows raised and his hands making a rude motion.
Richon tried to pull her away. She knew he was trying to protect her. But she felt a responsibility to protect this animal, and she would not let Richon take that from her.
“What is it called?” she asked the man, trying to buy time.
“It is a monkey,” said the man. “And I never give ’em names. Don’t want to make ’em answer to something that the new owner will change all over again. What would you want to name it, then? Anything you want, and it will come, I swear to it.”
The man was obviously a liar, and not a good one.
“Do you want the monkey?” asked Richon. He did not argue with her, or tell her that this was a whim, as the men she had known as a princess would have done. What a woman wanted was always a whim to them. But Richon, bear or man, had always done what she asked of him.
She nodded, and he put a hand to his side to get his purse of coins.
But she stopped him with a motion.
“Are there more?” she asked the animal trainer.
“Oh, yes, several. Of course, a lady such as yourself is used to a selection. Come, I will show you the others. There are some variations in color, and perhaps you would prefer an animal that is less—active.”
Chala wondered why any human would wish for an animal that had given up its wildness. But then she remembered the many domesticated animals she had seen that had no more of their own language remaining. Cows, goats, dogs, pigs—all had lost half their wildness and half themselves, in her opinion. But at least they had given it up willingly, in exchange for the ease of life with humans.
These monkeys were not the same. They had had no choice in this matter at all, and were given no recompense. She would not have it!
She gripped Richon tightly, and he made a small hiss of pain. Another hound would have nipped her in return, but Richon walked on.
The animal trainer led the way into a stall that stank of animal feces. It was dark and hot inside, and the monkeys in the cages were so weak and without hope that they did not even look up when Richon and Chala walked in. Chala could see old bruises on them and dried blood from wounds that had never been treated, but it was the blank stares that told her how often they had been beaten.
These animals thought there was nothing left in life but that, and they waited for the end. It made her sick to see them.
“This one is young and female,” the animal trainer said, pointing to a white-skinned monkey with a crown of white fur on the top of her head.
The monkey did not even look at Chala.
Chala leaned toward it. “Yes, yes, I see,” she murmured.
“And this one is a beautiful black male,” the animal trainer said, pointing to the one that looked as if it had been beaten worst of all.
“Black, yes,” said Chala, pretending interest in something other than the cage and its lock.
The animal trainer seemed to catch no hint of the undertone of anger in her voice. “Perhaps you would like to hold one,” he offered.
Chala gave out a long breath, as if she had been holding it for some time. “That would be best, I think. Don’t you?” She turned to Richon and let him see the anger in her eyes.
She wanted to kill the animal trainer, to feel his blood in her mouth, to feel his last kicking breath flow out of him.
But that was a hound’s desire, and it was not one she could indulge here.
When she had first been forced into the body of the princess, Chala remembered, she had attacked one of the coal boys who had come into her room at night to stoke her fire. She had not been used to being a human and had been angry at the change and at the magic that had been used against her. She had stayed in the castle before, but it had never felt as confining as it did then. Her every breath was a reminder of the prison she was in.
She’d told herself that she would get through this terrible time by thinking of the princess’s room as her own den, as she had had in her days with a pack. But the coal boy had violated her territory, had come in without warning, without permission. He had seen her sleeping on the rug near the fire, with the hound at her side, and in his surprise had fallen over her.
The pain had reminded her of other pain, and suddenly it had all come shooting out of her. She leaped on the coal boy and tore into his face with her fingernails, far less effective than claws but enough to draw blood. The coal boy had screamed for help, and it was the princess—in the body of the hound—who had come to his aid. She leaped on the hound and tore her off.
The coal boy ran away and left the castle. Afterward, orders were given for coal to be left outside the princess’s room for her to serve herself when she wished it. Slowly the hound had learned to restrain her violent impulses. It seemed this man had never done the same, though he thought of himself as far above animals.
The trainer got out his keys and whistled tunelessly as he approached one of the cages.
A monkey spit on him as he crossed its path, not out of anger, but because it was ill and wasting away.
The animal trainer threw the cage to the floor and cursed the creature, yanking on its tail.
Chala had had enough. She moved forward, kicked the man’s stomach, and snatched the keys out of his hands.
The sound of his howling filled the room, and the animals stared at him, and then at Chala.
She focused on the moment, something easy for a hound to do. She put aside fear and anger, and thought only of what must be done next, so her hands did not shake nor her eyes waver. After trying six keys, she found the right one to open the first cage.
Then she helped the white monkey with the crown of fur out and it scampered away. She moved next to the black-skinned monkey.
Richon stepped between her and the animal trainer.
The animal trainer kicked Richon in the stomach.
Chala heard Richon’s gasp, stifled.
It seemed wrong to her that he would have to hide pain even in these circumstances, but she could not spare thoughts for him. She moved to the next cage, opened it, and set the monkey on the ground. But this time the monkey did not move.
“Go, go!” Chala encouraged it in humans words that could have no meaning for the monkey. If only she had some of Prince George’s magic, she could speak to the monkey in its own tongue. She had never wished such a human thing for herself before, but she wished it now, for the monkey’s sake.
Richon and the animal trainer continued to fight. The animal trainer put his hands around Richon’s throat, and Chala heard Richon’s choking sounds, his feet and hands scrabbling at the floor.
She went to help, lunging at the animal trainer’s back and kicking at the backs of his knees. He turned, surprised.
But the animal trainer’s human reluctance to hurt a female doomed him. He did not throw her off fast enough, nor with enough force. And by the time that Chala was on the ground again, Richon was pounding the animal trainer’s body and pushing him back, and back again.
Chala took a moment to catch her breath and turned back to the cages. She tried to coax the unmoving monkey to leave once more, but it was no use. A human might have kept at such a fruitless task, but she did not. She could not spend all her time on one animal. There were others who needed her. She felt no guilt. An animal has a right to choose to live or die.
The third monkey that Chala freed wandered away, if not quickly, at least without question. Then she moved down the row of cages.
Richon and the animal trainer fell behind her in a heap.
She told herself that she should let Richon battle alone. No hound would thank her for interference with another hound. But she had to look to him, to make sure that he would survive even if she went on without him.
He was breathing heavily, had a streaming cut above one eye, and would likely have some terrible bruises in the morning, but he was winning. And he was smiling, not at her, but in his own joy at his fight.
Did he know how much that look was like a hound’s?
She hurried to the last monkey, picked it out of its cage, then shooed it back toward the forest beyond the town.
Then she waited for Richon to finish.
He seemed to take a long time about it, but she supposed that as a king he had not been taught how to fight.
When the animal trainer lay on his back, eyes closed, blood streaming out of his mouth, Richon brushed himself off and came to her side.
“I think I have never looked less like a king,” said Richon, his mouth twisting as he stared down at his clothes.
“And I think you have never looked more like one,” said Chala.
Richon’s cheeks reddened. “My princess,” he said to her, smiling.
Chala knew he meant it as a compliment, but she was not sure if she wanted to be thought of as a princess.
She turned back to look at the man’s chest, rising and falling. “Is it wise to leave an enemy alive?” she asked, genuinely wondering if humans had different rules for this than animals. A hound would never leave a threat alive.
“He is one of my people,” said Richon. “If I make an enemy of him, whose fault is it, his or mine?”
Chala thought there was a simple answer to that question, but Richon apparently did not agree.
“He lives,” he said, with finality in his voice.
They left the animal trainer where he was and moved to other stalls, near the edge of the forest.
Richon stared out into the trees. “Will other animals hurt the monkeys?” he asked Chala. “Out there, I mean. The monkeys are from the south and not used to the animals here. Perhaps we should go after them and make sure they are safe.”
Chala was confused. “Go after them and make sure they are safe? You mean cage them again and make them into pets for humans?”
“No, no,” said Richon.
“They will die in the forest when it is winter again,” explained Chala. She had known this when she had unlocked the cages and coaxed them to go. She thought the monkeys must know it, too.
“But then…why?” asked Richon.
“Because any animal would rather die free than live in a cage,” she said.
Richon breathed out slowly. “And any human,” he added.