DemonWars Saga Volume 1 (20 page)

She scurried away, suddenly uncomfortable.

All the bustle of the common room disappeared as soon as the heavy door was closed, leaving the young woman in happy solitude — almost, for a moment later, she noticed that Grady Chilichunk was in the house, moving about his little room.

Cat sighed again; the last thing she wanted now was to spend any time near Grady. He was a handsome man of thirty years, nearly twice Cat's age, with sharp brown eyes. Physically, by all accounts, he was the image of his father in Graevis' younger days, but by Cat's estimation, Grady could not have been more different than Graevis in temperament. Since her first days in the house, Grady had made the young woman uncomfortable. Not in a lewd way, like the drunk in the bar, or even in a teasing way, like the handsome young man. In four years, Grady had never once looked at the flowering young woman lustfully. To Cat-the-Stray, his adopted sister, he was always polite, too polite. Stiff even, and as the young woman had grown wiser to the ways of the world, she came to understand that Grady saw her as a threat to what he considered his rightful inheritance.

It wasn't that Grady honestly cared for Fellowship Way. He was hardly ever in the place. He liked the money the establishment brought in, though, and the young woman already understood that if Graevis and. Pettibwa left Fellowship Way to her, even partially, Grady would not be pleased.

"What are you doing in here?" he asked, coming from his room. His proper speech rang in sharp contrast to the street dialect of his parents. Grady saw himself as above that lowly station, Cat understood. He fancied himself an important man, and frequented the more expensive establishments near the duke's castle, and had even been in the castle on many occasions. It struck Cat that he must know the well-dressed gentleman in the bar; perhaps the man had even come to the Way on Grady's invitation.

"Have you no work?" he snapped at her.

Cat-the-Stray bit her lip, not liking his condescending tone. "I've done more this one night than you have in the last two seasons," she replied.

Grady glared at her. "Some were made to work in life," he began evenly,
"others to live and enjoy."

Cat decided that it wasn't worth arguing. She shook her head, tossed her apron to the back of a nearby chair, gathered up her cloak, and headed out into the Palmaris night.

A chill breeze was blowing off the gulf, moaning as it wound its way past the many two- and three-story houses of the great city. Palmaris was second in size in all the Kingdom of Honce-the-Bear only to Ursal, the throne seat, further upriver, though neither were reputedly as populous as the great, crowded cities of the southern kingdom of Behren. To Cat-the-Stray, who had grown up on the edge of the Wilderlands, in a village where ten people together was considered a crowd, the place had, at first, been overwhelming. Even now, after nearly four years in Palmaris, when she knew every street, where to go, where to avoid, and when the dark image of the great Masur Delaval and the smell of brine and the wind filled with crisp wetness had become very familiar to her, she could not consider the place her home. Even now, surrounded by the love of the Chilichunks, the place was not home; could never replace the fleeting image of a cabin that she held so dear. She loved Graevis and Pettibwa, even Grady, but they were not, could not be, her parents, and Grady would never take the place of a true friend she sensed that she had once known.

Cat-the-Stray winced as the thoughts careened back in time. She had blocked away so much, could only remember, fleeting images, a certain look, a kiss that she wasn't even sure had really happened. And the name, all the names, were gone from her mind — that was the worst thing' of all! She could not remember her friend's name, could not remember her own name!

"Cat-the-Stray," she whispered distastefully into the cold night air, watching the mist of her breath float away, and wishing the title would go with it. It had been given to her affectionately, she knew, and with all sympathy for her pitiful predicament, and so she had not argued.

The young woman made her way around the back of the inn, down a dark alley that inspired no fear, and up a gutter, to the one section of Fellowship Way's roof that was not slanted. The lights of Palmaris spread wide before her, the lights of the night sky wide above her. This was her secret place, her place of contemplation. She came up here as often as her duties allowed to be alone with her memories, to try to piece together who she was and where she had come from.

She remembered wandering into a village, dirty and wounded, covered in soot and blood. She remembered the tender manner in which she had been brought in, followed by relentless questions that she could not answer. Then came the long journey, tagging along with a merchant caravan that had swapped crafted items to the people of the small frontier village in exchange for pelts and great trees that would be used as masts for the sailing ships built in Palmaris.

Graevis Chilichunk had bin on that caravan, coming north to the Wilderlands to, pick up some very special wine, boggle by name. He had taken to the poor lost girl — he was the one who had given the girl the name of Cat-the-Stray — and the villagers had been more than willing to part with the orphan and with many of their own weaker folk, since they were in fear of a raid similar to the one that had sacked the neighboring settlement, Cat's settlement.

Cat rested back against a sooty chimney, the warm bricks taking a bit of the bite from the night chill.

Why couldn't she remember the name of her village or of the one where Graevis had found her? On several occasions, she had started to ask Pettibwa and Graevis about it, but every time she had stopped short, some part of her fearing to remember. Neither of her adopted parents pressed her to remember; Cat had overheard them talking one night, making a pact that they would let the girl heal in her own time. "Perhaps she will never remember," Pettibwa had said.

"Perhaps that would be better."

"And she's got her new name now," Graevis agreed. "Though if I'd've thinked it would stick, I'd've chosen differently!"

And they laughed, and it was not in any way an insult to the girl, just their joy at being able to help one so in need.

Cat loved them with all her heart. Now, though, she was beginning to think it was time for her to figure out who she was and where she, had come from. She looked up at the sky. Some streaks of clouds had moved in, giving a different perspective to those stars still visible. It was often possible to look at familiar things in a different way, Cat realized. She let the night canopy absorb her, used it to filter back through the painful barriers. She had seen this sky all her life and used that commonality to recall another place.

She remembered running up a forested slope, looking back to her village, nestled in a sheltered vale, and then turning her gaze above it, to the southern sky, to the faint colors of the Halo.

"The Halo," Cat-the-Stray muttered, and she realized that she had not seen the phenomenon since she had come to Palmaris. Her face screwed up with concern.

Did such a thing as the Halo even exist, or was her memory a mere fantasy?

If it did exist, then her memory was correct, then she had found yet another image of her lost life.

She considered going back into the Way and inquiring about this Halo right then, but her concentration was broken by a sharp, metallic sound.

Somebody was climbing up the gutter.

Cat did not get overalarmed — until she saw a familiar dirty face come over the edge of the roof.

"Ah, me lovely," said the drunk from the bar. "So ye come up here to meet with me."

"Be on your way," Cat warned, but the man rolled up over the edge of the roof and started to rise.

"Oh, I'll be having me way," he said, and then Cat heard yet another man coming up the gutter, and realized she was in trouble. They had followed her, all three, and she knew well enough what they meant to do to her.

Quick as her namesake, the young woman leaped across and put her knee heavily into the drunk's chest, knocking him flat to the roof. She slapped away his grabbing hands, then slugged him twice in the face.

Then she was up, meeting the second intruder with a foot in his face as his head came above the roof edge. His head snapped back; he started to say something in protest, and Cat kicked him again, right in the jaw.

With a groan, he fell away into the blackness, dropping heavily atop the last of the three, then both of them going down hard to the cobblestones. Two kicks and two down, but it had taken too long. Even as Cat started to turn back for the first, the drunk's arms came about her and locked about her chest, squeezing her tight.

She felt his hot breath on her neck, smelled the stench of the cheap ale.

"There, there, me pretty one," he whispered. "If ye're not to fight me, yell like it all the more:"

He nibbled her earlobe, or tried to, but she snapped her head back hard into his face, stunning him.

The one memory that Cat-the-Stray held completely from her past was not an image or a name, but a feeling, a deep frustrated rage. She let that memory out now, on the roof of Fellowship Way in Palmaris. She let all the tears and all the unanswered screams come out, channeled them into a level of violence that the drunk could not have foreseen.

Her hands raked at his arms; she stuck one arm between her torso and the drunk's arm, and let her legs fall out from under her, twisting and squirming.

"Might be more the fun if ye fight!" the drunk squealed, but he wasn't paying attention and had let the young woman get her face close to his clenched hands.

Cat-the-Stray clamped her teeth over one of his knuckles and bit him hard.

"Ah, ye whore!" he yelled, and lifted his other hand to pound her.

But he had broken his grip, and Cat turned and ducked, accepting the blow across the back of her shoulders, not even feeling it through the turmoil of her emotions. She came around and up and right back in, clawing at his face, raking for his eyes. He pulled her hands out wide, and she used the opening to head-butt him again.

She tore her hands free and grabbed him by the hair. He punched her hard on the side of the head, but she only loosed a feral scream, and tugged down hard with both her hands, while she jumped and curled one leg. She heard the crack of bone as her knee connected with his face. He shot back up straight, then fell over backward, but Cat was not done with him.

She came in hard, screaming all the while, driving her knee into his throat.

"Enough!" he whined, gagged. "I'll let ye be."

That wasn't the point; Cat would not let him be. She hit him a score of heavy blows; she kicked him, she bit him, she clawed him. Finally, battered and bleeding from a dozen wounds, he managed to get to his feet and he ran headlong to the ledge and dove right over it.

Following across the roof, Cat noticed that there was a light below in the alley. She came to the edge, expecting one of the man's companions to be coming up the gutter, and hoping that to be the case.

She stopped, taken fully by surprise. The drunk lay very still, groaning softly, blood running from his many wounds and from the side of his broken head.

The man she had kicked from the gutter was down as well, sitting against the building wall across the alley, one hand supporting him, the other clutching his shin. The leg had splintered in the fall; Cat could see the jagged edge of a bone poking through the skin.

The third drunk was up, hands high above his head and facing the wall directly below Cat, a sword's pointed tip tight against the middle of his back.

"I heard a scream," said the handsome man from the Way, the one with the sparkling light brown eyes, the one with the purest white smile. "I took my leave soon after you departed," he explained, "figuring there was nothing left in the place worth watching."

Cat felt the blood rushing to her face.

"Some hero I prove to be," the man said, bringing his sword back in a salute to the young woman. "By my eyes, it seems as if I saved these three!"

Cat-the-Stray had no idea what to respond to the gallant man. Her rage bubbled away, and she turned from the alley, walking back into the solitude of the darkened rooftop.

After a few uncomfortable minutes, the man called up to her, but before she could answer, she heard a commotion as several others, Graevis among them, came rushing into the alley.

Cat-the-Stray didn't want to face them. She was embarrassed, she was ashamed, and she just wanted to be left alone: That was not possible, she realized, nor could she slip down the other side of the building without having half of Palmaris searching frantically for her. She took a deep breath and moved to the gutter, then down, meeting the eyes of no one, falling into the bosom of Pettibwa as soon as she spotted the woman, and whispering for Pettibwa to please take her to her room.