The Wildings (34 page)

Datura had small doubt that he could continue to evade the cats of Nizamuddin. The tiger had terrified him, and the white cat had run until he reached the muddy path to the baoli. A glance at the panicked ferals told him that the tide had turned. He watched the ferals scatter, and then before the wildings could start hunting for him, Datura padded away down the road. The baoli was deserted; it seemed like a good retreat, and he settled in on the ancient steps, thinking about the wildings.

The only one he had feared a little had been the cat with the uncomfortably clear gaze—the Siamese whose blue eyes had looked so gravely at him that the feral felt she was staring into the depths of his mind. And she was dead, her blood staining the wild marigolds, killed by Ratsbane and his creatures. There was nothing else to fear.

Idly, he wondered if he should kill the other cats he’d seen. Datura had already marked Katar down as prey. The tom would put up a fight, but it would be a fair one. The white cat’s yellow eye had a smirk in it: to him, the only kind of fight worth getting into was the kind you won.

If there had been so much prey in the small space of the Shuttered House’s gardens, how much prey would there be in Nizamuddin? The white cat felt his muscles relaxing at the thought of the consternation the wildings would feel when
one by one, their numbers were thinned by an unseen enemy. He would slip in and out of their ranks, until he slipped in and out of their nightmares.

Datura yawned and stretched, wondering if he should go back and snack on one of the dead mice, or if it might be fun to make a fresh set of kills while Nizamuddin was still swirling in fear. He was about to take a quick cat-nap before he decided, when something made his whiskers prickle.

Datura turned his head to the right. A neat creature, half his size, sat quietly on the stone tier just below, observing him openly. Her brown-and-silver head was freshly combed, and her claws were sheathed.

The cat’s yellow eye gleamed, and he felt his whiskers tingle at the prospect of a good kill.

“Greetings to you, meat,” he said, rising, his tail at a jaunty angle.

The creature made no response. Her eyes flashed red for a second, but otherwise she stayed where she was.

“Would you like to run, or shall we fight?” he asked.

There was still no reply, but now the mongoose began to dance, moving from one paw to another.

“You haven’t asked my name,” she said, as she weaved first slowly, then rapidly, back and forth.

The cat sneered, his whiskers radiating their disgust.

“I never ask the name of my meat,” he said, stepping onto the stone where his intended prey danced. Datura meant to end this quickly and take his nap, after all.

Kirri moved so fast he didn’t see the strike until her teeth had ripped across his right paw, his neck and his open throat.

“Kirri,” she said. “They call me Kirri. You should always know the name of your killer, Datura.”

Blood poured out of his wounds as the white cat growled in anger, but the anger was laced with fear. He had struck back, but Kirri had danced so deftly out of the way that his blow went wide. Datura licked rapidly at his neck, trying to staunch the blood, realizing that she had sliced a key vein.

“You can dance, meat,” he said. “But can you fight?”

The cat lunged forward, his teeth ready to flay Kirri alive. But the mongoose waited till the last second and then flattened herself; Datura’s throat was exposed to her sharp teeth and the cat screamed as she bit deep. He twisted around; with his hind legs, he raked at the mongoose, and had the satisfaction of seeing a light line of drops of blood bedew her tail.

Kirri didn’t seem to notice. She slid out from under him, watching the blood drip down from his throat to pool and gather on the stone. Datura growled and leapt at her again.

“You can fight, Datura,” she said. “But you can’t dance.”

The mongoose disappeared from his view, and when he turned his head to see where she’d gone, Datura found his eyes clouding over. He staggered a little and shook his head to clear it. Instinct told the white cat the mongoose had to be behind him. He whirled around. She wasn’t there.

The pain in his left paw when Kirri crunched it into two was unbelievable. Datura howled even as he tried to slam into the mongoose, intending to wedge her between his body and the stone. But he slipped on the algae that covered the stone steps, and had to scrabble so as not to go over the edge.

“Try saying my name,” said the mongoose as she sunk her teeth into his right paw. “Kirri. It’s not so hard.”

Datura howled.

The mongoose watched him, her red eyes aflame. She raised herself high on her back paws and danced to the right of the wounded cat, who was trying to limp up to the next stone.

“The right paw was for the mice,” she said. “The left paw was for the birds.”

“Stop,” he said, his whiskers shivering with pain. “Stop it, meat. Wait till I get my teeth into your stinking hide.”

His yellow eye flared, but his blue eye was watering with the hurt. Datura could barely see ahead of him; he didn’t know it, but he was bleeding out from the deep puncture wounds the mongoose had left in his throat. He snarled, and tried for the last time to take a swing at the small predator. If he could only get closer, he could bite off her head. He could bite that snout in two, if he could only see her. Where had she gone?

When Kirri’s teeth sank into his throat, Datura screamed and rolled onto his back. “That was for the Siamese,” she said. “She was a better fighter than you, Datura. She fought for the little ones you slaughtered so rashly. And she gave me the honour of my name.”

The cat would have scrabbled up again, but his front paws were useless, and the mongoose was sending unbearable pain shooting up his spine as she ruthlessly savaged his back paws. Datura mewed in fear—he was looking up at the sky, away from the baoli, away from the stone. It arced over him, endless and menacing. “Please,” he cried to the mongoose. “Please, I’m afraid—the sky—take it away. Kirri—please.”

The red died out of the mongoose’s eyes, leaving them brown and a little sad. She moved up to the next stone, her eyes never leaving Datura’s; she saw that the fear was genuine. Almost gently, she leaned over the white cat, her brown and silver fur tangling with his bloody white fur, and then she bit his throat out.

“That is more mercy,” she said to her dead opponent, “than you showed any of them.” Kirri dropped down onto all four paws, and slid out of the baoli, a brown-and-silver shadow. She didn’t look back, nor did she clean the blood off her sleek muzzle. The rain would wash it off, in time.

O
nce, Miao had fallen into a river, and as she sank, all the familiar sounds of the world were cut off and reduced to faint, faraway murmurs as the blood rumbled in her long ears. As the Siamese dragged herself painfully towards the wall, that was how she felt. The sounds of the battle raging between the wildings and the ferals seemed to come from a long distance away, their cries much softer than the pounding in her ears.

Ratsbane and his friends had taken their time; as she lay there helpless against so many, she had been reminded of dogs worrying a mouse or a kitten. Then Miao had closed her mind to the pain and let her eyes wander elsewhere. She felt what they did to her, but she placed the pain into a small corner of her mind, the way Tooth’s mother, Stoop, had taught her to do many years ago.

Stoop had been a young, proud cheel then; Miao had been a young, proud queen. “Fold up the pain until it’s the size of a
fledgling, and then the size of a fledgling’s claw,” Stoop had told her the day the cheel had misjudged a spectacular dive and ripped off one of her own talons. It was good advice, Miao found, until the pain rose beyond a certain point. The Siamese had lost consciousness, sinking so deep into stasis that Ratsbane had assumed she was dead.

It took her a long while to get across the dried leaves and twigs that littered the ground. The Siamese stopped only when she thought she might attract the attention of one of the ferals. But she was lucky; Ratsbane had chosen a spot a little further away from the battle to stage his ambush, and the way to the wall was clear. Miao drifted in and out of states of pain and weakness as she made her slow way up to the wall. Her back paws were damaged; one was broken, the other crushed. From the pain, the Siamese could tell that her spine had taken a beating. But she kept going.

She was at the wall when the Sender shimmered into view with the tiger, and exhausted though she was, Miao felt herself react with happiness—if she had still had whiskers, she would have raised them in salute. It seemed to her that the orange kitten turned and caught her eye, and when she saw Mara move away from the tiger, she knew that she was right.

“No,” she whispered, hoping the Sender would hear it. “Stay with the tiger. The wildings need you more than I do, Mara—yes, I know your name, we all know who you are even though we’ve never met. Stay there. Do your job.”

The Sender hesitated, and then Ozzy roared again. Mara stayed by his side, but when she could, she turned her serious little face towards Miao again. “Beraal told me all about you,”
she said directly to the Siamese, cutting out the other cats from the conversation. “I can’t talk much—bringing and holding the tiger here drains all my energy—but can’t I help you? Can’t the other cats come to you, Miao?”

“No!” said the Siamese, “I’m dying, Mara, the wounds run too deep.” She saw the kitten falter, and realized that Mara did not understand.

“When we’re close to the other side, Mara, we prefer to die alone,” said Miao. “It’s—we’re cats. That’s what we prefer, quiet and silence. The other cats have their paws full with the battle. I’m safe here. You do what you must, Sender. But before you go—”

The Siamese stopped, and her old eyes glazed over with pain. Mara would have left the tiger and come to her, but the Siamese opened her eyes again and glared at the kitten, willing her to stay where she was.

“The Sender in my time ended her days as an inside cat, like you,” said Miao. “She suffered for it, Mara. She had great powers, but because she stopped going outside, something inside her shrivelled up and died. What you’re doing now is so brave—” the Siamese had to stop again, because her ribs were hurting her so much.

When she opened her eyes, the Sender and the tiger were watching the ferals flee.

“Mara,” whispered Miao, and immediately, the kitten had turned to her, their eyes connecting across the battlefield. “Your courage—your strength and talents—are greater than any Sender who’s come before you, even Tigris, who was Sender in my time. But you’re not here. This is just a sending.”
She had to stop. Blood had welled up in her mouth, and the cat bared her teeth, letting it spill onto the ground. It darkened the earth near her face. Mustering her fading strength, the Siamese continued.

“Nizamuddin is going to change, Mara,” she said. “I can feel it, and so can Beraal. It’s the battle, and more—I can’t see it all—you might—” Her voice was fading into exhaustion.

“Promise me you’ll step out of your house, at least a few times,” said Miao.

The orange kitten’s young green eyes widened. “But I hate being outside,” she said. “You don’t understand, Miao.”

The Siamese would have smiled; Mara could see it in her blue eyes, though the light was fading from them rapidly.

“I do,” she said. “I had a fear of heights when I was a young kitten. So I do know how it feels to tremble at the thought of something that seems so simple for other cats and is so hard for you. But Mara, you have to do it. The world is not a sending, little one. The world is real, and it is more than the four walls of your house. If you shut yourself in, away from the Nizamuddin wildings, something inside you will wither. I have no time left, Mara. Just promise that you’ll try to come out. Promise me, by whisker and paw. Give me your word, by tail and by claw.”

The words found their mark. Mara said, “I promise I’ll try, Miao.” And then her ears quivered, and the kitten’s fur seemed to crumple from tiredness. “I have to go, Miao. If only we’d met before.”

“We would have if you’d come out of your house before,” said Miao, holding Mara’s sad green eyes with her own calm blue ones. “Keep that promise for me.”

When the kitten shimmered out of view, Miao let her head drop back to the ground, grateful for the soft pillow of the earth. The talking had been too much for her. The Siamese heard a babble of noise—the distant yelps of the ferals, the war cries of Qawwali and the dargah cats, the low conversation of Katar and Hulo, Beraal’s clear tones. But she was too exhausted to listen to any of it. She lay at the foot of the wall, feeling a black tiredness seep into her mind, knowing that she was badly broken inside.

The wall brought her solace. It was a reminder that the ferals had stayed on this side of the crumbling boundary that divided the grounds of the Shuttered House from the colony the Nizamuddin cats roamed with such freedom. On the other side, the babblers went about their business, safe from Datura and his kind. The rats were free to roam their gutters, Blackwing, Brightbeak and their band of crows could call to one another across the trees in the park without fearing an unpleasant death.