Tortall (20 page)

It was an easy thing for him to say. She had not hit him on the head and called him a monster.

I showed him my fist, meaning this would not go well. He nudged me again, until I fell onto all four legs. I glared up at him.

I mean it, Kitten
, Spots told me.
Go
. He shoved my rump forward, nearly driving my muzzle into the dirt.

I ran as much away from him as toward the cave. The stubborn beast followed. He was determined that Afra should see me. Once he took up for someone, there was nothing he would not do for them. That included ordering me about.

Afra saw Spots first because he was taller. Her quick eyes took in his lack of a saddle or rider and his knotted tether. Then she saw me.

“You again!” she cried. She flung her hand out. A twining flare of magic, mixed pale blue and pale green ropes that would burn an ordinary mortal to the ground, sped from her fingers.

Afra’s spell washed over me. It stung, a little. Then it flowed up, meeting the magical barrier overhead in bursts of gold sparkles. I wanted to grip some, but Afra was not done with me.

Brighter two-colored fires lashed from her hand. I could feel their strength—if they hit me, they would hurt. I raised a shield of my own power that would cover Spots and me. Her Gift splashed against it and was sucked into the magic overhead. It blazed gold.

The earth quivered, an anxious horse about to break free of all control.
Uh-oh
, Spots said.
Did you feel that?

I looked at Afra. She was intent on working another spell. The earth shook hard, knocking her down. The stones beside the mouth of the cave trembled. If the shake got harder, there was danger to the cave.

Spots and I raced forward together without needing to check with one another. We were old campaigners; we knew what had to be done. The ground rolled. Spots scrambled for footing as small stones fell and hit Afra. Spots lunged and got a mouthful of her robe as I raced past him into the cave. Afra screamed as a large rock fell behind me, half-blocking the cave’s mouth.

For a moment I could not move. Inside the cave a welcoming warmth enclosed me. It reminded me of how I felt when Daine held me. I thought I heard a whispering song in
a strange language I almost knew. Dazed, I touched the cave wall. It was glassy and warm, an assembly of tiny beads. I wanted to stay there forever.

Then the baby screamed. Somehow I forced myself to break that spell of love and safety to walk deeper into the cave. Another shake inspired me to run, my night vision showing me all the dangers. Afra had a small fire going in the chamber she had turned into her home. I buried that in case falling rock scattered hot embers everywhere. The baby lay beside the fire, swaddled and tucked into a carry basket. I whistled a lifting spell until I could wriggle my forepaws into the straps. Then, as another shiver rocked the ground under my feet, I began to run, or rather, to slog.

I never expected a small baby and a straw carry basket to weigh so much. I was frantic to get out before the cave dropped on us, yet I also wanted to stay and be a baby myself, curled up against the mother spirit in the stone. Each time I stopped to catch my breath, I had to force myself to move on. Fortunately, though I did not think so then, the baby’s screams constantly reminded me to keep going. I could not wait to get it off of my back, or sides, wherever it had slipped. By the time we came to the rock that half-covered the entrance, the basket hung off of my neck, yanking me sideways.

Eyeing the rock and the opening it had left, I crawled out of the straps. Grabbing them in my forepaws, I backed into the opening, tugging the basket after me. It was half-out when it stuck. I was squealing curses when Afra said, “I am sorry that I called you a monster. Please—let me get him out.”

I slid off the rock with gratitude and let Afra lift her
child into the open. My poor forelegs ached. My back muscles complained. I wanted to go back into that comforting cave, which was deadly folly in an earthquake.

Spots came over to nuzzle me. I looked up at my friend and moaned. He pushed me a little harder with his nose.
Don’t complain
, he told me.
You aren’t bleeding
.

Afra had her baby out of the carry basket. She held it, bouncing it as she talked softly. It finally stopped screaming.

The hard ground shakes had also halted, though I could feel the same deep shiver that I had felt yesterday, on the rock over the cave’s mouth.

“We should get to clearer ground,” Afra said. “In case the earthquake returns.”

I nodded.

“There is a place by the spring where I get water. But I cannot leave the food that you brought.” She looked at the opening in the cave entrance, biting her lower lip. Then she placed the baby on the ground beside me. “Watch him, please. If something happens …” She shook her head and ran like a fool to the cave. She wriggled into the opening and was gone.

I squealed in irritation. I could have gone for those things! I looked at Spots, thinking that he could mind the baby.

She asked
you
to watch him
, Spots said.
If you go into the cave with her, she will panic, thinking the baby is alone but for a stupid horse
.

I had to do as she had told me, since she was beginning to see that I was no monster. I muttered to myself. I knew he was right. He often is.

Spots walked over to the baby and began to nudge him to and fro, rocking him. The baby liked it. He was chuckling, as if a horse rocked him every day. Then he looked at me. I jerked back, thinking he would scream in fear, but he only watched me as he rocked, his eyes big.

Afra returned with my sack. She must have put some of her own things inside, because it was heavier, judging by the way she carried it. She set it down and watched Spots rock her son.

“I don’t suppose you two would hire on as nursemaids?” she asked. “I’ll take Uday now.” She gathered her son up and tucked him into the carry basket, asking him, “Did you like that, Uday? Did you?” He chuckled for her, too. Carefully she settled the basket over her shoulders. While she tightened the straps, Spots made faces for Uday. I gave Spots’ foreleg a push, for showing off.

Afra picked up the heavy sack. She looked at me. “It’s not far, the spring. Would your friend mind if I put this on his back? I know it’s slippery with no saddle, but I can hold it there.”

Spots nodded at her.

Afra looked at him, then at me. “What are you?” she asked. Her lips quivered. Her eyes were wet. She turned to hoist the bag onto Spots’ back. I feared for those eggs inside the robe. They seemed to be doomed.

“I do not weep in the ordinary way of things,” Afra said, her voice defensive. “But it has been so hard, with everyone’s hand turned against me. And now you two come—it was you with the food, before?” She looked at me. Her eyes were dry
again. I nodded to her. “Why? What are you, and why are you doing these things?”

I made a cradle of my forearms and rocked them.

“The baby, yes,” Afra said.

Then I ran in place and pretended to be throwing rocks at her. I started to walk around as if I followed a maze, looking confused.

She frowned for a moment. Then her face smoothed. “You saw the boys chase me!” I nodded.

“Well, you’re kindhearted, both of you. Come. The spring’s this way.” She pointed out the path for Spots, soon discovering that if she spoke the directions there was no need to point. That was just as well, because the sack did slide all over his back. She was kept busy just holding it there.

We followed the gully where Spots and I had waited for Afra to take the sack. The path twisted out of view, making a wide curve around the cave’s protecting stone. We entered a small bay where trees grew and a spring bubbled up through the ground to make a pond. One of the three rocky walls of the bay was part of the stone that made the cave, reddish orange and fine grained instead of rough brown-black. Plants sprouted in the cracks in the walls. Birds fluttered to the tops of the trees as we arrived.

Spots let Afra take the sack from him before he trotted over to the water. He sniffed at it.
Is the water safe?
he asked me.
I suppose it is, if she has been drinking it, but it never hurts to be sure
.

I tested it with a drop of my magic. The water gleamed and rippled for a moment, proof that it was very good. Spots dipped his head and began to drink. I, too, was thirsty. I gulped until my belly sloshed.

While we slurped, Afra made camp. She set Uday up in his basket so he might watch us, then took everything from the sack. It was as I feared—the eggs were ruined. Afra looked at them, crushed messes in the folds of the robe. She covered her mouth, but I could tell that she was trying not to giggle. Finally she could not help herself. She gave way, and her laughter made Uday chuckle. She was different when she laughed.

Spots brought the soiled robe over to me. We were both shaking our heads over the ruined eggs when Afra picked the robe up. “It’s a shame about the eggs, but you brought me two sausages and a brick of pressed dates. You’re going to make me fat.” She smiled when she said it.

A stream left the pond and flowed out through the rear of our bay of rocks. Afra went to it with the robe. I followed her while Spots cropped the grass that grew around the pond’s edges and watched Uday. Afra knelt beside some rocks in the stream and began to wash the egg from the robe. “I saw this on their headman’s wife,” she told me, scrubbing two handfuls of robe against one another. “If she knew I had it, she would screech the clouds down.” She looked sideways at me. “If I were a better person, I would return it, but the nights are cold.”

I retracted my claws and took an eggy spot of my own, swishing it in the stream to wet it before I tried to scrub the stuff out.

“The horse is odd, but at least he is still a horse. But you … there are no pale blue crocodiles or monitor lizards, and a crocodile would have eaten Uday. You must have come from someplace wonderful,” Afra told me. “Not that my experience of the world is so wide. I have known only the mountain towns and villages.” She traded her clean handful of cloth for a dirty one and looked at me. I was scrubbing as well as I could in the hope that she would tell me her story. “My home is back that way.” She waved her hand toward the east. “My family had the Gift. My mother could charm metal, my father doctored animals. My sister was good at all-around magic. They believed I had no power. Then my woman’s time came, and my Gift with it.”

I nodded. It happened that way in about one person in ten, Numair said. Often it was an unpleasant surprise for the newly Gifted child.

“You have seen my Gift,” Afra said, finding a new place to scrub. I rinsed mine, then found another spot to work on. “No one knew what to do, or how to teach a girl with two-colored magic. They took me to our lord. He gave them three gold pieces for me and told them to go home. That was how I became a slave.”

I reared back on my haunches and hissed. The last emperor, Kaddar’s uncle, had tried to make a slave of Daine once. He had caged and bespelled me. That was why there was a new palace in the capital. They could do little with the old one, once Daine and her friends were through with it.

Afra smiled crookedly. “Oh. You know what it’s like. I bore it at first. They fed me well. But I could not make my magic do as they wished, so they beat me and took the food
away.” She began to wring out the robe. We had cleaned it entirely. “I would have done as I was told, if I had
known
how to control my Gift. I didn’t. After a few beatings and enough lost meals, I’d borne enough. That was how I learned that if I wanted to be free of shackles or ropes badly enough, my magic would do away with them.” She shrugged. “I stole some things and I ran away. I traveled with a caravan for a time, dancing for coins.” She spread the robe on some rocks to dry in the sun and she shook her head. “There was a man traveling with us. Sadly, he had a wife in one of the towns. I did not know that until Uday was growing in my belly.”

I stood, watching her. She spoke well. Perhaps she had learned it at the lord’s house. If I looked at her without the struggle of getting her to eat, or worrying about her magic, if I only thought of her as a human, like Daine’s friends, how old could she be? Her face was not strained with fear or anger as she sat on a rock and looked back at me.

“I joined another caravan, but once my belly was big, I could not dance anymore,” she told me. “You understand every word, by the rivers and springs, you do. I cannot see feelings in the face of a lizard or snake, but I can tell you are sad. Don’t be sad for me. I have whored and stolen, and done both of those among people who had taken pity on me and gave me work.” She pointed toward the village on the other side of the rocks. “Why do you think those boys were so happy to stone me? I got caught at my thieving and thrown out. The villagers had warned me about the maze of stone, but I never even saw it. I found the cave instead. I felt safe there, and that is where I managed to have Uday without bungling things too badly.” She looked at her worn straw
sandals. She was about fifteen, I decided. Nearly my age, just a baby. I knew human females are supposed to be old enough to marry and have families by the time they are sixteen, or even fourteen, but that never seemed right.

I could not play any more games with Afra, trying to keep her to myself. When she trusted me enough, I would take her to my parents. They would know what to do. Numair would welcome her for her rare Gift. Daine would welcome her because once she, too, had been a girl on her own. Afra and her baby would be as safe with my foster parents as I was.

“I think I will sleep,” Afra told me suddenly. “I have learned to fight using my Gift, but it tires me. Or maybe it is nursing a baby and fighting with my Gift both.” She walked back to Uday’s carry bag and curled up beside him, without even a blanket. I looked at Spots, thinking that there were extra blankets in Numair and Daine’s tent.

Once Afra slept, Spots and I left her there. Afra could also use one of Daine’s scarves, and perhaps a few other items. They wouldn’t mind, once they knew the entire story. I was sure of that.